So there I was, Rocky Ramirez, 7th grader at Lincoln Junior High School. I was a short kid, with jet black hair and a politician’s smiles. I could have run for office with that smile. It would have made me a fine mayor–cutting ribbons and kissing babies. Alas, I was just a kid. My favorite television show was The Simpsons. My favorite sport to play and watch was Baseball. My favorite player was Ken Griffey Jr. I loved comic books and Sega. And I was a huge 2Pac fan.
I was a typical ‘90s teenager, living in a non typical neighborhood. My home was the North Heights area of Fort Worth, Texas. What used to be a beautiful suburb was now a provenance for crime and gang violence. Kids from other places would ask me where I was from, and I’d get instant stripes when I told them. Then they’d ask the typical follow up question, which was either: have I ever been shot or shot at?
It was actually funny to me because living in North Heights wasn’t as bad as people thought it was. For one, it wasn’t like people were randomly shooting at folks. Secondly, people weren’t being harassed 24/7. The only folks who got messed with were people who were involved. Granted, if a family had a son who was involved in such things, they’d usually get their house shot up, but it never went past that with the families.
Back to what I was talking about. My father worked in construction and my mother was the day manager at the Six Points Griddle, a local diner, famous for its Chicken Fried Steak. I had a sister, Dahlia, who had just graduated college and was going for a master’s degree in Geology. She was a rock hound, and I don’t mean Guns N Roses and Bon Jovi. She was a good kid with a few issues, particularly boyfriend issues since she’d been with the same one since high school. We’ll touch on that a bit later.
My schooling was also atypical since I had been taking advanced classes since the first grade. I learned to read faster than the other kids in my class. Because of that, the teacher gave me harder materials to read, putting me at a third grade level. After that I was shipped off to an accelerated school, halfway across town. I excelled there, naturally. The only problem was that I missed my friends. I quickly got over that and made new friends.
Fifth grade graduation came and my father had me taking a test for an honors middle school. I passed it and the next thing you know I was on my way to Lincoln Middle School for the Fall semester. Lincoln was tough, but I got used to it. It was there that I learned a lot about life and all that other crap. It was quite eye opening.
Seventh grade would be an even bigger experience, since I was no longer a sixth grader. Thus, I was no longer the joke of the school. I now had some notches under my belt. Instead of being confused as to what class was where, and other junior high protocol, I was in complete control.

It was day one of the seventh grade. By then I was already used to the daily routine. After leaving the house I had to walk six blocks over to Shack’s Grocery, a small convenience store painted entirely in blue, even the windows. Yes, even the windows. No one could see inside or out, and it had a door made of interwoven iron. It was our spot, only because it was the only place in North Heights that had both Street Fighter II and Aliens.
Once I reached Shack’s, I had to wait there for the school bus to arrive. It was actually very cool since I got to chill with my boys, which included John Paul Cortez, whose parents were both Mexican Indians, which was why his skin was really dark. He also had a blue retainer–a rite of passage that I fortunately never went through. Then there was Mike Gossage, a white kid, whose family was one of the few that didn’t abandon ship once the neighborhood got rough. We stood there with some other kids we didn’t know. Some of them were eight graders, while others were sixth graders, scared out of their wits.
“What’s up?” I walked over to the fellas and leaned against a pay phone. My outfit wasn’t entirely fresh, but I made it work. I was wearing a Jose Canseco replica jersey T-shirt, which was a giveaway at a recent Rangers game. I also had on a pair of Today’s News blue jeans that I bought with some graduation money that grandma gave me. On my feet were the best things about the ensemble, though:  a pair of new Charles Barkley Air max force sneakers. At the time they were the crown jewel of my collection.
“Nothing much, just getting ready for that first day.” John Paul said. He smelled kind of weird, as if he had doused himself in cologne.
“Are you wearing cologne?” I had to ask.
“Polo. What do you think?”
I kept my response to myself since I don’t think he wanted to hear what I thought. I just nodded my head in approval. I didn’t want to tell him that he’d probably scare all the girls away with his stench.
Michael chuckled to himself and adjusted his glasses with his folder tucked under his arm. While not fat, Michael had a doughy face, with his eyes and nose looking like two decimal points atop a less than sign. He looked as if someone had drawn him.
“What’s so funny, fool?”
John Paul on the other hand, looked like a T-Rex with the sides of his head shaven and his gelled hair slicked back. That was the style back then. Of course, there were different variations, but getting your hair to look something like that was the main goal. I had my hair slicked and gelled as well, but I did it with style.
“I told you when we were coming up the block that it was too much.” Michael pulled no punches.
It was funny, the extremes that some guys would go to get the pussy. Women make men crazy; this was established years ago. A few weeks before that,  my cousin and I went to the mall. This fool bought about sixty dollars worth of crap to try and impress the cashier girl, who was looking quite lovely. She was at least seventeen, while he was barely going to enter high school. He gave her his number and she never called him.
“Who are you aiming for?” I asked John Paul.
“Belinda.”
“Good luck,” said Michael. We both knew that Belinda Chavez was one of the top ten of the hottest girls in the school. The year before, we had created a top ten, partially out of boredom and partially out of overall pervness. Belinda was number ten; but since a couple of the girls had graduated she was suddenly bumped up a couple of spots.

