We Were Here (33 page)

EVERYBODY IS NOBODY
.

It was almost like me and whoever wrote it were connected with each other. Put here for each other. Even though we’d never even met or ever would.

After a while I started laughing again ’cause I realized I could sort of smell the red flower a few feet away from my head. But I didn’t move it or anything. Just kept laying there, staring at that one line of graffiti,
EVERYBODY IS NOBODY
, smelling the stupid-ass flower, telling myself I deserved every single thing that had ever happened to me.

1:30 a.m.:

I’m sitting up on my bench now, watching Rondell come back onto the baseball field. Good ol’ Rondell. Big as hell. Like a damn bull or some shit. He’s cutting across the infield holding his Bible in his right hand, heading for the other dugout. He’s not even glancing at the one I’m in. If he’d just peek over, man, just for a sec, he’d see my dumb ass sitting here completely solo. No Flaca. He’d see I got played like a punk bitch. I know if I was him I’d at least get a quick look, man. Check if my boy was getting loose with his girl.

But not Rondell, man. He’s doing exactly like I said. And for some reason that shit is making me all choked up, like I’m gonna cry, man. Like a little girl. I don’t even get why. I grit my teeth and swallow down as hard as I can, but I’m not
gonna lie, a couple tears are coming out anyway, rolling down my punk bitch face and into my sweatshirt. I grab my cheeks in my hands and squeeze as hard as I can. And then let go.

Rondell’s ducking into the other dugout now. He’s taking off his shoes and putting his bag on the bench for a pillow. He’s laying down on his back.

And that’s it, there’s no more movement from his side of the field. Guy’s probably already out cold already.

But not me, man.

I’m wide awake as hell.

Like it’s damn noon.

And I just realized something. Mong left some shit out when he said only trivial things don’t matter. It’s so much more than that, yo.
Nothing
matters. Not when you break it all down like I been doing in my head all tonight. Trust me. Nothing. Not me. Not you. Not the guy in the liquor store with the bat. Not the Bible. Not the pretty girls. Not being the watcher-over of this park. Not
The Catcher in the Rye
. Not this damn book I’m writing.

Nothing, man.

It’s all meaningless.

Everybody.

Is.

Nobody.

August 6

It’s been three days and I still haven’t told Rondell I lost our money.

That first morning, we just hung out around the baseball field and walked the streets, me secretly looking for Flaca and her friends, wondering what I’d do even if I found ’em. But we never saw them. They probably went on a damn vacation to Hawaii or some shit. For food we just ate cheap at random taco shops with the money I had leftover in my pocket and the change Rondell gave back to me from when he was at the diner. We barely talked.

The next day we made our way toward the beach, every once in a while stopping at a gas station or store to make sure we were on the right track. I kept waiting for Rondell to turn and ask me a question about my night with Flaca, or about why we were leaving without me saying bye, but he never did. He just walked beside me, carrying his group-home bag slung on his shoulder, baby Afro bobbing up and down with each long stride he took.

Once we came to this footpath near the beach we started heading north, who even knows why. We walked at a steady pace, and just like the day before neither of us said much. All I cared about now was putting miles between me and National City and getting played like how I did. Didn’t even matter where we were going or when we got there or anything else. It just seemed like the farther we got from that baseball field the less I’d remember.

It wasn’t until the sun started going down yesterday that Rondell finally asked me anything. And all he wanted to know was when we were gonna eat. I realized we hadn’t had any food the whole day.

I felt in my almost empty pockets and looked up at him.

“We gonna get some more tacos?” he said.

It’s one thing to mess up shit for yourself, but when it affects somebody else, too … Yo, that’s when you wanna jump off a damn bridge.

I know from more than just this time.

“Wait here,” I told him, and I ducked into this big supermarket. I checked where all the mirrors were and the checkers and the other store workers and then started shoving random things in my bag on the slick: a loaf of bread and jelly and peanuts and a few oranges and cans of Coke. Then I just walked out like there wasn’t nothing in there I wanted. Nobody even looked up as I went through the automatic glass doors and cruised through the parking lot back to where Rondell was sitting on the curb. That’s the thing about stealing shit. If you act like you know what you’re doing most people don’t even look twice.

“Come on,” I told him, and he got up and followed me.

We ended up on this bus-stop bench a few blocks down and Rondell wolfed down anything and everything I pulled from my bag. I don’t even think he looked at what it was first, he just shoved it in his mouth.

I ate a couple things too, but something wasn’t right with my stomach.

A group of dirty-ass pigeons gathered under our feet waiting for scraps. Every time I kicked at ’em they’d back off for a few minutes, then slowly start waddling under our feet again. When a bus pulled alongside the curb, Rondell hopped up like we were gonna get on it, but I tugged the back of his sweatshirt, told him: “We gotta walk it this time, Rondo.”

He sat back down not even asking why.

As we kept eating, I thought how crazy it was to have
somebody trust me so much. I could pretty much tell the guy anything and he’d go along with it. Hey, Rondo, I could say, we’re going to Australia to hunt us a couple damn kangaroos, man. Dude wouldn’t even think twice about it. He’d just nod and tell me: How we gonna catch ’em, Mexico? With nets?

I pulled a slice of bread out of the bag thinking how come Rondell trusted me so much. But then when I took a bite my stomach started feeling even sicker. I actually had to lean over like I was gonna heave even though nothing came up.

Rondell stopped his chewing and looked at me funny. “You okay, Mexico?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

I looked at the piece of bread I was holding and tossed it to the pigeons. They all attacked at the same time, their crazy little beaks pecking at the bread and each other, darting in and then backing away and then darting in again.

“You sick or somethin’?” Rondell said.

