Dr. Sanchez uttered a series of uh-hms and nos into the phone handset that was pressed to his ear with his shoulder. Jesse and Dalisay sat across from his desk. Dalisay sat straight up and did her best not to be nervous. Jesse slouched in his chair with his head tilted up at an angle, and he stared mindlessly into a corner of the ceiling.
“Yes, thank you so much, Chief. And again, we are so sorry to waste your time,” Dr. Sanchez apologized. “I’m sure you have actual fires and emergencies to tend to. Of course, we will do that. Thank you.” He lightly slammed the handset back on the phone console and immediately blurted out, “Hijole!” and froze in place for a few seconds, his eyes enlarged. Still not moving, his eyes adjusted to a scowl and they shifted to Jesse and then Dalisay. “Both of you are suspended for the maximum amount possible: five days.”
“A’ight, peace.” Jesse grabbed his backpack from the floor and got up from his seat.
“That is unfair! Uh, sir!” Dalisay protested. “I had nothing to do with the fire alarm. There is no proof I pulled the alarm or had any connection with it -- because I didn’t.”
Jesse was almost at the door and stopped. “Yeah,” he chimed in and then slowly turned back around to the principal. “Yeah, me too. Where’s your witness?”
Dr. Sanchez’s face began to flush red. “Both of you were the only ones from the fair that were unaccounted for.”
“Sir, there were students in the locker rooms from P.E. Anyone who had access to the locker rooms could have done it. I was out on the exhibit floor when the alarm went off. Did you even interview people? Uh, sir?”
“Yeah, and I was on the shitter. Since when do you get suspended for having chorro?”
“Of course we interviewed. That’s why you two are here. I am willing to reduce your suspension if you admit to it right now.”
“Fuck that. You got nothing.” Jesse turned back around for the door.
“If you don’t have any evidence that either of us actually pulled that alarm, sir, then we shouldn’t even be here right now beyond answering your questions to help figure out who actually did it. Sir.”
Jesse’s hand was on the doorknob when he heard this last part and froze. Dr. Sanchez opened his mouth but hesitated to say something. The doorknob turned and Jesse jumped back as the principal’s secretary shoved the door open while quickly knocking on it.
“Dr. Sanchez? Dr. Sanchez, sorry to interrupt. You need to watch the news. Right now.”
“Which?” he clarified.
“Any. Come out here, we have it on.” Then she hustled back out to the main office lobby, where a large flat screen TV was on the wall.
Dr. Sanchez gave Dalisay one last stern look, then pressed his tie against his chest as he scooted his chair out from his desk and stood up. He walked to the door and Jesse had already started his way out. Various secretaries, office staff, counselors, and even a few students stood scattered around the office, all frozen in place and gazing at the television.
The headlines across the bottom of the screen read, “Tilson Plan Signed by POTUS.” The president himself sat behind his desk in the oval office. He had already signed it and was shaking hands with his Cabinet and Republican members of the House and Senate. He then folded his hands in front of him and stared directly into the camera, waiting for an imaginary audience to end their imaginary applause.
“Today marks a momentous day in our history as a nation and as Americans. Today, I have signed into law the Secured Entry of National Territories and Reintegration of Illegal Immigrants Act, or SENTRII for short. And, standing next to me is this genius bill’s author, Senator Tilson. Great job, Bob.” The president paused to reach out and shake his hand. Bob Tilson gladly and enthusiastically shook it with a smile that went ear to ear. The president continued. “Today, a new era begins in the United States of America. No longer will illegals feel the need to run and hide from this government. Today, we embrace our illegal population in an unprecedented legal package that will guarantee them the right to live and work in this wonderful country the rest of us call home. Today, I will order ICE to begin accepting pre-registered applicants into the SENTRII program while simultaneously seeking out non-registered applicants to bring registration to them. Today, we move forward as a united country and Americans can take pride in their country’s progress. Today, we look to tomorrow -- and it looks brighter already.” The President smiled and showed his teeth, then swept back to a smug grin as he took more handshakes from the small audience crowding his desk. He leaned over and his grandkids jumped on him for hugs. He stood up and began awkwardly embracing his wife and children.