So we stood in front of the store for another fifteen minutes hassling John Paul about Belinda. We watched cars go by as they headed toward the nearby high school, North Heights High. The gangsters were in their cars, with hot girls in the backseat and Eazy-E bumpin’ loudly. High school girls had bodies. That was the only reason I was in any kind of rush to get there. Also, high school student had lunch off campus, something I yearned for.
My best friend at the time, Felix, came running up to the store just as the bus was arriving. We all quickly boarded to the back, which was our territory. It was good to see some of the guys again. There was Tristan Agee, the Wallace twins, Oscar Mendoza, Jessica Gomez, and Luis Avila. They were all there congregating and being loud. Tristan nodded his head to the beat of his walkman, while Oscar and the Wallace twins discussed the up coming football season.
Felix and I took a seat in between Jessica’s row and Brittany Michael’s row. We talked about what we had both done in the Summer. I hadn’t seen him because he went off to visit family in Pennsylvania every year. He came back with his head shaved and no glasses– a departure from his usual nerdish look.  
I told him what I had spent my summer doing: playing in the Riverside Little League. I was a pretty good hitter; I was so advanced, they said, that I was playing in the fourteen and fifteen-year-old age group. Also, I spent the Summer cutting grass around the neighborhood to earn extra money, which I spent on movie fare, ice cream, and hitting the mall.
The day before the first day of school, I went to see the Rangers play the Mariners. Ken Griffey Jr. Hit a homerun, the Mariners’ only score that day. He was also hit by a pitch, which really had me riled up. I was a Rangers fan, but as I mentioned before, Griffey was my guy. I patterned myself after him, same swing and everything.

Finally arriving at Lincoln Junior High, I walked into the suburban middle school and as I did the year before, felt out of place. The school was nice, to say the least. The halls were clean, there was no security checkpoint or guards stationed everywhere. That was not the case at Meacham, the school I would have attended had I not been in the honors program.
There were a lot of Black and Latin faces at Lincoln; more than I ever expected. Even though the school was in a white suburb, it was considered sub par to the residents of the community. They sent their children to Trinity Valley, a private school on Mcart Avenue. I didn’t mind it at all. Lincoln was nice; nicer than anything I had ever seen.

