Despite their close quarters, Yunior’s mother spends most of her days in silence, except when Yunior watches her soap operas with her in the evenings. Yunior explains that he and his mother still live alone in the same small apartment in which he grew up.
Despite encouraging Yunior to leave New Jersey and think more of himself, Beto hated when Yunior knew things that he didn’t. He notices an old sign, “No Running, No Defecating, No Urinating, No Expectorating” and remembers that Beto was very angry with him because he knew the definition of the world “expectorating” while Beto did not. Yunior notices that he is the oldest person at the pool by several years, but he still recognizes the same types of youthful mischief that he and Beto used to get up to. Beto is not there, but Yunior still dives into the water, spending several minutes submerged under the surface, cherishing the silence and clarity that the water offers him.
When he doesn’t find Beto, Yunior once again hops the pool fence (though it is harder since he has aged) in hopes of finding his former friend. In spite of himself, Yunior walks past Beto’s house to see if he is home. At night, to beat the heat, they would hop the fence at the local pool and swim until the neighbors chased them all home.
Yunior recalls the summer before Beto left for college in which the two boys spent most of their time playing stickball, shoplifting, and terrorizing their older neighbors. Yunior on the other hand, stayed behind to finish high school, now living at home with his mother and selling drugs to the younger siblings of his former high school classmates. Beto always saw their neighborhood as a kind of prison, and he went to college farther down the Raritan River in New Jersey. While he and Beto used to be like brothers, they have not spoken in over two years, ever since Beto went away to college and came out as gay. When Yunior’s mother tells Yunior that his childhood best friend Beto is home from college for a visit, Yunior keeps watching television and pretends not to hear her.
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