Free Seeing Off the Johns by Rene S Perez II Page B

breakfast.
    â€œWe leave now, or you walk,” Chon said.
    â€œConcepcion.” His mother only ever called him by his proper name in reproach. “Be nice.”
    â€œYeah, Concepcion,” Pito said, mocking.
    â€œGuadalupe, you listen to your brother,” their mother said, getting up and meeting the boys at the door. “I love you guys.” She gave each of them a kiss on the cheek. “Be good.”
    Chon and Pito sat, letting the Dodge-nasty’s engine warm up. Pito interrupted Chon’s reverie.
    â€œDo you think today will be weird?” Pito asked.
    â€œIt’s just another day at school. Only you’re at a bigger campus with lockers and bells ringing every period and dressing out for gym.”
    â€œNo,” Pito said. “I mean at your school. This will be the first day of school after it happened. It’ll be the first time everyone sees Araceli. Don’t you think that’ll be weird?”
    Foolishly, in all of Chon’s planning and scheming over this day, he had never factored in what he knew had to be waiting at school, even though the frenzy had died down a bit. The church had stopped sending its statue of the weeping virgin from house to house so that every believing, willing family would say a novena for the Johns. The View , Greenton’s weekly, five-page news circular was no longer running stories about the Johns or at least had begun relegating them—now mainly responses to letters to the editor—to the back page of the paper. While folks were still coming into The Pachanga and buying John stars, they no longer did so weepingly or out of grief, but acquisitively and in line with the trend running through town.
    Pito was right though. This was the first day all the teenagers in Greenton would be in one place—within the walls of the high school which were adorned by so many trophies and banners won by the fallen heroes, where they had walked and studied and presided as the ultimate alpha dogs, held in high esteem by even the teachers and administrators.
    These same adolescents would focus all of their collective sadness on Araceli. Chon realized he would never get her attention, never get her away from the watchful gaze of almost a tenth of the people in town.
    â€œWhatever. They can get over it,” he told his little brother.
    â€œYeah, but they won’t get over it today,” Pito said. “It seems like no one ever will. They were—” he stopped here, either because he couldn’t put into words what the Johns meant to the town or to him. Or because he knew Chon wasn’t listening to him.
    Chon dropped Pito off at the junior high, a WPA-era building erected to look like a fallout shelter and a factory for the crop-cut future GIs who would come up in the last pure, pre-rock ’n’ roll era of American youth. You could almost hear Hank Williams tunes hanging in the air of the parking lot of what was initially Greenton High, with its vomit-hued green and pink tiles and cracked speaker box intercom system. At least it had windows, which is more than could be said for the new Greenton High, built like a high-security prison with cinderblock-walls and fluorescent lights.
    When he got to the high school parking lot, he sat for a while behind the wheel of the Dodge-nasty, day dreaming. The loud mock-childish whine of a DJ in some cramped booth in Laredo coming through the radio snapped Chon out of his trance. He killed the ignition and got out of the car, not bothering to lock its doors or even roll up its windows. He saw two girls in front of school break down and cry at the sight of each other and rush into an embrace right there in the student parking lot. Ohhhh . It was going to be a long year.
    The crying girls walked into the school building, arm in arm. In front of the school, the sun had only risen partially in the eastern sky, but the lack of trees or buildings to block out its rays made the day bright