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should read that book I gave you.”
    Meche had read some of the books Sebastian had given her. Correction. Probably some of the only books she read were the ones he gave her, but she hadn’t read this particular one because she was still a little pissed off that he’d only given her a book for her birthday instead of the album she had wanted. Getting Shakespeare’s sonnets and complete works for your fifteenth birthday was like getting a sweater from your mom for Christmas: bullshit.
    “I’m working on it,” she said. “Slowly working on it.”
    “Illiterate.”
    “Ass,” she said tossing her backpack at his face.
    Sebastian dodged it and shrugged. “Better an ass than to be illiterate.”
    “I can’t hear you,” Meche said, sliding to the floor and pressing the play button on her Walkman.
    “What are you listening to?” Sebastian said, sliding down next to her.
    Meche pulled out her extra pair of headphone and plugged it into one of the jacks. Sebastian put on the headphones. Meche pressed the rewind button. They tilted their head backs and Soda Stereo began to sing Persiana Americana from the very beginning.
     
     
    M ECHE TIPTOED INTO the apartment, trying to sneak into her bedroom. She was half an hour early and needed to hide for a bit. Grandmother Dolores was in the kitchen, humming. She spent most of her time there, looking after a boiling pot or frying onions and chillis, always on her feet and always ready to make a meal. She’d been a maid for many years before old age made her unemployable. Cooking had been her favourite task during that time.
    “Meche, did you skip school today?”
    Meche stopped in her tracks and cursed inwardly. Mama Dolores had an internal lie detector, so there was no sense in trying to fool her.
    “Yeah.”
    “You shouldn’t miss classes. Come, sit down. You can peel some potatoes. I’m making picadillo the way your mom likes it.”
    “What’s the point? Mom and dad both eat outside.”
    “Well, maybe one day your mother will come home early.”
    Meche walked into the kitchen, dumping her backpack on one of the two plastic chairs and sitting at the table. She grabbed a peeler and began slicing the skins off the potatoes.
    Mama Dolores turned on the little radio sitting next to the narrow kitchen windows and Pedro Infante began singing Amorcito Corazón while the old woman hummed and poured some oil into a frying pan. She swished the onions to the tune of the love song.
    “Mama Dolores, can you tell me something and tell me the truth?”
    “What, baby?”
    “Were there really witches in your town?”
    “Of course there were. They’d fly off at nights in the shape of great balls of fire, nestling in the trees and cackling.”
    “And they did magic and it worked?”
    “It did. They cast all sorts of spells.”
    “If they were so powerful why didn’t they leave the town and become billionaires?”
    “Oh, magic is more complex than that. You have to give as much as you take. There’s a price to everything.”
    “What about music? Could there be magic in music?”
    “There’s magic everywhere, if you look carefully,” her grandmother said. “The trouble is wanting it enough, and holding on to it.”
    Meche slanted the peeler, slowly stripping the potato.
    “What if magic...”
    “Magic will break your heart, Meche,” Mama Dolores said very seriously.
    Meche frowned.
     
     
    M ECHE’S MOTHER, N ATALIA , was good looking. When angered, however, she resembled the Medusa in one of Meche’s story books. Except she still had to grow some snakes on her head. Any day now, Meche thought those would begin to sprout.
    “Okay, Meche,” Natalia said, from behind the pharmacy counter. “How come I got a call from school today to ask if you were sick?”
    “I don’t know,” Meche said. “I’m just here because I need money for the tortillas and grandma doesn’t have any.”
    “I left money on top of the refrigerator.”
    “It’s not there.”
    “Your