A/N: This was written for Thea Appreciation Week. The Division Street Riots mentioned in this chapter were a series of riots that took place in Chicago and were the result of years of systematic oppression of the city's Latino population; however, there are very few resources on the riots and I can say from experience that the riots are not taught in most schools in Chicago (thank you Daley family). Questions/comments/concerns? Shoot 'em my way!

She is ten years old when her family leaves the island of Culebra and gets on a ship to New York. They leave in a hurry with only one suitcase between them—the men her father owes a lifetime of debt to take everything else.

"What's in America?" her little sister asks.

"A new life," her parents say.

Their life is certainly new.

The apartment in New York is too expensive and too cramped for the five of them. The pipes creak and sometimes the water comes out brown. Cockroaches skitter across the floor and the walls are paper-thin. She can hear her neighbors laughing and fighting and crying and lovemaking and she hates America.

The rest of the city isn't much better outside their tin can of an apartment. Smoke chokes the air and there is always noise everywhere—from cars, from people, from the ships coming to Ellis Island. Don't come here, she tells them silently. Go home, go back to Puerto Rico. There is nothing for you here.

She tries taking her brother and sister to a playground, but they are chased away by white faces twisted into sneers.

"Spics! Dirty Spics! Go back to Puerto Rico!" they shout.

Anselma cries all the way back to their tenement and Gervasio trips on the hard concrete and Esperanza can't help remembering the way her sister used to laugh when they played in the water, how her brother learned to walk on the dirt roads by the orchards.

She decides right then and there that she's not going to let this ugly, dirty world get to her. She survived hurricanes and disease and gangs coming after her father's money—she sure as hell isn't going to let this lousy country be her downfall.

They stay in New York for almost a year before her father's friend tells them to move to Chicago with him.

"There are more opportunities there, and less noise," he says.

And because New York has given them nothing but headaches and dirty looks, they go.

She doesn't know what she was expecting, but it wasn't this.

Chicago looks just like New York to her, a mess of cars and people and skyscrapers itching for the clouds. Their apartment is a little bigger than the last one, but not by much; she shares a room with Anselma while Gervasio shares a room with the baby, Joaquín. He cries all night and Esperanza, the only one who bothers answering his wails, sits up with him and thinks you and me both, kid.

She and Anselma go to school in the barrio; she walks her to school every morning before she joins the throng of Puerto Rican and black kids walking to the junior high school. She likes the school well enough, and she likes the kids who go there about as much, but she dreads the walk home. Every day, a group of Polish boys stand on the corner near the primary school and shout her down.

"Where are you going, señorita?" They taunt.

"Cha-cha! Aí, carumba!"

"Get on a boat back to Puerto Rico!"

At first, she listens to her teachers and tries to ignore them. She takes Anselma's hand and walks past them with her head held high.

She can ignore the names, the dirty words, the warnings to go back to Puerto Rico or else. And she can ignore them when they pull her hair, and she can even ignore them when they try to shove her down to the hard cement sidewalk and only a passing man stops them.

But when they reach for Anselma, she's had enough.

She fights them until her knuckles bleed and her knees are banged up and her lip is split and her eye black, but she grins a savage, bloody grin as the last of them runs away.

"You look like the devil," Anselma murmurs in awe.

She looks at her reflection in one of the store windows and sees a creature from hell staring back at her.

"Maybe I am," she says.

The boys never bother her or Anselma again, and if anyone else in the barrio makes the mistake of messing with either of the Torrez girls, Esperanza makes sure they don't make the same mistake twice.

Her father takes up odd jobs around the city, but most of his income is from his gang. Her parents bicker constantly—about the money he makes, about their apartment, about how they never should have left Puerto Rico. They stop long enough to have another baby—a boy, Pepe—and then they go right back to blaming each other for everything.

Esperanza raises her brothers and sister and herself. She teaches them English and how to fight back, because if there is anything America has taught her, it is how to adapt.

Anselma grows into a pretty señorita with half the boys in the barrio chasing after her. Gervasio, Joaquín, and Pepe, too restless for their cramped apartment, take to the streets; Esperanza sees them sometimes, scrambling up chainlink fences and fire escapes and leading their army of black and brown children to battle on the asphalt. They always come home with scrapes and ripped clothes. Sometimes they don't come home at all.

She doesn't blame them.

Esperanza doesn't have time for boys or playing in the streets. She sees the women in the barrio and she knows what happens when girls graduate high school (if they make it that far). They marry their high school sweetheart and move into a tiny apartment so that they can pump out eight screaming brats and complain about it for the rest of their lives.

Not me, never me, she promises to herself.

