Walter turned to him, at first expressionless, then he smiled. “Hey, we meet again.”
“Yeah,” Hector reached out for Walter’s guy handshake, trying to push away that still-lingering guilt that hadn’t completely disappeared even after making amends with Walter, “under better circumstances this time.”
Walter chuckled. “I know. My face ain’t being kicked into the ground this time.”
Hector smiled and motioned to the beat-up car Walter had just gotten out of. “And I see you got some wheels now too.”
“Yeah, well,” Walter shrugged, “when it’s running anyway.”
Thoughts about Walter’s car were pushed back by thoughts of the beating Walter took. “You all healed up now, though? Were your ribs okay? I remember you were hurting bad.”
Walter pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Not broken but I did have hairline fracture. By the next day, it hurt to even breathe, and I ended up in the emergency room. One had the fracture; the others were just bruised real bad.”
Hector winced. “Ouch, I’ve been punched in the ribs before but never bad enough to have anything fractured.”
“Yeah,” Walter nodded. “It was no fun, let me tell you. I was down for days.”
It still pissed Hector off that those pussies had ganged up and beat on him like that, especially since he was already down. “So those guys ever bother you again?”
“Nah.” Walter shook his head. “That school is so damn big. I don’t know if they’re avoiding me or I just haven’t run into them again.”
“Well, that’s good.” They moved off to the side of the crowds walking toward the auditorium. Walter seemed to be taking in the crowd or looking for someone as they stood there for a moment without saying anything. Hector remembered another thing he had always wondered about. Although he had an idea of what had happened, he still wanted to know. He may never get another chance to ask.
“So what happened to you, man? End of school year, you disappeared. Did you move?”
Walter’s eyes met his for a moment, but then he shook his head and continued to glance around. After a few awkward silent moments, he finally spoke. “I just decided to get my GED and get out. I hated high school.”
Knowing Walter was a top student the entire four years, Hector knew he didn’t mean he hated the academics part of high school like most kids. Hector knew exactly what Walter hated about school. He hated what Hector and his friends had put him through all those years. Even though he had the incredible urge to apologize once more, he decided he wouldn’t go there again, so he nodded and let it go.
“I was still able to get into East Side, and . . .,” he turned his head, and Hector turned to see what had distracted Walter: a passing car that parked nearby. Two girls got out of the car—a blonde and a redhead.
Walter’s shoulders went limp, and he backed up and leaned his elbow against a brand-new Mustang behind him that still had the dealership plates on. His demeanor went from awkwardly shy and quiet like he normally acted to this weird smug guy leaning on his own brand-new Mustang, almost as if he were trying to show off. As the girls got closer, he looked around with the goofiest expression on his face. “Yeah, I’ve been working out a few times a week.”
Hector turned to the girls, wondering if maybe he was talking to them. When he realized he wasn’t, because the girls weren’t even looking at him, he turned back to Walter. “Huh?”
When the girls got even closer, Walter very obviously sucked in his big gut and lifted a flabby arm. In a somewhat strained voice, he spoke again. “Yeah, I bench about thirty pounds on a bad day, about fifty the rest of the time.”
“Hey, Walter,” the redhead in a ponytail said, “new car?”
Seeing the ridiculous expression go even stupider, Hector finally figured out what Walter was doing. It was obvious he was about to lie about the car being his when the alarm on the car went off, startling Walter, whose elbow slipped off the car, and he nearly fell.
The blond girl squealed as the sudden blaring alarm startled her as well, and then both girls laughed and continued walking but not before the redhead glanced in Hector’s direction for just a split second. That’s when he realized who she was—Charlie—the same girl that was there the day Hector saved Walter’s ass, the one Walter had been so upset about not being able to make a connection with.
Never having been or even hung around with any girls but those with dark features, he was caught by her big deep blue eyes just as he had been that first day he saw her. But just like that day, it was only for a moment because she turned away too quickly. Hector turned to a now-back-to-awkward-and-frowning Walter. “What the hell was that about?”
Walter rolled his eyes, kicking a bottle cap on the floor. “Nothing you’d know about.” He kicked the bottle cap even harder. “Crap on a stick! Just like last time and all the other times, it never fails. I always end up making an ass out of myself instead of impressing her.”
Hector couldn’t help laughing as they both started toward the doors of the auditorium where the event was taking place. “What exactly was supposed to impress her: you sucking your gut in or the fact that you could bench fifty pounds?” He laughed even more now. “Because let me tell you fifty pounds ain’t shit. For a guy your size, you might want to up that to more than two hundred.”
Walter turned to him, incredulous. “Over two hundred? Are you crazy!”
“Nope,” Hector said, looking around again for Sam then back at Walter. “And it wouldn’t kill you to actually get your ass in a gym if you really want to impress this girl.” He reached over and patted Walter’s soft middle. “Getting in shape would probably help your little dilemma, you know. Girls appreciate the effort we put into getting our bodies nice and hard.” Hector lifted his arm and flexed with a smirk. “And they show their appreciation in real nice ways.”
Walter rolled his eyes, flinging his backpack over his shoulder as they reached the auditorium doors and walked in ahead of Hector. “Yeah, that’s easy for guys like you to say.”
With Sam nowhere in sight, Hector decided he may as well go in also. “Wait up. Are you here for the tournament too?”
