We knew who they were: the only white boys on the street, dressed in dark slacks and white shirts. When they opened their mouths to speak to us at the newsstand where we bought our cigarettes after school, they came at us straight like they were asking directions.

"That's not good for you."

A silence before we elbowed into laughter, clucking our tongues and blowing raspberries.

"Okay," we said. "Thanks for the tip."

"You should treat your body like a temple," they said, not circling us like sharks, but standing awkwardly to the side, a picket fence of pocket protectors.

"Besides." One of them pinched a pink bottom lip between his teeth. "You're too pretty to smoke."

This sent us flying into the crosswalk, chins up, barking clouds of laughter into the setting January sun. What did these men know about our bodies? Men of God, Abuela would say, men of the west, men with soft blonde hair they combed from their forehead as they hiked up and down Corona Avenue, trying to make sense of the noise and the neon fried chicken, trying to turn the old gamblers away from the chess tables at the park, trying to trace the lineage of the visible pantylines inside our VIM jeans.

What did these men know about how the two of us would warm our winter noses in the hollow of each other's neck until the Q58 pulled up? How we knew which jeans had the right sized pockets to slip our hands inside, underneath our bubble jackets, while we hugged? How we wore the same green apple hairspray because it reminded us of the Sour Punch straws we used to share before church?

"Mormons are some made-up shit," you said, dipping your finger in the holy water inside the entrance to St. Bart's, the smell of incense always heavy in the air, but its source never seen; an article of faith.

"What do you mean?" A thumbprint of water slid down the skin between my brows.

"Some dude just showed up in a wagon one day, and was like, Nah, I'm the real Jesus. Follow me."

We sat down in the second pew, closest to the aisle. Above us, a porcelain Jesus hung off a ten-foot crucifix, bleeding eternally from the nails hammered between his bones. His eyes seemed to cross in pain, staring up at the ceiling, at the sky, at his father.

"People are wild," I said, sneaking my still-cold hand under your thigh for warmth.

We sat there, waiting for Father Manuel to finish his prayers over the tabernacle and begin his lesson. We watched his head silently nod in front of the gilded cage, and I roped my Converse-clad foot around your ankle and felt both of us relax, each of us a sanctuary for the other, transmogrified from teen girls into something more not by the mystery that surrounded us in the dark church, but by the magic of our own touch, molding us into something powerful, known, if only to each other.


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