I already knew my schedule, thanks to a letter in the mail. My first period class was Ms. Johnson, an old hippie woman with big breasts. She was the school’s sole art teacher, and she was very proud of the work she did, constantly bragging about her ex-students who have gone on to greater things in the art world.
Ms. Johnson’s room was at the end of a long hallway on the second floor. It was a gym locker room in the ‘50s, converted into a classroom. Even though it had been nearly forty years, I could still smell the funky sweat socks in the air. That and the smell of open paint made me nauseous. My requests to open the window for fresh air were usually met with a look of ire. I’d just sit down and pretend to work, while trying to drown out Ms. Johnson’s little radio as it played the classical music station.
I chugged up the long steps, which had to be made for a giant, and looked down the end of the hallway. Standing next to Veronica Barerra was a person very important to me. I almost forgot to tell you about her. Her name was Gabrielle Morelos and she was my woman. I had known her since the sixth grade, and we hooked up a couple of months into the school year. I don’t even know how it happened; she kinda forced herself upon me. Not really, I mean she and I hung out a lot during school, and everyone thought we were dating. It all came to a head one day during gym. I took her behind the bleachers and straight kissed her. I had never kissed a girl so I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t even have sense enough to use my tongue. Awkward.
“Hey, there, Rocky.” She had that gleam in her eyes. I hadn’t seen her all Summer since she spent it in Kentucky with her aunt and uncle. She had grown some too, and had even gotten a bit prettier, if you ask me.
“Hey, kiddo.” I stood next to her as Veronica excused herself and left.
“How was your Summer?” She picked some lint off my shirt sleeve.
“It was good. I played a little baseball and I got to hang out.”
“With whom?”
Here comes the bullshit. I thought I knew better than to say anything to get her riled up. I noticed a jealous side of her ever since Julie Tosca was chosen to be my lab partner in science class the year before. She also noticed when I was being a bit too chatty with Chiquita Bonner in the lunch line. There were other instances, but those two were the only ones that came to mind.
“With Kaleil and Eddie.”
“What did ya’ll do?” The Spanish inquisition was on.
“Played football all afternoon until it was too dark.”
It was all true. One thing I loved about my neighborhood was that there weren’t that many kids, so there were only a select number of us that could hang out at any given time. However, when we did hang out, it was on. I’m going to be 100 percent truthful when I say that I only came inside the house for two things: to eat and to use the restroom. The rest of my time was spent outside, basking in the sun, chasing down the ice cream man, and going to our neighbor, Frankie’s house to watch R rated movies that his parents rented from Take It Home video. My personal favorite was Nightmare on Elm Street Part 6: Freddy’s Dead.
“Let me catch you lying, boy.”
Being honest again, I liked her jealousy. It showed me that she cared. After all, I was her property. I wouldn’t want her to do me wrong, even though she had every reason to, since we didn’t live in the same neighborhood and only saw each other at school. We’d go out, but it wasn’t like I could just call her and ask her to the movies. Our dates were carefully planned and the itinerary was usually thoroughly inspected by both sets of parents. Once we got the okay, either her older sister or my older sister would chaperone.

The bell rang and it was time for home room. The seating arrangement went by tables, with two people at each one. Michael Gossage and I were assigned to a table, while Gabrielle sat and chatted with Jessica Gomez, the half Black and half Mexican girl, or Blaxican, as we called her. I looked behind me and saw Oscar open up his red folder, a crack, to show Tristan a page from the S.I. Swimsuit issue he had.  Vendela Kirsebom was on the cover. It was a normal day, indeed.
Ms. Johnson sat there with her bifocals on, reading an art magazine and eating a blueberry Nutri-Grain bar, listening to her classical music. For some reason I wanted to punch her. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it was repressed pent up frustration. Perhaps it was simply an overactive imagination. I wanted to walk over to her and sock her in the bread basket.
I looked to see what Michael was doing; he was drawing his usual war stuff. He was a big fan of all things military, including tanks and other paraphenelia. His father was a military man as was his grandfather, which said a lot about his upbringing and psyche.
Every class, including Home room, was forty-five minutes long. Too long if you ask me. I’d sit there and think about baseball or Gabrielle. Sometimes I’d even think about what I was going to do after school. This happened daily. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I thought about.

