For all Chicas & Esme Fans

"Holy crap!" The girl snatched up the tabloid and gawked at it, nearly falling into her cornflakes.

"Lori, watch your language," said her mom as she poured herself another cup of coffee. "And close your mouth when there's food in it. What have you got there?"

Lori didn't answer for staring at the article, but she did shut her mouth and swallow. Her younger brother and sister had already finished their breakfast and were firmly planted in front of the TV, still in their PJ's.

"Look," she finally said, holding up the rag mag. "It's her. The One-Inch Girl. It looks exactly like her. The spitten image."

"You sure?" her mom said with an amused grin. At twelve, Lori was a big fan of the One-Inch Girl.

"Heavens to Murgatroyd," she used her current favorite expression, "she rescued a little baby from some kidnappers. There was a church picnic in the park and this lady sneaked out of the bushes and grabbed the baby from its stroller while its mom was getting onto its brother about something, and she ran to the car where her husband or whatever was waiting for her with the motor running, and Esme ran after her and jumped right onto the windshield and...hey, wait a minute...." She took another look at the accompanying photos. "That can't be her."

"She's one inch tall and she jumped on a car windshield?" her mom said.

"It can't be her," Lori repeated, a bit pale beneath her freckles. "She's normal sized here. Must be a girl that just looks like her. No, Esmeralda Cortez, that's her name all right. Her hubby is related to the Spy Kids. He's a babe."

That got the attention of the kids, who were fans of the Spy Kids. There was a commercial on now anyway.

"I told you that one-inch business was a hoax," their mom said, not too sternly. "I can't imagine why they cooked up such nonsense in the first place."

"It says here, she jumped on the windshield and hung on for dear life while the man kept jerking the car back and forth, trying to buck her off, and the baby's mom ran up screaming and--"

"Mom, she said a bad word," her little brother piped up.

"I did not," Lori said. "Butt out, poopy-head."

"You did too. You said the F word. I heard you."

"No, she didn't," their mom said. "She said bucked, with a B. Go back to your cartoons, Trevor. And turn down the volume, please. The whole neighborhood doesn't need to hear about Marshmallo Muncheez."

"Really," Lori murmured. "Marshmallo Muncheez, yikes. Carbs out the ol' wazoo."

"Lori!" her mom said.

"That's just what dad says," Lori pointed out.

"Well, you needn't quote him on everything. Bethy, don't sit so close to the TV, hun."

Trevor was scarcely paying attention now that Bethy's hand was inching toward the remote. Lori picked up the magazine once more.

"She zapped him with her magic ring," she continued, "right in the eye. Heavens to Murgatroyd. The beam penetrated the windshield and got him right in the eyeball. The baby's mom tried to open the door but it was locked. Finally the lady just opened up the door and gave the baby back to its mom. Then the cops came up and arrested them. Somebody called them on their cell phone, I guess. The lady tried to run away but two girls jumped her and wrestled her to the ground. One of them was her sister--Esme's sister, I mean, and the other was their friend. It says--"

"That story sounds almost as far-fetched as her being one inch tall," her mom mused. "I don't know why I bring those silly things home. They're just a big waste of money for a lot of lies."

Lori stared at the photos. The story was cool, but the thought that Esme was not really one inch tall was terribly disillusioning. She closed the mag, glancing at the cover that bore a headline about somebody-or-other's gay secrets and looked down morosely into her cornflakes which were totally soggy now.

Lenny sat up in bed, also in his PJ's although it was past noon, sipping a home-made milkshake. A petite and lovely girl in jean capris and a Betty Boop t-shirt that said PLEASE DON'T HATE ME CUZ I'M CUTE sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed, her raven hair in an attractively messy ponytail, a rag mag rolled up in one hand. A very handsome, dark, curly-haired young man in jeans, sleeveless white t-shirt and bare feet lounged gracefully in a big chair next to the bed, polishing off the remains of the pizza they had sent out for for lunch.

Lenny didn't really feel badly enough after his operation to be in bed. Not like when he'd had his tonsils out when he was a little kid. But they didn't make operations like they used to. This one had only taken a few minutes and he'd been fully awake and hadn't had to stay in the hospital overnight. And wasn't it great, everybody kept saying, that he'd never have to wear glasses again? They were making a fuss over him, but he kinda felt like he wasn't really entitled to it even though today was his thirteenth birthday. If anybody was entitled to a fuss, it had to be Esme. Turned out that the father of the baby she had saved was a laser eye surgeon, and the operation hadn't cost a cent.

"Well, they sure blew our cover, didn't they?" she was saying, flipping the tabloid toward Alejandro. "Guess we're pretty much screwed, 'Jandro. Even when we go back to being an inch high this fall, who's gonna believe in us any more, outside of town? But I'm not sorry about the baby. I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

Alejandro glanced moodily at the rag. He was as proud of Esme as could be, but a bit disgruntled that he hadn't been there that day, but had gone out fishing instead with her dad and Lenny. She might have been seriously hurt or even killed. As it was, she'd gotten by with just a scraped elbow, but it could have been plenty worse, and he hadn't been there to prevent it.

"It was bound to happen, sooner or later," he said in his Spanish accent. Esme looked at him as she heard his purry, sexy voice as she'd first heard it--after three years of marriage, she still looked at him like that when she heard his voice coming out big, as though she were being caressed, herself.

"Can't say nothing ever happens in this town now, can ya," Lenny chuckled, looking up at his sister. "Wish I'd a' been there to see it too. I missed all the good stuff. Good thing they didn't let YOU operate on my eyes, though. After what you did to that guy."

