Prologue: Sacrilege
“So you gonna ask her out?” came the inevitable question.
Salva groaned, though it was hard not to let his gaze linger
a little too long on Char’s bare shoulders, gleaming in the late August sun.
She knew how to look sexy even at church.
“Are you kidding me, man? I’ve known her since I was eight.
We were practically raised together.”
“Must have been rough chasin’ her through your sprinkler.” Pepe grinned, then leaned back against
the outer brick wall and rolled a wrapper off a limón candy. “You want one?” he
offered.
Salva shook his head. His father would blow a gasket if he
caught him with it at mass. “Look, you want to date Char, she’s all yours.”
“Right. We both know she ain’t lustin’ after my rep,” Pepe
said.
Salva elbowed him, though jabbing his best friend in the
chest was a lot like elbowing the statue of El
Pípila, hard as stone. “You break a few more sacking records this fall, and
she might start.”
“Everybody knows you’re gonna be the prime merchandise at
school this year,” said Pepe. “She didn’t wear that outfit for me.”
Once again Salva found himself staring at the teal-green top
with the off-the-shoulder sleeves. There was no denying the fact that Charla
looked fine.
His best friend might be right that she’d dressed on Salva’s
behalf, but that didn’t mean Salva could ask her out. It wasn’t just that he’d
known her forever or that their parents were always pushing their children
together; he’d dated Char back in their freshman year for two months, and
despite the fact that they shared the same culture, their parents worked the
same shift at the onion-processing plant, and he and Char had been in the same
class since second-grade migrant summer school, they really didn’t have much to
say to each other.
“We have nothing in common,” he tried to explain to Pepe.
To read the rest of the Prologue, come join Salva, Beth, and I at Pure Imagination for the first stop of our Salvation Teaser Tour!
Copyright @ 2013 by Anne Osterlund. Used
by permission of Speak, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, a member of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved.
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