“We’ll continue this later,” Dr. Sanchez said, his eyes still glued to the TV screen. Or to something beyond it.
“Yeah,” Jesse said absently.
“Yes, sir,” Dalisay said. She picked up her bag and brushed past Jesse on her way out of the office.
“Nancy, hold my calls except for district personnel. Take messages from local or federal agencies. I need to call in the APs, counselors, and campus security.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them.”
“Yes, Dr. Sanchez,” the secretary responded, as she wiped a tear from her face.
“Jesse. Time for you to go back to class.”
“Yeh,” he responded while still staring at the screen.
“This isn’t over.”
“Yeh,” Jesse uttered again. Dr. Sanchez closed his door and that seemed to snap Jesse back to awareness.
From the main office, Jesse headed to Yusef’s classroom since it was now his conference period. A campus security staff member sped past Jesse in a golf cart with one of the assistant principals riding as a passenger. She clutched her radio in one hand, the other gripping the roof of the cart. She squinted hard into the distance, but there was no sunlight on her face to squint through.
In the social sciences building, Jesse walked past the bathrooms and heard two girls sobbing as he passed by. A classroom had its door open and everyone inside was quietly watching the news broadcast projected on their pull-down screen. The President was now taking questions from reporters.
When he got to Yusef’s classroom Jesse’s excitement from the morning’s events fired him up and he swept himself through the door, ready to start blabbing away about his calamities.
“...Next steps are now immin-- ” Yusef cut himself off, holding his phone’s handset to his ear and now staring at Jesse. “We will have to continue this later. Ma’ al-salāmah.” He put the handset back on the phone’s switch hook. “You should be back in class, Jesús. Especially after all of the... excitement, from today.”
“Ah, shit. You heard already?”
“How could I not?” Yusef asked, standing up at his desk. “All of that work and preparation, Jesús!”
“Aw, shit,” Jesse said under his breath with an eye roll. He knew he was in for it now.
Yusef took a quick breath and was about to begin his next bombardment when the high-pitched tone of the P.A. system chimed. Jesse closed his eyes and sighed with relief.
“Good morning, Caballeros,” Dr. Sanchez’s deep, Latino accent crooned out of the speaker. “Just a few moments ago, the President signed into law the SENTRII Act, also known as The Tilson Plan.” Dr. Sanchez’s tone now switched from authoritarian principal to caring-adult-talking-to-kids. “This means that ICE, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency, will now begin actively seeking undocumented residents, wherever they may be, in an effort to collect them for processing in the government’s new tracking program. Any local or federal officer can now ask residents for identification and proof of citizenship if they suspect that someone is not living here with proper paperwork. But rest assured, your teachers, counselors, Portola’s staff, administrators, our district personnel, and I -- we are all here to support you. You shouldn--” Dr. Sanchez’s voice broke and he cleared his throat. “You should not feel unsafe here at Portola,” he continued. “We will do anything and everything we can to ensure the safety and privacy of our students and families. Caballeros: be smart, be safe, look out for each other.” There was another pause and something slightly muffled over the microphone. His voice returned, shaky but determined. “We love you all. We will get through this. Together. God -- good day.” There was a click and the P.A. system turned off. It was now completely silent in Yusef’s room, and Jesse found himself now sitting down at a desk.
“Damn,” Jesse said, gazing into a spot on the floor far off somewhere.
“Everything will be fine, Mubtadi. Eventually.”
“What does that mean?”
“It is like I have stated before. Things will need to get worse before they get better.”
“This isn’t worse?”
“We are getting closer.”
“What do we do now?”
“Your training will be intensified, especially now that the Science Fair is over.” Yusef paused and inspected Jesse carefully. “You were responsible for the debacle today, were you not?”
Jesse looked Yusef right in the eyes and kept a straight face. “You’re gonna read my mind later anyway.”
“I can read you from here. You were not prepared, were you?”
Jesse shook his head. “I was! I finished it! I stayed up all fucking night. I just… the pinche works cited.”
Now it was Yusef’s turn to shake his head. “Your solution was to set the school on fire?”
“La Puta Dalisay. She was right across from me, ‘Sef. I couldn’t let her win again. Or any of those stuck-up maricons.”