Esme glanced at her diamond ring. "I didn't really mean to do that," she said, not sounding too happy at having ruined somebody's career in baby marketing. Even though she was still getting letters and presents from parents who had gotten their babies returned to them, promising her anything she wanted. But ironically enough, the one thing in the world she wanted was a baby of her own. "I'm not supposed to use it unless I just absolutely have to. But that sure looked like an absolutely-have-to if ever there was one. He pulled a gun on me, after all."

"'Course it was. You did great," Alejandro said with soft eyes at her. "You the most wonderful girl in the whole world, mi mariposa--and don't you forget." He still called her his butterfly even when she was big. Actually she wasn't very big by regular people's standards--barely five-foot-two and a little over a hundred pounds soaking wet, but she was the Empire State Building compared to when she was tiny. And far as Alejandro was concerned, she was ALWAYS the Empire State Building.

"Yeah," Lenny said. "Boy, I hate to think what Chels would have done to that woman if the cops hadn't a pulled her off of her. That was really something, too."

"Your sisters are hell," Alejandro grinned fondly at him.

Chelsea walked in just then, with a wrapped package in her hand. She smiled at Alejandro, kissed Esme on the cheek, then reached over and rumpled Lenny's hair.

"How's the birthday boy?" she said. "Can you see better now?"

"A lot better than yesterday," he said with a grin, swatting her hand away. "Still a little bit blurry, but better. On those commercials they make it sound like you can see like magic right after the operation. But hey, it'll be great not to look like a dork any more."

Chelsea laughed and handed him the present. She perched on the side of the bed, in her lace-trimmed sleeveless print blouse and pink silky slacks. She really knew how to dress, and now that she'd quit wearing so much makeup and let her natural prettiness show through, she looked totally bitchin', Lenny couldn't help but notice. Just as pretty as Es really, but in a different way. Without all the eye liner you could really see what a striking light blue her eyes were. They were her best feature. And her hair hanging all long and silky, without all that crap she used to put on it, although she did still highlight it.

"Brittney says she's sorry to miss your birthday," she said, "but she couldn't get away from her university any sooner. She sent me this for you, though. And she'll be home in time for the party."

To his chagrin, he could feel himself blushing as he took the small package. His fingers shook a little as he tried to remove the red and gold wrapping carefully. The big people grinned at one another over his head.

It was the latest Dragonmaster game. There was a funny card with it, signed, "Best wishes to a great teenager, Brittney." He looked at it even harder than at the game.

"Sweet," he murmured. "I'm surprised she always gives me something. I mean, I'm not even like, her brother or anything."

"Well, she says when you're an only child, sometimes you end up adopting your friends' brothers and sisters for your own," Chelsea said.

"If you're Brittney you do, at least," Esme chuckled. "She is a real sweetheart. I'm always surprised she's not some atrociously spoiled brat, with her money, looks, and only-childness. Then again, she's fantastically smart too, I guess that makes a difference."

"Y'know what, Lenny," Chelsea said with a very innocent lift of her eyebrows, "I never noticed before, but you really have great eyes. They look blue with those blue jammies on. You oughta wear blue all the time. They'd call you Ol' Blue Eyes, I bet."

"Yeah," Esme said, "we should take you shopping, get you some new clothes for your birthday. Now that you are soooo hot tamale, you shouldn't have to go around wearing nerd clothes anymore."

"Yeah, and we really should do something with this hair," Chelsea reached over and gave her brother's straight brown locks a gentle tug. "Needs some highlights, wouldn't you say?"

He jerked his head away. "No freakin' way, Jose." he said looking to Alejandro to rescue him out of this situation. "I'm NOT having my hair dyed, thank you very much. You'll be suggesting press-on fingernails next."

Esme giggled. "Your nails could use some work. They're kinda ragged looking," she said. He looked at her with an et tu, Brute? expression and she winked at him.

Chelsea said, "We can make it look like sun streaks. When school starts up again, you'll look like you spent the summer on the beach. We can get you to a tanning booth--you're way too pale. When we have your party day after tomorrow, nobody will recognize you...not even Brittney." She threw a little wink at Esme from under the curtain of blonde hair that she strategically allowed to fall over her face.

Lenny thought of the most prosaic and convenient excuse he could come up with at the moment: "'Scuse me, I gotta go feed the fish." Chelsea moved out of his way with a little sweet smile.

After flushing the commode, he perched on the lid, gazing at the card as though Brittney's image were stamped on it instead of the insane-looking orange and purple dragon trying to blow out candles on a four-tiered cake. He could see her, taller than Chelsea, her incredibly thick, rich dark chestnut hair cascading to her waist, her perfect cheekbones, pouty lips, luscious complexion, and dusky-grey eyes, the way she moved like a floating cloud about the place....

What no one but Esme knew was, he had his own private webpage with pictures of her on it, two of which Es had copied for him, others of which he had scanned from her high school yearbook and the local newspaper. Even as photogenic as she was, none of the pictures really did her justice, making her look just a very pretty teenager instead of the remote and ravishing princess she really was. With his paint program he'd made beautiful gemmed borders for all the pix, making a castle background for the page. He'd even written a poem about her, not very good he supposed but he'd put it on the page just the same, careful to use a pseudonym of course...and he totally did not link it to his MySpace.

He stood up and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, flicking on the lights. His eyesight really had improved dramatically. He had seen himself without the glasses before, but not in such a strong light. Was that really him?? He struck a pose or two. Yeah, he could do with a bit of tan. Some bulking up wouldn't do him any harm either. And yes, Es was right about his clothes, they were drab and boring, and probably getting too small besides....

