Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood Read Online Free

counter. I examined her face. Her cheek was a little swollen. Not much. I kissed it. Elena laughed. “Let’s put some ice on it,” I said.
    “No,” she said. “Mrs. Apodaca did that already.”
    I nodded. “Who? Who hit you?”
    “Pico.”
    “Pico who?”
    “Pico Salazar.”
    “I know his brother,” I said. “I’ll go over there after supper.”
    “It’s okay,” Elena said. “Juliana fixed it.”
    “How did she fix it?”
    “Well, I was playing tether ball with Gabby and Pico comes up to us and says we have to stop, because it’s his turn. And I said we were here first. And Gabby says, yeah, and she told him he was nothing but a cucaracha, and I said, yeah, you’re a cucaracha, and cucarachas had to wait their turn because we were here first, and if he didn’t wait his turn someone was going to come along and step on him because that’s what happened to cucarachas. And then Pico says that he’s not a pinche cucaracha and if we don’t move, he’s going to have to hit one of us because girls have to do what boys tell them. And I say I don’t have to do what any boy tells me to except my brother, Sammy, and he wasn’t Sammy. And so he got mad and he punched me in the cheek. I didn’t cry, Sammy. Well, I cried a little bit, but not a lot, and then Juliana comes up to us, and she grabs Pico and she says, ‘If I ever see you hit a girl again, I’m going to kick your little Hollywood butt all the way to Mesilla.’ And then he starts to cry, and then she tells him she’s sorry and to stop crying, and that she didn’t mean to hurt his feelings, but he shouldn’t go around hitting girls—especially nice girls like me and Gabby, and she tells him again that she’s sorry, and she gives him some gum and she gives me and Gabby gum, too—cinnamon—and she made Pico tell me he was sorry, and he said he was sorry and Gabby wanted to know if he still thought girls should do what boys said, and he said no and so Gabby said she was sorry for calling him a cucaracha. And that’s what happened, Sammy.” When Elena told you a story, it was as if she was running a race—the faster she talked, the better the story. And she never left anything out. I looked at her, and she kissed me. She was always kissing me, that kid. “Juliana likes you,” she said.
    “How do you know?”
    “She said, ‘You’re Sammy’s sister, ¿verdad?’ I said yes. ‘You’rebeautiful,’ she said, ‘just like your brother.’ I’m beautiful, Sammy. Juliana said so. But how can boys be beautiful, too?”
    “You’ll have to ask Dad.” I always let Dad handle the questions I had no answers for. I was the brother. Not the father.
    That night, I called Juliana. I asked her if she had had a good day. Mostly she said no. But sometimes, sometimes she said yes. And that day, she said, “Yeah, Sammy, I had a good day.” And I could almost see her finger on her bottom lip. We talked. Mostly I got her going. And I listened. That’s what I wanted to do. Listen to her voice. I kept picturing her telling Elena that I was beautiful. No one had ever said that about me. Finally I said, “Hey, thanks for helping Elena out.”
    “So she told you, huh?”
    “Yeah,” I said.
    She changed the subject. She started telling me about a dream she’d had. As I listened to her, I thought about what Elena had said. “Gabby says that maybe Juliana’s an angel. Angels always appear right when you need them.”
    1968 was going to be a hot summer. I could tell. The desert had been heating up since March. I was always hot. A week before school let out, Juliana and I went to the Aggie Drive-In. I don’t remember the movie. It wasn’t anything I was interested in, that’s all I know. It’s funny about movies—after a few years you forget everything about them. I don’t think movies ever showed me anything interesting. Maybe I wanted to learn something. And the movies, well, I guess they didn’t make me dream. They did other people, I knew