Book 2: HomeFront

April's Angel

"Angel?" April picked up her cell phone. She was thinking about visiting her underground friends since Leonardo and Venus left yesterday. It just happened to be a coincidence that her 'little sister' decided to call, who was so interested in meeting them.

"When you gonna be home?" Angel asked. Her cap was on the floor. A flurry of her braids looked like abstract art spread over her bed. She looked up to the ceiling with her cell-phone by her mouth on speaker phone.

"Pretty late. I'm visiting some friends of mine. The special ones." April added.

"Oh." Angel jumped up, picking her torso off the bed and supported by a single arm. "Then you should take me with you. Now's the time."

"Nope."

"C'mon! I did my homework, my room clean, and I gotta whole day of NOTHING!" She argued. It didn't please her when she heard April chuckle into the speaker.

"Sorry. It's official business. I can't have kids in official business."

"Let me put on an 'official business' outfit and pick me up in 10." She said desperately. She heard April sigh.

"Bye, Angel." Then the phone clicked to end their conversation. Angel looked into the phone. For sure, it read 'Call ended' before reverting back to her 'Kenan and Kel' wallpaper. She sighed, scrolling through her apps.

"Guess it's time for Plan B." She scrolled through her pages until she found what she was looking for. The app had a GPS with a pin on it. When she clicked it, a menu popped up with 'Phone Tracker' as the heading. She grinned from ear to ear as she easily entered April's number into the space provided. When she pressed the 'Go' button, a searching screen pulsated briefly. In no time, the phone spoke with the phone's location pin pointed. From the address it gave it, April was in her apartment, but the pin began to move, indicating she was out and about on the streets. Angel giggled and kicked her feet excitably that it was working. Then, she rolled off her bed and picked her blue cap off the floor. It sat nicely when she set it on her head. Next, she grabbed her black pair of converse, yelling as she tied them. "Granma! I'm headed to April's place." Her voice echoed. Her abuela sat in the lit living room. It was a small and compact space with addition to the big, chunky furniture, but that's how she liked it; her own cozy, safe place in her home with a TV in front of her. On her lap, a small set of papers were being written on as she did her taxes in front of her favorite telenovela.

"Bueno, tell her I said 'Hi'!" Angel walked into the living room to plant a small kiss on her soft cheek.

"Will do!" Out of excitement, the little Latina scrambled out of the house, but she had to make sure she wasn't stomping on the floor. Granma hated that.

The shine of the hot sun hit her back when she turned to lock the house door. It was a good thing she traded her purple crop sweater for a black racer back with "Disney's Forgotten Princess" on the front.

"Aye! Angel!" A boy called next door. Angel's keys jiggled when she put them back into her shorts pocket. She looked up at the source of the voice.

"What's good, Troy?" She called to the African American boy that went to the same school as her. She and Troy were the only ones in the neighborhood to go to school at Jefferson and not the local one that was literally a hop, skip, and a step away. Troy had gotten in trouble in junior high and they both believed he could do better than continue being with the bad friends and hanging out with them seven hours a day, five days a week. In Angel's case, she went there to keep up with her friends Andrea and Jessie. Jessie had not been her friend anymore and avoided both her and Andrea. Andrea, on the other hand, got in trouble with her parents when she slipped up about Jessie. Knowing Angel and Jessie were eachother's doppelgangers, they forced her to stay away. Both girls were heartbroken and Angel sought no way to continue attending the school if she could not hang with the friends she intended to stay with. Yet, her granma refused and advised her to stay at the school and make new friends. Easy for her to say.