That’s pretty much all I know about my Hispanic culture beyond the fact that Spanish-speaking people often aren’t interested in me once they figure out I can’t speak the language, and white people treat me like Speedy Gonzales with boobs because apparently Mexican and Spanish are the same thing.

I’m halfway in between, too much and yet not enough at the same time.

It’s keen.

I swapped yoga pants for jeans, hopping to pull the damned things up over my hips. I made a beeline for two-dollar flip-flops, but a pointed Devorah groan and I went for some sandals with rhinestones on the bands instead.

“Lipstick,” she said. “Or gloss, at the very least. Pretend you care, please.”

“I care! Just less than you do!” I snatched a gloss from my vanity and even went so far as to mascara my lashes so Devi would leave me alone. “You’re a fashion enforcer,” I said, snagging my car keys and wallet from the table by the door. “If I don’t follow the rules, you’ll take out my kneecaps.”

Devi unfurled from the bed, her six feet of gorgeousness making me look like I was standing in a hole by comparison. “I’m your best bitch. What best bitch lets her bestie go to a party looking like they just crawled out of bed?”

“An awesome one. Be more awesome, Devi.”

Half an hour later, I stood at the end of a long driveway beholding a three-storied blue Colonial with a billion glass windows and a perfectly manicured lawn. Michelle Levitz’s father was a swanky city lawyer with a huge swanky house and an equally-as-swanky Jaguar in the three-car garage. Michelle once said that her dad’s name topped a partnership plaque on a skyscraper in the financial district of Boston. That meant he had bank, and he liked to travel to Bermuda with that bank. Thanks to his tropical wanderlust, Michelle had been left alone the last week of May to throw the biggest, most obnoxious party ever. Twenty tents were set up near the tree line beyond the shed. Another half dozen were being erected behind the pool. Nobody was in the pool on account of New England dumping snow on our heads two weeks before, but with enough alcohol, kids would be bobbing in the clear frigid blue within hours.

We’d learned some stuff in biology about teen brains being half formed and spongy. Freezing to death in a pool when it’s subzero is a half formed, spongy brain kind of thing to do.