Bedlam Boyz(58)

Fernando stepped out of the car first, scanning the street quickly, then gestured to Ramon and Kayla. Kayla picked up the shopping bag of her clothes and followed Ramon up the creaking flight of stairs, through a hallway littered with stinking trash and abandoned children's toys, to an unmarked door on the second floor.

"You'll like staying here," he said, and Kayla thought he sounded like he was trying to be cheerful and failing completely. "You'll have a room to yourself, you won't have to share with anyone. It's not as crowded as Roberta's."

"Yeah, but at least Roberta's place was clean," Kayla observed, stepping over some garbage on the landing.

Ramon shrugged. "No one really lives here. We keep this place only for selling . . . what we sell."

"Drugs, you mean?" Kayla asked.

He unlocked the door and they walked in, Fernando following them. She looked around curiously. The living room was a little cleaner than the rest of the building, but completely without any furniture, except an old couch.

Ramon walked down the short hallway, glancing quickly in each of the rooms. He said something in Spanish to Fernando, who nodded. "No one has been here since we left," he added. "You will be safe here. If any other of the homeboys come here, stay out of the first bedroom—that's where they work. We don't sell drugs here, they do that downstairs. When someone wishes to buy, we lower baggies through the hole in the floor of the bathroom. That way, if the policía or someone else breaks through the downstairs door, there isn't anything around."

Ramon said something else in Spanish to Fernando; the other man smiled and left, closing the door behind him.

"Fernando's going to make sure everything's okay downstairs," Ramon said. "Later, he'll go get some groceries for you. I don't think there's anything but Coronas in the fridge."

"Great. I'm starving." She looked at the sofa, some of the springs poking through the fabric, and decided against trying to sit on it. Doesn't matter, I'm not going to be here very long. Ramon won't be that hard to get away from—a lot easier than Carlos. It's only about fifteen feet to the ground; I can jump out the window, that won't be tough at all. I'm not sticking around here, that's for sure. These guys can carry on their war without me.

The silence was becoming awkward. "So, do you make a lot of money selling drugs?" Kayla asked.

Ramon turned away, moving to the fridge without answering. She watched as he popped the cap off a bottle of beer. "What, the money's not good? I don't believe that."

He turned to face her. In spite of herself, Kayla took a step backwards. "You don't understand!" he said angrily, then shook his head and repeated quietly, "You don't understand.

"No, I don't," Kayla said.

He gestured for her to sit on the couch; carefully, trying to avoid the deadly-looking metal springs, she sat down next to him. He took her hand in his, looking down at her grubby fingers. He glanced up at her and smiled. "You need a bath, querida."

"Thanks for reminding me," she said wryly.

"Fernando will bring back some towels when he goes to get groceries; you can bathe later. Just put a towel over the hole in the floor, otherwise the homies downstairs may play jokes on you. Kayla . . . what do you dream of<|>?"

"I—I don't understand," Kayla said, a little confused.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

"I don't know." Kayla looked down at her hands. "Before everything . . . went wrong, before my parents disappeared, I wanted to be a doctor, I think. I don't remember."

Ramon nodded. "I've always dreamed of being someone who could make a difference. I wanted to be a lawyer, to change the way the law treats Hispanics. I studied hard in school, thinking that even though my family couldn't afford to send me to college, I'd get a scholarship and go.

"But what I didn't know as a kid is that the system, it doesn't let you do that. You go to school, but they can't teach you, not here in the barrio. They don't have enough teachers, or books, or anything. If you're lucky, you can stay in school through most of high school, like I did. Carlos wasn't so lucky, he had to quit school and work after Papa left.

"All they can teach you is that nobody cares. Nobody really cares. What they teach is that you can't win, that if your name ends in Z, all you can hope for is a job at McDonald's. The teachers don't expect you to get through high school, let alone go on to college. Most of my friends can't speak English, they can barely read, even in Spanish, they can't hope for anything better than a job as a night watchman or a cook.

"And then there are the gangs. You have to stick with your own kind, otherwise you're dead. They'll find you alone somewhere and cut you up. I was ten years old when they started carrying knives and talking tough. Junior high is worse. By the time I got to high school, it was a war.