Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia Read Free Book Online Page B

turmoil. She was not permitted any boyfriends, though this was not an issue because in addition to her childish ways—no doubt rooted in the babying imposed on her by her parents—Daniela was a moon-faced, limpid girl. Her greatest assets were her breasts which had started swelling at the tender age of eleven, turning into two rather large embarrassments, causing Daniela to walk everywhere looking a little hunched.
    In fact, Daniela and Meche made quite a pair when they were side by side. Meche, thin and flat as a board, pimpled, dark of complexion and intentions, standing always very straight. Daniela, dwarfing Meche with her greater height, chubby and pale, shy and slumped, with short frizzy hair of a vaguely reddish hue which she had inherited from a Scottish ancestor who had stumbled into Mexico some eighty years before.
    Daniela liked watching soap operas and reading romance novels. She painted her room pink and kept all her Barbies on shelves. She was, in short, the polar opposite of Meche and loved her friend precisely because of this.
    Sometimes, though, Daniela had to admit Meche scared her. Early on in their friendship she had been warned by some of the other girls at school that Meche was odd, different, perhaps slightly crazy. However, beggars can’t be choosers and Daniela did not have many friends. Plus, Meche’s energy attracted Daniela, even if this same intensity made her step quietly back at times.
    Meche had a way of roping you in with her words, of convincing you to do the unthinkable. One minute you were firmly telling yourself that you would never play with a Ouija board, the next you were gathered in the bathroom, the board sitting on top of the toilet lid, while Meche urged you on before the principal came and busted you all.
    Daniela, never one to put up much resistance, constantly fell under the sway of Meche’s stronger personality, always the handmaiden to the queen.
    Like that day.
    She had told Meche there would be no spell casting in her home, but Meche informed Daniela that they couldn’t do it in her apartment because her mother was around and they couldn’t do it in Sebastian’s apartment because he shared a room with his brother, and Daniela was the one who had an empty house on Thursdays because her mother and her sisters went grocery shopping that day during the afternoon. It all made perfect sense, see? Before Daniela knew it she had said “yes.”
    Meche arrived with Sebastian, placed the portable record player on the floor, flipped the case open, and was riffling through the records she had brought inside a tattered, nylon market bag.
    Daniela wrung her hands, hoping her mother and siblings would not burst in any time soon and that this whole witchcraft thing did not involve anything gross. Once, when she was little, Daniela’s mother had taken her to an old healer for a limpia . The woman had rubbed an egg and a lemon all over her body, then made her drink this bitter brew, telling her it would heal her. It hadn’t. Daniela still had lupus and her mother still would not let her play sports for fear of lacerations.
    “What are you doing?” Daniela asked eventually, because standing there and staring at her two friends was starting to bore her.
    “We are picking spell music,” Meche said.
    “What spell are we doing?”
    “Something about success.”
    “Okay, why don’t we use the Iggy Pop song?” Sebastian asked, holding up a record.
    “Too obvious,” Meche said.
    “What? We get points for being cryptic?” Sebastian said.
    “You don’t just go out there and blurt it out,” Meche replied.
    “Why not?”
    “Because it would be too easy.”
    “Easy is good.”
    “My mother will be back soon,” Daniela muttered.
    Sebastian and Meche turned towards her, eyebrows arched, with that look that meant, Daniela, you don’t get it . It was a very common look.
    “Fine,” Sebastian said. “David Bowie. We play Fame and call it even.”
    “That’s about two degrees