We Were Here

After an unsuccessful attempt at hitchhiking, the boys are overheated, hungry, and exhausted, yet uncomplaining. Miguel speculates that perhaps each of them believes that they deserve to suffer as punishment for their misdeeds, in order to “make the world seem balanced again” (108). They arrive at a university campus, and Miguel recalls Jaden encouraging him to go to college because of his history of good grades.

Upon their arrival at a bus terminal, a clerk helps them to select a bus route in response to Mong’s request for “[s]omething cheap that goes along the coast” (109). They set off for Santa Cruz. Mong refuses to eat any of the vending machine snacks that Miguel purchases. Miguel tells Mong that Mei-Li probably would have been interested in him if he hadn’t been “so much younger. And […] Mexican” (110). The group members all fall into a dead sleep immediately upon sitting down in the bus. 

The bus driver awakens the group hours later, when they arrive at Davenport, the last stop along the beach and several miles north of Santa Cruz. Miguel recalls a wonderful day trip with Diego and his father to this area prior to his father’s deployment. Mong contemplates their next move, and announces that they can build a fire on the beach, where they will eat and sleep. Miguel feels that they’ve awakened on the set of a horror movie and anticipates the arrival of an armed madman; he reacts by thinking, “Yo, bring it” (113).

The tone of the adventure takes a marked change when the boys encounter an elderly, racist clerk in a small local store. The clerk advises Rondell to avoid the nectarines unless he wishes to buy “every single one his grubby hands touched” (113). He also tells Miguel that the store does not accept pesos. While Miguel is surprised by the overtness of the man’s behavior, Mong threatens to steal food and leave him tied up in the freezer if he does not refrain from further insults. The clerk, addressing Mong as “Kung Fu Theater,” proceeds to call the police; Mong pulls the phone out of the wall. He advises the other boys to select food supplies while he gags and ties the clerk. Miguel reflects that the man’s behavior is wrong but wonders about the correctness of assaulting an elderly person. Upon their departure, Mong advises the clerk he will not throw him in the freezer, but hopes that the clerk will “[t]ry to improve [him]self as a person” (116). Mong slaps the man’s face and is irritated when Miguel refuses to do so. They run down the road, and Mong is violently ill once again.

Miguel thinks that he has been changed forever by whatever the unnamed event was in Stockton–now he has been involved in an assault and theft from a store. He thinks that this is ironic, since his parents had always worried that Diego’s impulsivity would lead him to criminal activity. As the boys look up at the night sky, Miguel realizes that one’s life can be “changed forever” (119) by one bad event; anyone can become immoral.

The group arrives at a cave and prepares to spend the night. When Mong is ill again, Miguel asks about the nature of his problem; however, the other boy responds by questioning Miguel about the true nature of his crime. When Miguel attempts to answer, “nothing came out” and he could find no words to explain the “horrible thing I did. To my own family” (123). Miguel is able to express that he is obsessed with thinking about his crime and he experiences a waking dream in which he dives off the Golden Gate Bridge.

Miguel starts to feel that he has been in the cave since time began, yet reflects that he has felt out of place in his own body since the event that occurred in Stockton. He wakes up feeling normal each day, “[a]nd then suddenly it hits me what I did” (125). For the first time, the reader is given a glimpse into the specifics of the offense, but not the identity of the victim. Miguel recalls falling on his back in the family kitchen, getting the wind knocked out of him and seeing blood seeping from his head wound. He recalls holding a big knife, seeing the kitchen table turn over, “[a]nd his eyes—on mine, and then not” (126). He rewinds this scene in his head endlessly and replays it like an old movie; nonetheless, he feels that his only chance for survival is holding all emotion inside. Miguel acknowledges that he has no interest in whether he ever leaves the cave, arrives in Mexico, or whether he lives or dies, and proceeds to write in his journal. 

