We Were Here (20 page)

“Game time!” Rondell yelled as my shot kissed off the glass and fell through. Then his big ass came over and boosted me in the air, yelling: “That’s my boy Mexico right there! Pack your bags, fools!”

The guy genuinely acted like I’d just done something special when really it was him the whole time. He’d single-handedly won the game for us.

Mong came jogging over from the bleachers and slapped the hell out of both our hands. I’d never seen Mong so excited since I met him. He kept patting Rondell on the back the whole time we were walking back to where our stuff was in the bleachers. “You can really play,” he said to Rondell. “Amazing skills. You see the looks on those guys’ faces?”

“Mexico hit the game winner,” Rondell said.

“I know, I know,” Mong said, turning to me. “You played great too! Amazing!”

Some of the other guys chimed in. Once we all sat down in the bleachers, they asked Rondell where he played and who was his AAU coach. And when Rondell said he didn’t play anywhere, they all looked at him like he was crazy.

“I
can’t play,”
he said.

“Why not?” Peanut Butter said.

“’cause us three’s in a group home,” Rondell said. “Or at least we was. We just broke out two nights ago. And now we on the run to Mexico where we could fish.”

Me and Mong stared at Rondell with our mouths hanging open.

What can I tell you, man. Rondell definitely wasn’t no ballerina
off the
court.

“Today?” Peanut Butter said.

“Yup,” Rondell said, turning to me and Mong. When he saw the look on our two faces, though, he realized he’d said something wrong and blurted out: “But my name ain’t Rondell, though. It’s somethin’ else.”

The conversation didn’t go any further ’cause when I stuck my hand in my bag I couldn’t find the leather petty-cash envelope. I dug all around, nothing. Ripped it open all the way.

My stomach dropped.

“Yo, the petty cash!” I shouted at Mong. “Somebody took it!”

Mong looked at me, and then we both glanced toward the door where these two dudes in jeans and Timberlands were just sneaking out of the gym.

“Hey!” Mong yelled.

One of them turned to look at us, then they both took off running.

Me, Mong and Rondell sprinted after them, some of the guys from the gym trailing behind us. We sped through the double doors and out into the parking lot. It was so damn bright outside I could hardly see. Me and Rondell weaved in and out of cars after the guys. Mong darted off toward the exit.

We were just closing when one of the guys stopped, threw a wild punch that grazed my ear and then shoved me back at Rondell. Both of us fell over each other to the asphalt. Blood started coming from my scraped elbows, but I sprang back up and threw a punch right back. He ducked it, slugged me in the stomach, cracked me in the mouth.

When I opened my eyes I was on the asphalt again. No memory of falling. Head spinning and mixed up and blood dribbling out my nose and mouth. Rondell grabbing the guy in a headlock, squeezing, pounding him on the top of the
head, again and again. The guy slipping Rondell, taking off on foot again.

Rondell pulled me up by my sweatshirt and we raced after. But they were too far ahead now. All we could do was slow up and watch as they sped around a last row of cars toward the parking lot exit. My face stinging and heart pounding. Dizzy like I just stepped off a merry-go-round.

But Mong came out of nowhere. He leaped in the air, kicked the first guy square in the chest with both feet. They tumbled to the ground. Mong up first. The second guy grabbed him, pinned him under his arm, squeezed his shaved head. But Mong spun out of his grasp, delivered three lightning quick punches—boom, boom, boom—all to the guy’s face.

Timberland went down on one knee and reached up to touch his bloody mouth.

The first guy was back. He threw a wild right at the back of Mong’s head, but Mong ducked it, turned and caught the guy with an uppercut to the chin. Small Chinese kid putting a guy twice his size on the ground, one shot. Then Mong reached down and took the guy’s head in his hands and bit into his face. Sickest thing you could ever witness. The flesh breaking in his teeth.

Rondell and me racing toward them.

The guy’s screams. And blood spewing out in every direction, down the guy’s chest and Mong’s face and clothes, splattering across the asphalt in stringy lines. The guy cupped his bloody cheek in his hands and screamed in short bursts, a high-pitched squeal and then silence, a high-pitched squeal and then silence.

Mong pushing him down, kicking him in the back of the head. Dull thud and more blood flying and his body sprawled across the asphalt on his stomach and then curling up. Holding his head and face and still screaming.

