been arrested twice in his fifteenth year: once for stealing a car, the other time for carrying a gun - a sawn-off shotgun. He hadn't told him these stories to impress him. Sol didn't give a damn what anyone thought.
Park knew the horrors he'd related had only been the tip of the iceberg.
Once, old friends - the meanest, most wired Cholos he'd ever seen - had visited Sol while they were playing a rough game of one-on-one at the school yard on a Saturday afternoon. Both wore wads of jewelery and picked at their oily nails with shiny switchblades, talking in guttural Spanish with Sol about Satan only knew what. In the midst of the conversation, they said something that bothered Sol and he snapped at them. They paled noticeably and apologized frantically, like their lives depended on it, which may well have been the case. Afterwards, Sol explained that they had made an obscene reference to Park. The loyalty hadn't comforted Park.
Park wasn't sure how Sol's father had managed to get his two children - Sol had a ten-year-old sister of whom he was maniacally protective, the cutest little thing - out of the barrios; probably hard work. Mr.
Celaya currently had a flourishing gardening business in Ventura. But apparently, he hadn't felt that Ventura was far enough north of his son's friends. He rented a house on the outskirts of Santa Barbara, and Sol ended up in laid-back Hoover High like a wolf among sheep.
Park still remembered the first day they ran into each other - literally. Sol had knocked him out of his way in the hall. Initially, no one could understand hisSpanglish , and it was probably just as well, for in the first few days he seemed one angry young man. But first impressions are not always complete. The passage of a couple of weeks presented a different profile. Sol had his mean streak, and it cut pretty deep, but he could also be kind, and no one could doubt his intelligence. A month after arriving at Hoover High, after a couple of expulsion threats from the principal, he apparently made a firm personal decision to develop his positive qualities, and to only behave like an animal when he could get away with it. The most immediate demonstration of this decision was the change in the way he spoke. He would never be mistaken for an upper-middle-class white boy, but he developed a knack for using English concisely. And damn if he didn't take to spending hours in the library. He wasn't easy to fit in a category.
Of course, he seldom returned a book.
At the end of his junior year, he went out for track and smashed the shot-put record. His bulging muscles and blinding reflexes made him a natural at the event. Park was also on the team - he ran a mediocre mile - but what really brought them together was Sol's sudden discovery of surfing. Before moving to Santa Barbara, he once confessed, he hadn't even seen the ocean and he'd despised, because of his upbringing, anything associated with the wordsurfing . Yet the sea proved an asylum to him that seemed to wash away the weight of past cares. Park had already won two minor surfing championships.
Hearing of Sol's interest in the waves, he boldly loaned him a board and taught him a few tricks of the trade. Soon they were surfing together regularly. Park still wasn't sure what Sol liked about him outside of his skill on the waves. He had asked once, and Sol had said that hanging around with the school brain was good for his "tough-but-heart-of-gold-guy image". On the other hand, Park didn't fully understand what he liked about Sol. Certainly, there wasn't anyone else quite like him.
Shani didn't know anything about Sol's background. She didn't know that five days ago he'd been kicked out of his father's house and was now sleeping in the park in his van. She didn't know that he was low on money and was looking to his old ways to get some. Without explanation, while driving through Tijuana, Sol had dropped Park, Flynn, and Bert off for an hour. Afterwards, he had only allowed ever-agreeable Bert to sit in the back, with strict orders that he not touch or smell anything. Why didn't Sol want him to check on the spare? Probably because he'd dumped the tyre and jammed the space with illicit substances. Sol was reading his