Barely Missing Everything: 14–23

Life is too short to harbor feelings of hatred and anger.

And he'd never told anyone how blank he'd always felt, like a character in a story who'd been bonked on the head and was unable to remember who he'd been before; but instead of trying to help him recover his memory, everyone seemed to wish he'd just be cool with being an amnesiac.

She had to argue with Jabba to let her into the building the day before; the demented woman at first refused to let her inside so she could ask the new tenant if they were stockpiling any of her mail.

In a week Fabi and Juanito would be in front of a judge, and now she knew what "evading arrest" meant. It was a Class A misdemeanor, meaning it was the most serious and could land her Juanito up to a year in jail.

Gladi was a clinical psychologist with the VA.

Fabi grabbed her purse off the table and looked defiantly at her sister. "Are we going or not?"

Gladi sheepishly smiled. "I always did want an Antonio Banderas type."

Probability is an area of mathematics that uses experiments to yield chance results; however, the results over time do produce patterns that enable us to predict future outcomes with notable accuracy.

An exponential function is a function whose value is a constant raised to the power of the argument.

She was like Gladi—straight As, in all the nerdy clubs, and even beat out Gladi for valedictorian (Gladi would've had her if not for Mamá dying, resulting in a B in AP English).

Trees lined the front of the school, their naked, weather-beaten branches splintered and gnarled, looking ready to snap in the wind.

He read about his crime on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website, but couldn't find anything more on him besides other articles about the crime, a botched robbery that was only sort of like a Tarantino movie in that it took place in a diner.

Yahweh saw that human wickedness was great on earth and that human hearts contrived nothing but wicked schemes all day long.

"This happens every year, Juan. Every year someone like you walks in here, wants me to grade their test, either at the end of the semester or when they need to be eligible for whatever the case may be, and tells me how much they need to pass, and almost every time the same thing happens. You can't believe how frustrating this is for me."

There were so many baby pictures! But the camera seemed to have been whipped out a lot less often the older he and his brother and sister got. Suddenly there were only sporadic photos from Christmas mornings or birthdays.

"Myself," he said, feeling his face flush. "I'm making a movie."

We've all come together after what happened. We've all cried and been close. Everyone but you. Even your apá has shown remorse. But you, you still party.

JD was jerking his body back and forth, mimicking the halting way Juan had approached the house.

Music came on from inside the house, some obscure EDM.

"I'm detail oriented," JD said, keeping his camera rolling.
"I never wondered about that orientation," Danny said with a smile.

"Not everyone likes slapstick," JD explained.

The nervousness in JD's stomach now felt like miniature horses galloping in circles in his gut, corralled with nowhere to go.

Maybe blasphemy was the worst thing in the world to her, and he'd just blown his chance, like the Will Ferrell guy. Did making fun of a Mel Gibson movie even count as blasphemy?

"We're driving to Livingston, Texas. To the death-row facility. So Juan can meet his father," JD explained. "We have to get going if we're going to make the visiting hours."

I feel like the first days after getting here. Lonely. Wanting to die all the time. At the same time wanting to appeal, to fight and keep from being put down like a dog.

She folded her arms tightly and glowered at Papá. "Well, you're not funny!"

"I'm pretty sure Juan took my truck and is driving it to the middle of Texas to meet Armando."
"Armando? Your old boyfriend? The one in prison?" Papá said incredulously.

Everything was so loud; a policeman barked gibberish over a bullhorn.

The entire contraption rested on a thin pedestal, covered with white sheets.

"I guess...it must be my má's?" Juan said, now seething. "I had no idea she even had one."

But then, he didn't have a better option and there were plenty of hiding spots for the pistol. The never-used shed, or inside the flowerpots, buried in the potting soil. Tuck it into a hole along the eaves of the roof.

Juan took a deep breath, grabbed the pistol, and stealthily moved toward the back of the apartment.

Juan glanced back to see if JD had noticed, but he was plugging away on the laptop, oblivious.

When floodlights lit up and the red and blue siren lights circled, the first thing that popped into Juan's head was the PAC. How the harsh fluorescent lights sometimes created the same disorienting effect on the basketball court.

Before JD could even do that—get his hands up, stay down—he was pulled from the inside of the truck and slammed chest-down to the dirt, his head colliding against a hunk of rock embedded in the alley ground.

Most were pictures of Juan as a newborn swaddled in blankets, his face pinched shut.

When Fabi came across items neither her or Papá thought they needed or wanted to look at again, jewelry or some old army memorabilia, she took them to a van she'd passed on her first drive into town, a multicolored VW just off I-10 with a plywood sign with the word DONATIONS spraypainted across it.

She'd registered at the West Campus of PCC after applying and taking her assessment tests all on the same day.

The rain unloaded, and Fabi shut the window, the drops pelting the glass.

The rain continued, and the water in the backyard rose, seeping through the torn seal along the kitchen door. Fabi opened it; cold water rushed over her bare feet and flooded onto the linoleum.