She works hard in school and makes good grades; if she makes good grades, she can get a good job and move away from this cramped and awful place. She might even get into a community college and get an even better job and move even farther away.

And then someday, she can take the money she's made and go back to Puerto Rico, because it's both the furthest away place she can think to go and also the closest.

She makes it to her senior year of high school with the highest marks in her class.

"You should give yourself a break," Anselma says from the mirror, where she's attempting to flip the ends of her hair like the white girls on magazine covers. "Try spending a Saturday with a boy instead of a book."

"I can't get distracted," Esperanza insists.

She never counts on meeting Him.

The first time they cross paths is at the drugstore off California Avenue. She's picking up her mother's headache pills and buying milkshakes for her brothers when a group of Polish boys come in.

"It smells like garlic in here," one of them says loudly.

She keeps her eyes on her change. The stern outlines of presidents she memorized in school glint back up at her.

"Smile for us, señora! Let's see that gold tooth!"

"Cha-cha!"

"Move along."

Her eyes lift at this new voice. A boy from the barrio, a brown boy, with eyes like fire and a voice like thunder.

The Polish boys hesitate, their blue eyes flickering back and forth.

"What are you going to do if we don't?" they finally ask.

"It's not what I'll do—it's what they'll do," the boy says, gesturing to his friends in the back of the drugstore. There are eight of them, all glowering at the front.

One of the Polish boys spits on the floor before they skitter out the door.

"You shouldn't let them talk to you like that," he says, switching to Spanish.

She stiffens her back, sweeping her change into her purse. "I can take care of myself."

"Then why weren't you?" he demands.

She glares at him. He's dressed nicer than most of the boys in Lincoln Park and he wears his hair long like the Beatles. His English is very good with only the faintest traces of an accent—a college student, she realizes. Of course he wouldn't understand.

"There's no point; they don't listen," she says, making to leave.

He catches her arm. "Not being heard is no reason for silence."

Her lips curve. "I bet you're used to being heard a lot."

He releases her arm with a smile. "Every Sunday in Humboldt Park, by the Alexander von Humboldt monument."

She doesn't plan on going at first. She has more important things to worry about than attractive boys who tell her to stand up for herself. But her brothers want to play baseball in the park on Sunday and if she gets bored in the middle of their game and just happens to wander towards the Alexander von Humboldt monument…well.

She hears his thundering voice first. He stands on the ledge beside the water, a crowd of Latinos and Latinas gathered before him. He speaks of the corrupt mayor who gets paid off by the city's mobs, of the Polacks who force them out of their homes and businesses, of the police who arrest them and beat them for the color of the skin. It's a good thing, she reflects as a cop wanders by, that none of the cops speak Spanish.

When he climbs down from the ledge, his face flushed and his open collar damp with sweat, she applauds with the rest of the crowd. He sees her as the crowd thins and smiles, making a beeline for her.

"You came," he notes, running fingers through coal-black curls.

"I was in the neighborhood," she says, shrugging.

He laughs. "Well, what did you think?"

"I think…you use a lot of big words for this side of Chicago."

"Did you not understand some of my big words?"

"I understood all of them," she says with a twinge of annoyance, because if anyone's going to make her feel stupid, it's not going to be this college boy with fire in his eyes and thunder in his voice. "I just don't think everyone else did. Not all of us go to a big fancy college."

He smiles and it bothers her that he can be so pleasant. "You don't have to go to a big fancy college to understand the sentiment behind the words."

She opens her mouth to argue, but one of his friends shouts, "Julián! Are you coming or are you going to flirt?"

His cheeks flush. "Wait a second," he calls back.

"So the big, impressive college boy has a name," she teases, trying not to let her own embarrassment show. She is not flirting with him. She's not, she's not, she's not.

"Yes."

"Julián!"

"I'm coming!" He backs slowly towards his friends. "Can I have your name?"

She hesitates. "Esperanza."

He smiles. "To hope."

"I wouldn't hope for much if I were you, college boy." And she runs away, her heart pounding.

She drags Anselma to go with her the following Sunday because she can't bear the idea of looking desperate. Her sister whines and puts up a fight until she explains that she's going for a boy.

"A boy?" Anselma says in great interest. "You didn't tell me you liked a boy!"

"I don't like him, I just want to hear what he says," she insists.

But it does the trick; Anselma walks with her to Humboldt Park and listens as Julián holds his audience captive. Esperanza can't help noticing that, though his speech is still as fiery as last time and his voice still thunders across the park, he doesn't use as many big words.

When he's done, he heads straight for her.

"Came back for more?" he teases.

"You took my advice," she notes with deep satisfaction.

