Chapter 1 New Blood

The friends had liked Gerson Saravia from the start. With his halting English and scrawny arms that stuck out like sticks from the tank tops he wore, he reminded them of themselves when they first came to the U.S., excited but also bewildered and self-conscious.

Jonathan had spotted him at school on Long Island at the start of junior year in 2015. With a poof of curly hair and a wide smile, Jonathan liked to be the first to welcome newcomers at Bellport High. He had come from Honduras in 2013 at age 16 to join his mother, whom he hadn’t seen since he was a small child. The loneliness had been intense, and now he tried to save others from it. He invited Gerson to play in a local soccer league and to go on snack runs to a neighborhood pupusa shop, and teased him for his Salvadoran slang. He introduced him to his best friends, the Morales brothers, from Guatemala, and a Salvadoran-American freshman named Alfred. Soon, Gerson was coming over to their houses after school to play video games.