It was a typical friday afternoon, and I was typically rushed. I was throwing on a T shirt, glossing over my hair and scanning the poem I would recite a few minutes later at La Pena, a cultural center downtown, when I caught a glimpse of the scene outside. Six or seven junior-high kids were walking down the street, the two boys in the rear yelling over the others' conversations. The girls had rolled up their shirts in the back to reveal pudgy midsections. As they stepped over condoms, around abandoned cars and past barking guard dogs, they joked and talked about who'd been shot and which of their friends was pregnant.
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