“Calm yourself. You only belittle yourself when you resort to name calling.”
Jesse was about to go on but shut his mouth instead.
“You were upset because you put in all of that hard work. Then at the very end, it would have meant nothing. You felt like your work was worth more than anyone else’s there, because it was hard for you. And you know it was easier for everyone else there. You feel like they all had an advantage. A head start. Your work would not even have been looked at. Dismissed, like yourself, and every other positive thing you have attempted to do in your life.” Yusef let that last sentence hang in the air between them. “Is that accurate?”
“Yeh.”
“Excuse me?”
‘Yes! I said ‘yes.’”
“So, if you could not have your hard work finally validated, no one else could. That was your solution. Or your revenge, as it were.”
“Yes.”
Yusef, still standing, hung his head down in thought, and rubbed his brow with one hand. “What will you do now?”
Jesse shrugged. “I dunno.”
“I will not lie for you, Jesse. If I am asked a direct, specific question I will answer it honestly.”
Jesse nodded solemnly.
“After all, I only have my own assumptions and no evidence.” Yusef shrugged. “No one knows that you are here, correct?”
Shifting his eyes in thought, Jesse shook his head. “Nah.”
“Then perhaps it is best you leave before someone does, and asks questions.”
Jesse nodded and did his best to hide his grin, then briskly walked to the door. He peered through the glass left and then right, and left again. Then he slightly opened the door and peeked out. Not seeing anyone in the hall, Jesse slinked out and casually walked back to class.
The rest of the school day was somber and his teachers were not that focused in class, so Jesse was extra eager to get home and try to take a short power nap before his physical training.
On the walk home, Jesse wondered what Maria was up to. He wondered if she noticed that he wasn’t in class this morning. He wondered if she was ever going to notice him now that he blew it at the Science Fair. Well, if he got suspended she might start to notice him then. Assuming he didn’t get caught for the fire alarm and wouldn’t get fast tracked out of Portola, considering his long record of referrals, parent meetings, suspensions, arrest, and expulsion. “Fuck,” he said out loud to himself. “This was all for nothing. I’m still a piece of shit on her goddamn shoe.”
A notification on his phone chimed. Someone from an account he didn’t recognize tagged him in a meme post. It featured a close up of William Shakespeare’s very serious face and his pupils were replaced with emoji skulls and eye liner had been added. Black hearts floated around him. This fucking poem bullshit, Jesse thought to himself. I gotta find out who this was and bop them. In front of everyone. A new post popped up on his feed, from Chayne Sauze. It started to autoplay:
“’Ey, yo. This Tilson shit is fucked. Why we still keeping these fucking freeloaders here? We gon’ go through the trouble of findin’ ‘em, just go the extra step of kickin’ these foo’s out. An’ that’s a fucking blessing. I find a foo’ in my fucking house an’ he ain’t welcome, that nigga gettin’ shot.” Chayne Sauze then threw up his free arm. “This country our fuckin’ house. Why we not shootin’ these foo’s?” The video ended. Jesse saw that it had been posted a few hours earlier, probably right after the President’s announcement, and the video already had over four million views and tens of thousands of comments. This wasn’t even Chayne Sauze’s actual social media account, either -- it was a meme account, one of many that had probably reposted his monologue.
Jesse scrolled through them and saw that people were debating all kinds of things, from the law itself to whether or not someone like Chayne Sauze should be commenting on it at all. People were threatening each other. Whatever he saw, it was laced with anger. No matter what reasonable thing or compromise someone suggested, there were at least two other people who demonized it and swore to fight it.
“Yusef was right,” Jesse said out loud to himself. “This shit is gonna get worse.” He continued to scroll and hop across different social media platforms, and even checked the news for a little bit. He wondered: just how worse does it have to get? And then what? Even if someone came along as a new president or whatever and took away the Tilson Plan, there would be a shit ton of people angry about that and want it back.
Then a thought entered his mind and with it his knees got weak for a second and his body felt like gravity doubled on him. What the fuck does Yusef want me to do about it? How am I -- how is anyone going to stop this or make this better?
