Fifteen Minutes: CRLS.: The Kids Next Door

Ramon* [note about names being changed] lies on a bench, smoking, his head on his patch-covered backpack. He squints into the sun, toward his friends.

"Why the hell are you going home?" he asks.

Carrie hops over and holds out her hand to him. He smacks it, and she turns to go.

"Bye, Ramon," she calls over her shoulder. "Be good this weekend. Don't die."

Other kids move to slap Ramon on his leg, head, combat boot.

"You're all going to get drunk," he shouts as the group heads down the steps to Broadway. "And I have to take the SATs."

He blows smoke up at the sky.

At 2:25 p.m., when Cambridge Rindge and Latin lets out for the day, the afternoon sun hits the school full in the face. Students congregate at the bus stops on Broadway and Cambridge St., on the steps of the Cambridge Public Library and, most of all, under the overpass--a second story passage that connects one of the school's concrete buildings to the other. A Korean-speaking contingent sits apart from the chaos, over on the east side of the buildings; the studious head home straight away; the punks take over the bench by the school's orange front doors. Except for Ramon, a light-skinned African-American, they are all white.

Walking toward Harvard Yard, the boys pull ahead.

"Wait for us," Carrie cries after them. She and Beth run to catch up. Both in tenth grade, both shouldering black courier bags that bang against their legs as they hurry, both planning to get drunk this weekend, the two have been best friends since May. An adamant vegan, Carrie wears her blondish hair in dreads and her jeans safety-pinned close to her legs. Her eyes are rimmed with liner and when she speaks, it's in a voice much younger than her words. Beth has pink hair, purple hair, green hair, blue hair, studs up the sides of both ears and a silver barbell through the top of her chin. Her tank top displays lines of self-inflicted cuts.

"You walk so slowly," the guys tell them.

Beth and Carrie fall into step behind the black-clad boys. Nearing Quincy St., the girls spot a classmate and her oversized L.L. Bean book bag.

"Annie!" Beth hollers as the crew crosses to the south side of Broadway. "You walking to Harvard Square?"

Annie looks like she wishes they'd ignored her.

Still: "Yeah."

The group enters the Yard by Sever. It's 3:15 p.m. on a Friday and most of the other people out and around are taking pictures. Leading, the three boys take up the width of the path. They laugh loud. Beth and Carrie follow, discussing that night's party possibility. Annie brings up the rear. When she waves goodbye at Au Bon Pain, only Beth takes any notice.

"Bye," she says.

The boys take their leave at the T station.

"You're leaving?" Beth sounds dismayed.

"Gotta go home," they call as the escalator carries them down.

The girls sit on the lower level of the Pit's granite bleachers. They rest their elbows on the bags on their laps. Beth lights a cigarette. A big black guy called Gerbil bends over from an upper bench, brandishes his plastic cup.

"Kick in a dollar, you'll get three cups." He looks at Carrie. "I'll let you swill for free, though."

He jumps onto their bench but stands on it, leaning back and looking down at them. He looks about 20 and he reeks of beer. He passes Carrie his cup.

"So when're you all gonna let me stay at your house one night?" he wants to know.

They demur. Carrie hands him the cup.

"You like?" He points to the drink. "It's hard, living on the street. This chick from Lincoln I know, though, she's buying me a hotel room." He laughs. "Got another cigarette?" he asks Beth. "Know what that is?" He points to a patch sewed to the thigh of his black pants. "It's the rebel flag. It's the symbol of the Confederacy." He laughs again, takes a drag of his cigarette. "I love to piss people off."

"I didn't pass out," a girl beside them protests. "I just fell asleep real fast."

Carrie stands. "I'm hungry."

"You should get some of this," Gerbil says.

"Want to go to Ma Soba?" Beth asks.

They lift their bag straps over their heads and make for Dunster St.

"If you ever want some help with your dreads, just let me know," Gerbil calls after them.

At Ma Soba, Beth pours herself a cup of water while Carrie puts her hands up to her cheeks and agonizes over what to order. Usually she'll get rice, but today she's hungry. And she just got paid yesterday.

"Do the stir-fried vegetables have any egg or dairy products?"

They do not. Carrie pays with bills from a silver plastic wallet. Beth comes over and hands her a glass of water. "Mambo Number Five" plays on the loudspeaker, and Carrie bops her shoulders and beats a pattern on her leg with one hand. Beth wiggles her hips; the spikes on her low-slung belt jut from side to side. Neither smiles.

Sitting down, Carrie asks Beth why she's not hungry.

"Does smoking like take away your appetite?"

"Yeah. I think."

