I consider avoiding this job. But then I hear some guy’s voice behind me.
“Those plates over there have your name on them, son.”
I think I’ll wear the rubber gloves this time out.
THE JOBS THEYassign me at the soup kitchen almost always suck, but I’ve got to say, when my two hours are over, I usually feel pretty good. Basically, I like helping fine people eat some good food and have a good time.
But next day when I’m back at school, things are still pretty bad. Okay, there’s my own little group of friends, who are always there for me no matter what. That helps. What doesn’t help is that they keep asking questions like, “What are you gonna say?” or “Aren’t you nervous?” or “Do you think this is gonna ruin your chances with Sienna?” I tell them that I don’t need them to drive me up the wall, that I can do it entirely by myself. But they keep trying.
From where I stand, the opposition feels a lot stronger. They’ve got the passion. They make the noise. They rally around one simple belief: that cops use too much force. They don’t see police work as some sort of delicate balance between doing the right thing and the tough thing. They see it as bad people doing a bad job.
Here would be a typical argument between me and them:
“That porker didn’t have to cuff Mikey,” says someone.
“But Mikey had just cut the newsstand guy,” I say.
“It was nothing—a stupid little cut,” says the kid.
“But it was a cut, a robbery, an attack!” I say.
“It was nothing.”
“It was something.”
So, without my noticing, my opponent hijacks the argument. It’s not that he’s smarter than me, he’s just more determined than me. The debate right here this time is no longer about assault or slashing. It’s about whether the officer should have done more than slap some cuffs on a kid who could have killed someone. Yeah, debate depends on brains. But it seems that it also depends on cunning and strategy. I’m not sure I’m any good at either of those.
“But he was hurting someone. He was committing a crime,” I say.
“Maybe so. Who cares? They didn’t have to treat him so badly. The cops are out of control.”
“They weren’t out of control this time. They were stopping a kid from hurting someone.”
So that’s school. That’s how it goes.
Then there’s Sienna. When I run into her, she and I talk, but the words come slowly, and we both sound pathetic and shy. It’s a lot of “How you doing?” and “Doing okay. How about you?” and then “You ready for Thursday?” and “Trying to be ready.” Then, nervous laughter.
“See ya.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Luck, Sienna.”
“Luck, Ali.”
Every minute of every day makes me a little more nervous. And I’ve got the stories to prove it.
Next example. Every word is true.
The bathroom is a place I now try to avoid. Until it’s unavoidable. Yeah, they have security guards walking in and out, but there are two problems with the security guards at our school. The first one is that they can no longer tell the difference between the smell of weed and the normal bathroom smells, and secondly, all they do is take a quick look around the room, jot down some sort of check-in on their devices, and then they disappear. So you’re usually on your own, even when your bladder’s about to explode.
Okay, you don’t have to be a Marine recon trainee to know that if you want to avoid trouble in the boys’ room, donotuse a urinal. A stall seems a little safer. Step in, slide the lock closed behind you, do what you have to do, and get out. Hope that some bully doesn’t try to crawl beneath the stall door to try to pull you off the toilet (think I’m making this up? It happened twice to Mateo).
Anyway, today I opt for the stall, even though I really don’t need it. Then I do what I need to. I zip up. When I step out of the stall, though, I’ve got a surprise. The boys’ room is usually pretty crowded, but today, as soon as I unlatch the door to the stall, I see that it’s unusually empty. In fact, there’s just one other guy in there. This other guy doesn’t look at all familiar, but he does look large, mighty large, six-feet large, maybe. He’s standing at one of the sinks, and he’s doing a really bad job of pretending to wash his hands. I give my own nervous fingers a quick rinse, and then I head for the door. I will definitely air-dry my hands.
As I open the main exit door to leave the bathroom the six-feet-tall guy in the bathroom yells loudly, “Cop kid! Cop kid! Cop kid on the loose!”
I’M OUT INthe hallway now with four other kids—the guy who was in the bathroom, two girls, and another guy. I think that I know almost everyone in my school. Even if I haven’t talked to them, I can at least identify them. But I swear I’ve never seen any of these kids before, and I also swear that they are all bigger than me, taller than me, older than me, even the girls (who are not really girls but women). The worst thing is that these kids look way meaner and tougher than me.