In the Break by Jack Lopez

too. When Jamie and I did it to F’s — the asshole wore huge
     white briefs! — we couldn’t stop giggling, and now, when I thought of it again, I giggled.
    “It’s not funny, Juan,” Amber said. “You guys didn’t give him a chance. He was trying to help.”
    “He was gravy training,” I said.
    “Oh, and you were so good to him, Amber,” Jamie said. “You took his coins too.”
    F went berserk on that one. He had a coin collection, or so he claimed, in a huge glass jar. Jamie and I took coins from the
     so-called collection any time we wanted money. When the level became noticeably low, F hid the remaining loot somewhere where
     we couldn’t find it. And gave Jamie a tongue lashing. Evidently everyone was raiding those coins.
    “He is a jerk,” Amber said. “Let me have a beer, then.”
    We had a cheap foam cooler filled with ice and sodas and a few beers. I opened three bottles and passed them around. Amber
     tooksome of Jamie’s pot as she handed his glasses back to him. He put them on and leaned back.
    We sat there, watching the Baja sky, listening to the sounds of the empty night: waves breaking over the rocks, wind rustling
     sand and fire, and every so often tires echoing off the pavement up on the road.
    Amber did have a point about F. He hadn’t always been so bad. In fact, at first, I sort of liked him. He established an account
     for Jamie at this place that made hamburgers — Bimbo Burgers they were called — miniature hamburgers that were outrageous.
     Jamie could eat eight at a time, no sweat. I could eat four or five when I was hungry. Any time we wanted, and especially
     on our way back from surfing, we could stuff ourselves with those little hamburgers. That had been cool on F’s part.
    There were other things as well. One time F took Jamie, Greg Scott, and me to this all-you-can-eat smorgasbord. It was after
     surfing, and F insisted on taking us. He paid, and then had to go run some errands. Jamie and Greg and I got down to business,
     going for the roast beef first, with mashed potatoes. We each had two plates of that, and then went back for turkey plates.
     By that time I was stuffed, but I just had to get some desert, German chocolate cake. But Jamie wasn’t finished. He went back
     for ham, and then had two salads, and three deserts. When F came back from whatever he was doing, the manager of the place
     was at our table telling Jamie that he couldn’t come back. Greg and I couldn’t help cracking up.
    Jamie looked sort of embarrassed, when F intervened and said, “What are you talking about? Isn’t this all you can eat?”
    The proprietor said, yes, it was, but there were limits, and Jamie had exceeded them.
    “What limits?” F said.
    “Look, I don’t want no trouble, okay, but this boy isn’t welcome here again.”
    “Your food tastes like shit anyway,” F said. “C’mon, guys.”
    He followed us out of the big room that was the restaurant, but stopped right in the entryway that separated the eating part
     from the lobby. And there, before the manager, the staff, and the patrons, he lifted his leg and shook it as if there were
     something stuck high up in his pants, all the while cutting a huge fart.
    We were in the eighth grade and thought that was the funniest thing that would ever happen in our lives. Greg Scott fell on
     the ground he was laughing so hard. My stomach hurt the next day, I’d laughed so much. But when I told my older brother, he
     didn’t think it was that funny. He said it might have been funny if I had done it, or Jamie or Greg, but he said it wasn’t
     funny when a grown man acted like a kid. Something’s off, he’d said.
    It was later that I understood what my brother meant. It was like F had missed the day when they taught you boundaries or
     something. He seemed to understand how to act around adults, but around kids he tried to be one of us, and he wasn’t, no way.
     So it was inevitable that things would go wrong when this dipshit