And yet he wasn't too bad, now that Alejandro wasn't next to him--he made ALL guys look like crap. But really, Lenny wasn't so bad at that...not bad at all.

The game fell off the lavatory onto the floor while he was striking poses and being a bigshot, and the cover popped open, which took him by surprise because it should have been sealed. As he bent to pick it up, he noticed something fall out of it: a black silk cord, with a tiny silver sword hanging on it. Gosh, she was sending him jewelry too?? Although he was no expert, he could see it was made of real silver, no gum-machine trinket there. He took out a little slip of paper that had also fallen out of the box, unfolded and read it: Have fun fighting those dragons! Maybe this will help. B.

He looked into the mirror once more. Hmm...maybe that makeover wouldn't be such a bad idea after all....

But NO fake nails!!!

Esme proposed that rather than go to the local shopping mall, they drive into the city and make a day of it. That way Lenny was highly unlikely to see anybody he knew and be embarrassed to death while they shopped for him. Then later they could go out to dinner and maybe take in a baseball game or the amusement park or something. A sort of pre-party party. He was totally game for that. He even found himself getting pretty excited.

Especially since everybody else was dressed up so weird. Since the pictures came out in the tabloids, they'd decided they should disguise themselves so as to escape recognition from the general public. Alejandro sported tight shiny black pants, huaraches, and a PINK flowery satin shirt, of all things, with loose sleeves and open at the throat halfway down to his stomach. And three or four strings of beads, studded leather bracelets and about fifty rings, gold earrings in both ears, and a piraty-looking bandanna around his head. And to top it all off, a tattoo of a rose on one forearm and a butterfly on the other, and, and...oh my god...his fingernails and toenails. Lenny had to look twice and he still didn't believe it.

They were painted black. With eeny-weeny fake jewels stuck on them.

The girls and their mother totally howled when he came down in that get-up and pranced around for them, and Lenny found himself on the floor. He didn't think he had ever laughed so hard in his entire life.

Even their dad grinned after a while. "If you're trying to blend in with the woodwork, that should do the trick, all right," he remarked. "What if some guy makes a pass? I take it you're not carrying your sword."

Alejandro glanced up at the ceiling and then at his fingernails. "Then in a manner bold and daring, I will quickly and quietly impugn his personhood," he said. The girls squealed with laughter, high-fiving each other and whirling around. Their dad grinned with an I-had-to-ask expression.

Es had wanted to dress up biker-chick, but she had no such outfit and it was too hot out for black leather anyway. So she decided on a gypsyish ensemble with white embroidered Mexican blouse, colorful skirt, and a lot of gold beaded jewelry. And her little white cowgirl boots that she always wore to go dancing...her Dallas Cowboy cheerleader boots, as her dad called them. She wore her hair in corn-row braids, with colorful silk cords woven into them and gold coins dangling from the ends. The costume drew attention to her eyes, which you could really get lost in once you saw them big: huge and dark and soulful, starry and wondering and boundless. Lenny was seeing them really for the first time, and eventually he would notice how many people avoided looking too hard at them because once you did, it was very hard to look away, and you sometimes felt like you were seeing more than you should. She hardly ever wore makeup, except when she went out dancing or karaokeing with Alejandro. She didn't need it, but she wore just a tiny touch of gold glittery eye shadow now, along with a tiny star-shaped beauty mark at the corner of her left eye.

But Chelsea was the topper, in a long denim skirt and dainty pink and white gingham blouse with puffy sleeves and round collar (it had belonged to her grandma when she was a teenager), her long hair tied back in a high pony tail with a huge pink ribbon, a little gold heart-shaped locket and charm bracelet with doggies and kitties on it, and white ankle socks and penny loafers.

It took three people to get Lenny off the floor when he got a load of her. Boy howdy, he could remember when she wouldn't have been seen dead in another solar system like that!

"So is this totally Amy March or what?" she said through clenched teeth.

"Totally," Lenny gasped when he could get his breath, "whoever that is."

"More like Sandra Dee, I'd say," Esme said, and started singing the song from Grease: "'Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee...'"

"'Lousy with virginity,'" Chelsea sang with her. And they started waltzing together as they sang it, Alejandro chiming in, Lenny just listening since he didn't know the words, but totally cracking up from time to time. And their parents watched with shining eyes.

Lenny wore his usual clothes. Even if he'd had the nerve, there wouldn't have been time to work him up anything really ridiculous to wear. He'd just go as a dork. But: there was a black cord with a tiny jeweled sword carefully concealed beneath his tan plaid shirt. And he took his glasses along too, just to make his transformation look even more dramatic, just like on TV. He had them in his shirt pocket, and would put them on at the mall.

"Austin or San Antonio?" Alejandro asked as they were leaving the house. They lived about halfway between the two cities.

"Austin," Lenny said. "We went to San Antonio for your birthday, remember? And for Es's too. They're probably getting tired of us over there by now."

Alejandro had a black Mustang convertible now, and in honor of his birthday Lenny got to ride up front with him. It was still pretty early in the day. The girls were talking softly, but once in a while one or both of them would let out a squealy giggle, and Alejandro would yell over his shoulder, "You ladies laughing at us?" and they'd chorus back, "Yeahhhh, how did you guess?"

After a while Alejandro turned down the radio. "Lenny," he said, "you wanna hear about my makeover? Not this," he grinned as he saw the boy eyeing his costume. "I mean, before I met your sister. When I first came to the country."