Walter stopped, turning to look at Hector wide-eyed. “You’re in the tournament?” He shook his head, frowning when Hector nodded. “You play chess well enough to be invited to one of these things?”
Hector shrugged. “I’m here, right?”
Walter shrugged, imitating Hector. “Oh, yeah, of course, because it’s not enough that you look like this.” He lifted a finger up and down in front of Hector. “And that the girls in high school went crazy for the badass boxer from 5th Street, but you’re smart too?” Walter dropped his head back, looking almost disgusted.
Hector laughed. “You’ve always known I wasn’t stupid. We had a lot of the same AP classes together, remember?”
“Yeah, but to play chess at this level—” Walter stopped suddenly and raised a bushy eyebrow. “You do know this is a speed tournament, right? Thirty minute games and that there’s players here that flew in from all over the world—places like the Soviet Union and Romania—just to get on this team?”
Sam had explained some of that vaguely to Hector, but being here now and having it spelled out for him was starting to make him nervous. Not wanting to let Walter in on his teetering nerves, he played it off by shrugging again. “Yeah, I know,” he said as the self-doubt sunk in fast.
Charlie and her friend walked by them and Walter’s shoulders went all limp again as the goofball smile once again made an appearance. He bobbed his head up and down then actually bit his bottom lip and held his teeth there as he continued bobbing his head. Charlie smiled at him while the blonde looked away, and Hector could only assume she was trying not to laugh. “The team is sitting over there,” Charlie said, pointing toward a group by the back door.
She glanced at Hector again, giving him another glimpse of those dramatically blue eyes, but like all the other times, she quickly looked away, and she and her friend kept walking.
After a few seconds of staring at the back of her head and that intensely scarlet ponytail, Hector brought his attention back to Walter, who was still doing the slumped shoulder thing and bobbing his head. “Why are you doing that?”
Walter looked at him and stopped. “It’s called muted confidence. Read about it. I’m giving her the impression that I’m cool, confident, and just, you know, chillin’.” He started bobbing his head again.
Hector couldn’t help laughing again. “You’re giving her the impression that you’re a moron. You look like an idiot. What’s with the biting your lip shit?”
“It’s sexy!”
“No, it isn’t.” Hector laughed even more but made an effort to not ridicule Walter. The guilt of having done that to him for years was something he was still dealing with. He cleared his throat and stopped laughing, especially since he saw Walter’s expression go all serious as he gazed in her direction.
“So her name is really Charlie?”
“Yeah, but not like a guy. It’s Charlee spelled with a double e at the end.” Walter took a deep breath. “Charlee Brennan. Isn’t she beautiful?”
Hector was still stuck on the odd name. Charlee? “She’s cute,” he said, following Walter’s gaze.
More like okay, and he left out what else he was thinking, if you’re into white girls. Hector wasn’t, never had been, especially ones this snowy white. The neighborhood he grew up in and the schools he’d attended his whole life had maybe a handful of them. He had nothing against them; he just didn’t think he could relate. Everyone he hung out with was Hispanic, and so he was attracted mainly to Hispanic girls. He liked his girls with a little color, and, by that, he didn’t mean bright red on white. He was into dark hair, dark eyes, and the darker the better—like Lisa. He pushed away the annoying thoughts of Lisa blowing him off so easily.
“She’s amazing,” Walter was still gazing in her direction. “And she’s always nice to me. Like today she always says hi and even made sure I knew where the team was sitting. Stuff like that.”
Hector was about to comment on that: say something like maybe she liked Walter too. Though it was obvious she was just being nice. No way could she or anyone be into Walter. The guy was a mess. And his ridiculous muted confidence bullshit only made things worse, but then it hit him. “You’re on the team? U.S. under 20?”
“Yeah,” Walter turned back to Hector. “So is Charlee. We’re on the team at East Side too.” Walter looked around and lowered his voice. “Personally, I don’t think a speed knockout tournament is the way to go about looking for a replacement on the team. But we’d made it into the Junior World Olympiad just before the whole cheating scandal broke, and we had to drop that player. Luckily, they didn’t punish the whole team by disqualifying the team, but they did give us only so much time to fill that spot. With a regular tournament taking days, we had no choice but to do a one-day knockout tournament.”
Hector tried not to stare at Walter’s bushy eyebrows as Walter peered at him. Did the guy not realize a near unibrow was not an attractive quality to girls? “You really think you have a shot at this?”
Again, shrugging off any signs of nervousness, Hector glanced away at the crowd growing larger with every minute they stood there. “Sure, why not?”
He wouldn’t tell Walter that speed chess was his specialty. He knew a lot of serious players looked down on speed chess as if it weren’t as dignified as playing the six-hour games. Walter’s lowered-voice comment about this not being the greatest way to pick up the best player to fill the open spot on the team, was all Hector needed to know—Walter was one of those chess snobs.
Looking around again for Sam and not seeing him anywhere, Hector knew he had to get on with it and get registered. Sam had said he’d be there to walk him through the whole thing, but it looked like he was on his own now. With a deep breath, he turned back to Walter. “Well, I better get going if I’m gonna do this. Right?”
Walter smiled. “Best of luck. If you’re anywhere near as good at this as you are at knockout punches, you should do well.”
With that, Hector nodded and started through the crowd, his heart already beginning to thump anxiously.