I shrugged and told him: “Nah, man, I just ain’t really that hungry.”

I watched the pigeons devour my bread, trying to think why my stomach felt so bad. It wasn’t nothing to do about Rondell trusting me. And the food wasn’t spoiled. Everything else about me felt fine. It’s weird, man, sometimes figuring out about the title of a book ain’t nothing compared to figuring out about your own damn body.

After we finished eating, we walked a little farther up the beach, and then we crashed for the night in this big patch of ice plant that was sort of hidden by a boarded-up public rest-room.

I looked at Rondell at one point, when we were laying there. I almost told him about the money, but I just couldn’t do it. It seriously killed me how bad I’d let the guy down.

August 7

Today we made it all the way to this beach area called Cardiff-by-the-Sea before Rondell asked about food. I looked in my bag and there was barely anything left of the bread and oranges. My stomach still felt sick as hell, so I handed it all to him, and we wandered into this campsite area that was on a cliff overlooking the ocean. There was a little paved road going down the middle and on both sides there were these marked-off spaces where people had tents or RVs and picnic tables full of food and drinks and board games. It was getting dark and almost everybody was hanging around their barbecue pits where they’d built little fires and were roasting hot dogs or burgers or marshmallows. Me and Rondell sat down on a big wood stake that was overturned at the end of one of the few empty campsites and put down our bags.

“You still hungry?” I asked him.

He nodded, and we both watched this brand-new RV pull into a campsite down the way.

“Okay, lemme think for a sec,” I said, peeping our beat-up shoes. You could tell how much walking we’d done since leaving the Lighthouse just by looking at ’em. Both pairs were dirty as hell. One of my shoes had a rip in the heel and every time I took a step it looked like my shoe was opening its mouth to say something. Both of Rondell’s had big holes at the toes and you could see his dirty-ass socks poking out. The bottoms of our jeans were caked with mud too. We looked like we were damn homeless or something—which I guess we were.

I thought about that for a sec.

And then the shit really hit me.

We were homeless.

I was a homeless person.

I’d never considered it that way before. I always just said we were on the run to Mexico. But that wasn’t true anymore. Me and Rondell were homeless. To make things even worse, while we were walking I’d realized why I got sick the last time I tried to eat. It’s ’cause the food was stolen from that grocery store. After all the shit that happened with Flaca and Jules and the petty cash I decided I’d rather starve to death than steal from a person or even a store. And I know how stubborn I get when I decide something. I really won’t do it. Ever. So not only did we not have money, we also didn’t have the option of stealing anymore. Or at least I didn’t.

I stood up and told Rondell: “Wait here with the bags, man. I’ll be right back.”

I cruised out of the campsite area and jogged across the busy Highway 101. A little ways down the street I found this cheap taco stand and set all the money left in my pocket on the counter (mostly change and a couple crumpled dollar bills). I told the little Mexican guy: “Lemme get as much food as this buys me, man. Doesn’t matter what it is. I don’t need no drinks.”

He gave me a weird look, then scooped up my money, counted it and put it in the register. He disappeared for a minute. When he came back he handed me a big bag with a bean and cheese burrito, two chicken tacos and an empanada. I thanked him and went back across the street to the campsites.

I took a taco for myself and handed the rest of the bag to Rondell.

He tore through the bean and cheese and empanada like a damn wild animal. Dude was swallowing shit whole. As he unwrapped his final taco he looked over at me and said: “That’s all you eatin’, Mexico? Just one little taco?”

“I’m not that hungry,” I said.

“That’s why you so skinny,” he said, smiling.

“I could still whup your big ass,” I said back. But I didn’t say it with much energy ’cause I wasn’t really in the mood to mess around.

He took a huge bite and looked at me, smiling and chewing at the same time.

The Part Where I Finally Tell Rondell the Truth:

Later we were just chilling in our empty campsite, under a full moon. I was supposedly writing in my journal and Rondell was supposedly looking at his Bible, but really we were both watching these white kids in the campsite across from us drinking soda and eating pizza and pretty much having the damn times of their lives. The guys all had on surf trunks and flip-flops. The girls were wearing skimpy sundresses over their bikinis. Ugg boots or sandals. A boom box played mellow indie rock as they all sat around their campfire eating and talking and laughing.

I turned to Rondell, said: “Hey, man.”

He turned to look at me.

“I been meanin’ to tell you somethin’.”

He closed his Bible.

“I got some bad news, I guess.”

“Wha’chu mean?” he said.

“You know all our petty cash?”

“What we gonna pay back, you mean?”

“Yeah.” I shook my head a little. I couldn’t even look Rondell in the eye. “Shit’s gone,” I told him, and right that second my stomach dropped out, like I’d just jumped off a cliff. My ass was totally off balance even though I was just sitting there.

A confused look came onto his face.

I made myself look in his eyes. “I messed up, Rondo. Let somebody take it.”

His eyes went big and then he looked down at his bag of trash, like he was thinking about what that meant. He looked up at me again and said: “That’s why you wasn’t hungry earlier?”

“Not really,” I said. “I guess a little.”

He paused a sec and then said: “What we gonna do, Mexico?”

I shrugged, said: “I don’t even know anymore.”

He looked back at the campsite across from us ’cause one of the guys (long blond hair with green tips) was chasing a blond girl around one of the tents. She was laughing her ass off and shouting: “I was just kidding, Jackson! I swear to God! Jackson!”

He was laughing too, shouting back: “Dude, that’s so messed up!”

Eventually the guy caught the girl and they fake-wrestled around a sec, cracking up, and then went back to the circle around the fire and sat down.

I cleared my throat, told Rondell: “I just wanted to tell you, man. You know. I’m sorry or whatever.”