We Were Here (34 page)

He looked down at his closed Bible, said: “It wasn’t nothin’ you did, Mexico.”

“Actually, it was—”

“Nah, Mexico,” he said, cutting me off. “It ain’t nobody’s fault.”

“No, really,” I said. “I let that girl Fl—”

“It ain’t nobody’s fault,” he interrupted again, and this time he slapped a big black hand on my shoulder and smiled at me.

I looked back at him without saying anything.

“You’ll just figure somethin’ out new. I know how you is, Mexico.”

“You don’t understand, Rondo,” I said, pushing his hand off my shoulder. “We don’t have money to eat, man. We’re gonna starve.”

“It’s okay, Mexico.” He shook his head at me and tapped the cover of his Bible. “God won’t let nothin’ bad happen, watch. He’ll make you think up somethin’ smarter than you ever thought of in your whole life, Mexico. Watch.”

I looked back at the surfer kids talking around their barbecue pit. Skateboards turned upside down beside their tent. A couple beach cruisers leaning on kickstands. And for some reason I felt like my chest was gonna straight up explode on me. Like I was gonna start bawling like a little bitch. I swear to God, man. It was all just sitting right there at the top of my throat, just behind my eyes, all the sadness and guilt that’s built up inside me like a pile of trash at the dump. But the main thing wasn’t that we didn’t have money or food or a place to sleep or any idea what we were gonna do next. It was ’cause stupid-ass Rondell actually believed I was gonna save us.

Me!

The same guy who just lost all our money in the first damn place. Got punked by a girl.

I took a couple deep breaths to push the trash pile back down and said: “I just wish your boy would hurry his ass up.”

“Who?” Rondell said.

“Jesus or whatever,” I said.

And then I just laid my head back on my bag and closed my eyes.

Rondell started saying something else, about God or Jesus or the damn Immaculate Conception, but I didn’t hear a word. All my mind could concentrate on laying there was the
sounds of them surfer kids across the way talking in their low voices and laughing and being all happy. And me and Rondell laying on the dirt like bums, no money and no place to go and our stomachs full on the last food we’d be able to pay for. I knew soon as we woke up the next morning things would be getting worse.

August 18

I haven’t written in here in forever, I know.
Eleven days!
Haven’t even cracked the damn cover the past week. But that’s ’cause I never knew what it meant to be truly hungry until now.

Back home, me, my moms and Diego may not have much money—and, yeah, we don’t go to restaurants or out to movies or anything like that—but we always got enough food to eat. Moms hooks up these huge pots of pasta with meat sauce, or she’ll scramble eggs with potatoes and chorizo, like my grams showed her, roll everything in flour tortillas. We always have homemade bread in the bread drawer. And milk. Moms pretty much thinks milk is what could make me and Diego grow up to be big and strong like our old man. She’s always asking us at the end of dinner: “You guys finish your cup of milk?” Or when she comes home from work and sees me rummaging through the cupboards: “Why don’t you just pour yourself a cup of milk?”

Moms, man.

The woman’s straight up obsessed with milk.

Anyways, we may be poor back home or whatever, but we always got food. That’s why the past couple weeks have been so damn hard. I’m not even used to it. Me and Rondell wake up on the beach and the first thing I think about is food.
There’s this hollow pain that comes riding up into my stomach and chest. My head gets all fuzzy like I’m buzzing on beer, but I’m not even drinking. And then the worst part is when the pain goes away, ’cause then you’re on some next-level hunger.

Lately I’ve been getting mad dizzy too. Me and Rondell will be walking around looking for something to eat and I’ll have to double over for a sec ’cause I’m so damn weak or I feel like I’m about to pass out. It’s gotten to the point that I actually know when a bad hunger cramp is coming, and I’ll dig my fingernails in my shoulder so I could feel something different than hunger.

Rondell’s just as hungry, man—and he’s twice as big as me—but he hasn’t even asked once how come we’re not just stealing from stores. And he never complains. Part of it’s ’cause he’s also willing to scarf down sketchier shit than me. He’ll pull damn near anything out of these trash Dumpsters we always hit behind the row of restaurants by the beach. Moldy-ass bread. Slimy half-eaten Chinese noodles in an old Styrofoam take-out container. Dude doesn’t even care. And he never gets sick either.