"Sure." Lenny knew a little about it, but not all the details. How in Spain, Alejandro and his older brother Joaquin had gone around after the death of their mother and stepfather, getting into all kinds of trouble, then fled to America and took up where they left off there. Then one day when they tried to rob a certain old man, Joaquin pulled a gun on him, and the old man just put his hands in the air saying with a sneer, "Go ahead, disparame, cabrones!" Alejandro saw with horror that Joaquin, who was on speed and slightly crazy, looked like he was actually going to shoot, and Alejandro dove for the gun. In the ensuing scuffle it went off and struck Joaquin in the head, killing him instantly. Alejandro, at the age of eighteen, spent several months in a Texas prison while the old man, Diego, used his influence to get him out. Diego turned out to be a very skilled gunslinger and could have shot the sprinkles off their ice cream cones at fifty feet, and he'd have killed them both, had Alejandro not stopped his brother.

As Alejandro told how the old man took him in and cleaned him up and taught him a great many things about fencing and money and survival in general, Lenny noticed that the girls had grown quiet. He didn't look back, supposing them to be listening to Alejandro's story, although Esme surely knew it already. Then as they pulled in to a filling station, that was when the guys looked back at the girls.

They were both asleep. Esme's head lay on Chelsea's shoulder, her right hand loosely curled in Chelsea's left one. Chelsea's right arm circled her sister's waist, the blonde head bent protectively over the dark one. They both looked about five years old in their complete serenity.

Finally Lenny glanced toward his brother-in-law, who slowly turned his large dark brilliant eyes to the boy.

"They were up pretty late last night," he said in the softest voice Lenny had ever heard.

"EEEEEE!!! WHAT have you done with my son??" his mom screamed as Lenny, newly spray-tanned, sun-streaked, and turned out in a bold red and blue dragon print shirt, Calvin Klein stone-washed jeans, and studded leather sandals, dashed down the hallway, slid along the floor and came to land on one knee before her, hands extended outward. "This isn't my boy! I demand you bring him back to me!"

"You think that's something? Check THIS out!" And Lenny turned and pulled up the shirt in back to display a very colorful dragon across his left shoulder blade.

"Oh. My. God," gasped his mother, then looked accusingly at the others. "You got my baby boy a tattoo of all things?"

"It's not real," Lenny said reluctantly while the others giggled. "But--maybe I could get a real one there, some..."

"No," said him mom firmly. "Not until you are past eighteen, then you can get your whole body tattooed if you want. Although I will probably pretend I don't know you. But now, I draw the line."

Lenny modeled his entire new wardrobe for his parents. There were lots of blue things, but they'd decided he looked well in red also, and he didn't look putrid in green either, which gave a green tint to his grey eyes--real mysterious, Es said. There was a Superman shirt--Chelsea's idea, since she thought the guy on "Smallville" was, as she put it, total hotness--and a red shirt with a picture of a boiling pan on it that said INSTANT TEENAGER. ADD ATTITUDE. And one that said ALIEN ABDUCTEE. And a green one with a huge guy holding a can of Whoop Ass and the words DON'T MAKE ME OPEN THIS! And some swimming trunks, for he was going to join the YMCA this year, now that he could see and all. They had found an excellent fashion consultant in Chelsea, who was majoring in that. Alejandro had been a hoot, if kind of embarrassing, strutting around Lenny in a swishy manner as he emerged from the fitting rooms, plucking at the boy's sleeve, narrowing his eyes and waving his hands and saying things like, "Tut tut. Much too Greg Brady. Cheap. Tacky. Plastic. Why why why why WHY do you boys think plaid is a basic color?"

And Es bought him a gorgeous little Samurai sword, with the stipulation that he keep it in his bedroom until after he graduated high school, he could show it to anyone he liked but he mustn't ever take it out of the house until he was "of age" as she put it. He really thought he'd died and gone to heaven when she laid it in his hands after paying for it.

Later they'd wandered down to an open-air Tex-Mex cafe, where there was a little mariachi band playing and people dancing, and after a moment Esme, who just never could keep her feet still when she heard such music, began swaying in her chair, then she and Alejandro both got up and began to dance before the waitress could even take their order. Soon they seemed to forget where they were, whirling, taking turns kneeling to each other, whirling some more, talking with their hands, singing with their feet, two satellites revolving around each other, exuding enough sparks to ignite a large planet. Lenny and Chelsea glanced at each other, smiled, then back at Esme and Alejandro until the music stopped and everyone clapped wildly around them and they shared a kiss.

"Good thing she didn't go biker-chick," Chelsea quietly remarked after a moment.

Then the band began playing a much more upbeat number and Lenny was seized with a sudden impulse. He never knew what came over him, maybe it was the total raw wildness of the music, but he jumped to his feet and held out a hand to Chelsea. It was soooo crazy--there was a time when she'd have sooner gotten zits than be seen dancing with her own brother. But she just stood right up, gave him her hand with a big smile and they got down for all they were worth. Lenny could hardly believe he was doing this, he'd never supposed he could dance, even. But here he was, in a strange outfit in a big city, with a new pair of eyes, and he and Chelsea were shaking boo-tay right in front of God and everybody.

And when the music ended, THEY were the ones who got the applause.

Yo! Glad you like the game. Also glad you all had such a good time shopping. Sure sounds a lot more interesting that what *I* was doing--packing and stuff--yuck! Finals were majorly stressful. It'll be great to get home and relax. I suppose Mom will want to go off to Aruba or Jamaica (ooo I wanna take ya) or some such place for the summer, but to tell you the truth I'd rather just hang out with Es and Chels here for a while. Maybe I can get 'em to come with me. Maybe you could come too? Keep all those conceited phonies from hitting on us LOL

Sword sounds way cool, anxious to see it. Are you gonna name it or anything? haha Happy b-day and hang in there, mate!

