The Closest I've Come by Fred Aceves

Author:Fred Aceves
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-09-23T04:00:00+00:00

17

WE ON our way to the party looking our best—fresh haircuts, clean sneakers, least ugly clothes, Art with a new Heat cap, and Ruben rocking his dead father’s gold chain. I scrubbed my kicks with an old toothbrush, used Comet for the sides of the soles. The laces I washed by hand and hung outside the window to dry in the sun.

Besides the hole in my left sneaker, still growing bigger, my kicks don’t look so old.

We smelling good too. We stopped at Ruben’s house to spray on some Montblanc cologne, using the same method. What you do is shoot the mist in front of you and walk through it, so the scent gets all over but not too strong. You do that four times.

Walking outta Maesta, through the last pool of orangey light coming from a streetlamp, we hear, “Yo! Wait up!”

Uppercut raises his hand all excited, like a student with the right answer, and jogs over to us. Me and my boys ain’t ever invited Uppercut nowhere. We try avoiding him, but sometimes he tags along, like now, falling in step without knowing or asking where we going.

“Where you been this week?” Ruben asks him. “Ain’t seen you at school.”

“Ain’t going no more.”

Another one bites the dust, as they say. Uppercut looks poorer than usual, his Puerto Rican flag shirt unwashed, the green camouflage shorts clashing bad with it, but I won’t worry about him.

I’m getting me a girl tonight, or at least a number. By tomorrow Amy will be a memory.

Hip-hop’s thumping inside the party room above the gated pool. On the balcony, Kevin’s hugged up with Shanice while two boys are leaning over the rail to see whose gob of spit can stretch down the longest.

We step into the spot like we own it. People turn to us, about sixty kids, most of them from our school and clustered in the corners. A few sophomores. A few from Springview High, where Asha’s cousin goes.

A spinning black box fixed to the center of the ceiling beams colored lights onto the empty floor. Nobody ever wants to be the first to dance.

Art leads us through the room like we looking for someone in particular. The walk-around lets everybody know we here—Yeah, the party can pop off now, you very welcome—and also to evaluate every girl in the room. We nod at the guys from school, hug the girls we know, me and Ruben kiss the Latinas, and we keep walking. Uppercut moving all hard, like a steamroller with eyes.

Asha spots us and screams. She leaves her group of friends and hurries over, arms spreading just before she gets to Art. Then she quick-hugs the rest of us and says, “Thank you all for coming to my party.”

Sometimes kids surprise you with their grown-up behavior.

She grabs Art by the hand and hauls him over to her friends. The other guys go talk to Miguel and them from school. I wanna check out the pool, which has been filthy and unusable for as long as I remember.

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