Free Palo Alto: Stories by James Franco Page A

bags, Howard shoved her in. She had all her clothes on. She hit her tooth on a log.
    We got kicked out.
    In high school Ute had so much pressure from his brother, Rain, to have sex. His brother made fun of him, and would get him drunk, and rip off his clothes, and tie him up. Ute finally had sex with Venus. The black guys made fun of Ute and Venus. They all wanted Venus.
    *   *   *
    The football players like Sam liked to make fun of Jews. He called people “Heebs” when they “Jewed” him. Sam played center on the team. He was fat and got no girls. He drank a lot of beer. Dave Frankel was Jewish and was on the team. He didn’t say anything to Sam about all his talk.
    In History our teacher, Mr. Tyson, did a reenactment of the Anne Frank story. It was an elaborate thing that he did every year. It was staged on top of the machine shop in the storage room. He made the storage room look like Anne Frank’s attic. It was elaborate. Students played the Franks. At the end Mr. Tyson busted through the door dressed like an SS agent. He was pretty convincing.
    When they kicked us out of camp, Hulk drove us to the Greyhound bus station in the middle of the night. Howard cursed at him the whole way. He called him a child molester and a little-dicked faggot. Hulk didn’t say anything. Howard kept going for the whole ride; it took about an hour. Howard’s face was red by the end. Whenever Hulk switched gears, Howard told him to “work that stick.”
    At the Greyhound station in Redding, Hulk bought us all tickets and put us on the bus. He watched as we drove off. I saw him walk away before the bus was out of sight.
    Then we were in the dark bus with the real people, traveling in the middle of the night. Most of the people were Mexican, and were sleeping. We were all quiet; there was nothing left to do.
    There was a layover in Sacramento. We got out and wandered around. There was a seedy hotel near the station called the Henderson Hotel. It made us think of a slut at our school called Alice Henderson and we laughed about it. They sold hot dogs and beer in the lobby. The guy behind the counter said that Axl Rose had stayed there once.
    It was one in the morning.
    When we went back to the depot, Ed and I had both lost our ticket receipts and we couldn’t get on the bus. The woman in the customer service booth told us to go talk to the driver.
    We went around to the side of the depot where the drivers had their lounge. Through the small window in the door we could see them. They were all black guys, sitting in there laughing and drinking coffee out of blue and white Styrofoam cups. They looked like they were having such a good time.

Chinatown
In Three Parts
    Part I
Vietnam

    It was Sunday, at the beginning of summer. I was at Jordan Middle School, playing soccer with the Mexicans on the field in back. They were all in their twenties and thirties; I was sixteen. They were gardeners and construction workers and cooks. It was sticky hot out.
    After the game, I saw two girls smoking on one of the portable metal benches the coaches sit on. I walked over.One was an Asian girl with a beat-up face and a nice-looking body. The other was pale white and tall with curly hair. The Asian one passed a cigarette to the pale one. They were my age.
    I was sweaty.
    “Hi, I’m Roberto.” I put out my hand like a gentleman. The Asian girl smiled and said her name was Pam. We shook hands. The pale one smoked and didn’t say anything, or even look at me. She was like a big drooping plant.
    “How’s the smoking?” I said.
    “Fucking fine,” said the drooping plant. She passed the cigarette to Pam and looked off, across the field. She blew the smoke out through a little hole in her lips.
    “‘Fucking fine,’ that sounds pretty good,” I said. I smiled big. I said to Pam, “Can I try that fucking fine cigarette?”
    Pam laughed without sound and handed me the cigarette. The other one looked over her shoulder like there was something very