Chapter 1

You want a hero.

Before we start, you should know—I’m not him.

I’m not your hero.

A hero is a Prince Charming, a firefighter, a cowboy. He’s handsome and perfect. He’s probably white. He has his shit together.

None of that is me.

For example, would a hero be standing barefoot and half-asleep on a sidewalk in his chones, holding all his belongings in a backpack? Because that’s what I’m doing right now. Staring at the scene in front of me.

“You lying, no good son of a bitch!”

Regina tosses another drawer full of clothes out the second-story bedroom window. The clothes are followed by a wrestling trophy, which falls gently on a pile of T-shirts.

“You’re a fucking liar!”

Next, a PlayStation controller, followed by a grip of games. Some land on the grass and others on the concrete driveway with an ugly crash.

“You wanna live with that puta? Fine! Go be with that whore! Go!”

The neighbors are coming out now. Some of them are holding coffee mugs. Kids in pajamas appear, pointing and laughing.

I might be the one standing here in my underwear, but luckily I’m not the one they’re looking at. I put my bag down and pull out a clean T-shirt and basketball shorts. I get dressed, right here in the street.

My buddy Spider stands on the lawn. He’s shouting up at his old lady like some kind of opposite-day Romeo. “Regina! Listen to me!”

“Go to hell.”

And down comes the PlayStation itself. It doesn’t land on the grass or on a soft pile of clothing, but on the driveway. It crashes nasty, parts flying, and all I can see are dollar signs, floating away like little butterflies.

Oof. Ice cold.

“Regina!”

This goes on for a few minutes. Some of the kids are pulled back inside, some neighbors get in their cars and drive off. The neighborhood chismosas are all out, though—gossipy old ladies, grandmas and tias. And they’re not going anywhere until this plays out. They’re looking for a fresh scandal. This is good stuff.

I sit on the curb and get my socks and shoes on. I tie the laces, rub my face, and fold my arms. It’s August, so the cool morning air is already heating up.

Spider is wearing shorts and a wifebeater shirt. He’s halfway between pissed and heartbroken, his emotions swinging back and forth. Dumbass. I told him not to sleep around on Regina. I told him that she knew, that she’d get fed up with him, but did he listen to me? Does anyone?

“Fuck you, and fuck your no-good friends,” she shouts.

I raise my eyebrows. Wait a second. Is she referring to me?

“Hey, that’s not fair,” I murmur.

I’ve been crashing on Spider and Regina’s couch since I got out of prison six months ago, but I’ve been a good houseguest. Regina’s even told me so. I clean their living room every day, bathroom and kitchen too. Regina and Spider have three kids and between the five of them, before I got there, the house looked like a hurricane hit a rat’s nest.

Every evening before I’d leave for work, she’d cook for all of us and I’d do the dishes without being asked. Once she even told me, “You’re gonna make a woman super happy someday, Ghost.”

Me?

Doubt it.

I look down at the sidewalk. Something is written there. I clear away a little of the grit with my hand. I see it, scratched into the surface. Old graffiti, sixty, seventy years old. A cross with three lines. Pachuco cross. Below it, four letters. ESHB, East Side Hollenbeck.

My grandfather’s gang. My father’s gang. My gang.

“Regina, don’t be this way!”

I look up. Spider is begging now. Begging, in front of everyone. He has it bad for this woman. Why he couldn’t keep his verga in his pants for her, I’ll never know. Like a lot of homeboys, he has a problem with the females, especially the ones who are hot for gangsters. In this neighborhood, there are a lot of those.

Bang!

When she slams the window shut halfway through his speech, I know the conversation is over, at least for now. I get up, stretch, and yawn. I had been asleep for only a half hour when all this drama started up. I’ve been working all night. I’m so tired, I’m not even worked up. I should be. Now that Spider got us thrown out of his house, I’ve got nowhere to go.

As he walks toward me, I can see the hurt on his face. He tries to hide it. “Fuck.” He blinks away the pain. “This bitch is crazy.”

I want to say, “I told you not to sleep around,” but that would make me an asshole, particularly at this moment, so I just shrug.

“Where will you go now?” I say, even though I know the answer. The other girl’s door is open, at least for now. Unlike me, Spider has a bed to sleep in tonight if he wants it.

“I’ll be around.” He looks up at me apologetically, knowing he’s fucked up for both of us. “I’m sorry, man. Ruben said the crash pad has space.”

