Take Me There (15 page)

I WAS SO DISTRACTED AT WORK THAT I FORGOT TO REPLACE
the drain plug in a Volkswagen van. I must have looked pretty bad too, because nobody bothered me or accused me of pulling a Wade.

“I scored us some weed,” Wade told me after taking a lengthy lunch break and spending most of it at the pay phone out front. “Found us a party over in Compton. All we gotta do is bring a couple of bottles.”

“Sounds great,” I said, trying to smile. Truth was, I already felt like I had a hangover and wasn’t looking forward to tomorrow morning, but I’d promised Wade I would party with him, and it seemed to mean a lot to him. He walked around all day smiling and saying things like, “Good to have you back” and “Just like old times.”

“You okay, son?” Gomez asked me when I nearly poured a quart of oil into the radiator of a Jimmy.

“Don’t call me son. I’m not your son. I’m not anybody’s son,” I said. Then I grabbed an old oil barrel we used as a trash
can and went out back to empty it so I wouldn’t have to look at the hurt in his eyes.

I had just dumped a bunch of boxes and old rags into the dumpster when I turned around to see a fist coming straight for my jaw. It knocked me backward and I fell to the ground. No sooner had I landed on the asphalt than I felt arms lifting me, holding me while the first guy used my stomach for a punching bag.

I lifted both my knees and drop-kicked my attacker, who flew back about four feet, hit a wall, and came back swinging.

Meanwhile, I threw the two guys who were holding me off balance by forcing them to support my full weight. Then I shoved them in my attacker’s path.

He stumbled to the ground, and I finally got a good look at his face. It was Jess’s boyfriend, Jason.

Great! I could only imagine what Jess had told him about me—that I’d tried to force myself on her? That my gangbanger friends had tried to kidnap her?

Jason came at me swinging, along with his two cronies who were big guys like him and just as full of rage. “Somebody needs to teach you a lesson. Girls like Jessica don’t end up with trash like you,” Jason yelled.

I grabbed a piece of pipe out of the dumpster and swung it in front of me to keep the three of them back. “You don’t deserve her any more than I do,” I told him.

“What did you do to her?” he screamed at me.

“None of your damn business,” I shouted, but I panicked as I wondered again what she had told him. The events of the last few days raced through my mind. Had I moved too fast? Misread her? No, she had definitely been the one to come on to
me, but maybe she didn’t remember it that way. Maybe the guilt of seeing her boyfriend put the whole weekend in a different perspective.

“Oh yes, it is my business,” he said, picking up a piece of two-by-four lying by the wall. “I bought her a damn ring, and when I get to her house she tells me she wants to break up with me.”

“She broke up with you?” I said in disbelief, dropping my guard.

Jason’s two friends took the opportunity to grab the pipe and force my hands behind my back. Jason started whaling on me with the board, but I was too dazed to feel anything for the first couple of blows.

“I had to find out from her friends she’d left me for a lousy grease monkey,” he said as the board came down hard across my ribs. The whole scene seemed so unreal that I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. Which just made Jason angrier. He sliced the board across my mouth, and I wasn’t laughing anymore.

“Stop it!” someone screamed, and I looked up to see Jess running out of the back of the shop, followed by Kip and Gomez, who was carrying a tire iron. Gomez knocked Jason off his feet, while Jess started beating the guys holding me with her handbag. “Let him go,” she screamed at them.

“You heard the lady,” said Kip, picking up the piece of pipe I had dropped.

The two thugs released me, and I fell to the ground. Only then did the pain set in, but the sight of Jess kneeling down in front of me made it worthwhile.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t tell him anything. I swear.”

“I suggest you pick up your friend and get him out of here,” Gomez warned Jason’s cronies. “Before I call the police.”

They helped Jason off the ground and started moving him to his car. “Jess, you can’t leave me for
him
,” he pleaded.

“I already have,” Jess told him.

She had left her fancy rich boyfriend for me? Had I heard her right, or had the blow to my head left me loony?

Jess turned back to me. “Are you okay? Oh my God. You’re bleeding.” She took a tissue out of her purse and dabbed the side of my face. Then she kissed me on the lips so tenderly I was instantly lost. Little voices were saying things to me like,
You’re not good enough, you’ll drag her down, you don’t belong with her
.
But I ignored them all. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close, even though my entire body was aching. Because in that moment I believed something different from what the voices in my head had been telling me all my life. I believed I could be a better person than who I’d always been.