Me, I’m way more picky. It can’t be too nasty or else I’ll gag while I’m trying to chew it.

Being so hungry is why we haven’t walked north in so long. We’re both too tired and weak. We spend all our time every day looking for something we could put in our stomachs. Then the minute we find some bread or whatever and scarf it down, we immediately start thinking about the
next
thing we’re gonna put in our stomachs. It’s a cycle like that. There’s no time to think about anything else—unless it’s raining and we gotta find another place to sleep than just the beach, like the public restroom.

And then if I haven’t eaten in more than one day my
stomach sometimes gets sick on the next thing I eat. You’d think it’d be happy just to have something coming in, right? But nah, man. A couple times I ate something and threw it right back up. I tried to eat more and threw that up too. It’s so mad frustrating I can’t even tell you. I looked down at my damn stomach this one time and said: “Yo, man! If you so damn hungry why don’t you keep that shit down and do the digestion thing!”

My stomach didn’t say nothing back, though, just had me lean my ass over to throw up again, Rondell watching me.

And being hungry makes us talk about the most random things, man.

A Random Example of One of Our Talks:

Two nights ago, on the beach, we argued all the way past midnight about our favorite Looney Tunes characters from those old cartoons that always play as reruns. You should’ve heard us, man. You’d think we were debating the death penalty or some heated war topic.

Rondell tried to tell me his favorite was Wile E. Coyote, and I went off about how retarded that made him sound.

“How could somebody’s favorite cartoon character be one that always messes up?” I told him.

“He ain’t always mess up,” Rondell said.

“Hell yeah, he does.”

“Nah, Mexico. You thinkin’ ’bout some other one.”

“Every single episode it’s the exact same thing, Rondo. Trust me. I’ve seen ’em all. The coyote makes up some stupid plan to get the Road Runner, the shit backfires, and his ass ends up in a damn body cast. That’s the script, yo.”

“I don’t know if you been watchin’ the right one,” Rondell said, waving me off.

“I have. Trust me.”

Rondell shook his head. “I just still like him, though. He make me laugh.”

“Okay, maybe Coyote makes you laugh sometimes,” I told him. “I’ll give you that shit. But that’s enough to say he’s your
favorite?”

Rondell got a big smile on his face and said: “And he fast, Mexico. I like when they both speed down the street and then they stop and look at each other and the Road Runner goes: ‘meep, meep.’ It’s so funny whenever that happens.”

I pulled my hood off, said: “Nah, but the best character is my boy Speedy Gonzales.”

Rondell hit his head like he couldn’t believe I would even say that—though I wasn’t sure he really knew which one I was talking about.

“Wha’chu know about Speedy,” I told him. “He’s faster than the Road Runner and Coyote put together. Plus he gets all them little women mice. I don’t even care if it’s supposedly a racist cartoon or whatever, ’cause he gots on a damn sombrero and plays in a mariachi band. That shit is still funny as hell. And besides, Speedy’s mad smart, yo.”

When Rondell finally admitted he didn’t even remember Speedy, I explained every single scene from all my favorite episodes.

Anyways, we sat there and talked about Looney Tunes for hours and hours. Like it was the most important thing in the entire world. And I could tell you right now it wasn’t ’cause we were bored or ’cause we love cartoons so much. It was ’cause our brains were going mad loopy from being so damn hungry. And sometimes when you’re that hungry you just get on these stupid topics and talk about ’em for days and days. Or at least that’s how it is with me and Rondell.

Other Times How We Don’t Even Say a Word to Each Other:

But then the next day we’ll just lounge around the sand on the beach not talking, just watching the waves or checking out the people who roll by. Especially girls in bikinis laying on their towels. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, man, but lately I’ve been consumed with how fine some girls are. I know I’m not in a good spot to talk to nobody, but it’s always in my head.