“I’ll check it out,” I say, even though I won’t. That dump is overcrowded, and there’s always shit there—drugs, guns. I need to stay away for now. My parole officer has a hard-on to get me back inside. “I’ll find someplace. Don’t worry about me.”

I watch as Spider leaves all his stuff on the lawn, walks to his car and starts it up. He’s never gotten in serious trouble with the law, so he still has his car and driver’s license. I don’t have those things anymore. These days all I drive are my socks and shoes. Where should I go now? Another homie’s house? Crash with a booty call? I’m too tired to brainstorm. I pick up my bag, turn, and shuffle for the park. I’ve slept there before. It’s not the best thing in the world, but I need to get some sleep before my shift tonight. I feel like a zombie.

Now that the show’s over, everyone goes back inside. The only one who doesn’t is Chinita, Spider’s neighbor. One of the chismosas, she’s a little old lady from the neighborhood, churchgoing and respectable now, but who used to raise hell back in the day, or so I’ve been told. Chinita’s sitting on her porch smoking a cigarette. I nod to her. “Señora.”

As I walk by, her dog dives off the porch and rushes me, snarling and furious. He bashes the gate with his head over and over again until it clicks open and now I’m being attacked by a furious wiener dog who chomps at my shoelaces and whips me with his skinny brown tail.

I pick up the dog. The little fucker snaps at me. His teeth are sharp. He’s got fight in him, which I suppose I admire. I’m too tired to react anyway.

Chinita walks over. She’s wearing blue jeans and a Dodgers sweatshirt. She’s got curlers tucked underneath her kerchief, and I notice her glasses have rhinestones all over the frames.

“Bad dog. Chancla! Bad dog.”

I smile. Chancla—it means “flip-flop.” Sandal. A good name for this dog. I hand him over to Chinita and he immediately stops growling and squirming. Instead he mad-dogs me. If you’ve ever been mad-dogged by a mad dog, you know what I mean.

“Sal.” Chinita calls me by my real name because she remembers a time when Salvador was my only name, a time before Ghost. “How are you doing, mi’jo? Staying out of trouble?”

“Trying, señora. Trying hard.” It’s true—I am. I yawn again. “Just tired is all.”

“You worked last night?”

She’s just making conversation. The chismosas already know all our ins and outs. They know everything. They know who’s sleeping with who, and when we change shifts at work, and how we like our hot dogs. “I worked last night,” I say. “And again tonight.”

“Night shift. I used to do that. At the bottling plant. No fun.” She kisses Chancla’s head and the dog wiggles against her. “So where are you going now?”

I shrug. “To find a place to sleep.”

“Where?”

“Park, probably.”

“¿Con los borrachos? With the drunks? No, you need good sleep. You need to keep your job.” She looks me up and down and narrows her eyes. “Were you paying rent at Regina’s?”

“Not really. I gave Spider fifty a week to add to their groceries. And I cleaned the house a little. That was it.”

It was a good arrangement. With two part-time jobs, I’m saving up for an apartment, but with first and last month’s rent and a cleaning deposit, it’ll be a hot minute before I’ve banked enough cash. I’ve been out of the pinta since February, and at the moment, I’m still on my own. The family house is long gone, mortgage payments shot up a junkie’s arm. My younger brother Trouble is still locked up but he’ll be paroled in two months. The apartment is really for him. He’s a troublemaker and he needs a good place to land, somewhere I can keep an eye on him. Our youngest brother Mateo still lives in Salinas, where we sent him to keep him safe. As for our dad?

Well.

Let’s just say Dreamer Rosas is a ghost story for another day.

Chinita stares at me over her glasses. “Fifty a week, huh? Tell you what, mi’jo. Pay me fifty a week and you’ll have your own room here. Your own entrance even, so you can come and go as you please.”

“What?” Los Angeles rent is sky-high. Two hundred a month for my own room is a crazy price. “Are you serious?” If she doesn’t ask for a deposit, I could keep saving money at the same rate I’ve been saving it.

She opens the gate and Chancla starts growling at me again. “Ya, calmate,” she says softly to the dog. It whines. She puts it back in the house and shuts the door. “Come ’round back,” she tells me.

I follow the old lady past the flowerbeds and lemon tree. Like the other houses on the block, this one is an old one. Maybe a hundred years old or so, a two-story clapboard mess, falling apart, repaired here and there with duct tape and cheap nails. We walk up the driveway and she unlocks another gate.