Lunchtime was forty five minutes of my day where I did absolutely nothing productive. Instead of taking time out to eat a hearty meal of faux chicken fried steak, or even a stale hamburger, I hung out with the guys, ogling girls and talking about wrestling. Summer Slam was coming up soon, and the main event was Lex Luger vs Yokozuna. I couldn’t wait.
However, the first day of school held great importance because of another junior high rite of passage. Lincoln’s cafeteria was on the building’s third floor, which was an odd location for a cafeteria. On the first day of every school year, 7th and 8th grade guys would stand in front of the cafeteria and watch as the 6th grade girls made their first appearance of the school year. Yes, it was childish, but it was also the best way to check out the new talent.
Tristan stood at the top of the stairs with his black DARE T-shirt on, looking down. Whenever a new girl came by he would holler out her rating, which we based on Taco Bell hot sauce packets. If a girl was “mild,” then she was okay looking. If she was a notch above okay, then she got a score of “hot.” Now, the most important one was “Fire.” Rarely did a girl ever earn a “Fire” rating.
We were 7th graders now, so this would be our first time participating in the event. I played it cool, yet anxious to see what was in store. John Paul was a bit of a wreck, even though he had told himself he was prepared. He was a lot better off than he was in the morning, since most of the cheap cologne had already worn off. He still stank, though.
There were ten of us; all anxious to get the proceedings started. The way the 8th graders were prepping us, you’d think we were about to go into combat. Stay low and don’t make direct eye contact. Those were our instructions. Tristan yelled hot, and we all straightened up as if the sergeant was about to come through for inspection.
They came. We saw. I was disappointed. Sure, there were a few good ones in the bunch, but mostly they were noyot very appelaling. To be perfectly honest, some of them looked downright goofy. John Paul grinned like a crazy man the entire time. I know he enjoyed himself. I just wasn’t feeling it. I think I lost my nerve because all I could think about was Gabrielle catching me. She was nowhere around, but I still felt her scornful eye.
I took a peek inside the cafeteria through the vertical rectangular slit in the door. She was sitting with some friends at one of the many round tables. That was the thing about Lincoln’s cafeteria; there were no long tables. They had been replaced by smaller round tables to give the place a more congenial atmosphmere. I watched her eat her steak fingers and drink her tropical punch. For a second I almost felt bad for not partaking of lunch with her on a daily basis.
Thinking back now, I had my priorities backwards. Instead of chillin’ with the homies, I should have been with my lady. Nevermind what the guys thought. To them I might have been labeled a punk for doing so, but at least I had a girlfriend, while they were stuck rubbernecking every girl that passed by. Alas, that was not the case. I was a fellow rubbernecker.

The rest of the day went as predicted; I received my locker, located in front of Ms. Johnson’s room, naturally. My neighbors were Carlos Alba, a quiet kid that did his work and never bothered anybody. His locker was to the right of mine. To the left of me was Angela Cuellar, a cute gal whose looks were quite underrated. I immediately wondered how Gabrielle would take this. I wouldn’t have to worry about it for another day, since it was time to go and her locker was fortunately on the other side of the hall.
School was finally out and it was time to get on the bus. As I always did, I walked Gabrielle to her bus. She lived in another part of town, Rolling Hills. It was a suburb, despite what Gabrielle insisted. She never considered her neighborhood to be one where upper middle class people lived. How could she not? Her father was a doctor and her mother was an officer in the military. Her next door neighbor had a pool, and her backyard neighbors owned horses. Yet, she didn’t live in the suburbs . . . right. I guess I should have cut her some slack; she was just looking to identify with the rest us.
“So this is the 7th grade,” she commented.
“Yep.” I wasn’t sure if she was asking a question or making a statement. That was my
best answer. We had been standing in front of the bus in silence. I guess that was her ice breaker.
“Not much difference.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the bus–Her pretty brown eyes looking tired.
“Not yet, anyway. I’m just glad I’m no longer a fucking 6th grader.”
“That’s the one advantage.”
Sometimes in a relationship you run out of things to talk about. This was one of those times. It struck me as odd, especially since I hadn’t seen her all Summer. Was she giving me the shoulder? To me, it seemed as if she was trying to feel me out. As if she were trying to make a decision in her head.
“How was Kentucky?” I obviated the impending silence.
“It was cool.”
“Make any new friends?” I went right for the jugular. I wasn’t trying to be obvious, but I guess it just came out wrong.

Before we get too far ahead, there was a reason behind my question. See, too many times have I heard of girls going off on Summer trips, only to forget about their boyfriends. I knew this for a fact because I was one of those guys who’d make you forget.
Summer of 1992 saw me frolicking around the block, being a kid, playing ball with the fellas and acting like a nuisance. So, one of the neighborhood guys, Bobby, introduced us to his cousin, visiting from California. Her name was Lorena, and she was quite the looker. I won’t go into details, but yes, she was really bangin’. Long story short, she had a boyfriend, but we kicked it anyway. When she went back home, she dumped her guy, and wanted to start a long distance thing with me. We tried, but it ended up not working out.

“Are you asking if I played you?”
Damn. She saw right through me. It was obvious that I needed to take a couple of discretion courses.
“No.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“That’s good to hear, but that’s not what I was asking about.”
Suddenly, the bus’ ignition turned over and a group of kids scampered inside. Gabrielle didn’t even turn to say goodbye; she just turned to leave.
“Besides, I’d never do you like that. I’m not Lorena, dear.” She saw the shocked look on my face as she hopped on. The doors shut behind her, and she found a seat next to her friend, Melyssa.
I had to run to board my own bus before it left me. Mrs. H, the bus driver, was a mean woman, who would leave you there just to teach you a lesson. I jumped on at the last second, and she shook her head as I zoomed past her to find a seat.


