Album: Violator.

Release date: March 19, 1990.

Track: 6.

Mood: Self reflection (while carrying a chair).

Like yesterday’s post, this is a story about loss. Unlike yesterday’s post, this is a story about a person I never met, but whose passing affected a whole generation of kids at the school I studied at.

October 24th, 1990. The nuns took us to the Basilica of our lady of Guadalupe. There were two separate schools, one for boys, one for girls. These outings were the only times we would see the girls from our age group and hang out. This time it was different. They were distant, and sometimes they broke down crying. None of us had any idea of what had happened. During mass, one of them went to the front, talking about a girl named Angela. She passed away, not even a week before, on the 18th. We were silent on the way back home. Boys will be boys and the bus ride back to our school was always a wild, chaotic pandemonium of screams, singing and the occasional food slinging.

Not this time. We were all shook. How can someone so young die? Why weren’t we told? What happened to Angela?

The nuns never told us. Didn’t bother holding any chat with us to talk about how we felt. The page was turned. A friend of mine called Rubén approached me one day in late november, asked me how I felt. We never went for that topic and I told him I felt bad, as if I knew her. He said the same, and started sobbing. We had to sprint to the the library bathroom, the only one with running water, and wash our faces, or else the group of bullies, called La Banda, would beat us for crying.

I felt off for the remaining of the year. I had no problem with my grades, but everything that I used to enjoy, tv, cereal, PC games, reading comics, all of that, it felt joyless. I never spoke to my parents or my brothers about it. I think I said it to my dog and that stupid boxer only slobbered, gave me a lick and prodded me for a walk. That’s the best it could do for me and it was a momentary respite.

Every december, the day before the holiday break, we had the entire day for playing, eating, listening to music and then a piñata. That particular year, in 1990, the nuns decided to bus in the girls from the other building. They seemed to be in a better mood, but that everlasting mourning still seeped through every pore, every sigh, every quiet laugh and smirk drawn.

My aunt taught me several card games and I was playing solitaire in the football pitch, just the low winter sun and a couple of peanut butter sarnies in hand. Rubén came by with another friend, who was nicknamed Pfeiffer (because of the wonder years). Pfeiffer had befriended a girl from the other campus, and she caught up with us. She was carrying a small boombox and sat with us. They had more sandwiches, some pork scratchings, and crisps. We played poker and then black widow, while listening to music. It was a mixtape she made. I never caught her name, but she sang with her eyes closed, sometimes crying. We didn’t say anything, Pfeiffer raised his hand to stead us and both Rubén and I guessed this girl was close with Angela.

Depeche Mode was an extremely popular band in our school. Same for Londonbeat and MC Hammer. After Londonbeat’s I’ve been thinking about you finished, there was a three song stretch of Depeche Mode. Personal Jesus, Policy of Truth, and Enjoy the silence. The girl sang her heart out during Enjoy the silence, and I can still hear her voice, her tears flowing like a cascade out of her closed eyes, singing “all I wanted, all I needed, is here, in my arms”, her tiny hands clutching, no, folding the cardboard and plastic playing cards in her hand. I don’t think we even finished the game. Pfeiffer didn’t say anything, but touched her shoulder while she cried some more. We ate our in food without talking, only the music on the tiny boombox playing. The sun shone and we sat there, motionless until the bell rang and the nuns told us it was time to break the piñata and then go home.

—Sam J. Valdés López