“I didn’t know you had a guesthouse back here.” I maneuver around a big aloe vera plant and pots of fresh Mexican herbs that smell like old memories: yerba buena and cilantro. Epazote. Hoja santa, with its big dark green leaves. My mom taught me their names a long time ago. Everything is growing wild.

“Guesthouse? That’s a good one.” Chinita finishes her cigarette and puts it in a big ashtray on the back porch. It’s full of butts. She lowers her voice. “Vanessa doesn’t want me smoking inside.”

Her granddaughter. I don’t say anything, because everyone knows who Vanessa is, and no one in their right mind would cross that woman.

“Come on,” Chinita says with a smoky exhale.

I follow her past a half-assembled swing set and an enormous patch of overgrown grass. Rosebushes of every color line one side of the backyard, and a tall avocado tree throws a dark shadow on a small ivy-covered garage. The old lady unlocks a side door and tries to open it. Paint flakes fall to the ground as she pulls hard on the knob. Two big yanks and the door pops open. I follow her inside. My eyes struggle to adjust. She snaps a switch and a few fluorescent light tubes tap on. One of them flickers like a horror movie.

“Ta-da!” says Chinita, and I look at what she’s offering me.

Crumbling cardboard boxes and yellow stacks of newspapers. An ancient Chevy pickup truck, rusty and cobwebbed, its bed stacked high with more boxes and weird junk like plastic tubes and steel pots. Spiderwebs everywhere. Enough dust to choke a camel.

Smiling like a used-car salesman, Chinita yanks a folded-up bedframe from the corner and unstraps the mattress. She unfolds the tiny twin bed until it clicks open. There’s a deep and dusty crease in the middle. I can see metal springs through the pale yellow fabric.

“Huh? What do you think? Nice bed, right?” Chinita pats the mattress, raising more dust. She coughs a little bit. “I’ll get you some sheets from inside, mi’jo. Then, no problem, right?”

Before I can answer, something scratches in a dark corner of the garage. Little claws. So the garage comes with previous occupants. Maybe that’s a good thing. My case manager says I should try to make new friends.

Chinita studies my face. I look skeptical, I’m sure. I’m not a princess or anything. I’ve slept in gutters and in fields, on hard prison beds and on cement floors next to drains. But after being spoiled on Spider and Regina’s couch, I’m wondering if this housing situation is really the best I can find.

“Mi’jo,” Chinita says, “I know what you’re thinking. But look. Look!” She points to an outlet in the wall. “For a reading lamp. And to charge your phone.” She clears a few boxes off the workbench and reveals the smallest, dustiest window I’ve ever seen. We had bigger ones in prison. “A little sunshine.” She takes a couple keys off her Ensenada bottle opener keychain and hands them to me. “A lock on the door. A safe place to keep your stuff.” She pushes the door open and gestures toward the house. “That other key—the bathroom is right through the back door, through the kitchen. Plus, you can keep food in the fridge.”

Red flag. “Vanessa wouldn’t mind me in the house?” I ask.

Chinita waves her hand. “Vanessa don’t spend any time in the kitchen. She won’t care.”

I have my doubts.

“No one will bother you here, Sal,” Chinita says. “All of this was Ben’s old stuff. Do you remember him?”

“Yeah.” Ben—her husband. An old Okie, the only white man in the neighborhood. He was always nice to me when I was little and wild as a weed.

Chinita sits down on the bed and looks around, slowly nodding to herself. “To be honest, I should’ve taken better care of this garage. Years pass and, you know, everything just gets away from you. It all just gets away.”

I run my hand over the curving wheel well of the truck and I try to remember what this place looked like when I was a kid. Clean and orderly. The truck was in tip-top shape, shiny and well maintained. This was Ben’s place. I imagine him here in his coveralls, always building something, always fixing something. I must have been six or seven. He let me watch everything he did. I was fascinated by his tools and materials, by his big clever hands, all stained and beat-up. Workingman hands.

As if she can read my mind, Chinita says, “Twelve years he’s been gone already. You remember his funeral, don’t you?”

I was thirteen. Ben’s funeral was the first of too many funerals I attended that year. I nod. “Sure. I remember.”

“What a character. My old man.”

