Trouble Is...

By Anne Knowles

Sixteen year old Ricky Chavez is in trouble. Suspended from school, he has to face his older brother and legal guardian, Frank. Trouble is, Frank meets him with a belt. Bruised and depressed, Ricky drags himself to his evening job. His co-worker, Maria de Leon, reaches out to him, and he falls in love. Trouble is, she belongs to a gang. Being in love with Maria means hanging around Locos 18, her gang. Trouble is, that means ditching school and ending up with a report card full of C's, D's, and an F. But a bad report card is the least of Ricky's troubles. Maria's gang, Locos 18, comes in conflict with another gang, Westside Raza, when a Locos girl flirts with a Westside boy. When he beats her up, Locos goes looking for him. In the violent showdown, Ricky recognizes the conseequences of his association with Maria and Locos 18. He's left with a decision. Trouble is, he doesn't like either one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anne Knowles
• Release date: Aug 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476188430

Anne Knowles

I'm a former Vista Volunteer, zookeeper, and teacher. I write books and poetry for children.

Book preview

Trouble is...

By Anne Knowles

Copyright 2012 Anne Knowles

For Jacklyn

who made it through

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Cover Design by Laura Shinn

Chapter 1

The door was locked. I was only five minutes late, but Mr. Stamos wouldn’t let me in biology without a tardy pass. Trouble is this was my sixth tardy in only the third week of school. Harrison High School took tardy sweeps seriously. Six tardies and they suspended you. Your parents had to come for a conference before you could get back in school. Trouble is I didn’t have parents. I had an older brother, Frank. He’d kill me if he had to miss work to come to school because of me.

Things were hard enough at home with my brother’s wife, Imelda, not liking me no matter what I did. And her having a new baby made it worse. The last thing I needed was someone from school calling home about me. I had to figure a way to get out of this mess without Frank finding out.

I backed away from the door and looked up and down the long hallway. Beige metal lockers lined the walls. At the far end of the hall, a kid shoved his books in a locker, clanged it shut, and took off down the back steps. Ditching. I did some quick thinking. Ditching was better than being tardy. Most kids wrote their own excuse notes anyway. The attendance office either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Tomorrow I’d give them a note that said, Please excuse Ricardo Chavez for his absence first period Wednesday. He was not feeling well. I’d sign Frank’s name to it. Mr. Stamos would have to let me back in class, and he’d have to let me make up the test I was missing. And no one would call my brother.

The tardy sweep hadn’t reached third floor C-Wing yet, so I still had a chance. I headed for the back stairs. If I could make it to the football field, I could hide under the bleachers until the bell rang for second period.

I took the stairs two at a time, hit the landing, turned the corner, and ran smack into Mr. Wilkerson. He was six foot two and strong as a defensive lineman, but I wasn’t afraid of him. In fact, I kind of liked him. He always remembered my name, and it seemed like he didn’t mind talking to me now and then. Where’s your hall pass, Ricky? he asked as he put a big hand on my shoulder to stop me from dashing back up the stairs.

I don’t have one. No use lying. Wilkerson was too smart for that. I shoved my hands in the pockets of my blue jeans and looked down at my white Nikes. I’d really wanted black, but that’s what the gangbangers at Harrison wore and I didn’t bang. I didn’t want anyone to think I did, either.

How come you’re walking this way? asked Wilkerson. Tardies go to 104 for a pass. You should know that. The semester’s just started and you already own the tardy room. He smiled, but he had me firmly by the arm.

I was going to ditch, I said. I didn’t want you calling my brother.

If it’s been six times, we’ll call him. He turned to me. Why? Does he get too angry?

I looked at him so long I’m sure he thought I’d lost my hard-earned ability to speak English. I wanted to trust him. I wanted to tell him, Yeah, he gets too angry, and then he beats me up good. But what if they called Children’s Services? What if they took me out of there and put me in a home? Or worse, what if they just gave Frank a warning and then left me there to deal with him. He’d send me back to El Salvador to my Uncle Jose. I’d lived with him for a few months after my grandparents died in a bus crash. All my uncle did was drink and hit me. And there was never any food in the house. Uncle Jose made Frank seem like a saint.

Wilkerson repeated his question. Why don’t you want me to call him? Does he hit you?

I liked Wilkerson and wanted to trust him, but I was more scared of what I didn’t know than I was of my brother. Nah, I lied. He won’t beat me up. We get along good. He and his wife have a new baby, that’s all. I didn’t want you bothering them.

Wilkerson started me down the stairs to the first floor, his hand on my shoulder. He’s your legal guardian. He’ll have to be bothered, he said. At the bottom of the stairs he told me to go to 104. If I had six tardies in the computer, the supervisor would send me to Wilkerson’s office where I was to wait for him. I didn’t say anything, but I knew it was six already.

