Dad off on the graveyard shift at the quarry back then, mom so tired at the end of the day you could throw rocks at the wall and she wouldn’t wake up. Having to climb out of the top bunk, the one Andy wouldn’t take because he was afraid he’d roll out in the middle of the night, and sit on the edge of his mattress and rub his back until he stopped being scared and went to sleep. And then being awake for an hour after that before he could get back to sleep. Getting in trouble the next morning for not getting out of bed right away when mom came to wake them. Years of that shit. Walking downtown together to go to a matinee during the summer, having to walk slow because Andy couldn’t keep up. Andy, the little super genius, always so special. Always such a pain. Teachers and people looking at George, wondering what went wrong with him, why he didn’t get to take the gifted classes. But finally getting to high school, having it to himself, two years before having to worry about Andy, before having to worry about wiping his nose and making sure he didn’t get initiated too bad. And then the little punk goes and gets skipped a grade and it turned into only one year without him. Fine, they were still in different buildings. Then he got skipped again. Straight from freshman to junior. All last year, his little brother on the same schedule, walking between classes at the same time, taking the honors versions of the same courses he’s taking. And it’s gonna be worse when school starts again. Senior year, class of ’84. Should be nothing but good times, nothing but ditch days and double lunches and make work and senior trip and barely having to be around the fucking hellhole because the senior classes are such a joke. Best year of his life and he’s gonna have Andy with him for every day of it. Every single day. Why couldn’t he get skipped again? Why couldn’t the little freak be going straight off to college like everybody knows he’s going to do? Sometimes he’d swear the kid could have skipped if he wanted to, could have worked a little harder, but didn’t. Worked just hard enough so he could catch up to George and drag around behind him like a fucking boat anchor.

He pumps down the street, cutting across the heavy traffic on Murrieta, the shaft of the ball peen hammer stuffed in his back pocket banging against his lower back. He coasts for a moment so he can reach behind and shove the head of the hammer deeper into his pocket, making certain it doesn’t fall out. He doesn’t want to lose the hammer. If the Arroyos hurt his little brother he’s gonna use it to smash their teeth out.

Andy watches from the little league fields behind the elementary school as George rides past on the street. Paul already came by, taking his bike straight across the school’s blacktop playground. Hector will be riding the longest way around, all the way down Murrieta to Olivina before cutting toward the Arroyos’ neighborhood. They’ll have split up the routes to catch him before he can get himself into any trouble. And if it were a race, they would catch him, any one of them could run him down easy. But he’s not racing, he’s hiding, and no one can catch him when he’s hiding.

Out after curfew, when a cop car rolls up and they all break in different directions, Andy is the one who’s never caught. He’s not sure how he does it. The hiding places aren’t even that good sometimes, but he knows when the spot is the right one.

When George goes on a rampage in their house because he’s realized that Andy borrowed one of his favorite albums without asking and then put it back in the wrong jacket, he has a checklist of hiding places to look in. Cupboards, under the stairs, cracks behind large pieces of furniture, the roots of shrubs, high branches of trees even though he knows his brother fears all heights, in the hatchback of their mom’s yellow Fiesta. Once, he opened the sofa bed, certain Andy had figured a way to close it and replace the cushions with himself folded inside. But in the end George always has to do the same thing. He stands in the middle of the house and yells. Come out right now and I’ll only punch you once, make me wait and I’ll fucking kill you. And when Andy comes out he hits him. Twice.

Now George passes and Andy stands up from where he’s been sitting in the shadow of one of the bleachers, trots across the blacktop, over the white painted basketball and foursquare courts, his pockets loaded with rocks he sifted from the dirt while he hid. The new twenty sided die he bought today, the one that drew him into the game shop and caused him to leave his bike unlocked outside, squeezed tight in his hand.

Hector takes the long way around. All the way down Murrieta and then across on Olivina and then up on North P. Like Andy is gonna go that way on foot.

But George is right, they have to cover it. It would be like Andy to take the long way around just because they would be thinking he’d never take it. But it’s also too obvious a dodge, so there’s still no way he’d take it. But maybe it’s so obvious a dodge, he might take it. Freaky little kid. They have to cover it. And Hector has to ride it.

Partly it’s because he can ride the longest without getting winded. George can beat him in any sprint and can out trick them all when they start pulling stunts. Paul will take his Redline over any jump, pedal full out down any gravel strewn hill and bang off any other BMXer on the homemade dirt track all the kids ride on in the fields beyond the firebreak. But for distance it’s Hector. He can ride all day, all night, he can ride full out for a mile and hop off and start swinging.

The other thing is, George and Paul think they’re better fighters. Well, they talk more about it, and Paul gets in more fights than anyone, but that’s because he’s always mouthing off and starting them. He just doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. Doesn’t know how to keep shit inside. Doesn’t know that if you want to kick someone’s ass you just do it, you don’t talk shit about it. Hector knows that’s how it’s done. Just stand there and stare at the sidewalk while some redneck calls you spic and wetback and makes fun of your mohawk and the safety pins in your earlobe, and when he turns to his friends to laugh at you, you pull your fist, wrapped in eighteen inches of bicycle chain, out of your pocket and start punching him in the side of the head.

George and Paul think if there’s trouble at the Arroyos’ it’s best they be the first two showing up. They think they’ll be able to do something. They’re wrong. They could all three show at the same time, leap off their bikes and dive straight into a hook, but if Fernando and Ramon are there they won’t stand a chance.

The Arroyos were legend long before George, Paul, and Hector got to high school.

Bantamweights, they brawled their way through the school system until they emerged at high school, having moved up several weight classes.

Fernando was the first. He spent five years at the high school, leaving behind him a shattered and exhausted administration and a faculty that was to a soul nothing but grateful that they had survived. He had taxed the personal behavior codes to the limit, twisted them, and found loopholes so obscure the entire rule book had to be revised upon his departure. And yet, despite the physical damage he had done to the campus and assorted classmates, despite the psychological scars he had left on his teachers, despite all this, the football coach and athletic boosters had campaigned relentlessly to have a special grading curve installed to keep his GPA hovering in the vicinity of a C+, just that fraction across the border from C that would have allowed him to play varsity football. Their efforts had been inspired by the havoc he had wreaked as both an offensive lineman and linebacker in j.v. ball.