Sunset Estates sounds like a cool name, until you realize it’s an old folks’ home and ‘sunset’ represents their lives.
That’s some dark shit.
Sorry, it’s not an ‘old folks’ home’ – I shouldn’t call it that. In fact, our manager, Natalie, yells at us if we do.
It’s aretirementcommunity. And not like those ones you always see in movies or TV where there are a bunch of hundred-plus-year-olds drooling in wheelchairs wishing for death. Most of the people who live here are in great health, somewhere between sixty and a hundred and one ‘years young’ – yes, management says that to their faces, if you can believe it.
Some wake up early and live active lives outside the community; others haven’t left the complex in years. There’s a structure and routine to how things run at Sunset Estates. Saturday night is movie night, birthday night is the second Wednesday of every month, and dinner is always from four p.m. to seven p.m.
It’s what I liked about the job. It was structured and everything made sense.
But then Gabe De La Hoya started working there and ruined it.
Wait, no, that’s not when everything got messed up. It started way before then.
I met Gabriel De La Hoya in day camp the summer between fifth and sixth grade. He came up to me on our first morning with his dimpled smile and an Avengers lunch bag. He pointed at the brown paper bag in my hand.
‘What did you bring?’ he asked.
He was taller than me, so I’d assumed he was going to beat me up and take my lunch.
I figured giving it to him would probably be less painful, so I handed it over. He tilted his head but took it, then sat down on the curb next to me and opened the paper bag. He removed everything, one by one, and as he held up each item I told him what it was – the smoked turkey salad sandwich on brioche with lettuce (no tomato), the plastic baggie of homemade potato chips sprinkled with Trader Joe’s Everything but the Elote seasoning, a bruised peach, and a piece of raspberry chocolate chip banana bread wrapped in tinfoil.
‘Whoa, is your mom, like, a super chef or something?’
‘My dad.’
His mouth quirked at that, and he looked back at his own lunch bag. ‘I was hoping you’d want to trade, but I don’t really have anything good.’ He opened the bag and pulled out what looked like a PB&J on white bread – no way I was giving up my dad’s turkey salad for that – an apple, a pudding cup, and … Oh.
‘Are those Takis?’ I asked.
‘Yeah.’
My mouth watered and my cheeks seemed to tighten as I remembered the spicy, sour taste of the Takis I’d had at Steven Simmons’s ninth birthday party. I had been the only one who’d eaten them, but they were amazing.
‘I’ll trade you my chips for those.’
He held up the potato chips, scrutinizing them, and I realized I still didn’t know his name. ‘What’s on them?’ he asked.
‘Everything but the Elote seasoning.’
His eyebrows jumped up. I expected him to ask what that was, but he didn’t. ‘How about the chipsandthe banana bread?’
I must have shown how much I wanted the Takis. My dad always tried to make everything in our house from scratch, so I rarely got to indulge in processed foods.
‘Chips, half of the banana bread, and if you bring more Takis tomorrow I’ll ask my dad to pack a second piece for you.’
He jumped up, holding out his hand. ‘Deal! I’m Gabe, by the way.’
‘Tommy.’ We shook on it.
After that my dad packed a second dessert for Gabe every day. Eventually, we went from swapping lunches to just sharing them.
He picked me first when he got to be matball captain, knowing full well I sucked. When we had a camp field trip to see a new Pixar movie, he sat next to me and shared the popcorn, candy and soda he’d bought with the money his parents had sent with him. We spent every second of every weekday together.
But when August arrived, his family took him on what was supposed to be a weeklong vacation, and he never came back. I pretended he got swept away by a riptide or eaten by a shark. The rest of the summer I threw away the second dessert because I didn’t know how to tell my dad that my new friend was gone and never coming back. Or maybe I hoped he would come back, and I’d have that second dessert ready for him.
It wasn’t until the next summer that I realized why I had been so sad. Gabe wasn’t like the other friends that I had grown apart from or who’d transferred to Archbishop Murphy after kindergarten. He was my first crush. The first boy for whom I ever really felt those feelings that other boys were supposed to have for girls.
