Delia's Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

tell you exactly how to say it,” she said, turned, and marched toward my bedroom door.
    “I can’t. It’s too late,” I said.
    She spun around. “What?”
    “I already called her this evening and told her I would be there. You know I’ve been taking French.” I smiled. “When she answered her phone, I said, ‘ Merci, Danielle. Je serai heureux de m’occuper de votre partie .’”
    Her mouth opened and closed.
    “I have a wonderful dress to wear,” I continued, rising from my chair. “You remember it, I’m sure. It’s perfect for an evening in Paris.”
    I opened my closet and started to pull the dress off the rack, but when I turned around, she was already gone.
    Even Abuela Anabela would be unable to hide a small smile, I thought.
    But then she would chastise me and tell me to ask God for forgiveness.
    Later, I thought, I would pray for forgiveness. I was enjoying the moment too much right now, and I knew that pleasure was not going to last very long.
    Sure enough, in the morning at breakfast, something we rarely shared with Tía Isabela on weekdays, Sophia complained to her mother about my being invited to the Johnson party and her not being invited. Tía Isabela was genuinely surprised to hear it. I could see a look of amazement and then a faint smile of amusement when she glanced at me.
    Either to help Sophia feel better about it or maybe to make me feel less happy, she said, “I’m sure Angelica Johnson asked her daughter to invite Delia as a favor to me.”
    “Well, what does that say about me, Mother? She didn’t invite me. Is that a favor for you?” Sophia asked, wagging her head so hard I thought she would give herself a headache.
    “I’m sure it’s probably because of the girls you hang out with. I have told you many times, Sophia, that I don’t approve of the friends you’ve made. You make your own bed. Apparently, Delia’s making some nice friends.”
    “Huh?” Sophia said. She thought a moment and then threw her spoon down and folded her arms. “You mean you’re going to let her go to the Johnson party even though I’ve been snubbed?”
    “You’ve been invited to things I haven’t been invited to,” I said softly.
    Rarely did I interject myself between them when they argued, but I also rarely heard Tía Isabela defend me, for whatever reason she had.
    “She has a point, Sophia.”
    “A point?”
    “Do you want me to ask Danielle’s mother about it? I’m sure I can get her to invite you.”
    “Absolutely not! Do you think I’m desperate to be invited to parties, desperate for friends?”
    “So why are you making such a ruckus about it?” Tía Isabela asked.
    I kept my eyes down, but I could almost feel the heat and frustration coming from Sophia.
    “Forget about it,” she finally said. “If you don’t care, I don’t care.”
    “Good,” Tía Isabela said.
    I looked up at her. She was too pleased, I thought. She wasn’t only trying to teach Sophia some lesson. She was hoping for something else. It was so hard to live in a house with two spiders weaving their webs in dark corners, hoping I would fall into one of them.
    The silence started to weave its own cocoons around each of us, but Sophia, never one just to accept and retreat, made a new demand.
    “When are you going to decide about my having my own car? I have to wait for her after school if I want to come home in our limousine or ride in that stinking car with Casto. It’s embarrassing! You don’t like me riding with Alisha, who happens to have her own car even though her parents don’t have a quarter of our money.”
    “When I think you’re responsible enough to have a car,” Tía Isabela said, “I’ll get you one. And I told you, I don’t want you riding around with Alisha.”
    “If my father was alive, I’d have it by now. I’d have had it on my sixteenth birthday! He would want it. He left me a fat trust fund, didn’t he?”
    “And when you’re old enough to have control of some of those