He shrugs. "I'm a student; it's my job to learn." He glances at Anselma, who is watching the two of them with wide eyes. "And you must be…"

"I'm her sister," she volunteers, extending her hand. "Anselma. She wouldn't stop talking about you."

"That's a lie," Esperanza says at once.

"Really? What did she say?" he asks, smirking at her.

"I didn't say anything—"

"That's a secret," Anselma says craftily.

One of Julián's friends, a handsome boy Esperanza has seen around la Division before, jogs up to them. "Julián, we're going to La Musa now if you want to catch up with us later." His eyes catch Esperanza and she sees a spark of recognition. "Unless your friend wants to join us…"

"We're not friends," she tries to say, but Anselma digs her nails into her arm and talks over her.

"We'd love to come, wouldn't we, sis?"

She starts to say no, but she takes one look at the boy with fire for eyes and that's all it takes.

"Yes."

She meets all of Julián's friends from college—Ferran, from Spain; Carlos, the boy who recognized her from earlier (and who seems to like her sister an awful lot); Gaspar, who goes by R; Felipe, whose mother is Polish; Julio and Luis, who both seem to be dating a pretty girl named Marcela; and Bernardo, who has a loud laugh and looks as if he could take on everyone in the room. There is another member of their group, Marcos, but from the way they talk, he's never around anymore.

"It's that girlfriend of his," Bernardo says with distaste.

"From the way you talk, a person would think you don't have a girlfriend," Marcela snorts.

"My girlfriend doesn't exist when I'm with my friends," he says dismissively.

"Pig."

Esperanza can't get over it, how young and carefree all of them are. The twenty-somethings she knows are all married or trying to get there quickly. They all have jobs and spouses and a pack of screaming brats and a mountain of debt. But Julián and his friends don't have a care in the world. They're so…alive.

It hits her that this is what she wants. She wants a life where she's alive.

"But what happens when you graduate?" she asks Julián.

He shrugs. "We get jobs, we get married, we contribute to society. But we do it our way. The color of our skin doesn't determine what we should or shouldn't do. Who says a Puerto Rican isn't capable of being president of the United States? Who says a black woman doesn't know just as much as a white man?"

"White people say so," she reminds him. "We live in a white world, college boy."

He leans forward. "Yes, but the colors of the world are changing every day." He smells like rain and smoke and his thunderous voice has rolled into the memory of the ocean and she could drink him in forever if he let her.

Anselma joins her the following Sunday; she claims it's because she likes Julián's speeches, but Esperanza thinks it has something to do with the way Carlos smiles at her. The boys invite them to the house they all share on West North Avenue near the college. It's small and they sleep two or three to a room, but it's nice. They sit out on the fire escape and turn up the radio and drink beer (she hates it but she drinks it anyway because there's something right about the bitter taste).

Julián talks for a long time about the changes he wants to make to the world. Everyone gets bored and turns away after a while, but Esperanza keeps listening because she likes to hear the thunder in his voice.

"They keep finding ways to put us down, new ways to degrade us and pretend that they're making progress," he tells her, the fire crackling in his eyes. "But we're not stupid. People all over the world are figuring it out. One day, they're going to fight back. And then—"

"Julián," she says, because she is a little drunk and she likes the way his name feels on her tongue. "You haven't stopped talking about overthrowing the government all day. Let's talk about something else."

His eyes search hers. "I don't know how to talk about anything else."

She smiles. "Then don't talk."

She's not pretty in the way that Anselma is and she doesn't know how to flirt, but she knows that he makes her feel things she's never felt before and she knows that she wants to kiss those lips that never seem to stop moving.

It's an awkward kiss at first and she feels so stupid she wants to cry, but then he threads his fingers in her hair and tilts his head and this is what thunder feels like.

May passes in a whirl of balmy nights on the fire escape, with cold beers in her hand and a storm of a boy beside her.

The date of her graduation draws closer and closer, and where the idea of leaving high school and getting on with her adult life might have once pleased her, it now only fills her with dread.

"You could apply for the city college," Julián reminds her.

"Because they're accepting Latinas all the time," she says sarcastically.

Secretly, she wants to go, and she knows that she has a chance (if a slim one). She's smart, smarter than most of the kids in her school, and if she worked hard and got Julián to help her, she could probably get in. She even has the application sitting in a drawer in her desk at home.

But she wants even more to go home to Puerto Rico, and going to college will just hold her back. No, the sooner she can find work and save up money, the sooner she can get out of this dirty country built on a white man's dream and go home.

She graduates in early June and celebrates with beers at the boys' house. She feels alive and giddy, and if it weren't for Julián's arm around her waist, she would swear she could float to the moon.

