Calixto at a Crossroads

As Calixto's year took off, Ever's sophomore year at Gaithersburg High turned meaner. As a freshman, Ever says, he was recruited by Mara Salvatrucha-13, the region's most sprawling and powerful street gang. Instead, he became a leader in the LP (La Pared, "The Wall") crew. "It's not like we're a gang," Ever insists. "We're just friends who hang out." He adds, "We don't throw signs. . . . We don't do graffiti." But "whoever crosses our way" -- he punches his hand -- "we just snuff 'em."At the high school, he could fight as often as three times a week. "This guy threatened me with running me over with a car," begins one story. Goes another: "This one guy said he was gonna shoot me in the eye or stab me."

"It's a dangerous school," Calixto's father agrees. "There's bad kids there." Fall ended with Ever getting kicked out of Gaithersburg High for a year and leaving with an arrest record, a probation officer and a 0.42 GPA. In the winter, when Identity's classes began, Calixto ambled into room D226 defiant, rebellious and "aggressive," remembered Identity's counselor, Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey. "I was like, 'Wow. This kid.' "

Yet, as the semester went on, Calixto had lost 45 pounds -- "some mad weight," as Ever's friends said -- and "thank you" and "please" became staples in his vocabulary. "How are you?" he shyly asked teachers while walking into class. Toward the end of eighth grade, he won a schoolwide Character Counts award and proudly wore the prize T-shirt to school.

'Serving for God'

The Salgado brothers are scrambling. First Friday Mass starts in 15 minutes, and Ever and Calixto, who both hold high positions in the altar-server hierarchy at St. Martin's, are running late.

"The candles on the altar are lit?" Ever asks.

"Yeah," Calixto answers. Then, "Oh! The bells." The priest arrives, and Calixto helps him into the chasuble. Minutes later, in their long red cassocks and white surplices, Calixto and Ever herd two other altar boys toward the back of the Gaithersburg church, where they all lead the priest to the altar. The 2 1/2 -hour Spanish Mass -- a special service much more formal than Masses offered in English at the church -- begins.

Spring is warming into summer, and Calixto's confirmation classes are teaching him to be "a better person," someone "in tune to what you're doing, to what is right and what is wrong." He's paying more attention to his role as an altar boy. After serving at one well-attended Sunday Mass, he decides that being up on the altar "means I'm serving for God. It means God chose me. There was a whole rack of boys in the Mass -- a whole rack of boys. But God chose me . I'm up there for a reason."

Calixto is trying to weave the church teachings through the rest of his life. But Ever, the "subcapitán general" of the Spanish altar servers, says that even though church "relaxes me," much about church should remain there. Real life requires more than turning the other cheek.

The Mass pauses while the priest hears confessions, and Calixto goes into the pews to pray with his mom. Ever and the two other altar boys stay in the sacristy.

"Hey," says 13-year-old Roque Hernandez, leaning against a table, pouring Skittles into his palm. "Did you read in the newspaper about the gangs?"

"I guess it was MS-13, and they jumped two people," Ever answers. "And the cops were all over the place. That's just what my dad says." Spooning incense chips over smoldering charcoal, he starts describing the rising backlash against MS-13. Other gangs are forming, he says, like Cien Por Ciento Latino -- CPL, "One Hundred Percent Latino" -- and Sangre Pura, SP, "Pure Blood."

"It's gonna get worse," Roque says knowingly. "My mom talks about it a lot."