The Same Sky Read Online Free PDF

huddled together, glancing up at me with cold eyes. A block later, a small boy with a fat face waved from behind the iron bars that covered his front window. I waved back.
    Chávez Memorial was a faded brick building that could have housed a prison or a hospital. The parking lot was filled with late-model cars, some with metal panels that didn’t match. One Honda had a blue body and two tan doors; its bumper sticker read, “Proud to Be a Johnson High School Sophomore!”
    Through wire fencing, I could see a dusty track and a set of bleachers on which a motley crew of boys sat and smoked cigarettes. A clump of girls stood underneath an oak tree, gesticulating wildly. Teenagers—their deep emotions, their unpredictability, the possibility that they could be armed—made me uneasy.
    A large rectangle had been freshly painted on the front of the building to announce, “Chávez Memorial High School at the Johnson High School Campus.” In front of the school, a six-foot marble block was ringed by stone benches that looked as if they’d been stolen from a graveyard.
    I walked to the front door (I had never been inside) and pulled. The door was locked, so I pressed a red buzzer. Nothing happened. A police cruiser drove toward me, and when the window slid down, I saw that the driver was Officer Grupo, his eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses.
    “Hey,” I said, squinting. “Principal Markson told me to come by. It’s locked.”
    Grupo nodded, opened his door, and climbed out without turning off the engine. He carried the cool of hisair-conditioned car in the folds of his uniform, and I had to stop myself from leaning toward him. He punched a code into the keypad. “Can’t be too safe these days,” he said.
    “Jesus,” I said unthinkingly. “This seems a bit much.”
    “A bit much?” said Grupo, his words clipped short, as if by wire cutters. I turned toward him but saw only my flushed face in his glasses. He was white, about my age, with hair so light I could see his scalp. Despite his brash personality, there was a sweetness in him. He’d once given a Valentine—an actual paper card with a teddy bear holding a heart-shaped balloon on it—to Samit, who worked at Conroe’s. I’d asked her if she was dating Grupo, and she said he kept asking, but she kept saying no. When I asked why, she’d held up her hands and said, “No chemistry. And even though he’s tall, he’s kinda … puny. You know?”
    Strangely, I understood what she was talking about. He was muscled, but defensively so, as if he was waiting to be beaten up by bullies.
    “Three Chávez kids have been shot this year,” said Grupo, putting his hands on his hips. “One right here in this parking lot.”
    “Oh my God,” I said. Somehow when I’d thought about the gunshots I heard at night, I had connected them to “bad guys,” thugs—not schoolchildren. I felt a sour shame in my stomach, suddenly embarrassed by my protected life, the attention Jake and I paid to barbecue.
    “You know about walking the line?” Grupo said.
    “You’re not referencing Johnny Cash, I assume?” I tried to joke.
    “It’s a gang initiation. A kid walks along the line of members, and each beats the shit out of the new guy. He can’t fight back. If he lives, he’s in.”
    “And they don’t all …,” I said, my mouth growing dry.
    “Nope,” said Grupo. “They do not. Anyways, have a good one,” he said, walking back to his cruiser.
    I stood outside the high school for a moment, letting Grupo’s words seep in. I had seen the Chávez kids in Conroe’s, after all, ordering sandwiches and Cokes, shoving each other, laughing. I felt for them—their preening, their acne-covered, animated faces. Christ, it had been hard to be a teenager in rural Colorado. It seemed so unfair that Markson’s students had to worry not just about puberty and loneliness but also about guns and gang initiations.
    Unnerved, I yanked open the door and stepped inside Chávez