Page 75 - Demo

163Esperanza and me saw a car following a girl while we were riding back from jujitsu practice. We were on our bikes and took Central all the way back down to the neighborhood. It was a Honda, dark green like a rental, like something nobody picks out for themselves but got because they thought it looked normal. The girl was just a few years younger than us, probably, small and thin like an uncooked pretzel in purple pants and a T-shirt. She was on her phone, looked nervous, and I could feel the pace in Esperanza%u2019s pedalling slow down. So I slowed down too.Central is usually a busy street, but not at that time of day, late October near sunset on a weekday. Everybody who should be home was home already. We passed the cemetery that butts up against the elementary school. One car passed, then no cars. Invisible birds gossiped about each other from the trees. The bike ride there and back plus actual jujitsu practice was three hours of physical activity. Esperanza wanted to stop for Now and Laters, but I wanted a burrito. The car and the girl drifted farther away and then the girl turned onto Caldwell. The car followed. Now and Laters are the worst candy and will yank a filling out, or a whole tooth, depending on the mouth we%u2019re talking about. Esperanza pronounced them more like annihilators the way everybody else did.At practice, Noemi had been taking turns kicking our a%u2014es for weeks. We were not good. I was strong enough to hold my ground, to make myself heavy and hard to turn, but against Noemi%u2019s skill it meant nothing. Noemi was like a crocodile. She%u2019d tuck her arms close to her body and smile like some mad ancient mini-dinosaur, just waiting for us to try something that would fail. Then she snapped, and in seconds Esperanza would be colliding with the floor or I%u2019d have a shoulder joint nearly dislodged. It hurt so bad, but it was beautiful.Esperanza had bigger wheels than I did, a whole bigger bike, actually. Mine was made for kids or [men] who thought they were kids and liked to fling themselves upside down just to feel something. The bigger wheels made her faster, so it was strange to be in the lead for once as we rode.That day, Noemi had jammed her finger on something unrelated to B.J.J. and couldn%u2019t participate. She just coached me and Esperanza on how to escape from front-facing chokes. I had to practice grabbing Esperanza by the throat over and over. Esperanza kept telling me to make it tighter, tighter, tighter. When I thought it was way too much and was about to let go, she said, Okay, good.It wasn%u2019t cold yet. October was like that. The trees were giving up their color, but it wasn%u2019t like on TV with the piles of leaves that dogs jumped in and the cut of an icy breeze. The air here could get humid and balmy even if the stores wanted to sell us pumpkin-colored sweaters and brown leather boots. We rode home in our T-shirts, the short sleeves rolled up under our pits.To this day, I feel like perverts drive Hondas. The little girl had been out of our sight for too long, and the car too. I wasn%u2019t afraid like Esperanza yet; it didn%u2019t occur to me that I should%u2019ve been until I saw her lean forward on her bike and begin to pedal past me. Sometimes it%u2019s the witnessing of a horror story that makes us forget we%u2019re in one. She pedalled for the life of the little girl and our own. I pedalled just to keep up. Back then, I couldn%u2019t imagine the worst of us, those who take and take and stretch the tender parts of life to the point of breaking.I saw a play once as a kid about a detective bear that solved mysteries. I used to think about crime that way for a long time, like a child in a theatre safely surrounded by adults who keep 5HalloweenVenita BlackburnAnalysis of Theme in Fiction Culminating ActivityCopyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.