The Experience

Author's Notes: I wrote this story for a short story contest. It was based upon this one time in my Filipino-American studies class where we visited the Historic Filipino Town in the Los Angeles area. Everything was old, and it was clearly a low-income area. I made the decision to have the main character only speak at the end to be something of a blank canvas.

Sitting on the sidewalk in front of my house, I wait for my brother. The house address was once painted on the front of the sidewalk, but now, only two numbers remain. With this warm California weather , I choose not to sit underneath the mandarin orange tree in the front yard. Old cars pass by the thin two-way street with cars parked almost squished on both sides. More than once a month does the narrowness of the street cause accidents or near-accidents from cars coming towards each other.
    My brother, Victor, picks me up in an old, white Honda Accord. His girlfriend sits in the passenger seat while his best friend, David, sits quietly and menacingly in the back seat. 
    “Get in the back, Edrian,” Victor tells me authoritatively.
    As I sit in the back, Victor’s girlfriend gives me a ‘hello’ with a smile and goes back to looking at the mirror to put on lipstick. David lightly punches me in the shoulder and asks with a smirk, “So, do you have a girlfriend yet?”
“He’s only twelve,” Victor tells him with just a slight Filipino accent where the “V” almost sounds like a “B”.
    Victor drops me off at Goldlake Middle School, where most of the students and their parents either walk or take the bus. The sound of broken English from those who came straight from the Philippines can be heard throughout the quad area. 
    The bell rings, and everyone scrambles to their classes. With the large amount of students in this area, the school cafeteria has to be used as multiple classrooms. As I walk through the halls, a group of older students approach me. The leader of this group is Boy Ramos, who used to play with me when we were kids. Once Boy started to skip school and hang out in the streets, my parents did not allow me to be friends with him anymore.
“Forget this place and hang out with us, Edrian Rubic” Boy tells me in a haughty and mocking tone. 
It is somewhat difficult to take him seriously when his “F” still sounds like “P”. I turn around and try to walk away.
“You’re coming with us,” Boy tells me as he tries to grab my arm.
A proctor sees us and demands that we go to class. I hurriedly rush to the other direction that Boy is headed even though my class is in the opposite direction. I wrap around the old and dilapidated portables on the outskirts of school and enter my history class. My teacher, Mr. Payne, a young Caucasian male who felt that he could make a difference in a lower-class town reprimands me for being tardy. I take my seat to the sound of snickers from the other students. 
Sitting through the lecture, I daydream of being a basketball player that I have seen in television.  I run through the basketball court with the crowd cheering loudly, as I cut through defenders and jump in the air for a slam dunk. While in mid-air, the ball is swatted away by none other than Boy. 
I wake up from the daydream and look around the classroom. Seeing my classmates with obvious hand-me-down clothes and torn-apart shoes, I try to imagine something greater again. However, Mr. Payne calls me to answer a question, but I am just not paying attention. All the other students have their eyes on me as I stutter to say something, and I look down and slump further into my chair. Disappointed and a bit frustrated, Mr. Payne calls on someone else.
At lunch, I am used to sitting alone on an isolated planter that is held together by cracked bricks. Boy approaches me with his friends and block any chance for me to escape.
“After school, meet us next to the liquor store by your house,” Boy tells me.
Once school ends, I have to walk home since my brother is too busy with his girlfriend to pick me up. Walking up and down the hilly streets, I pass by three churches that sit atop the hills. My family and I attend church every Sunday, but I only attend because my parents force me to go. I look at the giant cross on top of one of the churches, The Church of Christ, that has graffiti on its side.
A middle-aged Caucasian man with hair turning gray and a noticeable beard approaches me and asks, “Are you looking for something?”
I nod my head ‘no.’ 
“Maybe you’re looking for God.”
I am caught off-guard by his statement, so I walk away quickly and avoid making eye contact with him. As I am wandering about, I really do not know what made me uneasy about his statement.
I pass through a row of houses, and most of them are old and have not been renovated since they were bought. However, three homes on the block have newly green and well-groomed front yards. The other homes contain brown and yellow grass or pure dirt for front yards. The rotted steps that lead to their front porches look as if they cannot carry any more weight. 
I head towards the liquor store that sits in the corner of my neighborhood. Its handwritten signs are spelled incorrectly, and a large golden retriever guards it from any delinquents looking for trouble. Boy and his friends wait on the side of the liquor store where the guard dog cannot see them. When he sees me, he greets me with half a nod where his eyebrows raise and his head tilts upwards slightly. 
“What’s going on, Edrian?” Boy asks.
A Caucasian artisan who just moved into the neighborhood passes by and heads to the liquor store. Boy is in his pathway, and he shuffles to the side and politely says to him, “Excuse me, sir.”
The man walks past him and gives a slight nod, as Boy looks down at the concrete sidewalk. Once he enters the liquor store, we all leave, with Boy grabbing me by my shirt and pulling me. After walking down the block, Boy releases his hold on my shirt and tells me, “We’re going to the churches.”
We take the main street to the churches where there is a beggar with a sign in every corner. We pass by the small community center that is the main place for parties and where Filipina girls have their debuts. On the other side of the street is a small café with a stage where teenagers and young adults hang out to listen to spoken-word poems. 
A family-owned Filipino restaurant or a Vietnamese Pho noodle shop sits in every plaza. Shops that closed down are being re-opened as Starbucks or other national restaurant chains. The graffiti on some walls have been painted over by the professional artists that have been buying homes in the area.
We eventually reach the hills and stand in front of the gates of The Church of Christ. Boy gets out a spray can and tells everyone, “We’re tagging this place.”
He shakes the canister and hands it to me. I point it to a part of the wall that is still white and look at Boy, as if I am looking for his approval. He gives a slight nod, and right when I am about to stain the church, the middle-aged man that I saw earlier yells loudly, “What’s going on here?”
Boy and his friends run away, but I stand still as if something froze me. I manage to turn around with the spray can still in my hand, and the man just looks at me. 
“Hey look, I’m the new minister to this church. I don’t know what’s going on, but you can’t do something like this.”
I sit still quietly.
“Put that away and put this in your hand, and don’t let it go.”
The minister gives me an old, hardcover Bible. I place the spray can on the ground, and he puts the Bible in my hand. It is a lot heavier than it looks.
“Once you begin to read this, you’ll begin to really exist. If you stay with those guys and do this crazy stuff, you won’t go anywhere in life.”
“Thank you for this,” I tell him, as I hug the book close to me.