Rondell and Miguel eat their stolen groceries voraciously, while Mong continues to abstain from food. Miguel realizes that Mong is sneaking away to be sick, and feels guilt for having “used [his] mind” (128) to wish Mong ill health. The boys sit and talk about their past lives, their fears, and their dreams for the future. Rondell fears the devil, whom he feels has caused him to commit actions such as beating a man standing outside a church when he was 11. Miguel admits his fear of spiders. Mong, however, has no more fears. He explains that all humans are “only temporary. When I learned that I realized there’s no reason to be scared” (131).

Miguel comes to the realization that the trio are now “totally free” (131) on the beach. Despite the fact that he is now drunk, Miguel attempts to stand, to go write in his journal. When Rondell points out that there is no judge in Mexico to enforce this directive, Miguel replies that he enjoys his writing and fantasizes that an archeologist may find his journal centuries in the future.

Later in the evening, Miguel reads the case folders that he stole from Jaden’s group-home office. He finds that Mong had been an excellent student until the time of his parents’ death, at which time he became violent. Mong had been shot in the face “from point blank range” (135) at the age of 14 and underwent multiple surgeries. He has suffered major kidney disease since the age of 16, has required hemodialysis every other day, and is awaiting a transplant. His mother suffered from bipolar disorder and his father had made heroic attempts to restore her to health. Upon failing to do so, he shot her in the head while she slept and attempted to kill Mong prior to committing suicide himself. Contemplating the unfairness of the events that had transpired in Mong’s life, Miguel shreds the file and buries the pieces in the dirt.

Upon reading Rondell’s file, Miguel learns that Rondell was an extremely premature infant and born the child of a crack-addicted mother. He was raised by a great-grandmother until her death, when Rondell was 6. An aunt and her partner adopted him; however, the child was removed from their care a year later “under suspicion of male physical and sexual abuse” (137). 

Miguel refrains from reading his own file, merely tearing up the pages and letting them blow away in the wind. He reflects upon the eternity of the ocean and the moon, and realizes that Mong is correct: people are just temporary. Conversely, he decides that “while we were here we were more than just what some file could say” (138). He wonders if the time that he spends watching the stars with Mong and Rondell constitutes his being disloyal to Diego.

Miguel reflects upon the fact that his mother had frequently tried to reason with her sons about their frequent physical altercations. He recalls that they had roughhoused more seriously, and more often, following his father’s death in the military. Diego would assure her that the fights were not “real”(142) because they did not involve punching in the face, and noted that his father and uncle had wrestled as boys. His mother replied that they had never “drawn blood” (141) and asked Diego to look at a gash near Miguel’s eye. While both boys agreed to cease fighting, Miguel could tell that their mother was afraid of them being hurt.

Although Miguel idolizes and loves his older brother, he notes that “Diego’s got this crazy temper” (141) and often forgets about not hitting in the face; nonetheless, Miguel knows that his brother “respects” him if he fights back.

Miguel awakens in the morning to see Mong standing in shallow water near the beach. He finishes the last pages Of Mice and Men and compares himself and his companions to the book’s characters. Miguel feels that Rondell did not give the appearance of someone who had been abused as a child, but that Mong “was touched” (143) by all his traumatic experiences.

The trio decides to hitchhike when they start off again, but a police car pulls over to talk to them. The officer talks to the boys and appears to be studying their faces in comparison to paperwork in a file folder. Miguel and Mong both give false names, while Rondell responds truthfully to the officer’s request for his name. Afraid of being detained due to having absconded from the group home, the three boys run toward the beach when the officer turns around to reach for his radio. The boys watch from behind a dune as reinforcements arrive to search for them, and they remain in hiding.

The group “lay low” in the vicinity of Santa Cruz for one day. After Miguel and Mong decide that they are “small fish” to the police, they decide to walk toward Mexico via the shoreline.

The boys are caught in a small crevice while waiting out a sudden storm. Miguel feels differently about his companions due to his knowledge about their painful backgrounds. The storm is violent and they are all drenched, despite the protection of the boulders on the beach. To distract himself, Miguel pretends that they were “some tropical island like Hawaii, and there was a waterfall above us” (153). They fall asleep, and the storm has passed when they wake that evening. They resume their walk toward Mexico.