suits he’d worn since junior high. His style, at one time ridiculous, smacked of retro-cool.
Frank tilted his head and looked me up and down. Our eyes met, and my heart fluttered. My mixed-up feelings for my best friend, crush or whatever, somehow seemed incestuous.
A cardboard witch, pushed by wind, tumbled across the street, flying over yards and vanishing around a corner. Plastic skeletons danced on porches, and jack-o-lanterns leered. Mr. Tibbs, Mrs. McGlinty’s cat, darted across the sidewalk in front of me.
“Great, more bad luck,” I said.
Frank raised his eyebrow.
“You know, when a black cat passes in front of you, it means you’ll be jinxed. Abuela taught me all about superstitions. She said you avoided the curse by walking backward ten steps.” I spun, counting off ten paces.
Frank tipped his fedora at me. “I think meeting Mr. C was unlucky enough for one day.”
I glanced over my shoulder. A man wearing a white cap stood next to a stop sign at the end of the street. He turned a corner, his red scarf fluttering, and disappeared. Whew. Not Mr. C.
Raindrops hit the sidewalk, and Frank and I ran the rest of the way home. We darted inside, bumping into Esperanza, who poured packets of licorice into a bowl.
“Hi there, you two. What do you think of my costume?”
A knit mini-dress hugged her curves and brushed the top of her thighs. Fishnet stockings covered her legs, and red lipstick matched dangling earrings. With her stiletto heels and hair piled high, she stood as tall as Frank. On top of her curls perched a witch hat, held in place with crochet hooks. One of Abuela’s knitting needles peeked from a pocket in her dress.
“Let me guess.” Frank tapped his chin. “A knit witch?”
Esperanza curtsied.
“Or a knitting hooker?” I laughed at my joke, but it sounded harsher than I’d intended. Sometimes, my resentment toward Esperanza, for her glamour and closeness to Abuela, slipped through before I could stop it. It wore me down being so ordinary next to Esperanza’s elegance.
She smoothed her dress. “It’s a bit short.”
“Come on, a joke,” I said. “Even the best comedians can fall flat.”
“Ignore her, Esperanza. You look gorgeous,” Frank said.
“I love the dress,” I added in a rush. “I don’t remember you knitting it.”
“Oh, something I whipped together.” Esperanza tossed me a package of red licorice, my favorite, the bad joke forgiven.
She’d only been angry with me once, when I threw out a plastic bag of hair. She rummaged through the garbage until she found it and told me never to touch her stuff again, something to do with knitting.
“Speaking of jokes, we met this crazy guy dressed up like a giant candy corn today,” Frank said. “You know, orange skin, yellow scarf, white cap. He was looking for someone named Hope and asked about your grandmother.”
Esperanza ducked her head and fiddled with the bowl of licorice.
“It was far from funny. He actually got pretty pushy. Do you know him?” I’d planned to ask her about Mr. C when we were alone, hoping she might confide in me without Frank around.
“Never heard of him.” Esperanza hurried toward the kitchen. “Now take off those wet jackets before you drip all over the floor, and I’ll make hot chocolate.”
“I’ll start a fire,” I said to her back.
Esperanza, heels clicking faster and faster, bumped into a basket overflowing with Halloween treats. Packets of candy corns spilled to the floor.
I shivered. “That’s a coincidence I could have done without.”
“Me too.” Frank scooped up the candy and swished them into the trash.
Chapter 3
Quake Stitch
“What’s going on with Esperanza?” Frank asked. “She sure seemed in a hurry to get away.”
“My sister is the queen of evasion. I mean, it’s obvious she knows more about Mr. C than she’s telling us.”
Frank and I hung our coats on pegs in the hallway and headed to the living room. Shadows draped themselves across the furniture. I switched on a lamp as Frank flung his backpack next to the sofa.
“How long do you think she’ll keep us in suspense?” Frank plopped in front of the fireplace and tossed his fedora across the room. It landed on top of the TV.
“Maybe forever. She’s good at keeping secrets, but I’ll try to ease Mr. C into the conversation later tonight.”
Frank placed several split logs and kindling, along with crumpled newspaper, in the fireplace. On the mantel sat a family of four miniature dolls, knitted by Abuela and dressed in the traditional costume of Pueblo Hunab, her Mexican birthplace. A knitted tapestry of the Tree of Life stretched its branches and gnarled roots across the wall. Abuela had called it the soul of Mayan mythology, where heaven and hell intersected.
More knitted tapestries, all Esperanza’s and in every color imaginable, decorated the rest of the walls. One held a bird’s nest, feathers, and dragonfly wings, as if it were an opening to a mysterious land like Narnia or Middle-earth. Esperanza’s work hung in galleries from Albania to Zaire, but not a single gallery in Seattle carried her pieces. When asked why, she said, “My work is too folksy for Seattleites,” and changed the subject.
Frank rummaged through the knitted dolls. “Matches?”
I tossed him a box of matches sitting next to a pile of stationary on Esperanza’s writing desk and wandered to the window. Rain battered the streets. A little ghost, accompanied by two adults holding umbrellas, tottered down the sidewalk. He’d never make it to our house before his parents talked him into going home.
Halloween in Seattle. What could you do? Nothing, just like you couldn’t control an earthquake.
The memory of that night ten years ago came to me in streaky blurs. The earth yawned open. The second floor collapsed. Mamá and Papá disappeared. My world jumbled into a collage of broken house and shattered furniture with Esperanza, Abuela, and I wedged between ceiling and wall.
“Esperanza and I knit a story about light and fresh air,” Abuela said. “First we add special yarn.” She plucked strands of our hair and wrapped it around yarn.
I dozed to the music of needles clicking together as Esperanza and Abuela continued knitting afghans they’d managed to hold, as if by magic, throughout the quake. Firefighters discovered us two days later among the ruins and cut away the blankets forming skin-like cocoons around us. Abuela and Esperanza had knitted us to safety, weaving us into a story of survival.
Their fingers, though, hadn’t reached Mamá and Papá.
Of course, I asked tons of questions. Where had the yarn come from?
