I look outside. I can hear the faint noise of those who can’t wait until midnight. And I tell myself, don’t go there. But every New Year’s Eve, the fireworks’ noise throws open a door and the fear returns. I remember that one night when Sergio and I walked through the neighborhood where I lived when I was sixteen.
Perez Street was a familiar area to both Sergio and me. That late night the street seemed even friendlier because our neighbors, their extended families and various compadres had gathered on front porches, sidewalks and along the curbs in front of houses, lighting fireworks, cracking open beers and yelling out to the New Year like it was a long lost friend.
Sergio and I were trying to project confidence as we walked down the street. We had hoped that Nikki, the blondie who lived in the mysterious house on the corner, had invited her charismatic cousin over for the holiday. Last year Sergio and I had been just freshmen. We felt inadequate around girls like Nikki and her cousin, Pamela. This year we had driver’s licenses, we were guys who knew the way high school worked, knew how to speak to women—well, we thought so anyway.
“Don’t blow it, Rubén,” Sergio told me as we left his yard and walked the sidewalk. “You always use big words. Nikki says you make her feel stupid.”
“It’s not Nikki I want to impress,” I said. “You can have Nikki. I want to have a conversation with Pamela.”
“Conversation? Well no woman wants you talking like a dictionary, Rubén, so keep it real, okay?”
“I’m real. I don’t tell girls I like that I have the dance moves of Michael Jackson.”
“I do!” Sergio exclaimed and right there on the sidewalk, he stopped and tried to shuffle back on his feet in the lamest moonwalk I ever saw. I rolled my eyes. I just waved him off and kept walking. After another two moon steps, he laughed and gave it up for a quick jog to catch up with me.
That’s the way it was that night—the two of us teasing each other, joking around like best friends do. We stopped to make fun of a little boy trying to get his sparklers to light. Every time his dad took a step closer to ignite the rod with his cigarette lighter, the little boy’s hand shook harder. When the sparkler finally lit up and silver sparks danced around his fingers, the boy dropped the thing on the street.
Sergio whistled and quickly picked it up. He waved it over his head, and then he helped the little boy take hold of the stem safely. He laughed and spun on the balls of his feet and both the boy and I smiled at Sergio’s silliness.
Suddenly whole packages of firecrackers exploded like machine guns. Bottle rockets fizzled into the smoky skies. From every direction sparkled colors appeared like arrows.
Noisy waves of fireworks underlined the yelling, “Happy New Year! Feliz Año Nuevo! Happy New Year!” that echoed up and down the neighborhood.
Sergio said, “Aw man! We missed the chance to kiss the girls at midnight!”
“That’s because you stopped to play with sparklers!” I told him, the noise of the midnight racket around us almost deafening. Still I crowed into the craziness, “Happy New Year! Happy New Year!”
I still tell myself that I actually heard a shot of silence within the rip of fireworks.
Did Sergio grab me or did I grab him? Still I don’t know, but we grappled together arm over arm, his body an uninvited weight against my chest and shoulders.
I thought he was kidding around. Then his life seeped across my hands in dark, warm blood. Whoever shot guns into the air to celebrate a new year had no idea of what they had done.
Everything blurs at that point.
The ambulance wailing into the neighborhood …
Sergio’s mom pulling his body from my arms with screams that echo my own …
Then my ten-year-old tugs on my arm. “Please, Dad, why can’t I go over to Mike’s house tonight? His dad bought firecrackers to pop.”
I look down and see my son, the boy I named Sergio. I want to tell him why. I want to explain how bullets fall from the sky on New Year’s Eve disguised within a firecracker’s noise.
I shake my head at my son, as I do every New Year’s night. Since that moment I realized my friend Sergio was dead in my arms, and that trajectory is a learned principle.
Continuing to keep the vigil, I lock Sergio and his sisters indoors, where I can remain watchful, protecting them from any misguided crack, whistle or shot.