Missing Angel Juan
Chapter One
Angel Juan and I walk through a funky green fog. It smells like hamburgers and jasmine. We don't see anybody, not even a shadow behind a curtain in the tall houses. Like the fog swirled in through all the windows, down the halls, up the staircases, into the bedrooms and took everybody away. Then fog beasties breathed clouds onto the mirrors, checked out the bookshelves, sniffed at the refrigerator--whispering. We hear one playing drums in a room in a tower.
Angel Juan stops to listen, slinking his shoulders to the beat. "Not as good as you," he says.
I play an imaginary drum with imaginary sticks. I am writing a new song for him in my head.
He sees something on the other side of a wall and picks me up. I feel his arms hard against the bottom of my ribs. Jungle garden. Water rushes. Dark house. Bright window. A piano with the head of Miss Nefertiti-ti on top.
"You look like her," he says. "Your eyes and your skinny flower-stem neck."
"But she doesn't have my snarl-ball hair or my curly toes." My toes curl like cashew nuts. He puts me down and messes up my messy hair the way he used to do when w ... read full excerpt from Missing Angel Juan ebook
