Ask anyone what happened with Waldy on A1A and they’ll talk about Lala and the eighth-grade dance in 2008. An hour in, people were trickling out of Buddy Taylor’s humid gym and into the bus loop. Some sipped vodka from plastic water bottles like they were standing in line on sixteen-and-up night at the club in Daytona. The quiet kids whose parents made them attend the dance were leaning against the brick wall, listening to cars speed down Belle Terre and looking at the stars above the swimming pool they filled up after integration, when Lala and Waldy climbed out of a cream-colored Oldsmobile.

They looked like each other’s photonegatives. Six foot one, skinny, and sweating, Waldy wore a white tux with black lapels that matched his black Jordans and, Lala joked, his dark-ass skin. The sleeves rode up whenever he lifted his arms, so he walked without moving them. Lala couldn’t keep her palms below her head. The minute her dad drove off, she was raising the roof to the bass booming through the double doors, talking about “They playing Tallahassee Pain.” Four eleven and cornrowed, Lala wore a black tux. The white lapels and buttons matched her white Forces, which her dad had bought big, claiming she would grow into them.

“Your shoes clapping like chanclas,” Waldy said, mimicking Lala’s father’s Cuban accent as he followed her inside. Standing under the fluorescent lights in front of the pictures of all-Black sports teams, Lala replied that he looked like a Jamaican mummy. She raised a hand and asked him for a high five. Waldy put up his fists. She slapped them away and he grinned. Then she cracked on Lanky Micaela, he made fun of Sleepy, and they both ragged on Manman, whose baggy suit made him look like a kid playing dress-up. “Let’s get a picture,” Waldy said, dragging her to the line. They shuffled in front of the backdrop, white cloud puffs soaring over a pale blue, their images appearing on a monitor beside them like those midride photos at amusement parks. Waldy donned oversize knockoff Chanel sunglasses and smiled widely. Lala pursed her lips, glared at the camera, and held Waldy from behind like she was his boyfriend or he was her girlfriend.

Afterward they headed for the dance floor, which was blanketed with the pineapple-scented body spray everyone bought at the Daytona mall. The crowd yelled the censored curse words in the crunk songs’ silences. Forty-five minutes later, the DJ played a Motown classic and half the students stepped off to the side. The disco ball became a revolving spotlight, illuminating a chaperone separating two kids grinding, a church boy doing the worm, and Lala, Waldy, and Sleepy.

Sleepy was still smarting from the rumors. The week before, Lanky Micaela had seen him on the back of the school bus, arms inside his shirt, his pants bouncing slowly. She ran to the front screaming. By the next morning, all of Buddy Taylor⁠—⁠even the kids with no friends⁠—⁠was ragging on him. He had walked into the gym trying to prove something, telling everyone that his older brother had snuck him herb and spitting game to any girl standing still. But nobody wanted to dance with the boy who touched himself. The song faded and another girl turned him down. Sleepy ignored Lala’s and Waldy’s laughter and, as the beat picked up, started krumping. Waldy said he looked like a rerun of 106 & Park, grimacing and imitating him. Lala cackled.

“Who you looking at, faggot?” Sleepy said, stepping to Waldy.

“Who you calling faggot?” Waldy said, puffing out his chest. “I ain’t the one beating my dick on the back of the school bus.” Students circled and chanted “Fight.” The DJ cut the speakers midway through “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.” Trying to get through the crowd, a teacher bumped people against one another, toppling human dominoes until Waldy stumbled into Sleepy, who gathered himself on his back foot and punched Waldy in the jaw. The crowd roared and surged closer, blocking the teacher’s path. When Waldy swung at Sleepy and tried to step back, more onlookers closed his exit. Sleepy grabbed Waldy’s neck, holding on as Waldy scratched at his forearms and tried to bite. And then Lala pulled something from her jacket and pressed it to the skin above Sleepy’s newly formed Adam’s apple. It glinted in the disco ball’s light. Sleepy let Waldy go.

The crowd backed away. The lights went on. “Lala!” Waldy yelled. She withdrew the knife and kneed Sleepy, who crumpled, then landed a kick to his face as three teachers pushed through the retreating bystanders. One isolated Lala and another helped Sleepy up. His legs wobbled. He was missing a tooth. The third teacher got on his hands and khaki-covered knees to look for it.

Though they patted Lala down, they never found the knife. On Monday, they questioned every eighth grader. No one said what they saw. Everyone already clowned Sleepy; if he snitched, he would’ve had to transfer schools. Lala didn’t get charged with battery, but the principal did kick her out of Buddy Taylor and ban her from graduation. Waldy stood alone for his pictures.

Nobody saw Lala after that. Word was her dad was strict. Some said he locked her up. That he wouldn’t even let her go to the library, not even in the light of day. Or maybe they’d returned to the islands for the summer, balling out in some country mansion. They could’ve moved back permanently. Why be poor in Florida when they were rich in Cuba? As for Waldy, Manman said he’d ridden the bus down his block the other day and seen him sitting on his front step in the sun, watching weeds grow in pavement cracks. Micaela saw him dragging his feet behind his mother in Publix. Sleepy spotted him on Colbert one night, running with a pack of stray dogs, mouth open and panting, but folks had stopped buying Sleepy’s stories a long time ago.

By the time school started that August, people had forgotten to wonder about where Lala was. There had been so many foreclosures that most classrooms at Matanzas had an empty seat. Waldy sat solo on the yellow bus and ate lunch on his own by the trash cans. He walked the hallways in a baggy sweatshirt, donning his sunglasses and hood until the dean yelled at him. Every once in a while, Waldy and Sleepy passed each other and the freshmen snickered, but the older kids didn’t care about eighth-grade drama.