“Man, I like to eat nachos, but scraping this cheese off the shelves is really gross!” Hector said, as he flicked up lumpy layers of hardened cheese with a dull knife.
The concession stand was really a cramped side room at the entrance of the gym. A tall wooden counter served as a front wall, with shelves, a plastic sign with prices for snacks and sodas, and a broken digital clock hanging behind them on the rear wall.
For the past hour, Trino’s job had been to organize the soda canisters, separating the full ones from the empties. He had stacked boxes of paper products, cans of unopened cheese, and jars of big pickles under the counter. Then he would sweep and mop the floors. The janitor had ordered Hector to clean off the shelves—first scraping off anything left behind, then washing them down.
But one thing Trino had learned about his “partner” was that when Hector was talking, he wasn’t working. Hector had started talking about the basketball team first, then he moved on to TV shows, and found a way to bring up food he liked to eat. Trino was ready to sweep and mop, but Hector hadn’t washed down the shelves yet.
“Can’t you work any faster?” Trino asked him, standing up from his kneeling position. He stretched his back and shoulders, stiff from bending under the counter. “I can’t sweep if you’re dropping junk on the floor.”
“It’s hard doing what I’m doing,” Hector replied. He gritted his teeth as he slid the knife under another layer of dried cheese. “Man, is this stuff made of glue or what? Ugh!”
The cheese flipped up from the shelf and went flying in Trino’s direction.
“Hey!” Trino slapped away the chunk, and it went back in Hector’s direction.
Hector popped it with the knife, and it flew by Trino’s face. “What do you know? Cheese volleyball!”
When Trino didn’t try to hit it back, Hector frowned. “Aw, man, lighten up. I was just having a little fun.”
“This isn’t fun. It’s work, Hector. And I got better stuff to do than pop cheese back in your face. Hurry up, so you can start washing the shelves and I can sweep and mop,” Trino answered, feeling impatient and irritated with Hector’s silliness.
“Jeez, you sound like my mother,” Hector grumbled. He turned his back on Trino and went back to sliding the knife under dried cheese lumps. He started talking about cleaning his room last week and his mother’s peculiar way of vacuuming a carpet.
“I’ll be back. I’m going to go fill the bucket with soap and water,” Trino said.
He figured if Hector had no one to talk to, maybe he’d work faster. Trino grabbed the bucket the janitor had left out and headed towards the closet door marked Maintenance across the way. The janitor had left the door propped open with a thick block of wood. Trino opened the heavy door and put on the light switch. He lifted the bucket into the deep sink against the back wall and turned on the faucets. He recognized the bottle of floor cleaner on the shelf above him. It was the same kind his mother had brought home from the motels to clean their floors. He poured a generous amount into the water, then watched the bubbles foaming their way to the top of the bucket.
“Hey, Trino, you seen the broom?” Hector kicked the block of wood with his foot. It slid across the floor of the closet. “Let’s play some hockey!”
“Hector!” Trino yelled, just as the heavy door shut behind Hector’s startled face. “The door, you idiot! That block of wood was keeping the door open!”
Hector waved him off. “Don’t have a heart attack. They just don’t want anyone getting inside. We can get out with no problem. See—” He turned back and tried the doorknob.
“Ugh—you see—” He squeezed and twisted the knob. He jumped backwards when the metal knob fell off and clanged on the cement floor.
Trino dropped his head into his hand. He couldn’t believe anyone could be so stupid.
“Oh, man! Aw, hey! Hey!” Hector started pounding on the metal door. “Hey! Hey! Can anybody hear me? Hey! Help! Help us! Oh, man! Man, we’re trapped in here. Help!”
Trino heard the panic rising in Hector’s voice. He shut off the water and went towards the door. “Hey, Hector, relax—”
“Naw, you don’t understand.” Hector shoved his shoulder into the door. “I can’t be inside a place like this.” He banged himself against the door again. And again. “It makes me crazy. Trino, we’ve got to get out of here.” His sweaty face and wild-eye look shocked Trino. Hector was the kind of guy who was usually silly, smiling and laughing.
“What if we get trapped here all night long? Trino, I can’t breathe. There’s no air in here.” He wrapped his hands around his neck. “I’m suffocating! Where is all the air?”
“Hector! Hector!” Trino grabbed the bigger boy by the arm and pulled him away from the door. “Hector! Stop pounding on the door. Let’s think about this. The janitor is still around. He’ll be back. He’s got to put his stuff away, right? He’s got to check on us, right?”
