“Yeah? You like it?”
“Bunch of crazy people walk in there twenty-four seven. Every druggie in the neighborhood is waiting till it’s seven in the morning so’s they can buy some booze so’s they can come down.”
The thing about hanging out with a guy like Fito was that he provided me with an education. Between him and Sam, I was all set. “Well, it least it’s not boring.”
“Yeah, well, I could go for boring. Some guy was trying to get me to hook him up with free cigarettes. Like that was gonna happen. I gotta quit one of my jobs.”
“How many jobs do you have?”
“Two. Beats the hell out of staying home. But I gotta keep my grades up.”
“I don’t know how you manage that.”
“See, it’s like this, Sal. I don’t have a dad like yours. Your dad, he figures your job is to go to school and get good grades and shit. Me, I haven’t seen my dad since he said goodbye to me a few years back. I know he’s trying to keep it all together. I mean, my mom did him some damage. I get that. Bottom line is that he’s not around to support me. My mom’s on public assistance, and I guess I’m just lucky she hasn’t been arrested. They arrest her, I’m screwed. The last thing I need is a foster home. The good news is that I’ll be eighteen in another couple months. Then I’m free and clear.”
“Are you gonna move out?”
“No. I’ve been saving money for college, and I don’t want to use that money for rent. I’m only home long enough to sleep, anyway. It’s just a bed. I have to stick it out a little longer. Won’t kill me.”
God, he looked tired. “I was about to fix me a sandwich,” I lied. “You want one?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Starving.”
Starving was the right word. That boy wolfed that sandwich down in a nanosecond. Fito was an interesting guy. He was all street-smart, and the thing was that he had this really clean-cut look. Short hair, dorky glasses, white shirt, khakis, and he liked to wear these thin black ties. Like my dad. You know, he had a look. Me, I didn’t have a look.
“So,” he said, “how come you and Sam don’t hook up?”
“She’s my best friend.”
“Why can’t she be more than a friend? She’s hot.”
I gave him a look.
“What?”
“She’s like my sister. Guys don’t want to hear other guys say things about their sister—?things like She’s hot.”
“Sorry.”
“No worries.”
“And she’s really smart, that Sam. Guess you’re not her type anyway.”
I just shook my head. “Let’s not go there.” I didn’t like talking about Sam behind her back. It was easy enough to change the subject. “You got a girl, Fito?”
“No girls. I had this thing with Angel for a while.”
Until then I hadn’t known he was gay. I mean, he didn’t act gay—?whatever that meant. “He’s a nice guy.”
“Ahh, he’s high maintenance. Don’t have time for that. Guys suck.”
That made me laugh.
“You ever been with a guy, Sal?”
“Nope. Not my thing.”
“I just thought that because your dad was gay—”
I laughed again. “Like it works that way.”
Fito started laughing at himself. “I’m, like, an asshole.”
“No, you’re not,” I said. “I like you, Fito.”
“I like you too, Sal. You’re different. I mean, you say things like ‘I like you, Fito.’ Most guys don’t say shit like that. Well, gay guys do, but they’re not really sayin’ they like you. They’re sayin’ they’re interested in maybe gettin’ you in the sack. Know what I’m sayin’?”
I made him another sandwich. He wolfed down the second one same as the first. He kept petting Maggie and saying, “Man, wish I had a dog and lived all normal and shit.” And he just got to talking and talking. He talked about work and about his screwed-up family and about school and about how he really liked Angel, but he was too young for any serious stuff anyway, and he didn’t want to be spending his money on a guy who was maybe just using him. “The only thing I’m serious about is getting into college.”
If my dad had been there, he would have called Fito a sweet guy. And lonely. That’s what I really noticed. He was lonely.
Finally he looked at the time on his cell. “I got to hit the downtown library. That’s where I study. That be my home away from home.”
After he left, I kept thinking that he deserved better.
And I wondered how Fito got to be so decent when there wasn’t anybody around teaching him how to be decent. I just didn’t understand the human heart. Fito’s heart should have been broken. But it wasn’t. And even though there were times when he texted me and told me that life sucked, I knew he didn’t believe it. It’s just that life hurt him sometimes.
I guess life hurt everybody. I didn’t understand the logic of this thing we called living. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to.
Sam (and Me)
SAM CAME OVER (again). She brought her backpack, and we studied all afternoon. That was one of our things. Sam hadn't been much into studying when we were in grade school. But once we got into middle school, she got to be a really great student. Sam was extremely competitive. She liked to win. I mean, she was all about winning. She was always better at soccer than I was. Getting the good grades was all about winning. A lot of girls didn’t much like Sam. Not that Sam helped herself out on that count. “F all those bitches.”
I hated that word. “Have some self-respect, Sammy. The B word is the N word for girls. I hate that. What kind of a feminist are you, anyway?”
“Who said I was a feminist?”
“You did—?when we were in eighth grade.”
“I didn’t know shit in eighth grade.”
“Look, just don’t use that word around me. It pisses me off.”
She stopped using that word around me. But sometimes she did say things like She’s such a B.
I’d shoot her a look.
So I had this theory that Sam competed with me. And it wasn’t just about grades. She wanted to prove to herself (and to me) that she was as smart as I was. And she was. Smarter, I’d say. A lot smarter. Sam didn’t have to prove a damn thing—?not to me, anyway. But Sam was Sam. So we studied together. All the time. And it was because of her that I had A’s (well, two B’s) in my math and science classes. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have known a sine from a cosine. Trigonometry, biology, statistics—?anything having to do with numbers and science was really hard for a guy like me.
But Sam, she was actually brilliant—?frickin’ brilliant. And she was pretty, too. Really pretty. Well, more than pretty. She was beautiful. So she had a beautiful face and a beautiful mind. But there was more to the equation of being a person than a face, a body, and a mind. There was that other thing called a psychology. Sam’s psychological makeup was, well, complicated. When it came to schoolwork, Sam was all A’s. When it came to picking boyfriends, she was all F’s.