Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass

“Yaqui Delgado wants to kick your ass.”

A kid named Vanesa tells me this in the morning before school. She springs out with no warning and blocks my way, her textbook held at her chest like a shield. She’s tall like me and caramel. I’ve seen her in the lunchroom, I think. Or maybe just in the halls. It’s hard to remember.

Then, just like that, Vanesa disappears into the swell of bodies all around.

Wait
, I want to tell her as she’s swallowed up.
Who is Yaqui Delgado?
But instead, I stand there blinking as kids jostle for the doors. The bell has rung, and I’m not sure if it’s only the warning or if I’m late for first period. Not that it matters. I’ve been at this school for five weeks, and Mr. Fink hasn’t remembered to take attendance once. A girl near his desk just sort of scans the room and marks who’s out.

“Move, idiot!” somebody grunts, and I follow the crowd inside.

It’s Darlene Jackson who explains the trouble I’m really in. She’s a student aide in the guidance office, and she knows all about Yaqui Delgado. “She was suspended last year for fighting.” We’re in the lunchroom, so Darlene has to shout for me to hear.
“Twice.”

I’ve only known Darlene a few weeks, but already I can tell she loves drama, especially if she has a front-row seat and it’s someone else’s catastrophe. Her mother is one of those nosy PTA types, too, so Darlene always seems to know whose parents are getting divorced, who failed last semester, or what teacher will be fired at the end of the year. Don’t ask me how, but that little spy even knew that our science teacher’s husband had dumped her. Before Ms. O’Donnell got past her swollen eyes to teach us about Newton’s laws last week, the whole class knew her love life was in shambles.

Darlene pushes up her glasses and tells me the whole rumor: “Yaqui Delgado hates you. She says you’re stuck-up for somebody who just showed up out of nowhere. And she wants to know who the hell you think you are, shaking your ass the way you do.” Darlene lowers her voice. “She even called you a
skank
. Sorry.”

I’m stunned.

“I shake my ass?”

Darlene studies her egg-salad sandwich for a second.

“Definitely, yes.”

Interesting. I’ve only had an ass for about six months, and now it seems it has a mind of its own. If only my friend Mitzi were here to see this! Last year in ninth grade at my old school, I was a late bloomer.
Planchadita
— ironed out and hipless — nothing at all like Mitzi, who got her curves in fifth grade.

It was Ma who first noticed my body changing, but she wasn’t exactly tactful about my getting
cuerpo
. “Put on a bra already, Piddy,” she said after she noticed a man on the bus gawking at my chest one day. “You can’t go around with two loose onions in your shirt for all the boys to stare at,” she snapped, like it was my fault that man had helped himself to the show.

Lila — that’s Ma’s best friend in the whole world — is the one who took me shopping for lacy bras the next day.

“Be proud,
mi vida
,” Lila whispered to me in the bra section of the store as I stared, shocked, at all the lace and bows. “And keep your shoulders back.”

This ass shaking is probably Lila’s fault, now that I think about it. It’s all the dancing we do. She’s been teaching me to merengue the way they do in her favorite clubs. Right before school started, she introduced me to her collection of old Héctor Lavoe records. We’ve listened to them so much that I’ve got the tunes stuck in my head.

“Move your feet small, like you’re on a brick,” she said when we danced across her apartment. “But the hips? Shake them big,
mami
.” She gave her bottom a good one-two to show me.
“Así.”

Maybe now I’m stuck on swivel. Who knows? When Lila walks down the street, men’s eyes get glued to her junk. Even bus drivers slow down to see. Ma says she’s a human traffic hazard.

Darlene finishes nibbling down to her crusts and tosses them inside her paper lunch bag.

“Maybe you could practice walking normal,” she suggests with a shrug. “You know, a little less wiggly. Like me.”

I try not to choke. Darlene does not
walk normal
. She leans forward as if she’s being led by her nose with an invisible rope. I’d say she scurries.

“I think I walk just fine,” I tell her.

“Suit yourself, then,” she says. “All I know is that Yaqui Delgado is gonna crush you.” She demonstrates by balling up her lunch bag and casting a knowing glance at the table across the lunchroom. That’s where the Latin kids sit.

