Dallas turned fifteen and could finally wear makeup: black liquid eyeliner that had people around her way calling her China. Her hair slicked back tight around the temples added to the effect.

Instead of a quinceañera, Esperanza promised Dallas that she’d buy her a leather jacket when she had some extra money. Not some off-the-truck jacket from a local store, no, her mother was going to take her downtown, to Macy’s, so she could get something nice. Dallas didn’t need a big party like some of the girls in her school were having, with damas and caballeros and dresses, patchworked from images they found in magazines. She wasn’t about to make herself up like Miss America as if she were some doll on a wedding cake. She’d rather have new clothes. A pair of jeans. Some cute sneakers like the ones she saw in the store the last time she cut school and went exploring downtown. That way, in the fall, when she started her junior year, she’d be ready.

She walked up Quepasó Street wearing her mother’s perfume, leaving a trail of flowery scents behind her. It was eight AM and people were already out. Car stereos boomed against fogged-up windows. Mothers rushed their kids to day care. Grandmothers pushed wheeled carts heavy with their forty-year-old sons’ dirty laundry. Boys posted on the street corners, in front of the buildings, running upstairs to work inside the neighborhood drug laboratories, concocting the next superdrug to be sold downtown on Wall Street.

—Hey, mami, what’s your name? one of the guys at the corner yelled.

—Oh please, Dallas said. Like they didn’t know that her big brother had shot a guy and was back home from jail. They better not even try messing with her.

But she liked their attention and swung her hips, implying that she could handle all of them though they weren’t good enough for her. Dallas didn’t want some loser punk hanging on the corner. She wanted a guy who made money. With a car. Not a drug dealer who wore gold like it was going out of style. She’d seen enough people die. She didn’t need to be worried about her boyfriend getting shot or going to jail. And she wasn’t about to wait two or three years for some guy who was stupid enough to get himself in trouble. She was tired of waiting for things, let alone a man. She especially didn’t want no mama’s boy who took his mother’s money to take girls out. Who had his sisters doing all his shit just as she had to clean up after Bobby when he was around. Dallas had bigger plans. Like finding herself a guy with a future. Who knew how to take care of himself.

She took the train downtown, fantasizing about the boyfriend she would meet one day. She cut her eyes at girls who checked her out, and let an old lady sit in her seat so that she could lean against the doors and listen to new beats on her Walkman. Why couldn’t she meet a guy with a two-seater convertible? They could cruise slowly up her block, and then peel off on Broadway so that everyone would know she was gone. Driving in a car low enough to the ground where she could feel the speed inside her thighs. Everyone would envy her. And if Hush wasn’t acting stupid, Dallas would let her squeeze in the car with them: the two-seater convertible, boyfriend with the green eyes and dark, curly hair and a stomach like a washboard, because maybe he would be an athlete or something. And he would drive them to places like BBQ, Red Lobster, or IHOP. And they would bring back doggy bags and show off the logos and act like they had it like that and everyone around the way would know that Dallas had access to wheels.