"You could go on a diet by smoking!"

"Yeah."

"You'll like develop ulcers and get cancer."

"I'm not drummer for my band anymore," Beth informs her.

"Is that bad?"

"I don't know."

"I heard you wanted to sing," Carrie says.

Beth fingers a package slip that her mother instructed her to deal with.

"I wonder what this is," she says. "Will you come with me to get it?"

Carrie nods. "Maybe it's a lace teddy from Steve!"

"After, let's go to Newbury."

"Street?"

"Yeah, Newbury Street," Beth laughs. "That's like a rich people street. Newbury Comics."

Oh.

Carrie breaks the silence: "Oh my god, Gerbil? He cannot spend the night at my house!"

"I know, so he could like rape you or something!"

But Beth worries that Steve may have showed up in the Pit while they've been eating. Though she figures they could try to find him at Copley, she'd rather not have to. Steve is 20; Beth does not know his last name. They met this summer, just hooked up last night for the first time. She urges Carrie to finish and they hurry back to the Pit.

Steve is there, leaning against the glass wall of the T station. His shoulders slope; he holds his arms folded across his chest; his blond hair pokes out from under his backward baseball cap. He smiles, goofy, shy, maybe sheepish, when he sees Beth. Beth grins and grins. Carrie stands off to the side, crossing her legs and putting one All-star sneaker on top of the other. Beth and Steve talk for a good seven minutes. They hug. Beth moves over to Carrie; they stand conferring. Steve turns his back to them to talk to his friends. The girls leave, waving goodbye as they go.

Crossing JFK Street, Beth squeezes Carries arm. "He has little dimples," she says. "I wonder what he's doing now?"

"Maybe he's going to fuck someone else," Carrie offers. "Just 'cause you're cute doesn't mean you're innocent."

"Nooooo," Beth defends him. "Know what he did last night?"

"You told me," Carrie says, but Beth pays that no attention.

"He pushed me into a bunch of leaves and then picked them all off me!"

She squeals with delight. Carrie jumps and gives her a hug. Outside the Mt. Auburn Street post office, they buy a copy of Spare Change. A man holding the door asks for money. Carrie gives him a dollar.

"If you've got money, you might as well give it to everyone," she says.

"Exactly," Beth agrees.

It turns out the package comes from Beth's mother's friend Harriet, who lives in Guam and has no real reason to be sending Beth anything. Beth hasn't seen her since she was six.

"If it's money, I'm gonna like pee on myself," Beth says.

Carrie helps her tear off the brown postal paper. Harriet has sent her a jar of pink body glitter and some brightly colored nail polish, rolled up in two Guam T-shirts. Carrie can't stop laughing. She holds a T-shirt up to her chest and bats her eyelashes.

"Steve, do I look sexy?" she says.

Beth puts the teenybopper makeup and T-shirts in her bag and recycles the package.

"At least there's bubble paper," she says, handing half of it to Carrie.

Wringing and popping the bubbles on their way out the door, Carrie turns to Beth.

"Does she like know who you are anymore?" she asks.

At 2:25 p.m., when Cambridge Rindge and Latin lets out for the day, the afternoon sun hits the school full in the face. Plain-clothes security guards watch kids pour out onto the street. On Broadway, students line up against the wall of the Gustave M. Solomons Transportation Career Center to wait for the bus. A block further east, Angelo's Pizza overflows. Alex and his friends push their way in regardless.

On the wall a sign reads, "CRLS students will be served only during scheduled lunches." Last year, Rindge kids weren't allowed to even go to Angelo's because the management didn't call the school when they knew that students were skipping. Everybody still went, though. Alex and his friends sit down in the window. Two girls walk in, and the boy closest to the door calls, "Come here." The girl has long black pigtails; her tiny legs show off flared cargo pants.

"Lend me a quarter," he tells her.

She complies. He makes his way to the counter. Across the restaurant, someone yells, "Hey, faggot!" When the boy comes back to the window, he is carrying a $1.25 slice of pizza smothered in ketchup.

"Ewww," the girl says.

"Don't be spitting all over my pizza," he cries and moves away.

Having secured a brown paper bag of french fries, Alex heads back outside. He wears Timberlands, baggy black jeans and a big black sweatshirt. He is very tall. He also clearly runs the show. He walks over to the curb to talk to Jason, who is sitting on a short purple-framed bike, one foot on the ground and the other on a pedal. A bunch of girls on the corner sing, at full-throttle to no one in particular, "Happy birthday dear whoever." Then a short, stocky one jumps into the middle of the gang and, turning in circles and waving her slice, chants, "I got pizza and you can't have it."