Britters

Alejandro came in, saying the girls had gone with Brittney's mom to pick her up from the airport. He was dressed in his usual jeans with a vivid red shirt.

"Tell me something," Lenny said, logging off the computer and standing up, then found that he had forgotten what he was going to ask.

"Yeah?" Alejandro raised his eyebrows.

"Uh...do these jeans make my butt look fat?" Lenny said and Alejandro yelped with laughter. "Do you think I should wear this to the party?" Lenny asked, holding out the front of his dragon shirt.

"Sure, why not?" Alejandro said. "Looks great...but hey, what is this?" He reached over and touched the cord he noticed for the first time showing above the neck of the shirt. Lenny felt himself blushing once more. Then he figured, what the heck, and pulled the little sword out for Alejandro's inspection.

"It came with the game," he said, truthfully enough. Alejandro smiled knowingly and nodded.

"She's a fine looking girl, ain't she?" he said with a wink. Lenny looked down at his feet.

"Es promised she'd never tell," he said in a very small voice. She was the only one he'd ever told about his crush.

"She didn't," Alejandro said kindly. "Some guys just ain't too good at hiding things, is all. Hey, we all been through it. I been through it since I was six. Early bloomer that I was."

"Why am I not surprised?" Lenny managed to grin back. Alejandro chuckled.

"Well, we both got great taste," he said, giving the boy's shoulder a little slap. "Brittney is special, you know. And when you start back school, girls your own age gonna be all over you like ugly all over an ape."

"Hah! Girls my age don't interest me," Lenny sighed as he sat back down on his computer chair.

"Por que??" Alejandro sat in the chair next to the bed.

"They're...dumb." Lenny turned around in his swivel chair to face his brother-in-law. "They giggle and scream all the time. They stare. They pop their gum. They're always talking about stupid stuff. They're mean to each other. They're all Chelsea...the way she used to be, I mean."

"They grow out of it," Alejandro pointed out. "Girls are like fruit. Fruit starts out as lovely blossoms, that does your heart good to look at them on the tree, then they fall away and the fruit starts growing hard and green and sour, and makes a nasty pucker in your mouth if you silly enough to eat it. But then it ripens into something sweet and delicious. Give them time. Give yourself time. And if dreaming about a lovely princess makes you happy, then do that too. It makes a beautiful light to hold. A wonderful place to go while waiting for heaven."

Lenny looked at him, unconsciously fidgeting with the tiny sword. In the afternoon sunlight that filtered through the window shade, Alejandro now had the look of one who had found that heaven, enveloped in a soft golden radiance like a stained glass window of white and amber and crimson. Yet, the boy knew he had been through some kind of pure hell before finding it. Had all those lights he had held really gotten him through it?

"Es never went through a sour stage, that I can remember," he remarked. "She's always been sweet. But then, I was just a little kid when she was junior high age, so maybe I don't remember so good. And she was home schooled too. Maybe if you're not around junior high kids all the time, you don't act so much like one. Maybe everybody should be home schooled."

He chuckled, remembering an evening a little over a year ago, when he and Esme had been lying on the living room rug watching TV. Alejandro and Lenny's dad were at the wrestling match, Chelsea was away at college, and their mom was at some kind of church function. Es and Lenny were propped against a gigantic bone pillow, eating nachos she had fixed. Lenny had to feel badly for her when she was tiny because she loved to cook and was darn good at it, especially at Mexican cuisine, almost as good as their grandma on their mom's side. They talked quietly together, Lenny confiding that he was starting seventh grade this fall and was dreading it, because all his online buds who'd been through it said junior high sucked big time and it just got worse as you went along. Of course, they were all nerds but so was he. She said did he ever think about home schooling like she'd had, and he said he'd seriously considered it, but it might be kind of a wussy thing to do for him, hiding behind Momma and all, maybe it would be better to just stick it out?

Es said she was proud of him, and he wondered if his dad would be proud too. He guessed he should feel grateful that his dad wasn't always trying to make him do "guy stuff". He'd said Lenny was a lot like his brother Luke, whom their dad was always trying to make do guy stuff when he was a kid, fearing he'd grow up gay or something. But Uncle Luke had been happily married to the same woman for twenty-two years and had five kids--and was still president of his opera club and made a wicked quiche lorraine. It was whiskey-guzzling, rodeo-loving, John-Wayne-fan Uncle Rog who turned out to be gay.

Alejandro had told Lenny how you could tell when something was guy stuff: it (1) involved the taking of life and/or the infliction of pain, (2) was long and pointy and went into something, and/or(3) caused the emission of disgusting fumes and noises. It was girl stuff if it (1) involved the giving of life, beauty, and/or comfort and sustenance, (2) was small, soft and cute or (3) was on sale.

