He heard Pim before he saw anything. "Medrano!" Pim yelled, over everybody, and somebody else said, "Yo, the corner guy," and the crowd sort of shifted and let him through, the way crowds do around somebody they have decided is a story, and he got close enough to read it.
Varsity. Brackett, Torin. Folau, Tuli. Further down. Medrano, Octavio.
He read it three times. Then he stepped back to let somebody else see, and found himself next to Torin, who had been standing against the opposite wall with his arms crossed, not pushing in.
"You're on it," Tavo said.
"I know. I saw it from here." Torin looked at him. "You're on it too."
"Yeah."
They stood there for a second.
"Does he still go to that park," Torin said. "In the mornings."
"He didn't go Tuesday. Or Wednesday." Tavo hesitated. "I think he'll go Monday."
Torin nodded. He looked at the floor.
"Ten to six," Tavo said. "He gets there at six-fifteen. He's off at six."
Torin did not say anything. He pushed himself off the wall and walked down the hall toward the parking lot. At the door he stopped and turned around and said, "Get new shoes," and went out, and Tavo stood in the hallway and laughed out loud by himself, and three freshmen looked at him like he had lost his mind.
They went to the Big 5 on Pacheco that night, after the truck was cleaned and the cooler scrubbed out, Rosalba still in her apron because she forgot to take it off. The kid who worked the shoe wall measured Tavo's foot with the metal slider and said, "Ten and a half," and Tavo said, "I'm a nine and a half," and the kid said, "You were a nine and a half," and Rosalba said, "Ha," very loudly, so the whole store turned around.