He stares at the mirror intently. He's silently focused on the black hair that rests mournfully above his brow; it's textured, cut randomly and unevenly but matted down to the length of his eyes, grown thickly, longer than average, covering portions of his face and a great deal of his neck.

"Damn it..."

He sighs and looks away briefly, to the bare beige walls and the matching marble of the sink before him. Leaning in, eyes scan the reversed image of forehead from left to right. Several moments of uneasy silence drag on before the stillness is broken with another sigh. He leans in even further and begins raising the object in his right hand to his head.

"Damn. It."

His gazes settles on the mirrored reflection before him: a bottle of green hair dye rests on a stack of black t-shirts with white skulls emblazoned on the front. The stack smells like new cardboard, having arrived only yesterday in the mail along with the glowing green bottle and only recently pulled out of their box.

The final sigh.

"Gotta do what you gotta do..."

He clicks the switch on the side and the object in his hand buzzes to life.

"Green mohawk, it is."

He brings the razor to his head.

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"Mmm, if you get any sweeter, I'm gonna have to eat this page..." she murmurs to herself with a smile, and licks her right forefinger. The flimsy page flips loosely with the finger trailing idly behind it, settling on the image of semi-transparent mauve cloth, and following the outline around the hem of the dress to the figure smiling glamorously from the gloss of the magazine.

"You don't even know what you have on, do you?" Her smile hangs absentmindedly. "And you'd wear anything that makes your boobs pop out, wouldn't you?"

Giggles come from beneath the studio desk where she lays on her stomach, face lazily propped by a pillow and an arm; the gentle laughs echo out and quickly become muffled behind the stacks of cloth that cover the bedroom. The floor, the bed, the open closet, even the desk above her is covered with little neat piles of greens and blues, reds and yellows, pastel hues and cool shades. The open door to the room is nearly blocked by various piles of material with various garments draped across messily.

"You almost DONE with that ROOM, SWEETY?"

"Yeah, Mom!" she yells back, jumping up at the sudden sound and hitting her head on the desk. The pain on her head is enough to make her wince and clumsily crawl out from her former hiding spot.

Her eyes wander around the room, over the heaps of the already-made and almost-made and barely-started and still-in-its-bare-elements – the testaments to her favorite after-school activity; she gives it all the most threatening look she can muster and the stacks glare even more menacingly in return. She shrinks and plops back onto the floor, ready to lose herself again in her favorite magazine when an envelope falls out from behind the magazine.

"Huh... must've come with it in the mail..."

She tears it open, unfolds the letter inside, and scans it slowly. It is long and wordy, containing clusters of paragraphs with unfamiliar jargon and dull colors. She flips to another page that is brighter, more colorful, and less cluttered with writing. It's message is plain and she reads closely.

Around her, it seems as if the piles of cloth are leaning to try to read over her shoulder.

She stops suddenly and jumps up with wild eyes and clenched teeth.

"They want to call me Le-WHAT!?"

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He's smiling because it's what he does. It usually settles people around him and prevents people from getting too worked up. He smiles when normal things happen, but mostly whenever he doesn't understand what's happening around him. And he definitely does not understand what's happening to him now.

"... ...ya... okay... si... ... que... ... hmm... ... selected to be a part of... ... hmm... and share in... ... ... que es esta mamada?... ... wonderful opportunity... ... yeah, yeah, yeah... ... ... ... HAH!"

His cousin turns to him and smiles happily. "No manches. Vas a estar en la tele, guey!" His smile is wide, a bit goofy and toothy, too. But it's a lot like his own and it usually makes him feel more at ease. Except for now.

"Ey, Carnal! Estar. En. El. TEE. VEE. Chingao! Did you know about this?"

Out of all the people in the world, his cousin Monolo understands him the best. They've shared everything together: river expeditions after school, tag team fights on school playgrounds, family pets dying of old age, and running through the desert in the cold night under hot searchlights. There is no one in the world – not even his parents working back at home – that understands him as well as his bloodbrother Monolo.

But sometimes, he just doesn't understand Monolo.

"A... bout... what?"

"Esto, cabron! Esta carta!" Monolo motions at the letter he's holding, the letter mysteriously addressed to him despite no one but the school knowing his "home" address.

He stands confused, baffled even, with the shears dangling from his gloved hands. The sweat drips down from the corner of his dirty baseball cap and rolls over the bronze skin.

"Mira, Juan... esta carta..."

All of a sudden, an older man walks buy and stares them up and down.

"Que mamadas estan haciendo, ahora?"

"Nada, Papa!" Manolo says quickly, smiling sweetly to his father and holding the letter behind his back. He motions to a nearby crate full of oranges and makes a very serious face. "Working. Trabajando como un negro!"

His father answers with a grunt and ignores his suspicious behavior. "Bueno, trabajen mas rapido, muchachos. No tenemos mucho tiempo."

After he leaves, Manolo pulls out the letter again and begins speaking English. "Mira, Juan. I know you have less experience with this English than I do. Pero, listen, you can understand pretty good, right?"

Juan nods his head intently, which looks strange when coupled with his constant smile, and pretends to be packing away oranges to not attract any more suspicions from the other migrant workers in the orange grove.

"Okay, Juan." Manolo relaxes and smiles his matching grin. "The letter is inviting you to compete in a contest... A contest on a faraway island..."

A half hour passes as the two cousins discuss – rather, Manolo describes and Juan listens – the letter's contents. As the sun sets, they argue a solution as they pack their materials away and head for a pickup truck at the entrance to the grove. By the time the California sun starts setting, they've already reached a decision.

"Oh yeah, guey!" Manolo adds in a whisper as they ride back home in the bed of the truck, nestled between crates of oranges. "Se me olvi— I mean... I forgot to tell you..."

He smiles mischievously and smacks Juan Gael Hernandez-Castro on the side of the head playfully.

"They want you to change your name to something gay like Justin!"

Manolo laughs the entire ride back home.

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