On a very uneventful spring night, I was hanging out in my room with Choli and Tommy. We weren’t doing much of anything, but the weight of not being able to do things that normal kids could was dragging me down. That’s why when Tommy said he had to go home, I replied: “I’ll take you!” Choli and Tommy looked at each other, wondering exactly how I was planning to do that.
Acting as casual as I could, I walked into the kitchen and asked my mom if I could borrow her car. She was rightfully scared because I had no license, but at the same time she felt bad because she knew I was old enough to get a driver’s license. I begged her to let me drive Tommy home: “Please—it’s just down the street.”
She caved.
Tommy lived ten minutes from me, and for five brief minutes it was the most exhilarating time of my high school life. I felt free. I felt like anything was possible, even being a regular American teenager just dropping off one of his best friends at home. Then, police lights lit up my rearview mirror. We heard the wailing of a police siren. The guys and I looked at each other in panic. I had been driving the speed limit. There was no reason at all to pull us over. With no choice in the matter, I pulled my mom’s car to the side.
The muscular white police officer walked up to my car, leaned into my driver’s-side window, and flashed his flashlight past me and directly onto Choli’s face, who was in the passenger seat. Squinting his eyes, Choli was confused as to what was going on. The officer started inundating Choli with a bunch of questions:
“What are you smoking? Where are you going? What did you throw out the window back there?”
For clarification, Choli was not smoking and did not throw anything out of any window. Like me, Choli was simply enjoying the spring wind as we drove through West Covina without a care in the world. But unlike me, Choli had a shaved head and a mean mug. And in the late nineties in West Covina, that meant he was a gangbanger and that was enough reason for the cops to pull us over.
Choli respectfully answered every question, explaining that he wasn’t up to anything. This was clearly a case of racial profiling and the officer was after Choli. For a split second, I thought I was going to get away with not having a license. I felt terrible for my cousin, but he didn’t run the risk of being deported like I did. I was secretly happy that all the heat was on him. When the cop realized he wasn’t going anywhere with Choli, he gave up and stood up straight. Then he asked me for “license and registration.”
Shit. My mom never told me where the car registration was, but I had seen enough movies and TV shows to know it should be in the glove compartment. Thank God I was right. I handed the registration to the officer along with my school ID, which was the only form of ID I had at the time. Well, that and my public library card. The officer stared at my big cheesy smile on my West Covina High ID and then sternly asked me for my driver’s license once again. I had no choice but to confess that I didn’t have one.
“Please step out of the vehicle. All of you.”
We sat on the cold sidewalk with our hands behind our backs like criminal delinquents. It’s true that my presence in the United States was questionable, but Choli and Tommy had not done anything wrong. They were good kids. It also helped that the guys had their drivers’ licenses. It was just me who didn’t have anything, and the officer couldn’t figure out why. He got upset—“Why don’t you at least have a California ID?” I didn’t know what to say, so I apologized. I said I hadn’t had time to go get it with all my work and schooling, which was partly true. I added that he could call my school to confirm that I’m a student there. It was seven thirty at night. I knew he couldn’t call the school. I explained that it was my mom’s car and she let me borrow it for a quick emergency. That I was actually on my way home. The officer didn’t believe me, so he asked for my home number so he could call my parents. Shit.
As the three of us sat on the curb unable to speak to one another, we saw a few neighborhood cars pass by, slowing down to look and pass judgment. I didn’t care about any onlookers. All I cared about was that my dad had not gotten home yet. The full wrath of the West Covina Police Department was nothing compared to what my dad would do to me if he learned that I took my mom’s car out on a joyride.
After twenty excruciatingly long minutes, the officer returned from his squad car. He said he spoke to my mom and that my story checked out. God, I love Latina mothers! The officer was going to let us go, but on the condition that Choli or Tommy drive since they were the ones with the licenses. I was elated. It was as if the universe was conspiring. For what? I had no idea. To keep me out of jail, I guess. Then the officer added, “But I am giving you a ticket for driving without a license and for driving with no insurance.”
“How much is that for?” I wondered naively.
“I don’t know. You’ll have to check.” The officer knew. He just didn’t want to tell me. It was for a total of one thousand dollars. That seemed to be the going rate for being a teenager while undocumented: one thousand dollars. It was expensive not to have papers.
The next day, the boys and I put our heads together and came up with the stupid idea of throwing a party to raise the money. We had never thrown a party that we charged for before, but this seemed to be a good enough reason to start. It was designed to be a backyard party with a ton of alcohol for underage kids called: “FREE RAFA.” We secured a buddy’s house for the venue, we got an aspiring DJ (really it was just the kid with a large CD collection), my cousin Joe brought us the alcohol, and Sandra and the girls were kind enough to run the door, which was really just a fence to the backyard of a house.
The guys and I spent a week promoting the party at school. The promotion consisted of a hand-drawn flyer of me in jail with a large scary inmate hugging me from behind. The inmate, by the way, was modeled after the police officer who gave me the ticket. The smart kids at school wondered if these flyers meant that I was running for midterm elections or something. Smart kids can be so dumb sometimes. I clarified that, no, this time it was for an actual party.