Mong turned to the other guy, booted him in the ribs and the back of the legs and the ribs again. The guy huddled there on the ground protecting his head and face with his arms. Fetal position.

Me and Rondell finally made it to them. Some of the guys from the gym. Peanut Butter and Slim held down the Timberland guys. Someone flipped open a cell phone and called 911.

I wiped blood off my own face, reached into the screaming one’s bag, my eyes darting all around me. I pulled out the leather petty-cash envelope, unzipped to make sure the money was still there, zipped back up. I turned to the screaming guy whose face Mong had bitten. He was holding his hands to his bloody face and kicking now, like a kid in a tantrum. A chunk of hanging flesh he was trying to push back in place. My stomach turned over like I might be sick, but I wasn’t. My eyes blurred and stung.

I moved quickly toward Mong, who stood breathing hard, his head turned slightly to the side and smiling. Like he was admiring a painting in a museum. He looked more psycho than I’d ever seen any human ever look. His eyes bulging and red with hatred. But at the same time smiling. Chest heaving in and out and in and out. But calm somehow also.

“We gotta go!” I said.

Mong didn’t move.

I put my hand on his shoulder, said: “Mong. Come on, man.”

I half expected him to throw a punch at me, too, but he didn’t. He turned around, wiping the guy’s blood off his face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt and spitting on the ground. He took my arm and looked at my cut, said: “You okay?”

I nodded, staring in his eyes. Something different about this Mong. His eyes still crazy, but everything else too calm
for what he’d just done. Nobody could be that calm. Like he’d already forgotten what had happened.

“We should go,” I said.

He nodded.

“Should wait for the cops,” the guy with the cell phone said.

“Press charges,” somebody else said.

“We can’t,” I said.

Then everybody was talking at once and the second Timberland guy was off the ground and yelling at Mong and two guys were holding him back. And my head was so loopy from getting punched I couldn’t think. Just knew we had to be out before the cops came. I grabbed Mong and Rondell by their sweatshirts and the three of us ran back to the gym to get our bags off the bleachers.

As we were leaving sirens wailed in the distance, coming toward us, and this long lanky guy stepped in front of me and said: “Y’all got any transportation?”

We shook our heads.

“Come on, then,” he said, waving for us to follow. “Let’s get y’all outta here.”

We went down the parking lot a ways, to an old Buick. He keyed open his door and we all climbed in and he turned around to face us, said: “So, where you wanna go?”

Rondell looked at me, and I looked at Mong.

“Can you take us to Malibu Beach?” Mong said, glancing down at his swollen right hand.

“We on our way,” the guy said, flipping it into gear.

It was the first time I’d felt relieved since the petty cash got swiped. I reached in my bag and squeezed the envelope to make sure I still had it, tried to calm my breathing.

Just as we were pulling out of the parking lot, we saw two cop cars speeding the other way with their sirens wailing. Me,
Mong and Rondell spun around after they passed us, watched them scoot into the gym parking lot.

“I’m Dallas, by the way,” the guy said.

We turned back around and I thanked him for giving us a ride, and Mong and Rondell did too. He nodded in the rearview, told us: “I spent two years in a group home when I was a kid. Whole time I wanted to break my ass out, but I was too scared. Least I could do is help somebody else.”

He turned on his car radio and tuned in an old Motown song, started singing the words. Me, Mong and Rondell looked at each other, still breathing hard. I reached up and touched my face where I got punched. Checked my nose. Didn’t seem to be broken. All my teeth still there. But my lip was split pretty bad. I knew it’d swell up huge by tomorrow. But I got off cheap considering how big the guy was. I always forget how much it hurts to get punched in the face until it happens again.

I glanced over at Mong. The Timberland dude’s blood still all over his face. The nasty scars on his cheeks. And he had that calm face still. I wondered how a skinny little Asian kid could beat up two big black dudes like that. All by himself. It didn’t even seem possible. It wasn’t like he was doing crazy martial arts moves either. He was just scrapping, like any other kid would.

I looked out the window again as Dallas drove his Buick through a yellow light, toward Malibu. I reached into my bag, fingered the petty-cash envelope again. Then I reached up and touched my split lip. The bleeding had stopped, but it was already getting big. Me and Mong sort of looked at each other, then looked away.

