“It’s okay, man. I get it. I’ll leave now if you want,” I told him.
He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. “No. I know you’ve heard rumors. How I punched a principal at St. Francis, how I started riots, sold drugs, slept with every girl under the sun. But all of them are a crock of shit. They don’t even come close.”
He opened his pack of cigarettes and stuck one in his mouth, then opened the sliding door to the backyard. “You coming or what?”
I followed him outside into the cool haze of dusk, a dull lullaby of crickets like surround sound, the sky a milky blue. We sat in the grass and stared at the lush expanse of lawn before us, at the looming pine trees with their scarred trunks.
He lit his cigarette, not offering me one like he usually did. “Okay, fire away. Ask me anything you want.”
It had been so different when he’d said that to me up in his bedroom. Now he wasn’t even looking at me. I kept my gaze on the trees, feeling hesitant about prying. I’d never seen him like this before, and it scared me.
“I did get kicked out of St. Francis,” he said. “Then I transferred here, and it was all because of my uncle. He helped me when no one else would. He moved here for me. He can do that with his job. He can work anywhere.”
“Why did you get kicked out?”
He took a long drag off his cigarette before answering. “I beat the shit out of this guy. He wouldn’t leave this kid alone.”
“What kid?”
“Just this kid at school. This kid who wouldn’t stand up for himself. Who couldn’t stand up for himself. And seeing that happen, day after day, eventually I just snapped. I punched that asshole dead in the mouth, and I just kept going. I couldn’t stop. It was like this wild rush, and I blacked out or something. All I remember is feeling my fist connect with his face, how good that felt. I fucking liked it. Can you believe that? But then some teachers got involved, tried to break us up, and apparently, I elbowed one of them in the face. I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t. But those fucking teachers, man. They’d seen it. They’d seen what he did to that kid, every single day, and they never did or said anything.”
“So…you transferred here. Why here?”
“It was the only school in the area that would take me. My uncle just wants me to finish high school, you know? This is like, my last shot, short of getting a GED.” He laughed even though it wasn’t funny. “He and my dad, they came to America when they were little kids. But my grandparents moved back to Santiago, to be with family before they…before they died. And my parents got caught up in some shit, meanwhile. And then they went to prison. And by that time my uncle was back in Santiago, organizing the funeral for my grandparents, doing everything, while my fucking parents were at the federal courthouse for months, begging to be let off easy. And I was in the system. With no one. I eventually contacted him, my uncle. I tracked him down online, found his LinkedIn, sent him a bunch of emails. I was so desperate. And I asked him to get me out. And he did. He came back for me. So, I kind of owe him my life.”
I tried to choose my words with care. “Where exactly did you live before you lived with your uncle?”
“A group home.”
“What was that like?”
He scoffed. “Fucking pizza party every day, man. Up to my ass in pretty girls. Heaven on Earth.”
I couldn’t think of something else to ask, so I just sat in silence as we listened to the crickets for a while before he spoke.
“I’ve been in and out of a bunch of different group and foster homes pretty much my whole life. My parents got arrested pretty early on. But there’s stuff I haven’t told you. Like, in one of the foster homes, it was five of us kids. The woman in charge had this boyfriend, this older guy, this fucking asshole who lived there and acted like he owned the place. He liked to slap us and her around for like, everything. He pushed one of the kids down the stairs once and broke her leg. For some asinine reason, I’m sure. I lived there for three years.”
He took a hard drag on his cigarette. The tip glowed like a firefly.
“He tried some shit with me, some of it I don’t care to remember. He liked to touch me at weird times, in strange places. He also liked to beat me with a belt. I knew he liked it, fucking loved it, that sicko. And he liked hitting me in particular. I would try to avoid him, but he always found some way to get at me when I was alone and defenseless. So at school I’d go to the weight room and pump iron every day, until everything burned. I never got that big, but I got stronger. One day I came home and he was shoving one of the kids around, and screaming at them. I yelled at him to stop and he went over to hit me. So, I grabbed him by the throat and shoved him against the wall. Told him if he ever put his hands on me or one of the other kids again I would fucking murder him. I would tear his throat out. It was like I had this superhuman strength inside me all of a sudden. I’ll never forget that look on his face. Pure terror. They had me placed in another group home, but for the last