As I sat with the guys in the large empty backyard, I was nervous that the party would not work. I was popular because I loved hanging out with all the different groups at school, but not all of them were alcoholics like us. I hid in the back of the house for most of the night. I heard some people arrive, but I couldn’t tell how many. Again, it was a large backyard to fill. When my friends finally found me in the corner, they asked me what the hell I was doing.
“Everyone is looking for you,” said Sandra.
Everyone? I stepped outside and discovered a large group of underage teens partying their asses off. They more than filled up the backyard. Everyone was there—even the smart kids. I was astonished. The boys and I had never thrown a party before, yet we packed that house. I knew right then and there that we’d missed our true calling of becoming club promoters.
We raised over a thousand dollars that night. We were able to pay for my driving ticket, the kid with the large CD collection, our buddy who let us use his house, and we still had enough money to take the crew to Boca del Rio (the most important taco stand in the West Covina area—period!). I couldn’t believe how the entire school came to my rescue that night. To this day, they have no idea they were helping out an undocumented student in desperate need. I guess the hand-drawn flyers of me in prison with a large menacing white guy ready to take advantage of me touched everyone’s hearts.
My school had my back. That true feeling of acceptance was exactly what I had been searching for since the day I discovered I wasn’t “legal.” It was at this time that ballots for the yearbook superlatives were released. It was time for us to vote on who was the “Best” at everything.
Some things fell into place naturally. Choli got Toughest Looking, Tommy got Most Opinionated, and Sal got Best Personality. I, on the other hand, demanded a lot of recognition. I knew I wasn’t the smartest, the most athletic, or the handsomest guy at school. I didn’t stand a chance for any of those categories. But there was one category that sounded vague enough for me to win: Best All-Around. What did Best All-Around even mean? No one knew, so I figured I had as much chance as anyone else.
I went into campaign mode one last time. I shook hands with the jocks, I waved at the color guard team, and I even kissed some babies (who belonged to the academically inclined cholas). But I was up against one of the coolest kids at school, Daniel. Daniel was a light-skinned Hispanic kid, who was literally better than me at everything. He was a star basketball player, on the principal’s honor roll, which was a bigger flex than the regular honor roll, and a classically handsome young man. Daniel was also a kind soul. That was exactly how I knew I could beat him. In the immortal words of George R. R. Martin: “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.” Daniel had to die, metaphorically speaking, of course.
The War for Best All-Around was close. If Daniel had campaigned at all, which he didn’t, he would have definitely won. Hell, if Daniel had had half the chip on his shoulder that I did for being undocumented, he would have crushed me. But he didn’t. He was confident with who he was. I wasn’t. Not at that age. I had a secret that nobody outside of my family or my boys knew, and the more accolades I won, the farther away I felt that people would get from discovering the truth. I was the Winter Formal king, an honor roll student, the senior class president, and now Best All-Around. Sorry, Daniel—you’ll always be Best All-Around in my heart, just not anybody else’s.
My high school counselor called me in for one last meeting. She was a kind and mature woman who cared deeply about her students. Unfortunately for me, my assigned counselor was white, so I did not feel comfortable speaking to her about my immigration problems. She informed me that two universities reached out asking about my social security number. I fidgeted in my chair as I told her not to worry—that I was on the case already. Comfortable with my answer, my counselor then reiterated that I should definitely go to college: “The time is perfect for students like you because of affirmative action.” I didn’t know what affirmative action was.
College acceptance letters started coming in. Around student government, the seniors were getting into Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UC Irvine. Tommy was accepted to his number one choice, Cal State San Diego, since he was determined to get out of the SGV. Choli would be a little closer, as he got into Cal State Fullerton. Running out of options, I began searching for alternatives to higher education and found a pamphlet about the California community college system. It was so cheap that I wouldn’t need FAFSA, Cal Grants, or any type of government assistance that I wasn’t eligible for.
The West Covina High administration asked me to give a speech at our graduation. I wasn’t asked because I was the valedictorian. I was asked because it was customary for the class president to speak at the ceremony. I was ambitious, just not valedictorian levels of ambitious! I dreamed of standing at the podium and declaring that I was “illegal,” explaining that those people you fear are only making our economy stronger, our workforce younger, and that their children are going to pay for your damn social security checks when you retire. But I didn’t say any of that. I was too scared. Since I didn’t know any others, I was convinced that I was the only undocumented student in the nation. I don’t remember what I said at the podium. I’m sure it was similar to what Zack Morris said at his graduation from Bayside High. But as I looked out at all those shiny maroon caps and gowns, I remember being jealous. Sure they were listening to me, but I wanted to be like them: to be able to graduate from high school with a green card and a social security number; to be able to finish my high school career and have the promise of a new American future before me. I had no idea what would happen to me after high school. Perhaps my dad was right and we would have to go back to Ecuador. I received a round of applause and then sat back down as a high school student one last time.
The day after graduation, I walked around the house in a daze. I felt lost. I didn’t know who I was if I wasn’t the class president. I walked into the kitchen as my dad read the newspaper that had a picture of Monica Lewinsky staring back at him. He read about the sexual scandal in the White House involving this very young woman (barely an adult) and he said, “American presidents are just as bad as the South American puppets they install.” My future was uncertain, but one thing was clear: several presidencies had come to an end.