By that time every guy in the shop was standing outside watching us, and they all began to cheer, except for Wade, who stood at the back of the crowd with his hands in his pockets, looking like he’d just lost his best friend.

“I couldn’t stand watching you walk away last night,” Jess told me. “But I was so afraid something bad would happen if you stayed. And now look at you.” She started to cry and wiped my face again. “This is all my fault.”

“I’m okay,” I said, trying to get up and grabbing my side in pain.

“All right, Romeo,” Gomez said as he and Kip helped me to my feet. “I’m taking you to my doctor to have a look at those ribs.”

Jess looked around and seemed to notice for the first time
that we had an audience. She quickly stood up, then leaned toward me and whispered, “Tonight. My place.”

“Tonight,” I said, and then I watched her walk away.

The doctor x-rayed me and said my ribs were bruised, but not fractured. Mr. Gomez paid him out of his own pocket and then drove me back to the shop. “Thank you,” I told him, feeling bad for what I had said to him earlier. He was the only person who had ever acted like anything even close to a father.

“Is she worth all that pain?” he asked me, smiling.

“Definitely,” I said, still reeling from the events of the day. “But I don’t deserve her.”

“Then be somebody who does.”

“That’s what I intend to do.”

By the time we got back to the shop it was closing time. “What about the party?” Wade asked me, looking like a wounded puppy.

“I don’t think that’s gonna work out,” I told him. It would have been easier if he’d gotten angry. Then I could have stood my ground, told him to leave me alone, but it was the sad, lost look in his eyes I couldn’t stand.

“But we had plans,” he said.

“Plans change.”

His lower lip started to quiver as if he was going to start crying right there in front of me. It took so little to make him happy and so little to crush him. It was exhausting, being so responsible for his happiness.

“Come on, Wade. Can’t you see I got a good thing going?”

“You can’t be somethin’ you ain’t,” he reminded me.

“I gotta try.”

“But I’m the one who set up the party. I’m supposed to bring the booze, and now I don’t even got a ride. Can you at least give me a ride?” He was so pathetic. What could I say?

“Sure, Wade. I can give you a ride.” And with those eight words, my fate was sealed.

Wade showered. Combed his hair. Got dressed. Checked his watch. Decided he didn’t like his hair. Spent a half hour trying to get it right. Then, just as I thought we were finally going to leave, he checked his watch again. Decided he didn’t like what he was wearing.

“I’ve got a couple of things to take care of,” I explained to Jess on the telephone, after Wade started changing his clothes yet again. “Then I’ll be right over, I promise.”

“I’ll be waiting, as long as it takes,” she told me. “I’ll stay up all night, just come to me as soon as you can.”

I looked around at the dismal room, the dirty throw rug we’d tossed over the grease stain in the middle of the garage, the one window with the threadbare curtain, the cinder-block wall we’d built where the garage door used to be, the lone bulb that served as our main light source. It was so pathetic compared to Jess’s house I almost felt guilty for leaving Wade behind.

Almost.

“Okay, it’s time to go,” Wade said at 8:35 on the dot.

Finally.

I thought about taking a change of clothes to Jess’s house, but then remembered the bag filled with her father’s rejects. Didn’t want to look like I was moving in. I put Baby Face in the backseat and we were on our way.

“You can wait out here,” Wade said as I pulled up in front of a liquor store on Rosecrans Avenue. “I’ll just be a minute. And keep the engine runnin’. I don’t wanna be late to the party.”

Then why did you change your clothes four times?
I wanted to ask him, but I kept my mouth shut.

Wade went into the store and didn’t even walk over to the liquor aisle. He just stood in front of the candy, next to the register.

“Wade, what the hell are you doing?” I said, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me.

That’s when I saw him draw a gun and point it at the guy behind the counter.

“Shit!” I yelled. “Wade, are you crazy?” I screamed.

Before I had time to think what to do, Wade had handed the man a pillowcase, which the clerk filled with money and handed back. Wade ran outside, jumped in the car, and screamed, “Drive. Drive! DRIVE!”

