Sam and I walked Fito home. I wanted to ask them both if they’d ever been in love, and I wondered what was stopping me. So I did it. I asked.
“I’m always in love,” Sam confessed. “Well, I always think I’m in love, but now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever been in love. Not really. Just these little, I don’t know what to call them, these attractions to good-looking bad boys. Nothing serious. They just seemed serious at the time. I’m kind of intense that way.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said.
“Shut up. You asked, right?”
“Right,” I said.
Fito was shaking his head. “You gotta stay away from those vatos, Sam. No bueno.”
“No bueno is right,” I said.
“Me?” Fito said. “There was this guy I met last year. He went to Cathedral. Can you believe that shit?”
“Ah,” Sam said. “So you have a thing for good boys, do you?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I sort of fell in love with him. Turns out he wasn’t such a good Catholic boy. I won’t get into it. I’ll tell you something: it hurt like hell. I went out and got all fucked up. First and last time I’ll ever do drugs. That’s bad shit. No bueno.”
Sam and I both nodded.
“How come we need to love?”
“Maybe we don’t,” Fito said.
“Like hell,” Sam said. “We need it. Like the air we breathe.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“That’s the question, isn’t it, Sally?”
“Do you think the heart needs love to keep on beating? You know what I mean?”
“Well,” Sam said, “isn’t that what a heart’s for?”
“But not everybody loves. Not everybody.” Fito had a real serious look on his face. “And that’s the fucking truth.”
Sam and I just looked at Fito.
“You okay?” Sam whispered.
“I’m not always okay. I don’t want to talk about love. Sometimes life is shit.”
(More) Shit Happens
WHEN SAM AND I went for our Saturday morning run, I tried to keep up with her. Lately she’d been stepping it up. We ran to the Santa Fe Bridge, and on our way back home, we stopped in front of the library. After my breathing returned to normal, I glanced over and saw Sam looking up at the sky.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” she said.
“You thinking?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I got a text from this guy at school.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. He likes me.”
“You like him?”
“Sort of. He’s my type.”
I smiled. “Yeah? Gonna go out with him?”
“Nope.”
“Nope?”
“I turned him down flat.”
“Really?”
“Yup.” She gave me one her fantastic smiles. “I don’t always know who I want to be. You think I do. But I don’t. But, Sally, I know who I don’t want to be. A lot of guys got this thing into their head that I was easy.”
“They were wrong,” I said.
“Yeah, they were wrong.”
We just looked at each other. And then I said. “And a lot of people got the idea that I was this calm guy who always had his shit together. They were wrong.”
“Hey,” she said, “go easy. The jury’s still out.”
That made me smile. “Let’s go home,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “You know we gotta talk to Fito. He’s got something going on in that head of his.”
“Well, it’s not just in his head.”
“Yeah,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve that screwed-up family.”
Life wasn’t always about deserve. That much I knew.
I was starting to get why Dad has this thing with uncertainty. He told me more than once that you don’t need certainty to be happy. And I was starting to get it. You never know what’s going happen. You really don’t. One day, you’re going along with your life and everything is normal. You go to school, you do your homework, you play catch with your dad, and the days go like that, and then bam! Bam! Mima’s cancer comes back. Sam’s mom gets killed in an accident. Fito gets thrown out of his house. I used to wonder at the emotional ups-and-downs that Sam went through all the time. I mean, all the time. But suddenly that’s how I felt. I woke up and felt good, at lunch I’d be all pissed off about something stupid, and then I’d be kind of okay. I flipped back and forth between being the old me and the me I didn’t know or understand. And just when I’d think that things were more or less balancing themselves out, well, shit happened. It’s the perfect way to put it. Shit happens.
I’d just gotten out of the shower after our run, and Sam had gone out with her Aunt Lina. That was nice, that she had her aunt. And it was really sweet, what they had. I walked into the kitchen, and my dad was reading the paper. He put the newspaper down and said, “What’s Fito’s last name?”
“Fresquez.”
“Would you text him and ask him what his mother’s name is?”
“What?”
“Just do that for me, will you?” He had a serious look on his face. I didn’t like it when he wore that look. So I texted Fito: What’s ur mom’s name?
Fito texted back: Elena
I looked at Dad. “Her name’s Elena.”
“How old is she?”
So I texted Fito: How old is ur mom?
Fito texted back: 44
I looked at Dad. “She’s forty-four.”
And then Fito texted back: ?
“Do you know where Fito used to live?”
“Yeah, on California Street. Close to school.”
Now Dad looked really sick. “Fito’s mother is dead,” he said. He handed me the newspaper. “Forty-Four-Year-Old Woman Found Dead.” That was the headline. I started reading. The neighbors found her. “An apparent drug overdose.”
I looked at my dad. “So what are we gonna do?”
“It’s not as if he’s not going to find out. You better tell Fito to get over here.”
“I have some bad news for you, Fito.” Dad’s voice was soft. Kind. Really kind. “There’s no good way of breaking this news, Fito.”
Fito shrugged. “I’m kinda used to bad news, you know, Mr. V.”
“Yeah, Fito, I get that.” Dad looked down at the newspaper. “It’s about your mom. I read it in this morning’s newspaper.”
Fito stared at the newspaper. He took it and started reading. When he finished, he put it down. Dad was popping his knuckles and studying Fito. Then Fito started hitting himself. I mean, he was punching the hell out of his chest, and he started crying, like, really loud, and he was saying stuff that I just couldn’t make out. And he wouldn’t stop hitting himself, and he got up from his chair and he ripped the newspaper up, and he started hitting himself again, and his crying was breaking my heart and I was really glad that Sam wasn’t home to see it, really glad she was out with her Aunt Lina, because this would’ve really killed her, to see Fito that way. And then I just couldn’t stand it anymore, and I took Fito’s fists and I was stronger than he was, and I held his arms and kept him from hitting himself. And then I just pulled him in to me, and I held him and he cried and he cried and he cried. And I couldn’t do anything about all the hurt, but I could hold him. And then Fito whispered in a voice that sounded tired and old, “Why am I crying? She didn’t even love me.”
Then I heard myself whisper back, “Maybe all that matters is that you loved her.”
“My life is shit,” he said. “That’s all it’s ever been.”
“No, it isn’t. I promise you, Fito, it isn’t.”
Friends