And the whole time Dallas kept right on singing with the song on the radio. Like nothing had even happened.

July 23

Mong had Dallas drop us off at this quiet little beach town called Malibu. It’s way different from how Venice was. There aren’t so many cars or people out walking around or young people. And the stores are smaller with less flashy signs, and all of them have stands outside selling beach towels and sunscreen and Styrofoam coolers.

We got out, stood by Dallas’s driver’s-side window thanking him for giving us a ride. He nodded at me and Mong, then grabbed Rondell by his sweatshirt, told him he better get his ass on a hoop team and quick. “Even if it’s one in Mexico, boy. They got pro teams there, too, you know.”

“They do?” Rondell said.

“Hell yeah,” Dallas said. “Got one of my boys down there somewhere right now. Gettin’ paid, too.”

Rondell nodded.

“I’m sayin’, though, it’s a sin to waste talent like you got.” He let go of Rondell’s shirt and pushed him away from the car. “A
sin
, boy. You hear me?”

Rondell nodded.

Dallas waved at me and Mong again and then drove off.

We went across the street to this cluster of stores, bought more hot dogs and fruits and donuts, and this time Mong had us buy a bundle of wood instead of charcoal. There was a liquor store next door and Mong sent Rondell in with a list thinking he’d have the best chance of passing for twenty-one. Mong seemed to have our whole night planned, probably figuring it was our last one in America. And it wasn’t just him, either. I think we all sort of wanted to go out in style.

Rondell came back from the liquor store with beer and Mong’s whiskey, and we took everything across the street,
followed Mong a long ways down the beach until he stopped in line with this big blue two-story beach house. He tossed his bag on the sand, said: “This is it.”

“This is what?” I said.

“Where my dad used to take me when I was a kid.”

“You went to this beach before?” Rondell said.

Mong nodded, pointed up at the big blue house. “Stayed at that place,” he said. “Every summer. Just me and him.”

Me and Rondell threw our bags in the sand too and looked up at the house. It was the nicest one in the whole row. I tried to imagine how it’d even
be
like, chilling inside such a big place, right on the beach, but I couldn’t really picture it. I peeked at Mong and then went back to the house. It seemed crazy that a kid who used to stay in that place could end up down here with me and Rondell, on the run from a group home. If I hadn’t read his file, how his old man came from money and was a lawyer, I wouldn’t have believed his ass.

Mong started clearing space for a makeshift barbecue pit, me and Rondell trying to help out but really just getting in the way. The beach was quiet, except a few older couples walking by holding hands. Some of them had their pant legs rolled up so they could walk right through the water whenever the tide came up. I watched one particular couple walking an old bulldog. You could tell all three of them had made this walk hundreds of times before. Probably thousands. The woman had a gray ponytail and the guy had a baseball cap and glasses. They weren’t really talking, but every once in a while the guy would reach up and rub his wife’s back. Behind them the sun was starting to set, like the whole thing was a damn Hallmark card.

As they passed us they both smiled and the old guy said “Howdy.” I said “Howdy” back and watched them walk a
long way down the beach, touching my split lip and thinking how different their lives were from mine. They were just strolling along the beach, not a care in the world, happy. And me, man, I was spending my last day in the country. This was it. I’d maybe never see an American beach ever again.

For some reason seeing that couple and saying howdy to the guy made me think I should call my moms tomorrow. And maybe Jaden, too. Even if I just left a message. At least people would know we weren’t dead or whatever.

Mong showed us how to dig a little hole in the sand and line it with a bunch of small rocks for a homemade barbecue pit. We wadded up pieces of newspaper and scattered them in the hole, put the firewood on top of that and doused everything with lighter fluid. I struck a match and tossed it in, started a giant flame on the paper that quickly jumped to the wood. Then the three of us just sat there awhile, drinking and watching the fire, not really saying anything.

When Mong claimed the wood was perfect, we cooked the hot dogs and ate and drank more. We started a conversation about how crazy it was watching Rondell take over the basketball game, before what happened with the Timberland guys. Mong even ate a lot for the first time since we left the Lighthouse. Usually he just picked a little or ate the corn tortilla of his taco and then pushed the rest of his food away. And he kept drinking, too, pulling sips off his bottle of whiskey every few minutes. I decided he must be feeling better if he was trying to get his buzz on like that.