I peeled out of the parking lot as fast as I could, nearly hitting a Volkswagen. I could hear sirens in the distance. Wondered if they were already coming after us. Wondered if the guy in the store had pressed a silent alarm, gotten my license plate number, had Wade’s picture on the surveillance camera. Realized I’d just become an accessory to armed robbery.

“Wade, what the hell were you thinking?”

“Get on the 710,” he said.

I didn’t really have much choice if I wanted to put some distance between us and the crime scene, so I did it.

He was clutching the pillowcase full of money to his chest, and the hand holding the gun was shaking so badly I was afraid he was going to accidentally shoot me. “Would you please put that thing down?” I said.

He looked at his hand. Didn’t even seem to realize he was still holding the gun. Tossed it on the floor.

“Wade, what is going on?”

“Take this exit,” he said.

“Wade!”

“Do it!” he yelled.

I took the exit. Didn’t know what else to do. When I was sure we’d lost the cops, I pulled to a stop in front of a park. Got out of the car, went over to the passenger side, and yanked Wade out by the collar. Threw him up on the hood of the Mustang with him still clutching the bag full of money.

“Is this some sort of fucking game to you, Wade? You turn eighteen in two months, and my birthday is next week. We’re not going to juvie this time. They’re gonna lock us in with the big boys.”

“Ajax got a hookup. We ain’t gonna do no time. He promised.”

“What are you talking about?” I looked around the park, saw the graffiti covering the trash cans, and realized we were smack dab in the middle of Compton.

About that time the black van pulled up alongside us and parked on the curb. Ajax, Spider, Eight Ball, and Two Tone all got out, along with some other guys from the BSB carrying twelve-packs of beer like they’d just arrived at a party.

That’s when I realized. This was the party.

“What up, cuz? You got the goods?” Eight Ball asked Wade.

“Right here.” Wade handed him the pillowcase, his hands still shaking.

Eight Ball looked inside, smiled, and slapped Wade on the shoulder. “You done good.”

“Dat’s my man,” Two Tone said, knocking fists with Wade.

Ajax pulled out something that looked like an electric toothbrush, with a needle coming out the top where the bristles should have been. “Okay. You boys proved yourselves. Time to tat up.”

The full impact of what was happening hit me. Ajax wasn’t holding a toothbrush. It was a homemade tattoo gun. And this was an initiation. So Wade had robbed the liquor store to get into the gang. But why did he have to drag me along?

Ajax grabbed my right arm and held the needle against it. I jerked away from him. “No!”

Eight Ball’s smile disappeared. “Whatchoo mean, no? You done the crime. Now you in. We had an agreement.” He looked at Wade. “Both of you or no deal.”

Wade turned to me. “Come on, Dylan. You know this is where we belong. This is where guys like us always end up. Here or in the gutter, and I don’t wanna end up dead in no gutter.”

“You decided this all on your own. You didn’t even hit me up on it!” I screamed at him. “You had no business!”

“You told me he was down,” Eight Ball said to Wade, his eyes cold and dangerous.

“Fo’ sho he is,” said Wade, posing like a tough guy. “He’s just a little sideways right now. Some rich bitch got him twisted. He’ll come around.”

I grabbed Wade by the face, wanting to crush his jaw in my fist. “Don’t you ever call her that. I’m not coming around, Wade. I don’t want any part of this.” I turned to Eight Ball. “What I told you in the garage is solid. I’m going legit.”

The BSB looked from one to another as if they were having a silent conference among themselves. “We cool wit’ dat,” said Eight Ball. “’Course, we can’t offer you no protection from the
po-po if you ain’t in.” He glanced at Ajax, who nodded. “If you in, this never happened. You ain’t in, you on your own.”

He was blackmailing me. If I joined the gang, my life would belong to them forever. But if I didn’t, I would go to prison.

“I’m not tatting up,” I said.

Eight Ball looked at me long and hard, but I wasn’t backing down. “Okay,” he finally said, his voice full of resignation. “You can roll.”

“That’s it? You just gonna let him fly?” said Two Tone.

Eight Ball raised a hand to silence his younger brother. “Go on,” he told me.

I walked to my car in relief. “C’mon, Wade.”