Weekend Read Free Page B

Flynn again, yet, all of a sudden, she wished that she was invisible.
    TWO
    "This tyre isn't getting less flat with us looking at it," Park said.
    "Why didn't you go to the cantina down the road with Bert and Flynn?" Sol asked.
    "I still can. Why don't you come with me?"
    "I have to guard my van. No way I trust the Cholos down here."
    "You're a Cholo."
    "Used to be," Sol muttered, lighting a cigarette. Sol chain-smoked.
    Park was tempted to split. The inside of their lame van was incredibly stuffy, and out here on the broken asphalt it was like standing on a frying pan. They had a much brighter sun down here than they did in the States. His nose would peel this weekend. It would probably rot and fall off. He sure could use a cold beer. Unfortunately, the strap on his sandals — his only available footwear — had snapped and it was a good ten-minute walk to the canteen. He should have taken Big Bert up on his offer to carry him. He knew Sol was intentionally mocking him, standing barefoot on the blistering pavement. Sol had feet like a caveman.
    "Why don't we check on your spare?" Park asked for the third time.
    Sol chuckled, the sound oddly frightening coming from him. Shani imagined Sol a modern Fonzie, tough outside but with a heart of gold. Park could attest to the fact that he had a heart, but it was made of a far less precious metal. Sol was tough to the core. Brought up in L.A's barrios, he'd once admitted to stabbinghis first person — a member of a rival gang — at the age of twelve. He had never said it outright, but Park had the clear impression that not everyone who had got in his way was still alive. He'd been arrested twice in his fifteenth year: once for stealing a car, the other time for carrying a gun - a sawn-off shotgun. He hadn't told him these stories to impress him. Sol didn't give a damn what anyone thought.
    Park knew the horrors he'd related had only been the tip of the iceberg.
    Once, old friends — the meanest, most wired Cholos he'd ever seen — had visited Sol while they were playing a rough game of one-on-one at the school yard on a Saturday afternoon. Both wore wads of jewelery and picked at their oily nails with shiny switchblades, talking in guttural Spanish with Sol about Satan only knew what. In the midst of the conversation, they said something that bothered Sol and he snapped at them. They paled noticeably and apologized frantically, like their lives depended on it, which may well have been the case. Afterwards, Sol explained that they had made an obscene reference to Park. The loyalty hadn't comforted Park.
    Park wasn't sure how Sol's father had managed to get his two children - Sol had a ten-year-old sister of whom he was maniacally protective, the cutest little thing - out of the barrios; probably hard work. Mr.
    Celaya currently had a flourishing gardening business in Ventura. But apparently, he hadn't felt that Ventura was far enough north of his son's friends. He rented a house on the outskirts of Santa Barbara, and Sol ended up in laid-back Hoover High like a wolf among sheep.
    Park still remembered the first day they ran into each other - literally. Sol had knocked him out of his way in the hall. Initially, no one could understand hisSpanglish , and it was probably just as well, for in the first few days he seemed one angry young man. But first impressions are not always complete. The passage of a couple of weeks presented a different profile. Sol had his mean streak, and it cut pretty deep, but he could also be kind, and no one could doubt his intelligence. A month after arriving at Hoover High, after a couple of expulsion threats from the principal, he apparently made a firm personal decision to develop his positive qualities, and to only behave like an animal when he could get away with it. The most immediate demonstration of this decision was the change in the way he spoke. He would never be mistaken for an upper-middle-class white boy, but he developed a knack for using