West Covina, California
A Wednesday in 1989
6:00 a.m.
The light flashed on and her blanket was torn away. "Get up, get up!" Teresa shouted. "What the hell is this?"
"What?" Ana Lucia shielded her eyes and barely saw her mother standing at the foot of the bed, holding a paper in her hand.
"Why didn't you give this to me last night?"
"I forgot - "
"You forgot? A note from the principal saying you were caught with cigarettes and you forgot!"
Ana Lucia sat up in bed.
"Do you know how embarrassing this is!" Teresa shouted.
"Eric gave them to me. He - "
"I don't care who gave them to you! You worthless little...do you go to school to act like a slut? Is that it?"
Teresa walked to the closet and threw open the door. "And if you think you're wearing this..."
Clothes hangers clacked together and piles of acid-washed denim flew around the room. Ana Lucia walked to the bathroom and closed the door. When she opened it again, her mother was waiting in the hall. "I almost wish I'd never had you," she said. "Sometimes I wish you'd just drop dead."
12:00 p.m.
The cafeteria was noisy and crowded. Ana Lucia saw Eric and jogged to his table. "Is this seat taken?" She sat down in his lap. Heather and Vicky put down their books and Eric wrapped his arms around Ana's waist.
"Did you get a letter from Mr. Drake?" he asked.
"Yeah, and my mom's being a total bitch about it."
Amanda Fernandez set down her books and pulled out a chair.
"What are you doing?" Ana Lucia asked.
"What?" Amanda said. She looked around the table at Eric, Heather and Vicky.
"You can't sit there," Ana said. "We don't want you there."
Vicky laughed and Eric smirked, and Amanda picked up her books. She turned and walked away, and Ana shouted after her, "Why don't you just drop dead?"
6:00 p.m.
Amanda Fernandez carried her books up the sidewalk. She passed small, single-storey houses on each side of the street. When she came to the corner, she heard quiet sobbing. On the other side of an evergreen, she saw a girl, her age, who she barely recognized from school.
"What's wrong with you?" she asked.
The girl wiped her face. "Nothing," she said.
"Maybe you should do the world a favor," Amanda said, walking up the sidewalk, "and drop dead."
12:00 a.m.
Captain Teresa Cortez slammed the car door. Red and blue lights flashed around the front yard of a tiny house on the corner. "There's the body."
She and her partner watched the EMTs wheel the stretcher onto the front porch.
"How old was the girl?" Duffy asked.
"Fourteen," Teresa said. "Hanged herself in the bathroom."
"What could be so bad when you're fourteen?"
"It's the parents," said Teresa. "It all comes back to that."