I still sit in that van

The van's a ninety-nine Ford, fifteen seats, white, and the AC only blows if you hold the knob over to the right while you're driving. My uncle had a key cut for me last June. So a year and a bit now.

Wednesdays and Sundays I go get the ladies. Aunty Mele on Marbella first, because she's two doors down from my grandma's. Then up to Alondra for Mrs. Faletolu and her sister. The two on Dolores are already out in the driveway before I even turn in, every time.

Mrs. Faletolu brings her own cushion. She puts it on the seat behind me and takes it home with her after.

I mount tires at my uncle's shop on Avalon. Six days, Tuesday off. The gloves they order don't fit me so I go through a box faster than everybody.

That's about the whole job. You break the bead, then the gun, then you balance it and hang it, and the next one's already up on the other lift and there's a guy in the lobby standing up to ask how long even though he can see us. He pays me Fridays in an envelope with the hours wrote on the front.

The knee was September sixth. We played Banning, second game, and it was third quarter, 9:41 on the clock. Nobody hit me. That's the part people don't believe, but you can ask my cousin Junior, he was standing on the sideline around the forty and he saw the whole thing.

I planted and it went sideways under me and I just sat down. Coach Tui was at the thirty-five. The trainer got out there and the first thing he asked me was my birthday.

El Camino texted about my film twice after that. Cerritos had come out to a practice in August. Then it just got quiet. My phone still works. Ha.

I sleep on the porch at my grandma's, the enclosed one, and the jalousie windows on the end don't shut all the way so it's honestly the coolest room in the house.

Nine of us in there and one bathroom, and I turn sideways to get past the water heater in the hallway, which everybody thinks is a joke I made up. You can come look.

Sione runs the sound board at church. He's twenty-six, small guy, five seven maybe, wears a flannel open over his tee even in August. He's got the key to the sanctuary and the code for the alarm, and my uncle's a deacon and even my uncle has to text Sione, that's just how it is. He puts blue tape on the faders and writes on the tape with a Sharpie.

Youth night's Fridays, seven to eight thirty. We stack the chairs after. It was May ninth, I know that because it was the Friday before Mother's Day and we'd been going over the thing the kids do.

Everybody cleared out and I brought the van around to the door for Sione's amp, and he got in the passenger side and didn't say anything about leaving, so I didn't say anything either. We just sat there.

There's a security light on the fellowship hall, up on the corner by the downspout. It's on a timer and it clicks over at 9:53. Not 9:50. You can hear it from the lot with the windows up. So from when we sit down to when it goes it's an hour and ten, about.

Every Friday since, except the one where his mom had the thing with her foot, and the two in August when the sanctuary AC died and there wasn't any youth night at all.

Sione talks about his brother mostly. His brother's out in Henderson driving a forklift for the place that supplies the casinos, the plates and the glass racks and the carts they push, and Sione was supposed to go out there with him in 2023 and didn't, and every few weeks he'll come back at it like it happened last week.

I don't say much. He'll ask me something and then answer it himself, and then look over like, well? And by the time I've got something he's already onto the next thing so.

He asked me one time does the knee still hurt. Straight out, seat back, not even looking over. I said in the morning, and when it's about to rain, which sounds fake but it's true.

He said okay. That was it. He didn't do the face. My aunties do the face.

He asked me another time am I talking to anybody. I said nah, not really, we're open till six and I'm wrecked after. He said yeah. Then he wanted to know did I watch the fight Saturday.

Junior came back one Friday for his charger. I didn't see him till he was at the glass and I came up off that seat so hard I caught the horn with my elbow. He goes what's wrong with you. I go nothing, you scared me. He got his charger out the third row and left.

I thought about it for four days at work.

That Sunday my uncle asked me who's been in the van Fridays. Not mad or nothing, he was doing the offering envelopes at the table. I said Sione, he helps me with the chairs. He said okay Tavita. Kept counting.

He's the one who put me on at the shop. And the keys.

There was a Friday in July where Sione fell asleep. He'd worked a double and he smelled like the boxes. He got in, put his seat back, started telling me about a fight he watched, and then he wasn't talking anymore. His mouth was open and his head was over against the glass.

I sat there. The light went at 9:53 and I sat there some more. I didn't move my arm off the console the whole time, because the console's in the middle and his arm was on it too.

He came up at like 11:20 and said oh damn, and got out, and hit the roof twice with his hand walking off, which he does.

Last Friday of August he got out and then leaned back in and put his hand on the back of my neck. Like how my uncles do it. He said drive safe big man and shut the door.

That's everything that ever happened.

Two weeks ago he texted me on a Thursday. Hours changed, cant do fridays. No period on the end. Then a thumbs up under what I sent back.

He's still at church. Sundays he's up in the booth and he says hey and asks about the knee. They moved him to nights at the place on Wilmington, which is real, I know another guy over there and their whole schedule flipped in September.

Youth night still ends at eight thirty. I still stack the chairs and I still bring the van around to the door, because that's where it goes, and then I don't leave.

I sit in the passenger side now. More room for the knee is probably it.

Junior's at the shop Saturdays now and he can't break a bead, he goes at it with his whole shoulder like he's blocking somebody, and my uncle stands there and watches him do it wrong and then comes over and does it himself with two fingers on the pedal and walks off without saying anything, and Junior thinks he's getting it. Saturday a guy brought in four twenty-twos off a lifted truck and stood by the compressor the entire time watching us like we were going to take something out of it. He hands my uncle a twenty after and my uncle puts it in the drawer where the receipts go.