He leans into her. "You should think about what I said."

"What's that?" she asks in a stupor.

"About college," he says patiently. "You could get in. I could help you."

Her stomach churns. "I don't know."

"Even if you don't, you should stay here. I know you want to go back to Puerto Rico, but…there's nothing in Puerto Rico anymore. Why do you think our parents left?"

The churning feeling gets worse. "They thought America would be better, but…it hasn't been better for me."

"You were a little girl when you left," he reminds her quietly. "What if you're just holding onto a dream?"

"And you're not?" she snaps.

"My dream is of the future. Yours is of the past." She can hear the gentle roll of thunder in his voice. "We hold onto what we need to, but when you try to go back…the Puerto Rico you remember leaving and the Puerto Rico you'll go back to are two different places, Esperanza."

"Just stop talking," she whispers, resting her head against the cool railing. She feels sick.

"I just don't want you to build up this vision that gets torn down," he murmurs. "Stay here, with me. We can work together, we can fight for change and—"

It's all too much. She doesn't want to hear it, any of it. She leans over and spills the contents of her stomach into the alley below. She becomes vaguely aware of the boys crying out and laughing in surprise before someone pulls her to her feet and jokes about how she's had too much to drink. Someone half-walks, half-carries her inside and lays her on the couch before everything turns to blissful darkness.

She avoids him for the next few days. She knows what he was trying to ask her, but that isn't what terrifies her. It's that she doesn't know what her answer might be.

She applies for jobs all over the city, from waitressing to maid services to secretarial positions. Anything to get away. But there are a hundred young, ambitious girls just like her all over the city, and she isn't surprised when the phone doesn't ring. She thinks of the college application stored in her desk drawer—and immediately shoves the thought from her mind.

The air conditioner breaks on the twelfth day of June, and not even the breeze from Lake Michigan can cool off the apartment.

"Let's get an ice cream or something," Anselma whines, fanning herself off.

"Take the boys with you," their mother grunts from where she's draped herself over the couch. "They're driving me crazy."

The boys run ahead of their sisters, leaping over each other and tackling each other as if it wasn't hot enough to melt your own skin.

"Either there's something wrong with them, or we've become Americanized," Anselma laughs. "Puerto Rico was much hotter, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Esperanza says without thinking. It sounds right, anyway.

There is a roar of sound on the next street—leftovers from the Puerto Rican Parade, she thinks. The boys run ahead to investigate and return a few minutes later.

"There's a riot," Gervasio pants. "It's us against the cops."

"Oh my God," Anselma gasps.

"Let's go," Esperanza says, turning around.

"We want to stay," Gervasio says stubbornly.

She shakes her head. "No, we're going home."

He grabs her wrist. "We'll be careful!" he promises. "And I'll look after the brats."

She hesitates. "Just…come home before long so I know you're all right."

His face splits into a grin. "We will!"

The boys tear down the sidewalk and whip around the corner and it's silly because they'll be fine, they always are, but she can't help the sinking feeling in her gut.

The riots last into the night with no signs of stopping.

Her father comes home long enough to get the revolver he keeps under his bed.

"This is a good business opportunity," he says before disappearing into the night.

She and her mother and Anselma fall asleep curled around each other on the living room floor, trying to shut out the sounds of sirens and screams.

Around one in the morning, Esperanza wakes up to someone coming in the apartment.

"Who is it?" she asks in a hoarse voice, the noise waking up her mother and sister.

"It's us." Joaquín and Pepe stand in the light of the lamp. Their clothes are torn and dirty and their hair is rumpled but they don't look hurt.

"Where's Gervasio?" she asks at once.

They glance at each other.

"Boys—"

"He ran into Julián and his friends," Joaquín blurts. "They're at their club on North Washtenaw. They're planning a strategy. He told us to go home where it was safe."

Esperanza could punch a hole in the wall. Instead, she gets to her feet and marches into her room.

"And where are you going?" her mother squawks.

"I'm going to bring him home." She goes to her bathroom and splashes cold water on her face to wake herself up. She changes out of her sweaty, rumpled clothes and into new ones. She pulls her hair into a ponytail before coming back out into the living room.

"You'll get killed out there," her mother warns.

"And yet, you're not volunteering to take my place." She takes one of the big knives from the kitchen and sheathes it in her back pocket.

"You can't go out there!"

Esperanza turns to regard her mother coolly. "And are you going to stop me?" When the other woman doesn't say anything, she snorts. "I didn't think so. Stay here and look after the boys. Lock the door and don't open it for anyone you don't know. You can manage that much, can't you?" She doesn't wait for her mother's nod, just turns and marches out the door.