Alejandro was a real kick in the pants, Lenny thought as he felt his sister's head drooping against his shoulder as the DVD wore on. It was a kid movie and he had a feeling she was getting bored with it. He was finding it hard to concentrate on it now himself....Then her head dropped against his chest. It wasn't the first time she'd ever fallen asleep on him, but all the other times she'd slept in his pocket or curled in his hand like a baby mouse. He put his arms around her and leaned his cheek against the top of her head and breathed in the fresh scent of her hair, and the thought drifted through him that he loved her more than anybody living. His own eyelids started getting heavy, until he became vaguely aware of something soft being laid over them, a throw from off the couch. He supposed it was his mom, but after a moment he could smell Alejandro's leather jacket. Through his eyelashes he saw Alejandro stoop down and kiss Esme's cheek and temple; then, no doubt supposing him to be asleep, he kissed Lenny's forehead, removing his glasses and then turning off the TV. Lenny kept his eyes shut, but in his mind, he formed the words "thank you" without knowing exactly what he was thanking him for.

Now he knew he'd been thanking Alejandro for not edging him out of Esme's life after all.

Alejandro looked up at him now as though guessing his thoughts, when suddenly the sound of a banging door and a booming voice yelling, "Where the hell IS everybody??" startled them both. Alejandro jumped to his feet.

"My dad's here," he said with a huge smile.

"Have I got some neeeewwwwssss!" Izzy bellowed as he hugged his son, high-fived Lenny and kissed his mother's hand. "Should I wait till Es gets home? This concerns her."

"Um, yeah, I think so," Alejandro said with a little wink at Lenny.

"I woulda called or emailed, but I thought it might be better to deliver the goods in person. Ahhh, what the crap, I can't wait. What time's the party anyway?"

Lenny's mom said it wasn't till six, so why didn't they all go sit on the patio and have some cold drinks, and Izzy could tell them his news. Once settled there, he sat back in one of the stripy chairs, an icy Coors in one hand, looking all around him as if to see if anybody was listening. He wore a sleeveless t-shirt with a picture of a scary bulldog on it and the words I MAY BE UGLY, BUT YOU'RE STUPID AND I CAN GET A FACE LIFT.

Lenny wished there'd been a shirt like that in his size.

He remembered a t-shirt Izzy had that said YOU SAY GREEDY SHIT-SUCKING CORPORATE ELITIST ASSHOLE LIKE IT'S A BAD THING, which he'd had made after he read where someone said that about him in The New York Times. He had quit the spy equipment business. When Alejandro and Esme were tiny he'd go with them, act as their agent for all their functions, trips, and TV appearances. When they were big he'd just come and go as he pleased. But, Lenny noticed with his new eyes, even though Izzy was dirty, rotten, filthy, stinking rich and could do whatever his hundred-million-dollar ass felt like doing, he only looked really happy when he was with his son and daughter-in-law.

They were all the face lift he needed.

"You didn't have to get all dressed up just for Lenny's party," Alejandro kidded his dad, giving him a little sock on the shoulder. "'K, out with it, Papi. What's the dope?"

"Six words," Izzy said with a loud gulp of his beer. "Ding dong, the witch is dead."

"You mean?" Lenny glanced at the fence of the still spookily empty house next door.

"Seguro," Izzy said, "the very same."

Alejandro looked a little pale. "How...?"

"Somebody throw water on her and melt her?" Lenny asked and his mom looked at him like that was a tacky thing to say, but her eyes were twinkling.

"Seems she pissed off Big Bertha in the can," Izzy explained with his unfailing penchant for elegant diction, "at which Big Bertha promptly served her one lulu of a knuckle sandwich, which obviously disagreed with her constitution. They ruled it a brain hemorrhage."

"Mierda," Alejandro whispered before he could stop himself, then murmured "Sorry" in the direction of his mother-in-law. "So...what does that mean for us? Could it be...?"

"Could it be?" Lenny's mother echoed. She had the look of one who has just learned that her terminally sick child will pull through after all. Lenny was about to ask for particulars when a giggly commotion could be heard at the front door.

"They're heeeeere!" Lenny and Alejandro said together.

Just half an hour till midnight. Esme and Alejandro lay in bed, clutching hands tightly. In just half an hour they would know whether it was back to the doll house for another six months, or, or....

Lenny couldn't sleep either. Good thing it was a Saturday night because Monday was the first day of school. He got up and went online and chatted with his buds for a while, but found it impossible to concentrate. He tried watching a vid, then playing a game, then took out his Samurai sword for the umpty-millionth time and held it, whispering, "My preciousssss." Only on Christmas Eve had time ever moved this everlastingly slow. Twenty minutes...fifteen...ten....

Then finally from downstairs, where Es and Alejandro had their apartment, there came a resounding shriek, even though it was supposed to be soundproofed.

"I CAN HAVE A BAAAAAAAAAABYYYYY!!!!!!"

Alejandro held little Joaquin Diego while Esme nursed little Ingrid Isadora, sitting up beside him in bed with a bright Mexican shawl embroidered with butterflies draped over her shoulders. Her hair hung in long braids, a red rose tucked behind one ear. Alejandro had put it there for her, out of the bouquet he had brought her that morning. She looked thoughtfully at her diamond ring.

"Guess I can retire this puppy now," she said, holding up her hand. She tossed the ring across Alejandro toward a glass bowl of trinkets on the bed table, but it bounced out and landed on the floor.

"You better keep it," Alejandro bent to retrieve it. "It might still be useful."

"I don't like it much," she said. "I'm not a diamond kinda girl. But what the hey, I can wear it to please you. Guess I am kind of attached to it really." She flirtily allowed him to slide it back on her finger. Then he kissed the knuckle.

"Sure you not," he said enveloping her tiny hand in both his big ones. "You too priceless for 'em. But, keep it anyway." He kissed her gently on the lips, then leaned over and kissed her breast, then his baby daughter's head.

Lenny tapped at the bedroom door, which was partly open. "Come in!" Esme said, covering herself a little more discreetly. With him was a plump, round-faced girl with freckles and short red curly hair, wearing jeans and a red plaid shirt way too big for her.

