We Were Here (8 page)

July 16

On the night Mong decided we should bust out we tried to make like everything was perfectly normal. Only thing different was me and Rondell didn’t change out of our street clothes when Jaden called for lights-out. We just climbed in bed and pulled the covers over our jeans and sweatshirts and dirty-ass kicks.

When Jaden came by for his nightly room check we closed our eyes up quick like we were already passed out. He walked in, did his normal circle where he checks everything off on a clipboard and then walked back out to get ready to leave for the night. Right after he left I heard Rondell snickering like a little girl.

“Shut the hell up, Rondell!” I whispered.

“I’m tryin’,” he whispered back.

“Well, try harder. Put a pillow over your damn head or somethin’.”

It’s not like I was that freaked out or nervous or whatever, I just didn’t want shit to go wrong before we even
did
anything.

Rondell did what I said, he put a pillow over his head, and for the next two hours we waited for Mong’s signal (two loud finger snaps from the hall) fully dressed, bags packed, swiped screwdriver stashed between my two mattresses.

I laid there quietly, staring at the paint-chipped ceiling and thinking about stuff. Like my rowdy school cafeteria at lunchtime and me and Diego’s secret fishing spot along the levee and riding Diego’s dirt bike to the store for moms and my grandma’s old arthritis hands patting down tortillas on the griddle in Fresno. I thought about the day Gramps had us out there in the fields from sunup to sundown, bent over picking berries. How after less than an hour I was so mad tired
I didn’t think I could do it even ten more minutes. But somehow I made it through the rest of the day. All these random things, they just kept flashing through my mind, and I let ’em. But after a while this idea popped in my head: I bet when people get old there’s only a couple actual moments they could look back on and say, Yo, that moment changed my life forever. And most of them probably aren’t even the person’s choice. Somebody gets hit by a car or gets fired from a job or wins the lottery or their pops gets blown to pieces by a grenade in some stupid war. But tonight was the opposite kind of moment. I was making a conscious choice. The second I broke out of the group home and started for Mexico, my life would be changed forever. And it would be because I
wanted
it changed. I knew I could never come back after this. They’d most likely throw me in
real
prison. And I heard some pretty bad things about that. Shit like you don’t even wanna know, man.

Right in the middle of all my thinking I heard two loud snaps in the hall.

I jumped out of bed and scooped my bag. I turned to Rondell ready to make shit happen, but you wouldn’t believe what I found: his crazy ass was actually asleep. No lie, dude was out cold, snoring and twitching, drooling on his damn mattress, probably dreaming about chillin’ with one of the disciples.

I stood there for a sec trying to think what kind of fool could fall asleep right before he broke out of a damn group home and went on the run.

Only Rondell, man.

I reached down and shook him awake. “Come on, Rondell! Get up, man! We gotta go!”

But I’ll give the guy this, he didn’t need no transition time. He whipped off his covers, slid out his own bag and was
pulling open the window over his bed before I could even get the screwdriver out from between my mattresses. He went right to work on the bars. We’d already unscrewed most of the bolts securing them to the house, so all he had to do was get the last two. When he did I helped boost his big ass through the window and watched him fall into the bushes outside. A couple neighborhood dogs started barking. I dropped both our bags out after him.

I paused for a sec at the window, and Rondell looked back up at me. “Ain’t you comin’?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I just gotta do somethin’ real quick. Go round the other side like we talked about. I’ll meet you guys there.”

Rondell nodded and took off with both our bags.

I replaced the bars on the window, redid the two bolts and closed the window back up. Then I snuck out of our room and down the hall toward the office with Jaden’s keys.

About
-
the Keys:

For the week since I told Mong me and Rondell would go with him, I’d been studying Jaden with his keys. Like I knew he had eleven keys on his key ring, and that he wore the key ring on his side belt loop. I knew the five keys with yellow rubber at the top were Lighthouse keys. I knew the two I had to get, ’cause one was the longest and one was the shortest, and that he didn’t use either one after dinner, when the night watch came on. And I knew the only time he took off his key ring was when he played one of us in foosball.

