MANZANA
Julia McCoy Lucy did everything last minute. She worked well only when she had to. Which was why she was studying for the Spanish exam on her way to school, vocabulary list twisted up in her hand. Lucy folded and unfolded the paper, covering up one half and then the other. Vocabulary word hidden, then revealed. Apple was manzana. Easy. Banana, plátano. Or, banana. Both pretty simple. Pear, just pera. But if you added that extra r it was perra, and that meant bitch. Sometimes she’d whisper that at people under her breath, like the girl who’d laughed at her in the locker room for not having enough breast to wear a training bra, or the boy who slammed her locker shut just after she’d opened it. In her pocket nestled a small wooden box she’d won during lotería on the first day of seventh grade. Inside sat worry dolls, Señora Diaz had called them, figurines in brightly patterned cloth no bigger than her thumbnail. Supposedly, if you slept with them under your pillowcase, and wished your worry on them, the worry would disappear. Hadn’t happened, not just yet. Maybe she had too many worries. Still, she kept hoping. As usual, Lucy stopped by Kat’s house to pick her up. She knocked on the door. No response. She could see through the front window into the vacant living room, where only a TV stood on an ice chest. Sometimes they watched Survivor on the carpet, while her little brother ran trucks over the edges of the cooler. There were days like this when Kat’s family wasn’t home. She told Lucy her mom let her skip. They went on grand adventures to amusement parks and ice cream parlors, the kinds of things that happen in movies. Once she even got to pet an elephant at the zoo. One day, she promised she’d let Lucy come along. Kat’s mom wouldn’t mind. Lucy didn’t want to be Kat, but she did admire her. Hair dyed black, skin pasty, she wore shades of clothing only darker than blue. She had four piercings in each ear, and wore long gloves to hide cutting lines, which she’d once shown Lucy at lunch break. She talked freely of smoking cigarettes, and made Lucy stand guard while she and her boyfriend made out in the ditch behind the school during breaks. 34
