They say it came from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked ...
You think people hate a fat person? Try a fat person who’s trying to get thin.
She would be a new person, she vowed. They said no matter how far a mule travels it can never come back a horse, but she would show them all.
Dude, you don't want to be dead. Take it from me. No-pussy is bad. But dead is like no-pussy times ten.
I always hated obvious dreams like that. I still do.
But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.
If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.
Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can't exist without one.
You don't know what it's like to grow up with a mother who never said a positive thing in her life, not about her children or the world, who was always suspicious, always tearing you down and splitting your dreams straight down the seams. When my fir...
That was the September I cut school six times in my first two weeks. I just couldn't do school anymore. Something inside wouldn't let me.
They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Thainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was c...
Called her a whore and attacked her walls, tearing down her posters and throwing her books everywhere. I found out because some whitegirl ran up and said, Excuse me, but your stupid roommate is going insane, and I had to bolt upstairs and put him in ...
Poor Oscar. Without even realizing it he'd fallen into one of those Let's Be Friends Vortexes, the bane of nerdboys everywhere. These relationships were love's version of a stay in the stocks, in you go, plenty of misery guaranteed and what you got o...
That’s life for you. All the happiness you gather to yourself, it will sweep away like it’s nothing. If you ask me I don’t think there are any such things as curses. I think there is only life. That’s enough.
I mean, shit, what Latino family doesn't think it's cursed?
You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.
He's really jealous, Ybon said rather weakly. Just have him meet me, Oscar said. I make all boyfriends feel better about themselves.
...and when he thought about the way she laughed, as though she owned the air around her, his heart thundered inside his chest, a lonely rada.