The first day I got here, I stood with my tray, just sizing up the neighborhood. The Asian kids were clustered near the middle. The black kids had a bunch of tables to themselves. I spotted the Latin zone right away, but I didn’t know a single one of them from any of my classes. As I got closer, a few of the guys grinned and elbowed each other, but none of the girls looked like they were going to make room. In fact, it was downright chilly how they stared at me. Luckily, Darlene waved me over.

So here I am at the corner table near the trash cans — the worst real estate in the cafeteria. Since we moved, I’ve had to start over. Our table is all the kids from our fourth-period science class, like Sally Ngyuen and Rob Allen. They’re both in the tenth-grade physics class with Darlene and me, which I’m finding out is a breeding ground for outcasts here at Daniel Jones High School.

Right now Rob is looking scared — even for him. He’s not an ugly guy, but he’s skinny and pale. The knot in his neck is bobbing, and the rims of his eyes look as pink as a hamster’s. He’s crazy smart, which I like, though he might be more popular if his brain came in a more attractive package. He can solve a physics problem even faster than I can, but what does that get him around here? Not a single friend that I can see — and I would know. His locker is next to mine.

“Who’s going to crush you?” His voice cracks a little as he stares at the balled-up paper bag.

“No one,” I say.

“Mind your own business, Rob,” Darlene snaps. She turns back to me and rolls her eyes. Even in a group of geeks, there’s a pecking order, and Darlene’s on top. Rob glares at her, but he shuts up.

“I don’t even know Yaqui Delgado, Darlene,” I tell her with a shrug. “I’m not worried.”

“Well, she knows
you
. And she hates your guts. You’re new here, Piddy, so take my word for it. You’re as good as dead. These Latin girls mean business. If I were you, I’d stay home tomorrow.”

I stop chewing and give her a look.

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a Latin girl, too, Darlene.”

Darlene rolls her eyes —
again
— like I’m the stupid one. White-skinned. No accent. Good in school. I’m not her idea of a Latina at all. I could point out that Cameron Diaz is Latina, too, but why bother? It won’t change Darlene’s mind.

“Yeah? Then why aren’t you sitting with them?” she asks.

The color rises in my cheeks as my eyes flit across the room. It’s because those girls are a rougher bunch — nothing at all like Mitzi and me. Still, I won’t give Darlene the satisfaction of knowing that. It’s bad enough that when Coach Malone read out my last name in PE and the Guatemalan girls in back gave me weird looks, even though they should know better. “You Spanish?” they asked. I ignored them.

“My last name is
Sanchez
, remember?” I finally say to Darlene. “My mother is from Cuba, and my dad is from the Dominican Republic. I’m just as Latin as they are.”

I finish off my peanut-butter sandwich and force myself to make small talk with Rob for the rest of lunch period, just to annoy her. This is harder than it might seem. He’s not much of what you’d call a conversationalist; I think he’s out of practice. His thoughts more or less explode from his mouth without warning.

“I’m going to make a dagger,” he blurts out.

It takes me a second to realize he’s talking about our English project. We’re starting to work on our
Julius Caesar
presentations.

“Watch out for ‘zero tolerance,’” I tell him. “I know a kid who got suspended for a water pistol in sixth grade.” It was my neighbor Joey Halper, early in his career as a goon.

Rob shrugs.

“I’ll say it’s Reynolds Wrap before I whip it out.”

“Creeper. What are you whipping out?” Darlene sneers.

Rob turns red, and that pretty much ends our chat. Thankfully, the bell rings just then, and we join the stampede for the door. I can’t help but look over my shoulder at those girls. I don’t see Vanesa, but maybe one of them is Yaqui. Maybe she’s watching me right now, staring at my swishy ass, hating me. I hold my books tight and press forward in the crowd, keeping my hips as still as I can.

How I got into this
lío
at Daniel Jones High is because the lobby staircase in our old apartment building finally gave way, and Ma said,
“¡Hasta aquí!”
Otherwise, I’d be at Charles P. Jeantet on the better side of Northern Boulevard, and nobody would be after me at all.

But every week, something would happen in the building to rattle Ma. No hot water from the boiler on Mondays. Mr. and Mrs. Halper fighting so bad, Lila sometimes called the cops. Dog turd from the old boxer in 1D that’s ninety-one in people years and can’t make it outside in time anymore. It was all getting on Ma’s nerves — not exactly her strong point — and that day when the stairs went
pfft
, she’d worked overtime, too.