After he went upstairs, I looked out the back door to the quad. The sky was blue. The sun was hot and bright. The grass was still green because school hadn’t been in session long enough for it to be trampled to death. I remembered how green the grass was in El Salvador the day my neighbor told me about my grandparents. It was over two miles to town on a dusty, dirt road, but I ran all the way. Pieces of the bus, black and charred, were scattered on the grass. I couldn’t look away from the grass. Yellow green. Hard, hot yellow. Like the sun. More painful than the sun. It made my eyes hurt. It made tears run down my cheeks.

I looked away from the window and took a deep breath. Dammit! Why couldn’t I get up early enough to catch the bus that would get me to school on time? I did it the year before. Made mostly A’s, too.

I came up six tardies in the computer in 104 and ended up in the discipline office on one of the uncomfortable, straight-backed chairs lined against the wall. I hunched over, my arms on my knees, my head down, staring at my shoes. They were the first thing I’d been able to get with the money I earned at McDonalds. Frank made me start working in July after I turned sixteen, but I didn’t mind. I wanted to work. Trouble is I got home so late, it was hard to get up for school.

Frank took most of the money I earned for rent and food, but I saved what he let me keep, didn’t spend it on sodas or anything. And last Saturday, I’d bought my shoes. Man, if I was eighteen and had my own place and worked and didn’t have to answer to anybody, I’d be happy. I’d make something of myself, too. Maybe be an engineer, work on stuff that goes in space. That’s what I really wanted.

My stomach hurt from thinking about how mad Frank was going to be. I realized I was holding my breath. I slowly let it out, trying to relax. I hated all this. I hated being only sixteen. I hated my father who took off before I was born. I hated my mother for coming to the United States when I was three and then getting a boyfriend who didn’t want me around. I hated the drunken son-of-a-bitch who swerved into the bus that killed my grandparents. I hated my uncle and my brother and his wife. I hated every bit of my life, except maybe my Nikes.

I slouched back in the chair and stretched my long legs in front of me. Why couldn’t schools ever buy comfortable chairs? I don’t think even the teachers got comfortable chairs. I looked over at the coffeepot on a table in the corner. There were a couple inches of thick, black coffee in the glass pot. It smelled like it had been heating there since the school was built. The minute hand on the clock ka-chunked each time it moved forward a minute. My back ached.

Two cholos from a Salvadoran gang called Locos 18 were escorted into the office by campus police. They were told to sit on the chairs against the wall and wait for the Mr. Wilkerson. I knew the guys, Angel Olivares and Leonardo Blanco. I’d had English as a Second Language with both of them. It looked like Angel had been in a fight. His shirt was ripped and his face was smeared with sweat and dirt. Mostly I could tell he’d been fighting because he was so high on adrenaline he couldn’t sit still.

I heard a commotion in the hallway outside the Discipline Office. Angel and Leonardo jumped up and started for the door, but Wilkerson came out of his office and told them both to sit down and be quiet and if you move again I'll call the police. There was a picture, I thought, Wilkerson standing in the door of his office, a cup of coffee in his hand, pointing with his other hand at these two punk cholos, ordering them to sit down. He never spilled a drop. Wilkerson’s skin was so black it was almost blue against his white shirt. His top button was tight against his neck and his tie was straight and neat. He looked calm. Like he did this kind of stuff every day. That was the picture. This older guy in a white shirt and tie, facing down two punk gangbangers in pants so baggy they were nearly around their knees. Calm, not even putting his coffee down, knowing he wouldn’t spill it. You could see it in his face. He might have gotten excited the first time he faced down gangbangers, but no more.

Angel and Leonardo sat down. Angel squirmed on his chair and I could hear him cussing out someone named Eddy under his breath. Security brought a kid with a bloody nose to the door of the office.

Don’t bring him in here, Wilkerson said. These youngsters think if they come from different countries they have to kill each other.

I recognized the kid. We’d had P.E. together. His name was Eddy Gonzalez, and he was part of a Mexican gang called Westside Raza. Take him to the nurse, call his parents, and we’ll deal with him after I take care of these two, said Wilkerson. He went back in his office.

Leonardo and Angel huddled, but I could hear them talking. I guess Angel and his girlfriend Sandra had a big fight the night before and she wanted to make him mad. so she flirted with Eddy before school. Borrowed money from him for a soda or something stupid like that. Who knew? I thought all that gangbanging stuff was crazy. My best friend, Marco Quintanilla, was from Mexico. We’d make sorry cholos, the two of us, supposed to