"Why don't you all chill?" Alex calls over.

"She's got ADD," one of the other girls says.

"No, I don't!" shouts the girl from circle center.

Alex and Jason laugh. Jason adjusts the white bandana he wears folded like a sweatband across his forehead. A boy they call Crazylikes emerges from inside and walks to the curb. He gestures toward one of the shrieking girls, who has a bright blue comb stuck in the back of her hair.

"She kissed Leroy and Tony on the same day."

"That's fucking nasty," Alex says.

Then Crazylikes notices a bus filling with people one block back toward school. He takes off sprinting, the yellow soles of his sneakers flashing up from the pavement. As the bus pulls away from the curb, Crazylikes darts out between two parked cars and runs directly at the front of the bus, waving his arms. Alex and Jason cheer, but the bus swerves out into another lane and keeps moving. Crazylikes trudges back toward his friends. More guys come out of Angelo's. The young Spanish guy who works the counter emerges behind them and beckons Alex around to the side of the store. When Alex comes back, everyone wants to know what he wanted.

"Basically--I don't feel like going through the whole story--but just chill."

They press him for more. He explains that the Spanish guy's afraid his boss might fire him if the kids keep making so much noise, since they're all friendly with him.

"We are awfully loud," Alex tells them.

Minutes pass. Alex, Jason, Crazylikes and four of their friends set out westward down Broadway. Two ride bikes; five carry Eastpak backpacks; all wear baggy jeans--seven 15-year-old black guys sauntering toward Area Four, the East Cambridge teen center. They discuss bicycles and basketball. Jason tells the others about a kid in his class who told a teacher to shut up.

Alex sighs. "He's stupid. He's not a bad kid, but he's trying to be a bad kid."

"He's a dumb nigga," declares one of the other boys.

It's 3:45 p.m. by the time the group reaches Area Four, but the center isn't open to them yet; preteens have it until 6 p.m. They sit outside, on the edge of the basketball courts. After all their talk, only one of the boys joins the game in progress. Alex sits apart from the rest, on the yellow railing of the wheelchair ramp. One of the guys moves over and leans his elbows by Alex.

"You trying out for basketball this year?" he asks.

"Yeah. Want to be a shooting guard," Alex says.

"On JV?"

"On JV or varsity! I want to be a shooting guard no matter what."

On the field next to the courts, a bunch of nine-year-olds do football exercises. 1-2-3-5, 1-2-3-6, 1-2-3-7, they chant. The basketball bounces against the court floor.

"Look at Billy with his Mobb Deep impression, playing b-ball," the boy beside Alex taunts the one kid who joined the game.

Billy comes over and spits up at the kid on the railing. His target moves to spit back, but Billy jumps away and the frothy white wad of saliva drops to the asphalt.

"That took you mad long," Billy laughs, screwing up his face in exaggerated imitation.

Alex smiles. He jumps down onto the court.

"I'm out."

"I'm out too," Billy says.

"You just didn't want to lose," the slow spitter tells him.

They make plans to be back at 6:30 p.m. But Alex is already half-way across the field and, Billy must run to catch up.

At 2:25 p.m., when Cambridge Rindge and Latin lets out for the day and the afternoon sun hits the school full in the face, most of the West Cambridge kids rush to soccer practices or piano lessons. Lunch time, on the other hand, brings them to Broadway Market. Hordes of them snatch at overpriced pastries and clog the check-out aisles. The girls wear head scarves, flared jeans, platform shoes, Adidas. The boys wear Tommy Hilfiger, fleeces, Fila.

Among the crowd at the deli counter, two tall, reedy girls hold each other by both hands.

"I think I have a social disorder," says the first one. "You know that commercial?" She lowers her voice to mimic it, "'Are you afraid to be with friends?' Well, that's me."

Her friend laughs. "You have ink on your forehead, too."

Over by the front windows, a blond girl whispers to her friends gathered around the tables, "Oh my God, did you see Carrie?"

The punks don't often make Broadway Market appearances.

A girl sitting on a pumpkin spills her bottled water down her shirt.

"Oh my god, I'm so happy that wasn't soda?" the girl beside her cries.

"I know, if that was soda?"

Outside, two more trendsters discuss an upcoming election.

"Will you vote for me?" one asks. "I really want people to vote for me."

A third stumbles out the door, white paper bag firmly in hand.

"I made it out alive," she breathes.

They head back to school. Lunch only lasts 25 minutes.

