From the battered folding chair on our screened-in porch, I watched little girls hop along their crooked chalk masterpieces and jump rope with colorful, dusty hands. Further down, their brothers weaved between parked cars lining the cramped street, kicking a frayed soccer ball and hollering, “I’m Hugo Sánchez!” “No, I’m Sánchez! You’re Ferretti!” When a car entered the neighborhood, they practiced their footwork on the sidewalk art, sticking their tongues out at the displea

"As the cold settled over her, Annaisha thought of those giant serpents slithering their gluttonous bodies along the ocean floor. Were they hungry for something different—for something bigger and warmer than cod or salmon? Had one swallowed Papa’s vessel in one gulp, emerging and disappearing at impossible speed? Maybe that’s why Papa hadn’t visited her for the Festival of Ghosts: he was trapped in the serpent’s cavernous stomach—now the doomed protagonist of his mythical tal