That’s why after dinner tonight I went up to him in front of all the other guys in the living room and said: “Yo, Jaden. I bet you couldn’t get with me on no foosball.”

He looked up at me shocked ’cause I’d never asked to play a game with
nobody
in the house, much less a counselor.
And then he got this grin on his face that I knew meant he thought I was finally coming out of my shell, which made me wanna laugh in dude’s face.

But I didn’t laugh.

He set down his clipboard and told me: “Wait, did I just hear that right, bro? You saying you want some of
this
?”

“You ain’t all that,” I said, playing the role, even though whenever Jaden talked shit it just came off like he was trying way too hard and actually made me feel sort of bad for the dude.

“Hey, Tommy,” he said, standing up. “Ring the bell, bro. School’s about to be in session.”

Everybody followed us to the foosball table and Jaden took off his keys, like he always does, and set them on the counter right behind him. We both grabbed the duct-taped handles and Tommy dropped the ball. Our dirt-stained men twirled and stopped on a dime and the rusted metal rods slid in their holsters all smooth and the sound of the ball smacking the wall was like the pop of a BB gun. As we went at it I thought of how many kids before me had slid their goalie in front of this goal. How many kids before me had stood in my exact spot, playing their counselor, while the other residents talked head on the side, waiting their turn. It made me feel like a straight-up cliché, man. Which happens sometimes. I’ll find myself doing something that I know every older person in the damn world has already done, like Diego and his boys, and all the kids younger than me will eventually end up doing too. When shit like that hits it makes me think there’s pretty much no reason to be alive, because everything you can or will do has already been done by at least ten thousand other people already. And if you’re not original then what the hell are you alive for, man? I know, I know, you’re probably
thinking I’m not looking at shit right and that I should go borrow Rondell’s Bible or whatever to see how God says to do it, but I don’t even care, man. That’s just me. I only really wanna spend the energy it takes to be alive if I’m original. That’s how my mind thinks.

Anyways, it was a pretty close game, but I made sure I lost in the end. Jaden slapped my hand and told me it was a pleasure doing business and then Rene took my spot and Tommy dropped the ball again. I waited almost till the end of the game before I swiped the two yellow keys I needed from the ring and put it back real quick. Reggie saw me do the whole thing, but all he did was laugh and shake his head. And I knew he wouldn’t rat on me. At least, not right away. People don’t really rat on each other in a group home unless it’s something that directly affects them.

Jaden played a few more guys and then it was supposed to be my turn again, but I said somebody else could take my spot.

“What’s the matter, bro?” Jaden said. “You a little nervous of me now?”

“Nah,” I said, fingering his two keys in my pocket.

“You sure?” Jaden said. “You look kind of pale, bro.”

I shook my head, said: “Nah, how ’bout this. We could maybe play again tomorrow night. I guarantee you won’t beat me tomorrow.”

“You bros hear that?” Jaden said, looking at all the guys. “Miguel loses eleven–eight and now he’s throwing around guarantees. All right, then, you got yourself a deal. Tomorrow night.”

Everybody made their little jokes about my challenge and then Rene took my spot. Tommy dropped the ball and the plastic foosball men started spinning all around again.

Back to the Escape Part:

Anyways, I peeked in the living room, found the night-watch guy lounging in front of the TV, sipping coffee from a thermos. Popping chips in his mouth one at a time and wiping his greasy fingers on his pants. I could smell weed coming off his clothes too. And his eyes were all dopey.

Get past the fat stoner, I told myself, and I’m a free man again. Just the thought of being able to go wherever, whenever made butterflies come into my stomach.

It isn’t until you’re sentenced to a place like this, by the way, that you can know what kind of busters they got working night shift. This mustache-faced fool had a big-ass beer belly, a tight Batman T-shirt with sweat stains under both arms and a damn feathered mullet. He didn’t take his eyes off the TV even once the whole time I was watching him. He was just giggling at some old episode
of America’s Funniest Home Videos
. Still, man, it wasn’t gonna be easy getting past the living room without him catching me in his peripheral.