I play out these little scenarios where I go up to a girl on the beach and start talking to her. And we go swimming together and then have lunch somewhere and then she wants us to promise we’ll meet at the same spot the next day. But I tell her I ain’t doing that shit, I’ll just see her if I see her. And then the next day she comes and finds me and we go swimming again and talk on her towel.

After a couple times of hanging out like that I ask her would she wanna be my girl and she says she totally would, so then we’re officially together. And later on it trips me out how many times she wants to be with me. And you know what I’m saying about “being” with me, right?
Being with
me. Like for real. She’s always wanting to make out and take each other’s clothes off and hook up like the crazy kind, yo. Right there on the beach. At night. On some towel she’s brought. Or we’ll hook up in the public restroom. Or she’ll take me to her house when her parents are out to dinner and we’ll do it in her bed next to all her stuffed animals even though it’s mad creepy ’cause they’re just sitting there staring at me. Or she’ll take me to her friend’s place. But it’s amazing how many times we do it. Just over and over and over, without barely any rest in between.

I never said it wasn’t schizo, man. But that’s what I do
every once in a while to kill time. I make up scenarios in my head and then play ’em out for mad hours, like they’re really happening.

Bad News About
Books I’m Reading and
T
his One I’m Supposedly Writing:

Probably the worst thing about being so hungry is I don’t even have enough energy to read my new book:
The Stranger
by Albert Camus. I’ve opened it a few times and tried to read the first couple sentences, but my mind keeps going right back to how hungry I am.

And why do you think this is the first time I’ve written in here in so long? I seriously can’t do it, man. My mind isn’t working right. One time I tried to write a page about how Diego looks so much like my old man and how it used to make me jealous, but I ended up ripping the page out and crumpling it up. This other time I tried to write about this dream I had where my moms suddenly shows up to the campsite across from us with some new boyfriend and we run into each other, but I ripped that one out too.

I just can’t think right. Which pisses me off, man. ’cause if you think about it, this stupid little book I’m making is all I have left in my whole life.

Pretty damn sad, right?

Only reason I have energy to write today is ’cause I finally came up with a new plan. Me and Rondell talked to some kid on the beach earlier who works at Kinko’s, and he said he’d let us make copies for free. Of whatever we wanted.

After he took off I thought and thought and thought about what we could copy. And then it hit me.

About an imaginary basketball team.

August 21

Today was our trial run, and it came through way better than I ever thought it would. Me and Rondell went around to all the campsites with this signup sheet I made at Kinko’s about people giving money to help our basketball team. The guy even gave me a clipboard to put it on so it’d look all official. And after only a couple hours we actually had enough money to eat a real dinner at McDonald’s.

We sat down at a booth in the back and just killed a Quarter Pounder each. We were eating so damn fast the people all around us started watching.

“Yo, you ever had a burger taste that good?” I said to Rondell as he ripped open his second Quarter Pounder.

“It’s the best one in the world,” he said, and he took a huge bite.

“And how ’bout them fries?” I said.

He shook his head, chewing, grabbed a few fries and held them up. After he swallowed he said: “They so crispy, Mexico. You the smartest person I ever met.”

I shrugged and sipped my soda. I had to admit, it wasn’t the worst plan somebody could make up.

I got the idea ’cause kids used to do it at my school back in Stockton. And yeah, okay, those dudes were really on a team, but I guarantee they kept half that money they raised for themselves. Me and Diego always used to talk about that.

And I already know what you’re thinking. It’s pretty much stealing if we’re not really using the money for a basketball team, right? But I don’t think so. It’s not like we’re taking anything people don’t wanna give up in the first place. We’re not reaching into fools’ pockets and jacking their wallets. Nah, man, they’re pulling that shit out on their own. And they get something out of the transaction too. They get to tell
all their friends how they helped these two scrubby-looking minority kids with their basketball team.

Trust me, yo, people love it when they get to feel all warm and fuzzy about shit they do.

Plus, if you could actually see my boy Rondell sitting here looking all happy as hell eating his third Quarter Pounder.

How you gonna call this a crime?

For real, man.
You
gonna be the one to take this burger out my boy’s hand?

I didn’t think so.

August 27