The best part of every day at Lincoln was after school at Shak’s. That’s when a bunch of us from both Lincoln and Meacham, gathered for Street Fighter II tournaments. As long as they kept it fair, that’s all that mattered to me. We had only one rule–you can’t choose Blanka. Blanka was the green creature from Brazil. He had one advantage that nobody else had; he could make his entire body into a live wire, shocking the shit out of anyone who touched him. This was considered cheating to us, since one could remain in that state throughout the entire match, guaranteeing victory.

So there we were, ready for battle. Felix was to my left, cracking his knuckles like Bolo in Enter the Dragon. I stood there, cool and calm, as our enemies approached. They were three Meacham kids: Johnny Gamboa, Kwame Davis, and Anthony Cruz. We hadn’t battled in Street Fighter since two weeks ago, and it was about to be on.
That’s when we noticed Felix’s cousin, Leo, hanging around. Leo was a troubled kid. At least two years older than me, he found himself already attending Metro High; an alternative school for wayward youth. It was the Fort Worth Independent School District’s answer to the juvenile system. Instead of locking the kids up, they figured they could educate them, instead.
Leo asked what we were up to, holding an open Pepsi Big Slam in his left hand. We explained the situation to him and it piqued his interest. He watched from the side of the cabinet as my E. Honda did battle with Johnny’s Chun Li. At first, he blocked everything I threw at him. But soon, he realized that the spinning bird kick was nothing compared to the hundred hand slap. It was over.
I didn’t notice this at first, but the owner’s son, Sonny, who was a big ham, was being distracted while we played. A group of girls from North Heights came in and crowded the front counter. A few were hungry, ordering burritos and corn dogs from the heat lamps, where Shak’s kept their food. It wasn’t much, just a few fried items.
While I was taking out the last guy from Meacham, Anthony, the crowd of girls continued to fawn over Sonny, giving him compliments and asking him why he didn’t go to school. Sonny was a dropout who preferred working in his father’s store, instead of getting an education. I wish I had picked up on this while it happened, but each time I laid a major blow with my guy, Honda, Leo would yell out “Bam.”
The three of us walked out of there with no qualms from the Meacham boys. They lost fair and square. I earned five bucks, and got a chance to kick some ass. Just as we’re heading up the block, though, Leo reaches into his pocket and pulls out three Neopolitan ice cream sandwiches, and hands one to Felix and one to me. I have to admit; it unnerved me some. I wanted to say no, but I realized that had I refused he would have taken it as a major insult. I was just shocked that the sneak had actually lifted the ice cream during our game.
It bothered me. I thanked him and ate the tasty treat. In the back of my mind I was bugging out. I had partaken in stolen goods. Of course, my parents had taught me that stealing was wrong. They taught me the value of a dollar, and a day’s hard work. I was conflicted. Felix was my friend, while Leo was just a neighborhood miscreant that I tolerated. Don’t get me wrong, Leo was an okay guy, but he had a track record of bad deeds and overall misbehavior. I wanted to vomit.
Leo and Felix lived on the next block over, so I was left to walk another four blocks, pondering what had just happened. I had never stolen anything before. When my old day sitter would take me to Mott’s; there were candy containers close to the exit. We saw some kids taking candy from it without paying, and she gave me a good lecture about stealing. That stayed with me for years. I don’t know why, but as a kid I pondered stuff like that. I obviously had an advanced mind for a twelve-year-old. My sister once told me that it was because I had an old soul, as if I had been here before. Rubbish.

I made it home, finally. The first thing I noticed coming up the street was a big Uhaul truck outside of the Ortiz home, across the street. I asked my mother about it as I walked in. What she told me devastated me more than anything I could imagine. It quickly made me forget all about the ice cream sandwich. The Ortiz’s were moving away.