Tires screeched from a flashy green car that had sped past Jesse as he continued on the sidewalk. Out of the rear passenger side window he saw an arm and a pointed, painted fingernail sticking out toward him. For a split second he hoped it was Maria, but then he didn’t recognize that arm or hand. The smell of burnt rubber reached his nostrils before the smoke did. Then the car abruptly pulled into reverse. Jesse couldn’t ignore this, as he remembered this was Raymond Bravo’s car. He stopped walking and got ready for anything.
The lime green Accord stopped next to Jesse. The windows were tinted, but through the passenger door he saw the familiar shape of Maria’s face and hair. Behind her, with the window still down and the pointing hand still sticking out, was Xotchitl. She looked at Jesse and then looked away as soon as he made eye contact with her, instead dropping her focus to her phone in her lap. Jesse heard the rapid clicking of a handbrake being pulled back and then the driver side door swung open. The gleam from the shaved head of Raymond Bravo was disturbed only by the black shades that he now pulled off and tossed back into the car before slamming his door shut and coming around the hood toward Jesse without saying a word.
Jesse knew what was about to happen. He had just enough time to drop his backpack off his shoulders. Raymond’s Air Jordans stepped over the curb. His eyes deadlocked on Jesse’s, and then he hurried his pace toward him. Raymond seemed shorter compared to the last time he saw him.
Just as Jesse’s backpack hit the ground behind him, Raymond reached striking distance and swung a giant right hook. It was pretty easy to read and as Jesse was ducking under it, he realized that it was too easy.
Jesse saw his right shoulder coming back and his left foot pivoting. Raymond had adjusted his weight to throw a left cross, his sneakers screeching against the sidewalk cement while he did so. As he was already in motion raising his head back up, Jesse swerved his upper body and stepped to the left toward Raymond. A sharp and powerful exhale hissed from Raymond’s nose. The tatted left cross shot straight out and barely missed Jesse’s head. Now, Raymond’s right arm was too close to Jesse to have any good momentum to strike him.
The advantage was now Jesse’s. He threw a right jab at Raymond’s face.
Raymond brought up his right forearm and parried the punch, but was now off balance and he had his entire right side exposed.
Jesse followed up with a left uppercut to Raymond’s liver. His body jolted and Raymond let out a breathy grunt. His arms instinctively dropped to protect himself and Jesse hissed an exhale and pivoted, throwing a right cross. Raymond tried bringing his guard back up but Jesse connected with Raymond’s nose and right eye. Raymond flinched and threw his upper body backward, taking a few steps back. Jesse didn’t relent and moved in.
Raymond threw out a jab, connecting with Jesse’s face. He threw another but Jesse guarded against it with his forearm, then bobbed left, threw a fake body shot, and bobbed right with an uppercut to Raymond’s jaw. It was a risky move, but Raymond wasn’t ready for the speed and already had his confidence shaken. He slumped into himself and fell back, his body falling on the sidewalk and his head slammed onto the grass of whoever’s lawn had turned into their own boxing ring. Raymond’s chest expanded and sank down in big motions, and his eyes were open. But nobody was home inside.
“What the fuuuck, bruuuhhh!” Xotchitl yelled from the car. Jesse looked over and saw her hanging out the car window, recording with her phone. She brought her arm back in to open the door and stepped out to get a closer shot of Raymond on the ground, then she pointed her phone’s lens toward Jesse. He was now staring at the tinted front passenger window. He saw a hand tightly pressed against the window and Maria’s silhouette behind it. The hand disappeared and there wasn’t any movement or sound. Jesse stood and stared to where he felt her eyes must be. Then he moved to retrieve his backpack, put it back on, stepped over Raymond’s body, and continued down the sidewalk toward home.
He felt warmness on his cheek and wiped it with the back of his hand. Blood was smeared all over it. He touched his cheekbone and felt a cut. Jesse smudged it with his hand and continued on. He wanted to look back at Maria, but knew if he did he would just see her cradling Raymond in her arms. And his face was now a mess. But not nearly as much as Raymond’s was. Jesse smirked and straightened his posture. He picked up his pace and calculated the time he would lose from training now that he had to ice his face when he got home.