I was the one who got stabbed, not Leonard, who was (as they say) the intended target, and no, it wasn't about drugs or a girl or even the Dodgers, it was just (as they also say) one of those things.

We were standing outside the Wendy's that used to be a Tastee-Freez. The traffic on Whittier Boulevard steady, purposeful. Mid-day, mid-week, the sun beating down on us like a punishment for what we weren't doing with our lives. We knew the guy who would eventually stab me instead of Leonard. He'd gone to our high school, a year older than us, defined by his Buddha girth and passion for firecrackers. He was always throwing them out of his car at younger kids and laughing. He was also always trying to sell you a brick, but at some point we got too old for firecrackers and moved on. Ricky Lowers, however, didn't.

This was a couple of years after graduating. We hadn't seen Ricky up close since then, though we'd heard he was around, not doing much, that familiar drift. When he pulled up in his same dark brown Buick Regal (clearly a parent hand-me-down car), he looked amped and committed to following something through. Straightaway, he walked up to Leonard.

"You owe me money, fool," Ricky accused.

"For what, fool?"

"For those firecrackers. Back in high school. You never paid."

"What? That's ancient history. And I don't ever remember buying no firecrackers from you."

"I wrote everything down in my notebook. 'One brick: Mendoza, comma L.'"

"Mendoza, comma L?" Leonard laughed. "Show me. Then we'll talk."

"I don't have it with me. But I remember. I remember everything. Twenty bucks you owe."

That was when there was a tussle and a knife appeared and I stepped in and the knife entered my left side like a motherfucker.

"Damn," said Ricky, realizing. "Wrong dude."

I crumbled to the ground, blood already pretty prominent, a vivid leaking. The concrete burned my bare skin. Back in high school we would come here, when it was a Tastee-Freez, and hang out, Friday and Saturday nights, nothing ahead of us and everything behind suddenly erased.    

Ricky took off. Leonard drove me to the hospital. Fortunately the knife blade didn't encounter any organs or anything serious. They said I was lucky. Just a lot of blood. The cops arrived and asked who. I said some random guy I didn't know.

So now I have a scar, a story. The ladies will want to know how, and, depending on my mood or the number of beers I've had, I'll add a little here, a little there, make it a better story. Because that's what we all do, right? Live a story one way and then tell it another.

There is one more thing. A few years later I saw Ricky at a bar. He came up to me. Drunk but coherent. He thanked me for not ratting him out. Said he remembered. Said he remembered everything.

"Here," said Ricky, reaching into his old man's wallet. "It's all I got."

He handed me a $20 bill.

We sat there and listened to the music—Van Halen, "Running With the Devil"—filling the bar, filling us.

"Do you want to see the scar?"

"Sure."

And I lifted my shirt and showed Ricky the scar and without asking he right away touched it, tracing his finger over the still-raw pinkness like it was evidence of something—of God, of magic, of forgiveness, of his own small part in a world that, most of the time, wanted nothing to do with him.



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