After school, it's dark in the narrow corridor under the overpass--nevermind that the sun turns the school's front doors into glowing tangerine beacons. Christy and Tamika lean on a wall in the shade, smoking Newports. Christy's shirt says "Play Soccer," but she's skipping practice today. Their friend Erica stops by on her way to catch a bus to work and bums a cigarette off Christy. Under a nearby tree, eight guys stand in a circle, freestyling.

"Look at them!" Christy shouts. She bends down, starts snapping her fingers. Her long, dirty blond ponytail falls over her shoulder.

"I have a better chance than they do," Tamika says. "There're so many boy rappers; we don't need no more."

Erica laughs, then puts her pale hand on her stomach. Her nails are very long.

"Oh God, he's kicking," she says.

Fifteen, almost lost in her oversized orange polo, Erica hardly looks 6 1/2 months pregnant. But she is, and she can't button her pants all the way anymore.

"Ohhh, mine's kicking too," Christy says, grabbing her stomach.

Erica slaps at her.

"No, really, I'm pregnant. Can't you tell?"

Christy pulls her shirt flat and wiggles her hips.

"I want to get drunk this weekend!" she says.

"I always want to get drunk, but it never happens," Tamika responds.

"I haven't gotten drunk in a long time," Erica says. She leans back, thinking. "A looong time."

"That's good, though; that's good," Christy tells her.

Tamika agrees. A large, very pretty black girl, Tamika has a stud in her nose and a tongue pierce that winks as she talks. She's hanging around because she's hoping to see Lenny, the boy she likes.

Erica has to go.

"She shouldn't smoke," Tamika says when she's gone.

"Neither should we. It's gonna kill us when were older," Christy responds.

"It's killing us now."

But Christy has spotted a girl she fought last year, and she just laughs. The girl was a senior but couldn't graduate because of the fight.

"When I'm a senior," Christy tells her friend. "I'm not messin' with no one; I'm getting out of this school."

"Bye, Bo," she calls over the wall, to a boy who waves.

Tamika leans in. "There's a lot of rumors going around about him and his girlfriend."

"Like what?"

"Like that he ate her out and they had sex and stuff."

Shocked, Christy bounds down the steps after Bo. She returns, out of breath, three minutes later.

"It's true! I went up to him and said, 'I know it's none of my business, but I've known you since kindergarten, and I've been hearing these rumors, and I just wanted to ask you if they're true."

"You've known him since kindergarten?"

"Yeah."

"I'd kill myself." Tamika laughs. "But I guess that's why. When I asked him, he was like, 'No, not really.' And I was like, 'Not really? It's either yes or no.' So he said 'Well then, no.' He was lyin'!"

Christy leans over the wall to stop a girl named Jasmine, who she thought got punched that afternoon, but that turns out to have been a different Jasmine.

Straightening up, she informs Tamika, "Everyone I know who doesn't go to Cambridge Rindge and Latin, they're all like, 'I wanna come down and see the chick fights.' That's what this school is known for."

"Know why I don't like Cambridge?" Tamika asks. She's lived here her whole life. "It was okay at first, but everyone talks shit about you."

Christy agrees. "They're all two-faced."

"They pretend like they're your best friend, but they're not."

"No."

Another girl walks by them.

"She's so skinny. I used to be jealous of her 'cause she's so skinny."

"I used to want to be skinny," Christy says. "But then I found out that guys don't like skinny girls no more. They like some meat on the bones!"

They laugh.

Tamika says, "My boyfriend, I don't want to go out with him no more. Lenny gave me his number today. Well, he gave his number to his boy Chris to give to me... Did you hear that Pilot's going to some college for a whole day next week? I don't think it's fair. Leadership don't go nowhere."

"That's 'cause we're known for all the worst stuff, like all the drug dealers who don't ever go to classes--they have perfect attendance but don't go to any classes!"

"It's so easy to skip at this school."

"That's leadership!"

"Do you know Lenny's girlfriend? Is she a ho?"

Christy giggles. "Well, I don't know if she's a ho, but over the summer she lost her virginity and since then she can't stop fucking."

"That's a ho!" Tamika seems pleased. "I didn't lose it and I'm not going to lose it--until I go out with a boy I really like."

Christy shouts over the wall to a passing friend, "Where'd you just come from? Detention?"

Tamika pulls out the scrap of paper with Lenny's number on it and shows it to Christy.

"I know that number," Christy says. "That's not Lenny's pager!"

Tamika's face falls. "I'm glad I'm not in love with him or anything," she says. "If he's giving me his girlfriend's pager number."

"It's not even his girlfriend's pager number; it's his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend's pager number!"

"That's fucked up."

"It is."

"Well, he knows I know he's a player," Tamika rationalizes. "Does his girlfriend know?"

