While Don Chan napped, Dallas sneaked over to the luncheonette’s basement to meet with Hush to play spin the bottle. She left the television on in her bedroom and opened the tap in the bathroom, just enough to make Don Chan assume she was in there. She left the lights on and closed the door. If Don Chan woke up, he wouldn’t bother her in the bathroom. Ever since she became a señorita she was entitled to certain types of privacies to do cosas de mujeres, as her mother liked to say.

If the radio station played his old music, Don Chan would nap for two hours minimum. Before she left she sneaked into her mother’s bedroom. Her mother didn’t allow her to wear makeup. Not until she turned fifteen. And Dallas was twelve. Most of the girls in her school were already wearing makeup. —If your friend jumped off a bridge, would you do the same? was Esperanza’s response. —We could only trust familia, Esperanza told her and would say nothing more about the subject.

Dallas applied the lipstick, blush, and mascara. She had enough time to take it off before her mother came home. She kissed her reflection and unbuttoned her shirt to show some of her new cleavage. One day she woke up and it was there. Two soft lumps budding out of her chest. Like the hair between her legs, every day there was more of it. Soft and straight, like her eyebrows.

If she timed it right, she could chill with Hush and make dinner before Esperanza returned home from work. Esperanza had warned her that if she ended up like the fulanita upstairs, who got pregnant and ruined her life, she would kill Dallas with her own two hands. She would send her straight to Dominican Republic. —Children don’t have rights in D.R., she’d warn Dallas. And if Esperanza knew how many tap kisses she had already shared under the auspices of playing spin the bottle or seven minutes in heaven, Dallas was sure her mother would take away her favorite clothes and destroy her Madonna and Back Street Boys posters.

Dallas was careful. Her mother might not trust her, but she knew how to take care of herself. It wasn’t as if she was going to let some stupid kid ruin her life. She was curious, that was all. And she still had to experience seven minutes in heaven. She made up stories in her head of what it would be like to stay inside a closet with a boy. Sometimes the boys took out their penises for the girls to see, but the girls never admitted to showing anything in return. Despite the beer smell and moldy boxes lined against the wall of the basement, Dallas looked forward to playing games in the dimmed lights with Hush, her best friend.

Hush was Salvadorian. Her name always came out soft, sparking a curiosity that made people cock their heads. Hush. Her name was a mistake. When she was born, her mother, Soraida, was hiding in the back of a truck under blankets. The man being smuggled into the U.S. with them kept saying hush every time Soraida cried. Hush was slipping out of Soraida like diarrhea. Hush like a rude comment, an onion burp. Hush, who used to go to the same elementary school as Dallas, until Soraida married Oswaldo, and he helped pay for Hush to attend St. Rose of Lima. For months, Dallas begged her mother to find the money so that she could also attend.