Lights Up

No Me Diga!

Hello hello hello beautiful people. Author here. Here's another chapter in celebration of Tuck day on Saturday. Happy first day of August, Tuck fans! I won't have WiFi to publish a chapter on Saturday, so I'm doing it now. For the record, I made Benny's last name Johnson in this story. I couldn't find what his last name was no matter where I looked, and I couldn't use Jackson because in this story it's Jackson Heights. So Johnson is close. Hope you enjoy!

Dia's POV

I'm mentally preparing myself for ringing ears tomorrow. Tía Nina invited everyone over to her and Uncle Benny's place for dinner tonight, and it's going to be loud. Anywhere with my dad, Tío Sonny, and Dani is going to be loud. But hey, there'll be bunuelos, so I'm in.
We're heading over there now, though it's not a long walk. The Johnsons (Uncle Benny and Tía Nina) live above the taxi service, cause that's where Uncle Benny works and it just makes everything easier. And it's not that far from the bodega. My mom always says that it's kind of funny how she and my dad, and Uncle Benny and Tía Nina used to dream about getting far away from the barrio, then once they did (or almost did in my dad's case), they just ended up right back where they started. It always seemed more sad to me than funny, that they dreamed about things for so long and it never happened. But I guess I wouldn't be who I am if I didn't live in Jackson Heights. I wouldn't have grown up surrounded by people who are proud of who they are and where they come from, and I wouldn't have been eligible for the scholarship that let me make a group of great friends and find a boy that I really, really, liked. So, it's good in a way that their dreams failed? No, wait, that sounds really bad, and-

"OUCH!"

"Santo Cielo! Dia, are you ok?"

"Yeah, mamá, I'm fine."

So apparently when my internal monologue starts getting too deep and philosophical, I decide to miss the doorway into the Johnson's apartment and run straight into a wall.

"Dia, can your favorite aunt get a hug or what?"

"Sure, just give her a minute to recover. She decided to miss the door entirely and run into the wall in the hallway."

"Really papá, I'm fine."

My aunt Nina laughs at that, before pulling me into a hug. She really is right about not seeing me in forever. I've been at school, and she has been in California for a little over a month. Aunt Nina's an author, and she's been invited back to Stanford, where she went to college, a few times to talk about her book. She just got back, and with rehearsals for HSM and homework, and the fact that I've gone to get ice cream with Jack, Crutchie, and Miss Medda after school for the past three days to avoid the Plastics cornering me on the way to the subway, (Jack and Crutchie are the only ones who know that the Plastics have been harassing me after school. Miss Medda thinks we just want ice cream, which is a bonus) and I haven't had time to run over to the dispatch window since she got back. So Aunt Nina and I have been severely deprived of gossip time.

"USNAVI, VANESSA, I'M STEALING YOUR DAUGHTER."

"ALRIGHT."

"WAIT, WHAT, VANESSA."

Two minutes later Aunt Nina and I are sitting on the fire escape with mugs of hot chocolate, talking about school.

"So you made friends, that's great."

"Yeah, they're really cool."

"And you've got a crush."

"Yeah, and-wait where did you hear that?"

"You think I haven't talked to my three best friends, one of which is your MOTHER, since I got back from Stanford?"

"Fair point."