“Where?” I said.
He looked at me funnily, like who cared where it happened, and then he said, “Over on East Meadow. So they drove back and they threw eggs at me. I fucking chased them, but they were gone. I guess Brian thought I wouldn’t recognize the car, but I did. So on that next Monday, I went to school at lunchtime . . .”
“You didn’t go to first period?”
“No, I—no, I skipped first period.” He seemed like he was laughing at me a little bit. But not in a bad way. “I just went at lunch, to fuck up his car. I smashed every window with a bat. They kicked me out for that.”
“So now where do you go?”
“I went to this continuation school, Shoreline, but I got kicked out because I was the only white dude with all these black and Mexican dudes from East Palo Alto. They thought they could fuck with me, but they couldn’t. They kicked me out for fighting. Now I go to this school for idiots and I’m with the real retards.”
He was so. So dirty, and just moving in front of me, and cute. I was in love with him, especially because he was talking to me.
“I bet you’re smart,” he said. It was the best moment of my life.
Then this guy came up to him. He looked part Latino.
“What’s up, little bitch?” the Latino guy said to Ronny. Ronny was calm. He looked up at the Latino guy. This guy was older.
“Fuck you,” said Ronny, but softly. Then it seemed like the party got quieter.
Katie Hesher came out of the kitchen. She looked upset. She said, “Ronny, don’t! Not in my parents’ house.”
“Come outside, little bitch,” said the older guy to Ronny. The older guy looked like an ugly wolf. He had a skinny face, and pointy, uneven teeth. There were zits all over his nose. “Come outside, little Ronny,” he said.
“Ronny, kick this spic’s fucking ass,” said someone in the crowd. Ronny stood up.
“Don’t get hurt,” I said. He didn’t hear me. Everything was fast and scary. I sat there for a minute on the couch. Everyone else was pushing to get outside, after Ronny. I was still waiting for Ronny to finish talking. He was telling me I was smart and he was looking at me. But he was gone. It was like it hadn’t happened.
I got up and squeezed onto the porch with all the people. Mist was on the front lawn. The whole party was out there. Ronny was in front of everyone. I couldn’t see the Latino guy. Ronny took his shirt off. He was thin, and tough, and wiry in the mist. The guys were cheering him on. He was laughing with excitement. He had a big white smile. The other guys worked up this chant. They were saying, “Wetback attack,” over and over. Ronny’s older brother was there, Boris. I only knew who he was because he was a legend. He had got into more trouble than Ronny did when he was in high school. They were both Russian. I knew that. I don’t know how I knew that. Boris took his shirt off too. A bunch of the guys took their shirts off. I was standing behind so many people on the porch. It started to rain a little. Their bodies were pearly in the misty rain. Their chests were flexing and their stomachs were breathing.
Then everyone was fighting. It wasn’t just Ronny. All the Latino guy’s friends, and Ronny’s friends. There was shouting. I couldn’t see Ronny; he was in the middle of everything. I saw Boris, he was shouting at someone, then he was fighting again. There was a guy on the ground, in the grass, facedown. Two guys were kicking him. One of the guys kicking was Ronny; he kicked and stomped. It was hard to see through all the people on the porch.
Then a bunch of the fighters were running away. It was the Latino guy and his friends. Ronny and some others ran after them. And then they all disappeared, except Boris and a black guy; they went over and punched and kicked the guy on the ground.
A car drove up very fast. It was a white SUV. There was a person on the hood. The car stopped abruptly and the person fell off into the street. Then the SUV backed up and drove away. Everyone on the lawn ran to the body. I did too. It was Ronny. I could see his face through the heads. His eyes were slightly opened, like a whale’s eyes. They lifted him; he was trying to say something. They took him out of the street, and laid him on the grass section between the sidewalk and the street. Then someone yelled. Everyone looked.
The white SUV was driving back. It swerved up onto the sidewalk, toward the group around Ronny. The headlights lit up the whole scene in yellow. Everyone scrambled and dove out of the way, and the SUV drove over Ronny’s body. It was fast. His body jerked up from the sidewalk and turned over, so that he was facedown with his arms splayed.
Girls were screaming, and then I knew that it was me who was screaming. I couldn’t see anything for a while. The SUV was gone. I walked to the middle of the lawn to see. Boris was at Ronny’s side. He was crying. He was trying to turn Ronny over. Everyone was shouting, arguing about what to do. People told Boris not to turn him over. Boris was yelling at everyone to call the police. There was blood coming out on the sidewalk, slowly, from under Ronny’s face.
About half of the people walked or ran to their cars and drove off. I saw Katie Hesher crying on the porch with some people comforting her. Some of the neighbors were coming out in sweatpants and slippers. A neighbor woman in a flannel shirt went over to Katie. When I looked back again, the neighbor was kneeling in front of Katie on the steps, comforting her. Boris had turned Ronny over. Ronny’s face was smashed on one side, and swollen like a white balloon on the other. Nobody did anything until the police arrived. Boris had his hand on Ronny’s chest and was talking softly to him.
There were about five police cars, and then ten, and an ambulance, and a fire truck. All the flashing lights lit up the trees, and they turned the misty rain red, just above the cars. The paramedics were calm. They checked Ronny, and then gently lifted him onto a gurney and put him into the ambulance.
Then the police were asking for statements. I was one of the people they talked to. A heavy policewoman with regular clothes and brown hair in a bun asked me questions. She had a tough exterior, but she was gentle with me. I told her everything about the car, and about how the fight had started. I told her about when Ronny and I were talking on the couch. She asked if I was Ronny’s girlfriend.
I said no.
Did I know him pretty well? No, but.
“But what?” she asked.
“Well, he told me I was smart. I mean, I think he liked me.” She looked at me like she didn’t understand what I was saying. Then she thanked me, and said she would call if she needed more information.
She never called. The Latino guy, Richard Alvaro, was arrested. Ronny died. I didn’t get invited to the funeral. Nobody knew that I was the last person he had talked to.
I worked at Lockheed for the rest of the summer. I didn’t draw anymore. My parents could tell I was sad, but I couldn’t tell them why. I couldn’t even tell Jamie. I didn’t do much but watch the moon. It floated there, on the films, reverberant. I began picturing Ronny’s face in the moon. My face was there too and he was kissing me. Whenever there was a scratch on the film it would pull me out of the daydream, and I would mark it down.
American History
Then the other day in tenth-grade American History, Mr. Hurston was teaching us about slavery and we had to act out a mock debate between the slave states and the free states. I played Mississippi, and I had to pretend that I wanted slavery to remain legal. Me and the other four slave state guys sat on one side of the room and faced the five kids from the free states. The rest of the class watched us with dull stares.
I’m not the most outgoing person, but no one was really saying anything. So I started it off.
“We need the blacks to be slaves because this country would fall apart without them.”
Jerry Holtz represented New York and the good side. Jerry was handsome and good and a good soccer player. His hair was short in a crew cut and looked just right.