Free Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood by Benjamin Alire Sáenz Page B

was pretty straight. I mean, she played tough, but she wasn’t. Not really. There were some girls in Hollywood that were really tough. But Gigi wasn’t one of them. She was a nice girl trying to pretend she wasn’t.
    “Can I catch my breath?” I said.
    No one said anything for a while. René and I, we just wanted to catch our breath. God, breathing can be loud. In a car. When no one’s talking. I wiped the sweat off my face with the shoulder of my shirt. “Thanks, Gigi,” I said. “You saved our asses.”
    “Yeah, well, look, give me a smoke.” So I gave her a smoke. I watched her light it, then noticed who was driving the car. A girl who lived down the block. Angelina. Quiet. Never stood out much. Everyone called her Angel. Good girl type. What was she doing at a keg party?
    “Hi Angel,” I said.
    “Hi Sammy.” She had a nice voice. Soft. Maybe too soft for a girl from Hollywood.
    “So where we going?” René says. “It’s early.”
    “I’m not taking you anywhere. I’m gonna dump your Raza ass at home—unless you promise not to start anymore fights. What is it withyou, anyway? You’re such a bofo. Estás loco ¿o qué?”
    “I didn’t start that fight. That pinche gringo has it in for me. Y yo no me dejo. Hell no. I don’t bow to cabrones like that. No way. Next time I see that cabrón I’m gonna kick his ass all the way to Minneapolis or wherever the shit his people come from.”
    “You know why Gloria broke up with you? Because you think with your fists, that’s why. That’s even worse than thinking with your dick.”
    “Hey, hey, Gigi,” I said.
    “Cállate, Samuel. Just shut up.”
    “I don’t want to talk about Gloria.”
    “Guess you don’t. She loved your stupid pinche brown ass. Did you care?”
    “I cared.”
    “Oye el agua. Está lloviendo. Look, just shut up.”
    “This is fun,” I said. “We’re having fun, aren’t we, Angel?”
    Angel smiles but she’s a good driver. She nods and just keeps driving. By then, we were on El Paseo just cruising. And then René says, “Hey, there’s Pifas! Honk, Angel.” Angel, good girl that she was, does exactly what René says.
    René hangs out the window, “Hey, Pifas!”
    Pifas looks up, and does that Aztec chin thing. We both pull over to a side street.
    “There was cops everywhere! Chingao, and everyone’s running, and I’m thinking, shit, all that wasted beer. And people are hiding all over the house, and Hatty’s crying, felt bad for her, and I’m just tryin’ like hell to boogie, ¿sabes?” Sometimes when Pifas got going, you couldn’t shut the guy up. “Bunch of people got busted. And, cabrones, you left without me.Órale ¿qué pues?” But already, he’d forgiven us. “Let’s go to the river. I got some Boone’s Farm.” And he just takes off.
    “Follow ‘em,” René says. And Angel does what she’s told.
    “Pifas is all screwed up, ¿sabes?” Gigi does this thing with her cigarette like she’s writing a sentence in the air.
    “He’s alright, Pifas.” René was loyal. I liked that. “Buena gente. He’s there when you need him.”
    Gigi was into lecturing. If she didn’t watch herself she was gonna grow up and be Mrs. Apodaca. “He finds trouble. He smells it. Just like you, René. If you could only smell money like you smelled trouble.”
    “Yeah, yeah. If only, if only,” René said. He kind of went away for a second. I could tell. I wondered where he went. He did that sometimes, went somewhere in his head. Just like me.
    At the river, we parked the cars. God, you could see everything in the moonlight. The river looked clean and pure—even though it wasn’t. In the light of that summer moon, everything seemed calm. Even us. Even Pifas and René. God, I liked it there. I think the garden in my head was lit up like this. Better than any party.
    Gigi and Angel and René and Pifas and me, we sat there and drank Boone’s Farm Apple Wine. And we smoked. Mostly Angel didn’t say anything, she