Red Glass by Laura Resau

Author:Laura Resau
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780375890598
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2007-11-13T05:00:00+00:00

We ate lunch around four o’clock; then I helped strip corncobs, feed the chickens, and sort beans. When it got dark, Ángel said, “I’m going to the court. Everyone hangs out there on weekend nights. Want to come?”

I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t want to stay home either, so I shrugged. “I guess.”

Pablo begged us to take him, too. I was glad to have his hand to hold. While we walked to the court, Pablo talked about how good Ángel was at basketball and how when he grew up he wanted to be just like Ángel.

A few times, Ángel let his arm touch mine, but I stepped away. This wasn’t going to work. I knew it. Ángel was going to stay in Guatemala and make tons of friends there. How did I ever think I could make him stay?

The court was lit up. A crowd was gathered, including the girls who had been playing. They had miraculously transformed. They were showered, their hair shiny with gel and spray, comb lines visible, earrings dangling, thin gold chains nestled between their pushed-up breasts. Tight pants, high heels, shirts not quite reaching their waists, showing off a little mound of belly. Lips outlined in red and colored in pink beneath a thick coat of gloss.

Ángel was shaking hands with some guys standing in a clump under a tree. The girl who’d been squirting him now wore a sparkly red spaghetti-strap shirt and hoop earrings. She moved away from the group of girls and came over to me. “Goo’ nigh’,” she said in English, and then leaned closer. “Ángel. He joo boyfrien’?”

Inside, part of me shouted Yes! But a bigger part of me said—with scorn—Don’t be stupid, Sophie. I shook my head. “No. No hay nada.” There is nothing. I’d had my time in his spotlight and now he was moving on.

The girl strutted over to Ángel and planted herself possessively at his side.

I stared at them, feeling the same sick feeling I’d had in Huajuapan after the parade stomped through the streets and left sad heaps of colored sawdust.

I walked quickly over to Pablo. “Okay, Pablito,” I said. “Time for you to go to bed.”

“Pero, Sophie, we just got here!”

I grabbed his arm. “Let’s go.”

“No, I’m staying.” He squirmed out of my grasp and ran to Ángel.

I walked back to the house in the dark. I was Sophie the amoeba after all. Sophie the weak. A few streetlamps glowed and flickered and illuminated swarms of moths high in the air. Back at the house, Dika and Abuelita and the aunts and cousins sat inside the yellow glow of the smoky kitchen, sipping lemongrass tea and eating pastries.

I tried to sneak past them, but they saw me. Dika patted a wooden chair. “Sophie, come sit down.”

“I’m tired. I’m going to bed,” I said.

“Come, Sophie! Two minutes. We have plan.”

I sat down, wary.

“Now, Sophie,” she said. She spoke in Spanish so that Abuelita could understand. “My comadre and I, we were talking, and we have decided to do a limpia.

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