The Ortiz family had lived in North Heights for as long as I could remember–actually, longer. Felix and Maritza Ortiz had two children: Alex, who was cool but rather geeky, and Vanessa, their adopted Black daughter. Vanessa was the day sitter I mentioned earlier.  Up until a couple of years before that, she was the woman I was head over heels in love with.
Vanessa was the popular girl, but she still found time to take care of me. She didn’t go on dates or attend dances. She was gorgeous. To this day I still say that she looks like Holly Robinson. When I say Holly Robinson, I mean the Holly Robinson from 21 Jump Street, not the Holly Robinson from Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, where she had a nose job, dyed hair, and looked like a toothpick.
I was four when she started taking care of me. Both my parents worked their asses off, and my sister had a job at the local supermarket. Dahlia would drop me off at their house around four, an hour after the high school let out. We’d watch tv, eat ice cream and play board games, which she always let me win. We’d get out of the house, too. She took me to see Gremlins, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and a plethora of others. It’s weird thinking about it now, but she practically raised me.
We moved across the street from them in late 86, making Vanessa a lot more accessible to me. When I started elementary, she’d be there every day to walk me home. It was great. But it all came to an end in the 4th grade when my parents said that I didn’t need a sitter anymore, and that I was old enough. Old enough for what? We’d still hang out, since our families were very close. My parents would either invite Vanessa and her father over for dinner, or vice versa. It clearly wasn’t the same, but I wasn’t fretting about it.

“So when are they moving?” I asked my mother at the dinner table. A plate of pork chops; homemade mashed potatoes and corn was placed in front of me.
“Tomorrow or early Wednesday.”
Dad’s sat down with the evening paper tucked under his arm. He worked the night shift at his job, and he had just enough time to eat before he left each day.
“You should go and see if they need help, Rock.” Dad’s voice said from behind the newspaper. It was a miracle that he was even paying attention. Once he got his nose in the paper, a marching band could go through the kitchen and he wouldn’t hear it.
“Is that okay, mama?” I took the captain’s suggestion and looked to the general for approval.
“Make sure you’re finished eating, first,” was her response.
I don’t think I ever wolfed down a meal faster in my whole entire life. The pork chops
were ravaged, the potatoes begged for mercy and the corn found its new home in my stomach. I declined a slice of grandma’s famous Sock-it-to-me cake, downed my cola, and darted for the door, wiping my mouth with a napkin. I was on a mission, dammit!
It didn’t take me long to get across the street to the grey unorthodox house that Felix Ortiz had built in the ‘70s. I say unorthodox because it had no porch, and a flat roof. It looked more like a place of business than a home. The Uhaul was open and a few sealed boxes were lying around the grass. This was going to be tougher than I thought.
I mean, how dare she move and not tell me. Years later I learned that she did it that way because she knew it would be incredibly tough to say goodbye. It was. I was as much a part of her life as she was mine. I seriously doubt she felt for me what I felt for her, but still, I was special to her.
So I walked in and noticed the newfound empty feeling around the house. Practically everything was already boxed up. I’m guessing it was done over the weekend, while I was at my Grandma’s in Arlington. I saw that all the family photos had been taken down from the wall and fireplace mantle. They were all packed into a box on the floor. A few pictures of Maritza were up. She was a beautiful woman who passed away before I got the chance to meet her.
“Hey, Rocky.” The lovely Vanessa Ortiz spoke.
She was in her father’s old office, packing up his books. The room was empty, except for an end table that had a battery powered radio on top of it. Tony! Toni! Tone!’s Anniversary was playing, if I remember correctly. It was funny; I spent so much time there in the ‘80s that it was nearly impossible for me to imagine any other music playing besides something from that era.
“Need some help?” What a chicken. That was not what I was going to say. I wanted to ask her why she didn’t tell me. Why I had to hear it from my mother the day before they were set to move away forever and take my childhood with them.
We packed her books up in complete silence. 100.3 Jamz, “the best jamz on the radio,” was the only noise we needed. It took us a good hour doing that. She was sad, when she should have been happy. Hell, if it were me moving out of what had become known as one of the most violent neighborhoods in Texas, I’d be very happy.
After that, we went to her room to clear out a few more things. The pink room had always struck me as memorable. I rarely got to see it, since Vanessa, like all women, valued their privacy. All of her old posters and girlie stuff had been taken down, in exchange for a fresh coat of paint to cover all of the tiny holes she had made, stapling posters. The only poster she kept up was a small Boyz II Men group face shot that she kept over her desk, replacing her old Ready for the World one. It was illuminated solely by a lamp on her dresser. The florescent light in her room messed up years ago, and since then she had to make due.
It was on to Alex’s old room. Most of the rooms in the house had been updated with the times. The old 50-inch tv in the living room with the woodgrain finish, had been replaced years ago by a more up to date Zenith. However, in Alex’s room, it was still 1987. Dead giveaways were the wood paneling on the wall, and it was the only room that still had that old brown carpet. It smelled like the ‘80s, too. A really pungent stale smell would not leave the room at all. It was as if the ‘80s said, “at least let me stay here!”
“Rocky.” Vanessa sat me down on the window sil of the big picture window, overlooking the backyard and the big ugly satellite dish that still stood there. “Before Alex moved out, he said he wanted you to have some of his things, if you wanted them.”
It almost felt like the scene in Star Wars, where Obi-Wan gives Luke his father’s old
lighstaber. However, I was no Luke Skywalker, and Vanessa was the hottest Obi-Wan I had ever seen.
She handed me a box of old records, VHS tapes, and his old posters, all rolled up. I still remembered where he had each poster hung. The Aliens one was behind his bed. Star Trek: The Motion Picture cast shot went on the closet. And Blade runner stood over his computer desk. I dug a bit deeper and found the crown jewel: an old model of the Starship Enterprise, which hung on a string from the ceiling. I was in awe.
“There’s more in storage,” Vanessa uttered. “We’ll get those to you tomorrow, though.”
“Tell him I said thank you.”
“When I talk to him . . . probably not for a while.”
“What do you mean?”
I forgot to mention that Alex was Dahlia’s boyfriend that she just wouldn’t let go of. He had strung her along all through college, and even when he graduated he wouldn’t get his act right.
“He’s been acting really strange. Maybe it’s just me, but he doesn’t seem like himself anymore.”
“He talks to my sister almost every day.”
Vanessa sat there and thought to herself, while I looked through my new treasure box. She seemed concerned, but not worried. She knew that her brother could take care of himself. I had to admit, though, he was acting rather funny.

We spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening packing up boxes and fitting them inside the Uhaul. We talked about current issues, instead of reminiscing. She gave me some good advice about Gabrielle, who I hadn’t thought of the entire time I was around Vanessa.
Mr. Ortiz came in around 8:00pm, waving a carton of Rocky Road ice cream in the air. He had been out all afternoon, trying to get the new place ready. I never got to see it. Mostly because I didn’t want to. I preferred to let the great Oz stay behind the curtain, weaving his magic.
The ice cream was eaten in the kitchen, as we sat around and chatted with the old man. He was in his ‘50s and was still going strong, kicking ass at General Dynamics. He told some embarrassing stories about his two kids, and Vanessa turned it around on him, telling me about a few times where technology got the best of him and led to sparks flying and power going out. It was all in good fun.
The old man had gone to bed. Vanessa and I made it up to the roof, where we sat there with the battery powered radio. We spent the rest of the evening up there, listening to the radio and trying not to cry. This was going to be it–the end of an era. They’d be leaving tomorrow, and then a new family would move into the house that Mr. Ortiz designed himself.
Aerosmith’s Crazy came on the radio, which was now on the rock station, The Eagle, which in the ‘80s, used to be the really popular pop station. She told me she was going to miss me. I returned the gesture. Her smile was beautiful. I wanted to kiss her. Just once. Aside from the age difference, it would have been highly inappropriate, so I decided against it. To her it would have been plain weird, since she’d known me since I was but three years old, and she was sixteen.
The last song we heard together was Pets by Porno for Pyros. Then she told me I was the only real friend she ever had. That touched me. It must have been around 10:00pm when I finally came home. My mother didn’t gripe at me. She actually smiled as I walked in, the same way I walked in every time I came home from the Ortiz house, with a smile on my face and cartoon hearts around me.
I’d go to bed that night knowing that this was probably the last time I’d see Vanessa. I’d go to school the next day, and when I’d get back they’d be gone. In retrospect, I think I preferred it that way. The new house was in The Colony, which was a really nice suburb near Dallas. I heard that Jose Canseco and Shawn Michaels had homes out there. It was about time they left North Heights. The scene was getting too wild, I guess. I was happy, yet sad.
That day I realized that I was no longer a kid. For the first time, I felt like a teenager, even though I was three months away from it, officially. It was the start of a brand-new day. A new family would be moving in within the next week. New neighbors. It was my duty to make them feel welcome, since when we moved into the neighborhood, it was the Ortiz family that made it seem like home for us. The torch must be passed on. I guess it’s true what they say: All good things must come to an end.