Chapter 5

Chandler looked over at Lonnie then. “Hey, man, you think you’re pretty tough too, huh? I hear you tried to murder your old man,” he said. “What was that all about?”

Lonnie didn’t look up. “I don’t know,” he said.

Chandler laughed. “Then you must be a crazy—a psycho. That what you are, Bowman? You shot your old man and you don’t even know why.” Then Chandler wedged his fingers in the corners of his mouth and pulled it wide, making his tongue loll around. It was his lame impersonation of a madman. “You a psycho, Bowman? Huh, huh?” he taunted.

“Leave him alone,” Rodrigo said.

“You mind your own business, Garcia,” Chandler snapped. He walked over to Lonnie and crouched on the floor beside him. “Hey, psycho, should we be worrying about you? Maybe you’ll try to waste us when we get up on the mountain. Are you one of those really dangerous quiet types? You gonna snap and push somebody over a cliff just for fun?”

Lonnie just looked coolly at Chandler and said, “No, I won’t do that.” He didn’t seem to have any emotions at all. Maybe, Rodrigo thought, he really was a psycho. But then he wouldn’t be here at the Chaparral Corral. He’d be in some kind of mental health place. The only guys approved for this camp were normal boys who seemed headed for serious trouble without some kind of radical intervention.

Montrose stuck his head in the door. “Get moving, you guys. We’re hitting the trail in five minutes,” he barked.

The three boys walked to the flagpole and stood waiting for Montrose and Marcus. In a moment, Montrose arrived, carrying the biggest backpack of all. He and Marcus set the pace with long strides.

“We’ve got maps to mark where the rain washed out the trails,” Montrose said, “so let’s keep our eyes open. Been a rainy winter. Lot of damage.”

Rodrigo glanced up at the sky. A few puffy clouds bobbed in the clear sky. “Look at that. Maybe it’s gonna rain again,” he said.

“No problem. We got gear for it,” said Marcus Finley, who had dropped back to the rear.

Rodrigo noticed that Marcus had the build of a football player. But he also had a knife scar or two. He asked, “You ever been in trouble yourself, man?”

Marcus grinned. “You might say that. I’m in college now—but I’m a graduate of the Chaparral Corral school of hard knocks. Glad I made it here. It kept me out of state prison. Hope it does the same for you guys.”

“Huh! Crawling up a hot, dusty mountain can cure a man’s demons, you think?” Rodrigo asked.

Marcus smiled again. “Only one person you’ll ever meet can decide your fate, Rodrigo. That’s the fella you meet in the mirror every morning. You’re never gonna change anybody else—no matter how hard you try. Something I learned from being here helped me fix the man in my mirror,” he said.

Rodrigo was glad he only had to put in three months here. Maybe he could keep his cool that long. Maybe he could fool Montrose into thinking he’d changed for the better. Then he would be home free. The court would seal his juvenile record and he’d be starting fresh. That’s all Rodrigo cared about—getting through the next three months without messing up.

Rodrigo missed his friends back in the barrio. They were all wannabe gangbangers like him. He missed hanging out, driving around in their lowriders, scaring the pants off the dudes who had no business in his end of the ’hood. When Rodrigo got out of here, he decided, the first person he’d look for was Estevan. Then the two of them would hit the streets like a dust devil, making up for all the time they’d missed.

As Rodrigo trudged up the steep hill, he kept thinking of the freedom waiting for him after Chaparral Corral. Instead of eating the slop at camp, it’d be chicken enchiladas with hot sauce at Manny’s, beer whenever he wanted it, ice cold. It’d be hanging out with Emily with her pretty black hair and her dangling gold earrings, or maybe Rosie who could dance up a storm when salsa music began to play.

“Branches torn down over there,” Montrose said. “Can’t use the trail without getting dangerously close to the edge. We’ll make a note of that. When we come up here next week, we’ll bring chainsaws.”

Rodrigo wasn’t looking back when he heard Lonnie yell out. For a while they had been walking single file, with Montrose and Marcus up front, Rodrigo in the middle, and Chandler and Lonnie last. Then Lonnie had cried out and just disappeared! Nobody really saw what happened. Lonnie simply wasn’t on the rugged trail anymore. He must have slipped over the side. Or been pushed.

Rodrigo couldn’t help noticing that Chandler was wearing an evil grin.