Saving Raphael Santiago- In The Beginning

Sophia

New York felt like Mexico in the summer, dry and humid, the school kids practically having to swim home in the evenings. Sophia sat outside, as she always did, dressed cheerfully in a short white dress that was covered with flowers where it met her tanned thighs. Raphael sat with his friends on the other side of the street, leaning against the wall drinking plastic cups of water trying to imagine themselves into a beautiful snow storm. Granted Raphael had yet to see one of them in his fifteen years of life on earth but still he had an imagination. He felt Sophia's eyes on him -or maybe she was looking at his older friends- but still the attention only made him hotter. Laughs and giggles hung in the air from behind them, where his much younger brothers hung out of the living room window trying to stretch their pudgy cherub arms to reach the toy soldier one of them had dropped. If Guadalupe noticed they were sure to be in trouble.

The older boys spoke loudly about girls they thought were worth their time; Tiffany, Lana, Clara, Jessie. Though Raphael had never kept up an interest in girls and had little patience for most of them. Keeping the fact that Sophia was probably the most interesting girl he'd ever met, everything about her bounced as if in movie, her thick black hair, her body, her buoyancy flew over everything else to his Raphael in the face whenever he saw her. She talked to them often, when he was with his friends, never alone but all the same Raphael supposed he appreciated it. The negative side of him got the better of him a lot of the time, making him shout out the wrong thing to make him sound mean. Being his age it was expected of him to be moody, angry and ungrateful which meant he worked hard to make that up. Really, it was only around his brothers and his mother that he truly relaxed, they understood he was a good boy really.

He fiddled with the cross around his neck, hot from behind tucked under his white t-shirt of so long and wet against his fingers as Sophia looked on, crossing and uncrossing her legs to get comfortable in the plastic yard chair she sat in, in front of the house in which she lived on her own Raphael figured. Not even Guadalupe had met her family and she talked to everyone, not always friendly though but well meaning. The religion in her said so.

"You know you're staring, right, Raph?" Jamie said, wrapping his sweaty arm around his friends head, he watched Sophia too but from his much taller height as Raphael blushed under his tan and shrugged him off. Jamie grinned.

"I'm not, I was looking at her window," Raphael thought up.

"Yeah, like that's any less creepy,"

Raphael looked up at his friend, in a mix of annoyance and embarrassment a patronising smile scraped across his face like a slice wound on a statue.

"How do you know she's not staring at you?" Raphael asked, turning his head up, questioning.

"Because I'm not Spanish nor fifteen years of age," Jamie pinched Raph's cheeks with his free hand where he was awarded a disapproving glare from the side of his favourite.

"Like that would make a difference," The boy at the end said grinning madly, and for a second Raphael thought Sophia heard that fact his friend said she'd sleep with anyone. A flash of something crossed her face though you couldn't see what her eyes were doing under her larger white rimmed sunglasses.

Raphael thought, multiple times a day, that some of his friends were stupid and rude to the only person he'd ever really liked every part of. They'd lived beside each other since they were kids, played together, he was the boy next to door; stereotypes and all.

Raphael would never say that out loud though, not even to his mother. She was the only other Mexican person he talked to, when they were together they speaked in Spanish so it felt as though they were speaking in a secret language when they met up at school. At school, Sophia was always alone, preferring the company of her own which Raphael understood, finding it difficult to put up with most people himself.

The boys separated after a few hours of talking, a topic that worried Raphael popped up that reminded him to ask his mother about the murders that continued to happen all over the neighbourhood. Luckily, no one he knew had been struck down and he knew he would rather be dead that let that happen to his family.