Party Girl by Lynne Ewing

Author:Lynne Ewing [Ewing, Lynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-47775-0
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 1998-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

A sound jolted me fully awake. I sat up in bed, listening, looking for the danger.

A shadow stood at my window. I sucked air into my lungs, expecting a spray of bullets to blast through the glass. Instead a hand reached up and knocked. I climbed from bed, went to the window, and pushed it open.

“Hey, Kata,” Pocho said.

“You made it.”

“Yeah, I run faster than bullets,” he said, and smiled. “I got nowhere to sleep tonight.”

“Come in, then,” I said.

He swung his leg over the sill and pulled himself up and into the room. I closed the window and turned on the lamp on my nightstand.

Pocho sat on the edge of my bed, the springs sagging under his weight. His eyes looked blank and sad. He took off his shoes and let them drop on the floor. I lay on the bed and pulled the covers over me.

“You knew Raul wasn’t the one who shot Ana,” I said.

He nodded and took off his Pendleton and T-shirt. Tattoos covered the hard muscles on his back and arms.

“You took me to kill the wrong guy,” I said.

“No,” Pocho said. “I took you to the right one. I loved Ana. I did. You know? She never let me touch her, and then she goes off with some vato from another neighborhood. Raul’s the one I wanted dead as soon as I heard.”

“You should have blasted him yourself, then. It was wrong to send me.”

“No, I couldn’t. If you blasted him, people would think he killed Ana. If I did him, they’d believe the story and think Ana loved him and I was jealous. I wanted the secret to die with him.”

“Who told you, anyway?”

“Amelia.”

“The little bitch. Don’t you mess with her.”

“She caught Ana with Raul,” Pocho said. “She knew about it but didn’t tell me until after the funeral. Said she’d tell me about Ana if I let her in. She said you were keeping her out.”

“She doesn’t know what’s up.”

“Maybe I’ll recruit her.” He said it like a challenge.

“Don’t mess with her,” I repeated. “Out of respect for Ana. She didn’t want Amelia in the life.”

Pocho took off his jeans and fell back on the bed. He lifted one leg onto the mattress, then the other. I turned off the lamp. The light from passing cars and the glow from the neon sign of a taco stand on the corner lit the room, giving it a strange red cast.

After a while Pocho whispered, “Kata?”

“What?”

“I didn’t mean to hurt the puppy.” His words struggled from his throat. “What makes me do what I do?”

I shook my head against the pillow. “Why do any of us do what we do? We don’t have many choices here.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Pocho said, and stared at the ceiling. He was silent for a long time, and I thought he had fallen asleep, but then he spoke softly, his words filling the room with sadness. “I wonder if this is the way guys feel in war,” he said.

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