Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood Read Free Page A

asked.
    “Nothing,” I said. I looked at my father. “Mrs. López disrespected Mrs. Ríos by inviting Mr. Ríos into her house. At night.” I stopped, nodded at my father, and winked at Elena.
    “People aren’t supposed to visit each other at night, are they?” Elena asked.
    “No,” I said, “they’re not. They’re supposed to stay at home. Right, Dad?”
    “Right,” my father said, though I knew he thought it was wrong of Juliana to call Mrs. López a ‘puta desgraciada sinvergüenza’ in front of everybody who was buying vegetables at Safeway. My father looked down at his plate again. “Well, I don’t want you and Juliana smoking in my car anymore. No se porque fuman. Ya se creen muy grandes. You’re just kids.”
    I nodded. He got up from the table, and he and Elena started cleaning up. Every night, they cleaned the kitchen together, and afterwards, they’d eat ice cream and leave the bowls in the sink. I’d see their bowls sittingthere on my way out the door in the morning. It was as if I took a piece of them with me. They were good together. Elena always had a hundred questions, and my father tried to answer all of them. Sometimes, when I’m doing stuff, I picture the two of them, Elena and my dad. And I think about how both me and my dad always fought like hell to protect Elena—as if we could prevent all the crap around us from touching her. You know, the funny thing is that my dad, well, I used to think of him as being as common and decent and ordinary as a piece of gum. But after everything that has happened, well, I think I didn’t know shit, not about my Dad anyway. What the hell did I know? What the hell did I know about the things he had to keep in his heart—the things he had to hide from us, the things he had to go through in order to save me and Elena? And why couldn’t I have been a thanker like him?
    I left them there, in the kitchen that evening. The two of them. As if they were always going to be there. I went to my room and called Juliana. Her father answered the phone and when I asked for her, all he said was: “Don’t call here. That puta’s not home. Just don’t call here anymore. ¡Pinches cabrones, todos! ¡Todos!” I wanted to run out of the house, run down the block, break down his goddamned door and shove my fist down his throat. I pictured me beating on him. It made me feel better. I wonder if things would have turned out different if I had done something like that. Maybe, if I’d done that, the whole history of Hollywood would have turned out for the better.

Chapter Two
    “So what’s the symbol for potassium?”
    Birdwail, the chemistry teacher, looked right at Juliana. She gave him the right answer. “And the symbol for hydrogen and the symbol for aluminum and the symbol for magnesium and what are their valences?” He kept shooting questions at her. I swear they were bullets and he wanted to kill her. But she wasn’t in the mood for dying. She answered them all. One after another, she answered all of Birdwail’s useless questions.
    “Very good,” he said.
    “You’re surprised, aren’t you?” She just stared at him.
    “What?” he said.
    “That I know.”
    “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, Miss Ríos—”
    “I can see it.”
    Birdwail ignored her question. He told us to turn to page 163 of our textbook.
    Juliana got up, turned in her lab notebook and walked toward the door. “Last time, you gave me a B on my lab notebook because you said it was late. It wasn’t late. And neither is this one. Now I have witnesses.” She walked out the door.
    “Come back here!” he yelled. “Come back here!” But she didn’t. Hisface was on fire. “Read chapter 11 ,” he told us, then sat down at his desk and tried to pretend he was in control. But he kept muttering to himself. He caught me looking at him. I wanted him to see what I was holding in my eyes.
    After school, I went looking for Juliana and found her at her locker. “Why did you do