"Hi, Lori!" Esme beamed at her. The girl approached with a shy smile.

"Hi, Es," she said. "Hope I'm not interrupting anything?"

"She wants to see the twins," Lenny said unnecessarily. Alejandro made an inviting gesture, holding up his tiny son.

"How cuuuute!" Lori said the expected thing, although she seemed a bit shy of Alejandro still. She and Lenny had met a year ago on his first day back to school. She was new in town, but they soon discovered they were into a lot of the same stuff: Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, DragonMaster...in short, they were both geeks. Now nearly everyone assumed they were going together, but in reality they were just best friends, as well as web partners with their own e-zine. Who knew what might happen eventually, but at fourteen and thirteen neither of them was really ready for a commitment.

And when you had a really good friend, junior high didn't totally suck. Especially when you had girls whispering to each other (sometimes quite loudly) that you were pretty hot stuff and why hadn't they ever noticed you had blue eyes and wow, what a bod, you must have spent the summer on the beach...yet deep down, you were still the same ol' geek and that was fine. You could get by with being a geek if you at least didn't look like one.

Alejandro with a huge smile allowed Lenny to take his tiny nephew. The boy cradled the week-old baby and turned him toward Lori, who delicately touched the little face with the tip of a finger. "Sweet," she whispered.

"You'd think sweet," Lenny grinned, "f you ever tried changing his diaper. I did yesterday and now I call him Squirt." The others laughed.

"Tell me about it," Lori said. "I got a brother, remember? He's nine now and still a squirt. He's a pain in the BUTT. But this one is adorable." She ran her fingertips over the baby's perfectly shaped head and went "Goo goo" at him, then said, "I got a sister too, but she's not so bad. She's only five though."

"A lovely age. Little girls are a kiss from God," Alejandro said with a glance toward his tiny daughter. Esme smiled in shining agreement.

Lenny often felt stupid that he had never realized how Esme felt about not being able to have children when she was tiny. She'd never let on, but he should have figured it out anyway. He'd always been closer to her than anybody else, after all. He felt a little hurt that she hadn't confided this to him, but he just had to deal with it. If he'd learned anything in his lifetime, it was that changes happened, and sometimes all you could do was adjust, adjust, adjust.

Brittney had a boyfriend now. His sisters were dithering over how to break it to Lenny, but he already knew, having overheard them talking. The girls were of the opinion that the guy was probably a jerk and not nearly good enough for their friend, and he would end up breaking her heart, but there was nothing they could do about it except hope that she would see the light and dump the loser ASAP. Lenny dealt with that too. It was no more than he'd expected, and he had plenty to keep him occupied now.

But he still wore the little sword around his neck.

Izzy was busy working on a machine that would produce tiny virtual-reality people for the amusement of the babies--little clowns, dancers, acrobats, angels, fairies, children, animals, cartoon characters, that would caper all around the crib and do tricks. Esme felt a bit badly that he was pouring so much money into a project that wasn't really necessary and would be much too expensive to mass-produce, but he wouldn't be distracted from it. Just humor an old man, he'd say with a wink. Being a grandpa clearly agreed with him. And he enjoyed pissing off his relatives, he said. Yes, he had relations that he hadn't even known existed back when he didn't have a pot to pee in, but once he'd made his fortune, they started coming out of the woodwork, all butter and honey, until he just as good as told them to kiss his self-made ass...like they weren't doing plenty of that already. From time to time he'd hear from Gregorio all kinds of nasty things they'd told him about Izzy, being actually dumb enough to suppose his kid brother would believe all their crap and wouldn't relay it back to him. Now he could feel them glaring at his back every time he did what he damn well pleased with his money, blowing it on his son and daughter-in-law and grandbabies....

What Es didn't know was that he was also building a dream house for her, and hoped to have it finished by next month when her birthday rolled around, or at least by Christmas. Lenny had even helped him design it a little. What with twins and all, soon the basement apartment wouldn't be big enough. Lenny dreaded the time they would move out, really dreaded it. Which was dumb, of course--it wasn't like they were going to live on Mars. The house was right here in town, well within walking distance. But it still wouldn't be the same. So he felt.

Adjust, adjust, adjust....

A lot easier said than done, sometimes.

A beautiful bassinet made for twins stood nearby, that had a built-in baby monitor, dangling musical toys, a fold-out thing that could double as a bathtub, a bottle warmer, wipe warmer, a little machine that made soothing noises--everything but an electric butt-wiper, as Izzy put it. A tag still hung from it inscribed "With love and profoundest gratitude, Lucie Warren." She was one of the parents whose babies had been recovered. She'd asked Chelsea what Esme wanted most in the world. Chelsea blurted that she thought what her sister really wanted was a baby of her own, but for obvious reasons could not have any. Mrs. Warren looked at her a long thoughtful moment, then said in a gentle and mysterious voice, "Someday, maybe very soon, your sister will have her heart's desire."

The look on her face spooked Chelsea out a bit. She didn't know what had got into her; Es had never told her she wanted a baby. She told herself she had just guessed it from the way her sister looked at other people's babies, but still, it was so weird that it just occurred to her and she'd said it without even thinking. Lucie Warren was a very tall, gorgeous woman with both a queenly and spiritual aura about her, and Chelsea felt in awe of her. It wasn't at all hard to believe she could accomplish anything she set out to do.

