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CHAPTER TWOBy the time Ernesto got home, he had a message on the home phone’s answering machine. “It’s just too soon,” Naomi said in the message. “Thanks for asking me, and it woulda been fun. But I think it’ll be easier for me and Clay to get over our relationship if we don’t hook up with anybody else for a while. Sorry, Ernie.”
Badly disappointed, Ernesto plopped own on the sofa in the living room. His grandmother was watching a nature special on television with Ernesto’s sisters, eight-year-old Katalina and six-year-old Juanita. Ever since Abuela came to live with Ernesto’s family, she and the girls were inseparable. Abuela’s spending so much time with the girls freed Mom up so that she could finish her children’s book. Now that it had been sold to a publisher, she had time to t