She was born in the middle of a hurricane. She raised her sister and brothers in a concrete jungle. She once fought off a pack of blond-haired, blue-eyed wolves. She has not given in yet, and she will be damned if anyone tries to stop her now.

The city is full of chaos. Bottles break at her feet, rocks fly over her head, fires burn all around her, sirens shriek past her, but she does not stop once.

The Latin American Boys' Club is a flurry of activity, with boys about her age running frantically from room to room. She peers into each and finally finds the one full of familiar faces.

"Esperanza!" Carlos greets, his smile faltering when he sees her face.

"Where is my brother."

Gervasio peers at her from between R and Bernardo. "Sis! I didn't think you were the rioting type!"

"I'm not." Her eyes lock with Julián's. "I'm just here to take you home."

"He's safe here," Julián tells her before the younger boy can protest.

"Yes, the middle of a riot seems very safe," she says sarcastically. "Come on, Gervasio."

He opens his mouth, but Julián beats him to it again. "We know what we're doing, and we're not going to get your brother hurt."

"I don't think any of the people in the hospital right now planned to get hurt; and yet, there they are," she snaps. "He's my brother and I know what's best for him."

"What, to hide him behind your skirts? You can't protect him forever, Esperanza."

"No, but I can damn well try. Come on, Gervasio!" she snaps, grabbing her brother's arm and dragging him out the door.

Julián follows them into the hall. "He's old enough to decide for himself. He wants to stay here and help our cause—"

"You and your cause," she scoffs.

"Yes, our cause," he fires back. "I know you don't care about it but you could at least try—"

"Of course I care." She releases her iron grip on Gervasio, who flees back to the room. "Why wouldn't I care? When my family left Puerto Rico, my parents promised that we were going to live a better life in America, and they lied to me. I never knew there was something wrong with me until I came here. But the color of my skin, my accent, the food I eat—all of it means I'm something less than human. I'm Latina. Puerto Rican. Brown." She shakes her head. "I never want a little girl to be crushed the way I was when I came here. And if your change is the answer for that then of course I care."

"Then stay," he pleads, taking her face in his hands.

She smiles at him bitterly. "This is always going to come first for you, isn't it?"

He gives her an apologetic look. "It makes sense to me."

She takes a deep breath. "Okay."

They pour into the streets a few hours later. Rocks and bricks are hurled, bottles shattered, and a man they call Javier convinces them to turn over a police car and set it on fire. Julián looks at her from across the flames and she swears he was born from them. She smiles a bloody, savage grin back at him and holds Gervasio close to her.

When the cops come for them, she fights harder than she's ever fought before. She fights for her brothers, for her sister, for Julián and his stupid change, for the little girl she left behind in Puerto Rico.

The sun is rising when a cop raises his club to Gervasio.

She's more tired than she's ever been and she's already fighting off another club, but something pushes her. They can take her but they will not take her brother goddammit not after everything she's done for him.

The man must be twice her size and weight, but she throws him off her and lunges for her little brother, shoving him towards the sidewalk.

Gervasio disappearing into a side alley is the last thing she sees before the club connects with her skull.

By the time she is released from the hospital, the riots are mostly over.

Her friends were either sent to the hospital with injuries like hers or were arrested on the spot. Julián was arrested.

She visits him every day that she can, and when he asks her to help organize the march against police brutality, she rolls her eyes but does it anyway.

She applies for the city college, and by the time Julián gets out of jail, she's already gotten her acceptance letter.

"Looks like you're stuck here," he says with a smile.

"Just until I graduate," she reminds him.

In 1968 he and his friends attach themselves to the Young Lords human rights campaign.

"You and your cause," she scoffs, twisting her engagement ring.

When Jose Cha Cha Jimenez makes the move to New York, he personally asks Julián to head up the Chicago Young Lords. She helps him, putting her social work degree to good use, and speaks out against the corrupt Mayor Daley. They fight against the gentrification that would force their families out of the barrios and make room for white yuppies to build more condominiums. They join forces with the Black Panther Party and work for equality for Latino and African American people all over the city. Mostly, they fight for change.

"What do you say we take a trip to Puerto Rico?" Julián asks her one day.

Esperanza gives him a look over stacks of papers. "Don't be stupid, we have too much work for that."

They end up going to Puerto Rico a few years later as representatives of the U.S. branch of the Puerto Rican Independence Party. They bring their daughter, Sofia, and watch her swim in the sapphire-blue water of Culebra.

"Is it like you remembered?" he asks, taking her hand. "Your dream?"

"You and your dreams," she scoffs, standing on her toes to kiss him.