We Were Here

“And then after a short pause he said: ‘Anyway, sir, Mrs. Nichols told me I needed to get someone to rehearse with since tryouts are comin’ up soon.’” 

Miguel recalls Diego’s ability to fabricate very believable lies on short notice. In the above case, Diego is congratulating the school principal, who intends to discipline Diego and Miguel for fighting in the school hallway. Diego gives his best wishes to the principal on his wedding anniversary and tells him that Miguel was helping him to rehearse for a role in the play, West Side Story.

“Lemme ask you something: If you send a normal kid to a group home with a bunch of dummies for nine months what’s more likely to happen?” 

Upon arrival at the Lighthouse group home, Miguel feels that he is far more intelligent than the rest of the residents. He feels that he will not be helped, but rather intellectually hindered, by his sentence. 

“And he spit on me.” 

Determined to maintain his cool exterior, Miguel mutters the word “bitches” in response to being introduced to the other residents. Mong responds by spitting at him twice. When Miguel fights back, the other residents look away in fear.

“‘It’s called lookin’ out, dumb-ass,’ Rene said. 

Following the incident with Mong, two residents approach Miguel in the backyard to warn him of the boy’s history of excessive violence. Miguel dismisses them, asking why they think he cares about this story; Rene explains that they were attempting to help him.

“They said only a bike thief like me would read books in a group home.” 

While some of the group-home residents brag about the magnitude of their crimes, Miguel purports himself to have been sentenced as a result of having stolen a bike. The reader suspects that this may not be the case.

“I’m gonna try and read every single book they got on the bookshelf in the game room.” 

Aloof and isolated from the other residents, Miguel seeks to immerse himself in reading in order to pass the time of his sentence in the group home. He will seek to emulate Malcolm X, who Jaden told Miguel learned as much as possible while incarcerated.

“Next Sunday, when Jenny and Jaden bring me in the office to call home, I’m gonna dial a fake number.” 

The group home counselor and therapist have each boy call their family each Sunday. When Miguel dials his mother’s number, there’s no answer. Miguel envisions his mother sitting at the kitchen table, hearing his voice on the answering machine and choosing not to answer the call. 

“‘I’m leaving,’ he said. ‘One week from today.’” 

Mong appears in Miguel’s room one night; Miguel assumes that the other boy has come to assault him again. Instead, Mong states that he is absconding from the group home and would like to invite Miguel to join him in the escape. 

“She was around nineteen or twenty with short choppy green and black hair and big round eyes.”

Mong, Miguel, and Rondell escape from the group home. Mong’s cousin, Mei-li, agrees to pick them up in her car and transport them toward the Mexican border. Although the boys eventually leave when they doubt her intentions to do so, Miguel is impressed by how smart and beautiful Mei-li is.

“‘Tell me something, boys,’ she’d start, ‘why are you two always going after each other?’ 

Miguel recalls the frequency with which his mother tried to address the issue of the brothers’ frequent physical fights. He notes that things often got out of control when he and his brother had fistfights, particularly after their father had been declared MIA. 

“‘Cause first of all they did something bad to get put away, and second everybody in their family is disappointed, and third you start to wonder if maybe that’s really who you are.” 

Mong explains to Miguel that he is a fierce fighter because he doesn’t care about what happens to him. Miguel understands this concept, and wonders if all group home residents feel the same about themselves.  

“Was there such a thing as a Mexican surfer?” 

After Mong’s death, Miguel and Rondell spend time at Venice Beach. Miguel observes some boys surfing, and wonders if this is a sport that might ever be available to him; later, Jaden advises the boy that he has a good friend who is Mexican and is an excellent surfer. 

“I pretended like it was a ceremony about Mong. Or my pop. Or something with Diego.” 

The boys happen into a diverse group of people playing bongos on the beach at sunset, and are invited to join. Miguel is transported by the peaceful sense of communality and spirituality that pervades the atmosphere.

“He looked down at the straps of his bag, said: ‘If you gonna leave me then just say it.’”

Rondell, the product of an abusive upbringing, has a chronic fear of abandonment. He mistakes Miguel’s silence following their loss of Mong for the boy’s plan to leave him behind; Miguel assures him that this is not the case.

“Still, man, I’m pretty sure I’d remember Rondell leaning over his damn Bible like this, scanning a finger across words he couldn’t read.” (“How a Normal Conversation Goes When You’re Talking to Rondell,” 

Although Rondell’s low cognition level and naiveté often annoy Miguel, he is taken by the other boy’s dedication to pretending to read the Bible. Functionally illiterate, Rondell spends time daily scanning his finger across words that he’s not actually able to comprehend. 

“Who had their entire lives zipped up in bags stashed back at the baseball field.” 

Miguel and Rondell are excited about attending the fraternity party to which they are invited by Flaca and her friends. Miguel notes that the guests represent an array of social classes: college students, high school kids, and Mexican “hoochies”; however, he notes that he and Rondell are the only homeless group-home absconders in attendance. 

“For the first time since I met him I thought maybe Rondell was better off locked up.” 

When a fraternity boy at the party makes a comment indicating that he intends to steal Flaca from Miguel, Rondell responds by flying into a violent rage. He beats the individual past the point of unconsciousness and powerfully assaults other guests who attempt to restrain him. Subsequently, he appears dazed and unaware of his behavior.

“I messed up, Rondo. Let somebody take it.”

Miguel is humiliated when he realizes that Flaca and her friends have stolen the Lighthouse petty cash money from his duffel bag. He is reluctant to tell Rondell, and merely refrains from eating for several days in order to reserve cash to buy food for his friend. Finally, he has no recourse but to tell Rondell the truth.

“This was probably the best day I’d had since my moms dropped me off at Juvi in the first place and they led me down the hall, away from her, and I thought it might be the last time I’d ever see her.”

As the boys work their way northward following the coast, they re-visit the location where they saw Mong swim away for the last time. They memorialize the occasion by carving their names on a boulder under Mong’s name; Miguel swims in the ocean and recalls the love with which his friend regarded this spot. For the first time in months, he experiences joy at “Mong’s beach” (318). 

“I just knew her hug was trying to tell me I was still her grandson, even after everything I did, and it made me sick about myself.” 

Miguel’s grandmother has an emotional scene with him while he and Rondell are staying in the shack and working with his grandfather. She tells him that she knows Diego’s death was an accident, that she prays for him daily, and that she is so sorry for him. Miguel feels undeserving of her sympathy. 

“Your brother would want you to go on living your life. He loved you more than anyone.” 

Grandma has another talk with Miguel about the incident with Diego. She encourages him to forgive himself, but Miguel is unable to do so. Rondell and the reader remain unaware of the details of the incident at this point, though it’s soon revealed.

“This time our messing around isn’t just messing around because I trip and fall with the knife and my head bangs the cupboard door and when he goes to tackle me there’s the knife and he falls on it and it goes in him.” 

Miguel devotes this section of the narrative to describing the specifics of the previously vague incident involving Diego. His brother died as a result of falling on a steak knife held by Miguel as a result of horseplay in the family kitchen. 

“And I thought how I was saying sorry to him, but I was also saying sorry to Diego and to my moms and to my grandma and grandpa.”

When Miguel finally describes accidentally killing Diego to Rondell, Rondell attributes it to the work of the devil. Miguel responds by assaulting Rondell to the point of drawing blood; subsequently, he is mortified by his behavior and apologizes to the other boy.