Maybe this garage is already haunted. Maybe there’s no more room in here for me. I’m about to thank Chinita for the opportunity when she catches the expression on my face and cuts me a deal.

“Listen, mi’jo. I’ve got an idea. Clean this place up and I’ll charge you two hundred for the first two months’ rent.”

“Clean it up?”

“Yeah. Clean it up.” She smiles. “Sort out the boxes and see what’s inside. We’ll figure out what we can sell and what we can give away. This place has been neglected for a long time—too long. It’s time to discover what kind of treasures are hiding in here.” She pauses. “Might be junk. Might be worth a million dollars. Who knows unless we look, right? Plus, two months for two hundred dollars? Who else is going to charge you rent like that?”

A month of free rent—an extra two hundred dollars to put toward a real apartment. Plus privacy. It’s no palace, but when I look closer, it’s not bad. A little sweeping. A little soap and water. A little time. I could live with this.

“Okay. Deal.” I hold out my hand. Chinita shakes it. I reach into my backpack for my wallet and count out ten twenties. After that, I’ve got two fives for the next three days until I get paid again. I hold back a sigh as I hand over the bills. Maybe Ben hid a cheeseburger somewhere in here for me.

“Excellent.” Chinita stands up and tucks the money into the back pocket of her jeans. “See? I knew we could work something out.”

I put my backpack down. While Chinita goes into the house to get some bedsheets, I pick the thin mattress off the rickety frame. I take it into the backyard and shake the dust out of it. I look at it in the sunlight and realize that the dust is just that—dust. No bedbugs. No fleas. No critters.

Chinita comes out of the house and hands me a pillow and a set of pink sheets. They’re covered with fairies. I look at her with my eyebrows raised. “Really?”

“Suck it up. These are the only twin sheets we have.”

They belong to Vanessa’s daughter. I take the sheets and make the bed. By the time I tuck the old flat pillow into the pillowcase, I can barely keep my eyes open. I settle down on the bed to take off my shoes and the springs whine under my weight.

Chinita taps my forehead with her finger. “One more thing. Ground rules. No drugs. No guns. No shenanigans. None of your troublemaking friends or girls from the neighborhood in here, okay? I got a great-grandbaby, and she doesn’t need to see none of that garbage. Understood?”

I nod and lie down. “Understood.”

“I need your word, Salvador Rosas.”

“I promise, señora.”

“Okay. As long as we’re clear.” Chinita turns off the lights and drags the crumbling door shut. My eyes are already closed when I hear her say, “Sweet dreams, kiddo.”

When the alarm on my phone goes off, I take a second to get my bearings. It’s warm in the garage, and the air is still. It smells like old wood, grease, and gasoline. There’s a dusty shaft of sunlight that starts at the window and lands on the back wall. Black paper peels away from the wood. I look up. The bare rafters are coated with fine dust, like ash from a volcano.

I turn off my alarm and sit up. It’s six o’clock.

Now there’s one thought in my head—food.

Feeling like a bear getting ready to leave its cave, I get dressed for the night. Jeans, a T-shirt, my one pair of sneakers. I find the keys that Chinita gave me for the house. I need to clean up a little before dinner and the bus ride to work.

I put my hand on the doorknob, but the door is stuck. I bash my shoulder against the wood just like I saw Chinita do it. The door gives way on my first try and I explode out of the garage.

Before I can do anything else, a woman is screaming at me and a blast of cold water hits my face. It doesn’t let up. I try to cover my head with my hands but the water moves downward, soaking my clothes. It’s ice cold.

“Hold up,” I blubber. “Stop, stop!”

At last, the water turns off. “What the hell?” I say. There’s water up my nose. I’m coughing. I take off my soaked shirt.

When I stop drowning, I look up to see Chinita’s granddaughter standing next to the rosebushes. She’s wearing an office skirt and blouse. Her dark hair is pulled back tight. I see pearls and pretty red lipstick. Her mouth is wide open. Instead of high heels, she’s wearing old Converse tennis shoes with the backs smashed down. She’s little but curvy in all the right places and I can’t help it. I rub the water from my eyes and stare.

Goddamn.

She’s fine.

Almost fine enough to make me forget that she just tried to put me out like a fire.

“Ghost?” A confused look crosses her face as she grips the hose. “You scared me. What the hell are you doing in my garage?”

I wipe my face with my T-shirt. I try to come up with something cool to say and fail. “Hey, Vanessa.”