Hector shook off Trino’s grip and backed against a side wall. He looked up, his eyes darting around the ceiling and walls. His fingers scraped against the wall like a caged animal, desperate to find an escape. “Gaw, it’s so small in here. There’s hardly any air. How come there are no windows? We need windows—so somebody can see that we’re in here. What if no one finds us? Trino, I don’t want to die in the janitor’s closet! I can’t breathe anymore. I can’t!” He slid down the wall and slumped down on the floor, his body heaving with sobs.
Hector cried and kept repeating “I don’t want to die” over and over. The whimpering sounded so pathetic, Trino got down on one knee to talk to him.
“Hector, listen to me. We’re going to get out of here. I promise. The janitor is around somewhere. He’s going to open the door soon.”
Slowly, Trino reached out and put his hand on Hector’s shaking shoulder. “Listen to me. This room isn’t so small. It’s—it’s pretty big, actually. My bedroom at home is smaller than this, and I share it with two brothers.”
“Really?” Hector lifted his head, his eyes wet, his nose slimy with mucus. “How can you live in a little room like that?”
“It’s all we’ve got, that’s all. Tell me about your house, Hector. Where do you live?”
“I—I live in a house by—by the Dairy Cream. On Santa Clarita—you know where that is?”
“Yeah. It’s not too far from where I live. What does your house look like?”
“Uh—well—purple—it’s a purple house. My dad hates the color, but my—” He paused and drew in a deep breath. “My mom is an artist—and she wanted our house to be different—I don’t like to invite the guys to my house—because—aw, Trino—don’t tell anybody I live in a purple house, please—”
Trino smiled at him. “I won’t say anything, man. Tell me about your mom and dad. Are they cool?”
He kept Hector talking, answering as many little dumb questions as Trino could think of. It helped keep Hector calm, but it also made Trino realize that he and Hector had things in common. Hector had three younger brothers, he didn’t really like school that much, and he wished he had more spending money. But the biggest surprise came when Hector admitted that he like Lisana Casillas, his best friend’s sister.
“Don’t you think that Lisana is pretty?” Hector asked Trino.
“Yeah, some. She’s okay,” Trino answered, although it became difficult for him to breathe.
“When we’re hanging out at Jimmy’s house, I pick on her all the time just so she’ll notice me.” Hector’s face had dried up, and his voice was almost back to normal. “The bad thing is that she likes to read books and stuff. Ugh, and that poetry junk she drags us to hear at the bookstore. Well, you know, Trino. I once saw you there. Did you like that stuff?”
Trino hated to admit that he had enjoyed the last time he went with Lisana to hear a writer talk. It gave them something special to talk about, a connection that he shared with no one else. They hadn’t been able to talk about anything like that in weeks, not until this history report stuff came up. He could probably use the assignment to spend more time with Lisana if he planned it right. But what about Hector? Now that Trino knew his partner liked the same girl he did, Trino would have to figure out how to spend time with Lisana without Hector around.
A pounding on the metal door from the other side put Lisana completely out of Trino’s mind.
“Anybody in there?”
“Mr. Flores! Mr. Flores!” Both boys yelled together as they got up from the floor.
Hector’s big fist pounded on the door. “Get us out of here!”
They heard the jingle of keys, then the door opened. Mr. Flores, a fat man in a gray uniform, looked at them with an angry frown.
Hector just rushed out of the closet and into the open area near the concession stand. He gulped in air like he had been holding his breath underwater.
“What’s wrong with you boys? Didn’t you see that chunk of wood I keep as a doorstop? And what t’hell happened to the doorknob?” the janitor wanted to know.
“Hector kicked the block by accident, Mr. Flores,” Trino said. “When the door slammed, it knocked the knob off. We knew you’d be back and would get us out.” He spoke as if being trapped in a janitor’s closet with a guy who went crazy in small spaces happened to him every day. He almost laughed at the relief on Hector’s face.
“Well, you boys need to finish up here. I got better things to do than babysit the two of you. Grab that mop and the broom and get that bucket of soap out of my sink. And see this? I’m putting this block here. One of you holds the door open while the other one’s inside, get it?” Mr. Flores jammed the block of wood into place. As the janitor walked off, they heard him cussing at the school district because they wouldn’t buy a modern door with a release bar so nobody got trapped inside the storeroom.
Hector ran to the door and held it wide open. “Trino, you can get the supplies out of the room. I’ll wait here.”
Trino stared hard at Hector. “I just saved your butt, and you want me to do all the work? It’s your fault for kicking that stupid block. And if it hadn’t been for me, you’d have been a crying baby when Mr. Flores let us out.”