Another couple minutes went by before I decided I had to use my mind on him. I squinted my eyes up real tight and thought crazy hard and after only a minute or two something happened: the guy bent over choking on a chip. Coughing and pounding himself on the chest with the inside of his fist and sucking down coffee to try and wash it down.

I snuck by easy, keyed open the office door with the long key and quietly pulled it shut behind me. Locked it. Pulled out the short one to open the drawer where Jaden keeps the petty cash. And there it was, man. Right inside the petty-cash tin. Didn’t have to go searching or nothin’. The fat leather envelope—full of cash for Alcatraz and that fancy restaurant Jaden told us about—was just sitting there on top, waiting for me. It had the name “Lighthouse” on the front and the house address and phone number. I unzipped the zipper and looked
inside. Flipped through the bills. Felt the weight. I counted it real quick: $750. I’d never held so much damn paper in my life.

I zipped it back up, shoved the whole thing in my jeans pocket and stepped to the window. Pulled it open, unscrewed all the bolts on the bars and tossed everything into a flower bed outside. I was just about to climb out myself when I turned and peeped Jaden’s desk. I stared there for a few seconds and then looked over at the spot on the wall I always looked at whenever I sat in here, the cocoon or whatever. I thought about how I’d never see it again. It’s so weird how a little thought like that, about a cocoon shape on a wall, can make your entire body feel all like Jell-O.

I told myself I should go on already, pull myself through the window and be out, but something inside my head was stuck.

I hurried back over to the desk, pulled open a different drawer and riffled through all the resident files looking for mine. I found it, yanked it out and tucked it under my arm, closed the drawer. I stood there for a few seconds, thinking, and then I opened the drawer back up, riffled through the files again and pulled Mong’s and Rondell’s, too.

Right then there were footsteps outside the office door and the sound of keys rattling.

I slid closed the drawer quietly, tucked all our files in my bag and damn near dove headfirst through the window, into the flower bed. I got to my feet next to the window bars and ducked around the side of the house to meet Mong and Rondell.

“Where were you?” Mong said when he saw me. “We almost just left!”

I pulled the petty-cash envelope out of my pocket and held it up.

He stared at it a sec and then a look of understanding came over his face and he nodded.

“What’s that?” Rondell whispered.

“The petty cash,” I whispered back, peeking around the corner for the night-watch guy. But he wasn’t there. The window was completely empty.

“The what?” he said.

“Money
, Rondell! American currency!”

“Oh, damn. Good thinkin’, Mexico.”

“Hello?” the night-watch guy finally yelled from the window. He couldn’t see us, though, and ducked his head back in the house. The front-porch light came on, and more dogs started barking.

“Let’s go!” Mong said, pulling his hood over his head.

Me and Rondell pulled our hoods up too, and we all took off sprinting down the street.

Before we rounded a corner I looked back over my shoulder and saw the night-watch guy bumbling into the road in front of the house. But he didn’t chase after us, he just stood there with his cell phone pinned against his ear, probably calling the cops.

And the house looked so different from the outside, like you’d never know it was a group home full of bad kids unless you were sentenced to be there. But at the same time it stood out too. It was faded yellow with black trim while all the other houses around it were white or gray or beige.

Jaden wasn’t lying, I thought, as me and Rondell followed Mong down a side road and I turned my eyes forward again. I hadn’t really thought about it, but our pad really
did
look like a lighthouse.

We sprinted through the streets of San Jose in our black sweatshirts, hoods up, hands all sharp like we were competing in the damn summer Olympics. We heard sirens in the distance as Mong led us through a couple dark weed-infested alleys, over
a narrow wooden bridge, through a fenced-off construction site, down a long empty boulevard and into a big mall parking lot. We zipped past a few sleeping cars and ducked behind a trash Dumpster. Threw our bags down and bent over gasping for air and laughing. Hearts beating in our throats.

There probably wasn’t anybody following us once we cut out of our own neighborhood, but what the hell, man: if you’re gonna break outta some place like a group home you might as well break out running, right? Plus our adrenaline was going like crazy.