Soon afterward Chelsea got an email from her saying that she was praying for Esme to have her heart's desire and had sent word to the other parents who'd gotten their babies back to pray also. They would all set aside half an hour each evening, at the same time regardless of time zones, for it. Those other parents were urging their friends and relatives all across the country and even overseas to join in, and their ministers, priests and rabbis got in on it also, those who didn't believe in prayer were sending out "positive vibes", and the forwards were still circulating around the Internet....

The Witch Formerly Known as Cassandra watched the enormous figure standing at the prison window with her back turned. She had gotten wind of the praying campaign, and had laughed her butt off. Did a bunch of holy rollers really think they could convert her bony ass to Jesus and make a psalm-singer out of her? They could all take a flying shit in a soup bowl. What a crock!

But, before long she began experiencing sharp pains in her nether regions, and the first thing that occurred to her was: Omigod, I'm getting CANCER!!! She was paranoid about cancer, among other things. Her mother and grandmother had died of it. Not that she was terribly sorry to see them go, for they'd both been bitches on wheels, but still the fear lodged within her and wouldn't be expunged. Didn't help matters, she reckoned, that she'd given her own brother cancer through a big momma of a spell. Not that the son of a bitch didn't deserve it, after the way he'd molested her when she was only twelve.

She made such a ruckus, the prison doctor finally took her to be examined. No cancer cells, they told her. She was clean as a whistle. She didn't believe them for a second. The bastards WANTED her to get cancer so they could get their jollies watching her die. She finally told them she wanted a second opinion, half expecting them to say, "OK, you're ugly too!" This time they did find a small cyst in one of her ovaries. It was removed and she was all right again...or so they told her.

But an acute depression seized her. She would be eligible for parole in two years, provided she behaved herself. But the thought of spending those two years in this hellhole kissing ass and toeing the line filled her with such an overwhelming bleakness, she started thinking of suicide. She thought of the girl whose chances of motherhood she had ruined, and all those people praying for her. So who'd ever pray for ME...unless they were praying for me to get cancer, and in the female parts, fittingly enough. Poetic justice. But there was no real way to off yourself here, other than take a running head-butt at the wall, and that was just so not the way she wanted to go....

She looked up again at the one they called Big Bertha--or, at least, the matrons called her that. None of the inmates did, not to her face anyway. Her real name was Gladys Dillahanty, and she had killed three men and one woman and had been on death row for six years. She was six-foot-three and weighed in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds--and that was a damn big neighborhood. It was rumored that she was a man with a sex-change operation. There were some girls there, not much over eighteen, caught peddling drugs or pussy to the wrong party, and if they started giving you their lip all you had to do was promise them a day in the tank in the company of Big Bertha. That shut 'em up fast.

As far as Patricia/Cassandra was concerned, she was a gorilla with a species-change operation.

She'd probably have gone to the chair long ago if all the bleeding hearts who opposed the death penalty hadn't made such an issue of her sentence. Funny, thought Cassandra, those same bleeding hearts are probably out there right now praying for me to get cancer.

You Jesus freaks wanna know what hell is? she screamed silently to the cinderblock wall. Growing up in a dysfunctional family, that's what it is. And you never get away from it even if you live to be two hundred thousand.

"OK Jesus, you win," she said too softly for anyone else to hear. "You want my scrawny old tuchas, you got it, buddy. So take away all my sins but one, I'm keepin' that one, and if you're not OK with it, then...bite me."

She actually smiled then, pushing back a lock of her hair, which was cut very short and gone back to its natural mousy brown, considerably mixed with grey. She drew a deep breath. Now here was a conversion that should go into the Guinness Book of effin' World Records, she thought. Heaven will be much more interesting with me there, surely. 'K, One-Inch Girl, have all the babies you want, sweetcheeks. Name one of the little shits after me, OK?

Just don't call it Patsy.

"Hey, Big Bertha," she called to the behemoth standing at the window, "yeah, you, tootsy. Is that your ass or are they setting up a planetarium in here?"

Lenny wondered what Alejandro would have done if he had known that Cassandra's death would free them from the spell. Maybe he shouldn't think too much about that. He'd think instead why Alejandro would name his son after his brother who had been a common criminal and gotten him thrown in prison. Alejandro would just say his brother had also looked after him, had saved his life a time or two, and had, though unwittingly, pointed the way to his redemption. Maybe this was Alejandro's way of redeeming his brother, as well.

Lenny also used to wonder if Esme ever missed being tiny, but all he had to do was look at her now to see the answer. She said she did miss her tiny horsy, Brisa, which was now in the care of Lori, who adored animals. And at first she'd wondered what to do about her splendid little designer wardrobe, which had cost a pretty penny, but she'd managed to sell it on eBay and make quite a killing. Except, of course, for her wedding gown, which was enshrined on a tiny Esme doll in a little glass case. She didn't seem to mind that sales of the Esme dolls had gone down considerably. Her fifteen minutes of fame were over, she said, and she didn't mind at all. She was more than happy to go back to private citizenhood.

"Guess we'll have to get a real job now," Alejandro said, not sounding a bit sorry as Esme handed his little daughter to him and Lenny gave Joaquin, who was starting to get fussy, to Es, then Alejandro let Lori hold Ingrid. "I'm learning plane mechanics with my dad. And I've just got my pilot's license. I could be a commercial pilot and a mechanic too. And keep giving fencing lessons on the side, if I got time."

"I've got a real job already," Esme said looking down at her little son as she put him to nurse, looking as though she had swallowed the entire solar system. "The realest job there is."

"Viva la familia!" Alejandro said, raising an imaginary glass to all.

~*~The End~*~

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