Oakland, California
"The city sprawls across seventy-eight square miles, stretching from the shallow, salty estuary at the edge of San Francisco Bay to the undulating green-and-gold hills where bobcats and coyotes roam" (6).
Slater's description of Oakland's diverse landscape mirrors its diverse population and demonstrates the varied environments the city contains.
First Day at Oakland High
"The smell that is the lemon-pine-disinfectant of just-mopped floors, that is new jeans still chemical-scented, pencil shavings, sweat, fryer grease, body spray, reeking bathrooms, weed smoke, morning breath—The smell that is the salty press of bodies changing classes that is socks that is feet that is blood that is bones that is finding your way through halls and up stairs to a classroom filled with unnamed faces—That smell is the pungent eraser that wipes the whiteboard clean, so just ignore the ghosts of last year’s scrawl still there, still showing through" (61).
Slater's description of the first day back to Oakland High starts in the realm of the literal, the smell of disinfectant, the freshly cleaned facilities—but as the passage goes on, she enters into a more figurative realm. Slater is still talking about fresh starts and new beginnings, but by the end of the passage, it's clear she's referencing the past trauma of many of the students who attend, including Richard.
The 57 Bus in the Afternoon
"In the afternoon, it was usually packed with students from a dozen different elementary, middle, and high schools. On game days, the kids from rival high schools razzed each other back and forth. It was loud, obnoxious. Rowdy. The kids were tired, wired, just sprung from school. The adults looked out the window or studied their phones. Tried not to make eye contact. The bus felt charged with daredevil energy. Hot. Muggy and musky with adolescent bodies" (108).
Slater demonstrates how the bus is an arena for adolescents, "hot cognition," and "risky thinking." The imagery of chaos, high energy, and rowdy kids foreshadows the attack.
"Chad" Youth Correctional Facility
"Through a gate topped by razor wire, into a complex of low-slung white buildings with pitched blue roofs. This was N. A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility, known as Chad, home to some two hundred and thirty males ages eighteen to twenty-five" (270).
The youth correctional facility in Stockton is characterized by the vacant scenery surrounding it. It seems to go on forever. The harshness of the razor wire and the austere white buildings demonstrate that this is a place nobody wants to end up, a place with a history of harsh punishment.
