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more than a table’s worth of Mexican kids, though, sometimes they run out of room, and a couple of them end up sitting at the table that’s usually empty except for Adam and me. Today Isabella and Jorge, a stout, pleasant-looking boy who doesn’t speak much English, sit at our table, looking suspiciously at their cafeteria trays.
    For a second, I’m in Isabella’s mind, watching as an old lady pats out a tortilla by hand, sets it in a cast-iron skillet, flips it, and then takes it out and fills it with fragrant shredded meat. There’s no comparison between this remembered taco and the greasy, soggy mess on Isabella’s tray.
    The smell of lunchroom food takes me out of Isabella’s mind and back into the moment. “From eating at your parents’ restaurant,” I say, “I know you’re used to better tacos than that.”
    “Yes,” Isabella says, poking at the taco shell stained orange with grease. “And we’d have even better tacos if we’d ‘go back to Mexico.’”
    I wince. I had hoped none of the Mexican kids saw the menu board.
    “You know what’s really stupid?” Adam says. “We had tacos in the cafeteria at least every couple of weeks before there were any Mexican kids here. It’s not like you guys showed up and started demanding tacos until the cafeteria people caved.” Adam takes a bite of the peanut butter and banana sandwich he brought from home. Like me, he won’t touch the cafeteria food.
    “If I was going to demand tacos, I’d ask for better ones than these,” Isabella sniffs.
    Jorge takes a bite of his taco, makes a face, and lets loose a stream of Spanish.
    Whatever he says makes Isabella laugh so hard she can’t catch her breath. When she finally gets control of herself, she says, “I would translate for you, but if anybody heard me say what Jorge just said in English, I would get thrown out of school.”
    “Hmm,” I say, nibbling my egg salad sandwich. “That’s an advantage I’d never thought of to speaking a language the people around you don’t know. You can say pretty much whatever you want.”
    “And we do,” Isabella says, smiling.
    “My mom and dad do, too,” Adam says. “You should hear them talking in Korean in the Wal-Mart. They say some awful stuff.”
    “Maybe that’s why so many people don’t like foreigners,” Isabella says. “They’re afraid of what we might say about them.”
    “Well, whatever you say can’t be worse than what was written on the board out there,” I say.
    Isabella shrugs. “But what do you do? There are stupid people everywhere.” She turns to Jorge, and they talk in Spanish for a minute. Isabella laughs. “Jorge says if we really want to force people to eat Mexican food in the cafeteria, we should make them serve menudo.”
    “What’s menudo?” Adam asks.
    “It’s a soup,” Isabella says, “very popular in Mexico. I won’t eat it, but my grandparents love it. It’s made of the foot and stomach of a cow.”
    “I wouldn’t eat that either,” Adam says. “It sounds even worse than the kimchee my parents can’t get enough of.”
    “I probably wouldn’t eat it either,” I say. “But I bet there are a lot of Americans who wouldn’t eat menudo but who are more than happy to scarf down those nasty lunch meats Masters’ meat processing plant makes. You know that stuff has got to have stomachs and hooves and worse in it.”
    “Snouts and tails,” Adam says.
    “Eyeballs,” Isabella adds, laughing.
    And then Jorge says something that makes Isabella scream with laughter and play slap him. I don’t speak Spanish, but I’m pretty sure I know what body parts he was talking about.
    If we’d been having a gross-out contest, Jorge had jumped right over the language barrier to win.

Chapter 3

    Adam and I take turns going over to each other’s houses most days after school. When I visit him, we have chips or popcorn and soda and play video games or watch a movie. When he visits me, it’s much more low-tech. We play with