It’s Malú’s first day of school. Malú asks her mom if she can walk to school alone; her mom says no. Malú’s first-day wardrobe consists of “green jeans” accompanied by a “Blondie T-shirt and [her] silver-sequined Chuck Taylors”; the shoes are a gift from Malú’s dad, which he gave to her after she finished reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. They function as Malú’s personal version of Dorothy’s ruby slippers. Malú offers that in the book version of the Oz narrative, the shoes aren’t red, but rather, silver. Malú adds that she’s been wearing the sneakers “for a week now, but they seem to have lost their magic, because no matter how many times [she] closed [her] eyes and clicked [her] heels, [she] was still in Chicago. Never back home” (42). Malú repairs a hole in the sole of one of the shoes with duct tape.

Malú goes on to describe herself: “brown skin and thick brown hair that was lighter than Mom’s but darker than Dad’s and that [she] usually wore in two braids” (42). She adds that she has her “Mom’s dark eyes” (42). However, Malú believes the punk side of her aesthetic to be “terribly lacking,” so she applies copious amounts of black eyeliner in the bathroom (43).