“Hey, hey, I know, I know.” Hector raised his hands as he spoke, but his back was firmly planted against the open door. “Trino, everything you said is true. All of this is my fault. I never should have said anything about your mom and started our fight. I shouldn’t have played kickball with that block of wood. I broke the door handle, too. Hey, man, if you want, I’ll do all the rest of the work. I’ll sweep, I’ll mop, I’ll even shine your shoes. Only—Trino—man—I just can’t go back into that closet. I just can’t.”
Trino could have teased Hector, called him a chicken, but in the thirty minutes or so he had been stuck with Hector, he had come to like the guy. And it wasn’t fair to use Hector’s fear against him. Hector couldn’t help being scared of small spaces just like Trino couldn’t help that he had black hair.
“Okay,” Trino said, ready to take full advantage of Hector’s offer. “I’ll get all the supplies out, and you can finish the job by yourself. Then I’ll put everything back in the closet.”
“Sure, yeah, great.”
Trino got the mop and broom out, then went back for the bucket of mop water. He set it down by the concession stand and watched Hector sweep the floor.
“Hey, you forgot to wipe down the shelves,” Trino said. “Let me find a rag or sponge and you can do that, too.”
“Thank you for being so-oo helpful,” Hector said after Trino tossed a hard sponge onto one of the back shelves. He turned and gave Trino a grin and cross-eyed look, and both boys broke up with laughter.
By the time Coach Treviño returned from his teachers’ meeting, Hector had finished cleaning, and Trino had put everything back into the closet.
“Hey, this place looks good. The last pair of clowns who did this job broke a pickle jar and got stuck in the janitor’s closet because they let the door slam behind them,” Coach Treviño said, shaking his head and grinning. “Who could be that dumb, huh?”
Hector and Trino exchanged a little smile before Trino said, “Can we go now, Coach?”
“Sure, guys. I’ll see you tomorrow in school.”
Friday, after history class, Hector made a quick comment before he left about seeing Trino at lunch time. Trino didn’t promise anything, hoping to eat with Lisana instead. He spotted her by the cafeteria windows, only she wasn’t alone. A boy stood across the table talking to her, and they both looked angry. It took Trino a moment to realize that the boy was Lisana’s twin brother, Jimmy.
He didn’t want to lose a chance to talk to Lisana, so Trino made his way to the table and left an empty spot between his chair and where Lisana sat, so he wouldn’t seem like an intruder.
“I’m not doing this report for you, Jimmy. No matter what you say.” Lisana looked sideways when Trino arrived. “Hello, Trino. Sit down. Don’t mind my blockhead brother here. He’s leaving anyway.”
Jimmy glanced at Trino, too, then said, “Look, Lisana, you’re good at school stuff—”
“So are you! You’re just being lazy. You can come with Amanda and me on Saturday to the city library—”
“But I have a scrimmage game on Saturday—”
“The game doesn’t last all day, dummy. Now go away so I can eat my lunch with my friends,” Lisana replied, then grabbed an apple beside her brown lunch bag and took two big bites. She turned herself to face Trino, but she had to attempt a swallow before she could talk.
Trino smiled. She looked funny with her face stuffed with apple. He decided to help her out by talking first. “Hector and I are having a tough time doing our report, too. There’s nothing in the school books about Navarro. When Hector complained to Coach today, he said that it’s because the white men who wrote the history books left out the tejanos. He said we need to find books written by latinos if we want to get better information.”
Finally Lisana had chewed enough so she could talk. “Maybe we should go to Maggie’s bookstore and look around. She has more books by latinos than I’ve ever seen at a library.”
Trino’s eyes widened. “You mean buy books for this report?”
“Well, no. I just thought we might see the titles, maybe read a little. I don’t think Maggie would mind. Do you, Jimmy?” She looked back at her brother.
Jimmy sighed, as if to release his earlier anger. He pulled out the cafeteria chair across from them and sat down. “Well, Maggie’s cool and all—but it would be kind of like cheating her if we used her books like she was a library.” His dark eyes moved from his sister to Trino. “I guess I got it easier than you two. At least Burnet was an Anglo guy. It hasn’t been too hard to find books about him. But I still don’t know how to organize it. And Coach paired me up with Mario. He misses a lot of school because of his asthma. I feel like I’m doing this report all by myself.” He reached across the table and swiped some potato chips from the open bag near Lisana’s sandwich.
“Hey! That’s my stuff. If you’re too lazy to get up and make your own lunch, don’t steal mine!” Lisana told him, as she pulled her chips and sandwich closer to her.
“Relax! I’m going to get a tray. The cafeteria cooks can’t mess up hamburgers too bad, can they, Trino?” Jimmy said.
