CHAPTER 18: THEN

It was maybe ten in the morning, and me and Pelón’s older sister Maribel were stretched out right on the kitchen floor, listening to Mega 101 and trying to stay cool. The temperature was already in the high 90s, and the AC was busted again. Pinche Bel-Lindo, everything chafa and broke. We were going back and forth about the question, could you really ever change your life? I thought maybe, but Maribel said yes, all you had to do was decide. She wanted to get a tattoo of a butterfly on her wrist so that everybody could see that she was changed. Transformed, she said. She wanted it right there so she could take a look at it any time and remind herself, too.

Maribel was the one who gave me the idea for the butterfly necklace. I needed something for Becca’s birthday anyway, and Wal-Mart had a couple. I picked the shiniest one. It was silver with little diamonds at the corners of the wings and all along the center. When the lady who opened the display case went to help somebody else, I palmed the butterfly necklace and slipped a cheap-o piece from one of the racks into its place. I was out the door before anybody noticed what was up. Anyway, I was changing for Becca, for myself even, but not for Wal-Mart.

I couldn’t wait to give it to her. Even though Becca’s birthday wasn’t for another week, I went to find her at the mall. She was working in this shoe store, and I grabbed her hand and took her over to one of those little angled mirrors that make it easy to see how your shoes look even when you’re standing up. I made her sit down on the floor in front of it, and I told her to close her eyes.

“Don’t boss me, Azz,” she said. She acted tough, but she closed her eyes and tilted her chin up like a little girl waiting for a kiss.

I gave her a sweet one with just a flick of tongue, and then I swept that curtain of shiny straight black hair forward over her shoulder so I could fasten the chain around her neck. “Go ahead, mamita. Open your eyes,” I told her.

She blushed like crazy. “What’s this for?” she asked. “How’d you get it?”

I just told her, “Now you gonna be reminded every time you put this on that I’m changing for you, baby. ’Cause you’re my world.”

She made sure her boss wasn’t out in the front of the store, then she kissed me long and hard. After that she kicked me back out into the mall.

“Before I lose my job, Azzie,” she said. She was smiling.