Tigers, Not Daughters - Samantha Mabry Page 0,2

right hand to her left and back.

All warm, star-flecked spring nights in downtown San Antonio bring out the tourists, but this night was different from the other warm, star-flecked nights. The girls were making their getaway on one of the busiest nights of the year, during Fiesta, when the streets were packed, even in the middle of the night—and not just packed with tourists, but with locals draped in medal-covered sashes and wearing crowns made from paper flowers. They were out in droves to celebrate the Texians who fought long ago in the battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto. And even when we were still a couple of blocks away from downtown proper, we could hear the music—the blare of horns, the percussive thumps of guitars. Little bits of colored crepe paper floated through air and covered the sidewalks and the streets.

The girls chose to run away during Fiesta probably because they thought they could disappear in the huge, ambling crowd and no one would notice them, and maybe that was a good plan. We, however, could do nothing but notice them. None of the Torres sisters was particularly tall—Iridian was the tallest, but still not tall. Their heads didn’t bob above the crowd, but we could still see it shift and part as the girls pushed through. We followed, shouldering and ducking our way through people who smelled like beer and cinnamon and drugstore cologne. We thought we could stay hidden and that we could go unnoticed, but once the sisters had finally plowed through the crowd’s northernmost edge and were picking up their pace, Jessica, who was still bringing up the rear, glanced over her shoulder and saw us.

She stopped. Her eyes narrowed. We froze. She advanced.

“Shit,” Jimmy squeaked.

Even with a little square of pink crepe paper stuck just above her right eyebrow, Jessica Torres was still scary as hell. It seemed like she was always, always angry. In kindergarten, she bit a teacher on the wrist because snack time was over and he tried to take away her peanut butter crackers. In junior high, she keyed Jenny Sanchez’s mom’s car because she didn’t like the color of it, and just this last December, she got detention for three days after she’d jammed the tip of a lead pencil into Muriel Contreras’s pinky finger. The lead is still in there. Muriel tries to say it’s a freckle, but everyone knows the truth.

For a moment, there on the far edge of the Fiesta celebration, none of us spoke. Jessica stared us down. Her teeth were clamped together, bared slightly, just like they were when she was climbing down that tree. The other Torres sisters—realizing Jessica was no longer with them—halted and spun around.

It was Hector who finally mustered up some courage. He cleared his throat and asked, “Where are you going?”

“We can help,” Calvin quickly chimed in.

Ana took a step forward. She shrugged off her heavy backpack and slid herself in front of Jessica. She looked us over, met each of us in the eye for the briefest moment, but said nothing. A breeze caught her hair, lifting the strands, blowing them in our direction.

We’d never been this close to Ana Torres before, and it was disorienting. She was so, so beautiful. We’d imagined before—many times—what she might’ve smelled like. Maybe it was roses, vanilla, lemons, or maybe the first, fresh slice of white bread pulled from the plastic sleeve. But until then, we never truly knew.

It was laundry. She smelled like laundry, like dryer sheets mixed with a little stubborn sweat.

“We can help,” Calvin repeated.

“Boys.” Ana’s tone was full of scorn, and it burned our soft hearts. “Go home. We don’t need your help.”

Ana was suddenly lit up from the side. All four of the girls turned, and in that moment we knew from the loud rattle of the overstressed engine coming our way that Rafe Torres had discovered his daughters’ escape and had tracked them down in his truck.

Hector cried out, “Run!”

But the girls didn’t run.

They just waited and watched as their dad honked his horn twice and brought his old green Ford pickup to a stop in the middle of the street. Jessica’s heavy