Trino was glad that Jimmy included him in the conversation. He hated when people acted like he wasn’t even there.
“Hey! My man, Hector,” Jimmy said, looking beyond Trino’s shoulder at someone else. “And look it there! He’s got two hamburgers on his tray. One’s for me, right? Your best friend since childhood, right?”
“Wise up, Casillas! We’ve only been friends since last year. And if you think I’m parting with half my lunch, you’re nuts, man. I had to pay the cafeteria extra for a second hamburger.”
Hector put his tray down between Trino and Lisana. “Take one of these and you die!”
“Don’t tempt him, Hector. Go sit on the other side of Trino, or I guarantee your food will be in my brother’s big mouth.” Very calmly, Lisana leaned over to push Hector’s cafeteria tray around Trino’s.
Trino continued to push Hector’s tray two chairs down. “Yeah, sit over here on the other side of me, man. Away from Jimmy. You don’t want him to take your food.” Now that he knew Hector liked Lisana, he didn’t want the guy in between them either.
But Hector sat only one chair away from Trino and pulled his tray back in front of him.
“I’ll be back. If you see Albert, wave him over here too,” Jimmy said, then walked off.
“Lisana, what are you doing here with the gorilla guys?”
This question came from Janie, Lisana’s friend, who sat down across from Lisana with her food tray. Today, Janie was dressed completely in orange.
“Hey, Janie, doing your shopping at the Halloween Bargain Basement again? You look like a pumpkin,” Hector said before taking a bite from a hamburger.
Janie just rolled her eyes and said to Lisana, “Don’t you want to sit some place else?”
“No, I like it here by the windows,” Lisana said. “Besides, Trino and I were talking about looking for books for Coach Treviño’s report.”
“I sure lucked out,” Janie said. “Mr. Chaffee doesn’t make us do extra stuff in his history class.”
But Lisana didn’t seem to be listening. “It would be so interesting to read more books written by latinos.” She smiled at Trino.
“There she goes again with the books stuff,” Hector said to Trino, shooting the words out of the side of his mouth. “Next, it’ll be poetry junk.”
Trino gave Hector a nudge with his elbow to quiet him. “There’s got to be some place besides Maggie’s store that has the books we need.”
“Hmmm.” Lisana cocked her head to one side. Suddenly, her face brightened. “I know! We can go to the university. My sister told me that a college library has a lot of books for research. I bet Coach would give us extra credit if we used college books.”
“Are you crazy? You think they’re going to let a bunch of seventh-graders into a college library?” Hector said. He spoke with a mouthful of hamburger. Bread and meat pieces smashed together as he talked. “Besides, Trino and I don’t have a library card for a college library. Do we, Trino?”
Trino wanted to say that he didn’t have any kind of library card, but kept silent. He looked from the gross sight in Hector’s mouth back to Lisana’s annoyed expression.
“You don’t need a college library card, Hector. You just stay and read the books there. You take notes from your reading. My sister used to do it all the time.”
Trino thought Lisana’s idea was crazy, too, but he wanted to look nicer than Hector; so Lisana would like Trino better. “I’ve never gone to the college library, Lisana. But I’ll go with you if you think we can find books by latinos there.”
She rewarded him with a glowing smile. “That’ll be great, Trino. Thanks. I’ll talk to Amanda and see if she can come with us.” She looked around Trino to give Hector a questioning look. “Well? Hector, are you coming with us? You’re Trino’s partner, right?”
“I have a scrimmage game on Saturday. Sorry!” He gave Trino a wink. It seemed like he thought he was smart for getting out of the library trip.
“Then we’ll go on Sunday—in the afternoon,” Lisana said. “Jimmy can come with us, too.”
Trino was relieved that Lisana picked a day when he wouldn’t lose any money. But he wasn’t so sure he wanted to spend Sunday afternoon in the library, either.
“I guess we should go, Trino. There might be books we can use for our report.”
Hector sounded so serious that Trino just stared at him. “And then we’ll get the girls to write the report for us, huh?” He gave his goofy grin and cross-eyed look to Lisana and Janie, then laughed at their reaction when both girls started to complain loudly.
Trino smiled, not because Hector was funny, but because he knew that as long as Hector said dumb things, Lisana might like Trino more.
When Jimmy came back with his food and brought the boy named Albert along, they kept joking around, talking and laughing. None of the guys made fun of Trino like they did each other. But when they did make a joke, they didn’t seem to mind that Trino laughed with them. By the end of the lunch period, Trino still felt like someone standing outside a window looking in. Did he have a chance to become just another one of the guys?