Calixto at a Crossroads

"Lourdes had a dream," one of the boys explains.

They take the omen seriously and turn suddenly quiet, facing Calixto. He bows his head, and the mostly Catholic students and their adult chaperones recite the Lord's Prayer: "Padre Nuestro, que estás en el cielo, santificado sea tu Nombre . . ."

As the weekend unfolds, these 13- and 14-year-olds devour pepperoni pizzas, rush into the morning chirping, "Our room smells like farts!" and take a trust-building blindfolded walk in the nighttime forest. After a furious rain, Calixto's guide trudges though the goopy mud, her jeans soaked to her knees. "This sucks," Elsa Miranda says.

Calixto, though, tilts back his head, breathes in the tangy, sweet woodsiness and notices: "This smells good."

Not until midmorning Saturday do these kids, who hula-hoop and play noodle tag, unveil themselves as more fragile than their antics suggest. While practicing skits, many loll at the edges of the cabin, listless and tired. But when the topic turns, they rev vigorously to life.

That topic is gangs.

The Transformation

"I was getting sick of myself," Calixto says, looking back at the boy he was in seventh grade. It was spring of 2004. Calixto was 12. He weighed 194 pounds.

He had spent much of middle school imitating his older brother, who was suspended from Forest Oak 10 times in one year. Calixto disrupted class, cussed and scowled at teachers, "What ev er. I ain't doing nothing. " He got sent to the office regularly and was once suspended for fighting. "My brother," Calixto says, "he teaches me a lot of stuff."

And then suddenly, Calixto decided to change -- to remove himself from Ever's shadow and become someone different. It was a turning point he can't explain. It just happened.

Maybe it was the letter Forest Oak Middle sent home, warning that if Calixto didn't bring up his grades, he would have to go to summer school -- or repeat seventh grade.

Maybe it was his aunt, dying of diabetes, pleading, "Do not let this happen to you." He started going with his dad to the gym and spending five minutes on the treadmill, then lifting weights.

Maybe it was the Identity program. Or confirmation classes at church. Or that in eighth grade many kids turn serious. No matter, the result was striking. Calixto launched into "this incredible personal transition," as one teacher called it, and when eighth grade began, he was noticeably slimmer and vowing to study harder. He still approached his reading class angrily. "I can't read," he would fume. "I can't do this!" But first quarter, on a report card with three C's and a D, he also earned two B's.