"I don't think she does."

"She need to know."

"No she doesn't," Christy says. "Let her get played; let her get played."

"Yeah. I don't really care about her. Lenny and I could never have a future together."

Christy says, "I'm hungry. Wanna go get some food?"

"I don't have any money. I gave it away."

"To who?"

"To Lenny. I was being nice. I gave him $5 at lunch to buy a chicken sandwich. He came out with two and a soda. But he gave me a kiss and a hug."

They sigh.

"Will you go to Angelo's with me, though?" Christy asks.

"Yeah. You can buy me something."

At 2:25 p.m., when Cambridge Rindge and Latin lets out for the day, the afternoon sun hits the school full in the face, and only the punk kids are there to greet it. Today someone brought a tiny radio. Carrie flips to 103.3 FM.

"I love fucking oldies!" Beth yells. "Oh my god, I'm gonna die. Does anyone want a pretzel?"

Carrie goes and crouches next to her, against the bleached white cement wall, glaring in the sun.

"Do they have egg in them?" she asks.

"You can't be a vegan in 1999," a boy calls over from his spot on the bench. "Even the vegetables are covered in beeswax."

"That's a valid point," a boy standing nearby says, scratching his chin. "I'd like to subscribe to your weekly newsletter."

The doubter rushes at him. They mock-spar, and everyone laughs. Randy, a lanky boy who wears his hair in a mohawk, pulls out a fake black mustache. The doubter grabs it from him, sticks it on and starts jabbing the air with his fists. He hands it back a minute later.

"Your nose smells bad," he tells Randy.

Randy curls the mustache into a sinister little shape, slicks his mohawk to one side and starts dancing to Elvis's "Return to Sender." He laughs and sticks the prop back in his pocket. Beth jumps up and runs down the steps to say goodbye to some preppy kids who are leaving for the day. She hugs them; they hug back, gingerly, avoiding the spikes on her vest.

"Beth just loves getting with everyone," Randy says when she gets back.

"Fuck you!"

"Fuck you. I think fuck you is overrated now; everyone says it. Why not fist you?"

"Fist you?"

"It sounds more profane," he explains.

There's a new kid hanging out in front of school today: Max, a chubby ninth grader, has not been punk long--he's only stapled spikes to half of his denim jacket. Randy turns to him.

"I have a bunch of CDs I'm gonna let you borrow. I'm going to say this again--I can't stress it enough--it's more about the music than the clothes. I was in the scene for a year before I started buying patches.

Max nods.

"Now, the Sex Pistols suck, in my opinion."

The girls disagree; Randy ignores them.

"Rancid blows."

A chorus of concurrence.

"But Operation Ivy's okay. The Clash is good."

"Oh, the Clash is like orgasm, I swear to God," Beth breaks in.

"Are they old?" Carrie asks.

"I don't know; I think maybe."

"Yeah," Randy continues. "They're pretty good."

Beth and Carrie get ready to go. Max decides to go with them. The three walk through Harvard Yard to Seven Eleven. Max wants "one of those buckets of soda."

"If you don't put any ice in it, it's like your pancreas is gonna burst," he says.

The girls wander over to the alcohol case.

"They never have cider!" Beth exclaims.

Heading back to the Pit, Carrie spits her soda against the windows at Abercrombie and Fitch. Then she has to go home. Beth and Max settle into the granite bleachers by themselves. Beth is not having a good day. Her friend Ingrid won't admit that she's mad at her, but Beth was supposed to go hang out at her house after school and Ingrid left without her. And Beth wrote her a letter that Ingrid never responded to. Worse, Steve's friends have been giving him shit about fooling around with a 15-year-old, and Beth isn't sure when she'll see him again.

"I wonder what they had in mind when they designed this place," Max says.

Beth looks away.

"The cops get mad when you're just sitting here...I wonder why they designed it this way if this is exactly what they didn't want, if they were always going to be asking you to leave."

"You've been asked to leave?" Beth asks.

"Yeah."

"I've never been asked to leave."

Max asks her about the safety pins through the top of her ear.

"I did this one today in science class," she says.

"Did that hurt?"

Beth squirms a little.

"I have this thing about pain," she says and shows him the inside of her left arm, where she's etched a pattern of cuts--with razor blades, never knives. "Knives hurt," she explains.

She shrugs. "My mom knows about it, and my psychiatrist knows about it."

"I've done stuff like that," Max says. "Once I started scratching myself and couldn't stop--"

"Want to go to Hubba Hubba?" Beth interrupts him.

The two set off for Central Square in silence.