Today I am thrilled to share a guest post from YA author Ashley Hope Perez. You may not remember but I loved her debut last year, What Can't Wait. I interviewed her last year. Welcome back Ashley!!Unfortunately I was unable to review The Knife and the Butterfly but I am looking forward to following the rest of this tour and reading the great reviews it's getting, such as this one from Forever Young Adult (giveaway included)! Plus reading the book ASAP
Chapter 1 of The Knife and the ButterflyI’m standing inches from a wall, staring at a half-finished piece. Even though I’m too close to read what it says, I know it’s my work. I run my hands over the black curves outlined in silver. I lean in and sniff. Nothing, not a whiff of fumes. When did I start this? It doesn’t matter; I’ll finish it now. I start to shake the can in my hand, but all I hear is a hollow rattle. I toss the can down and reach for another, then another. Empty. They’re all empty.
I wake up with that all over shitty feeling you get the day after a rumble. Head splitting, guts twisted. All that’s left of my dream is a memory of black and silver. I sit up, thinking about snatching the baggie from under the couch and going to the back lot for a joint before Pelón can bust my balls for smoking his weed.
Except then I realize I’m not at Pelón’s. I’m on this narrow cot with my legs all tangled up in a raggedy-ass blanket. It’s dark except for a fluorescent flicker from behind me. I get loose of the covers and take four steps one way before I’m up against another concrete wall. Six steps the other way, and I’m bumping into the shitter in the corner. There’s a sink right by it.• No mirror.• Drain bolted into the concrete floor. I can make out words scrawled in Sharpie on the wall to one side of the cot: WELCUM HOME FOOL. I turn around, already half-knowing what I’m going to see.
Bars. Through them, I take in the long row of cells just like this one. I’m in lock-up. Shit, juvie again? It’s only been four months since I got out of Houston Youth Village.• Village, my ass.
I sit back down on the cot and try to push through the fog in my brain from the shit we smoked yesterday. Thing is, I’ve got no memory of getting brought in here. It’s like I want to replay that part, but my brain’s a jacked-up DVD player that skips back again and again to the same damn scene, the last thing I can remember right.
We’re cruising through the Montrose looking for some fools who’d been messing with Javi’s stepsister. We’ve got this ghetto-ass van that Javi bought off his aunt, and the whole time he’s driving he’s hitting a bottle of Jack and trashing the punks who called his sister a ho. Pelón’s in the front seat, and me, my brother Eddie, plus Mono, Cucaracha, Chuy, Greñas, and three other homeboys are smashed in the back. We’re sitting on top of bricks and chains and bats and all the other shit Javi keeps there. All the way, I’m thinking that by the time we get out of the van I’m going to have chains imprinted on my ass from sitting on them so long. There’s a knot in my guts. Don’t matter how many battles I’ve been in, I get it every time. But I know as soon as we hit the ground it’ll turn into a rush.
“Where the hell are these fools?” I call up to Javi.
“Tranquílo, culero. We’ll find them soon,” he says, passing the bottle to us in the back.
“Watch for the red and brown,” Pelón says, all businesslike.
Greñas lights up a fat joint, sucks on it hard. Everybody’s joking and taking hits when Javi sees the beat-up green Caddy his stepsister told him about.• He floors it and noses the van right up to the tail of the car. Three dudes in the back throw up their hand sign.
The Caddy flies through stop signs, swerving like a dog with an ass full of wasps.
“Come on, let’s ride them bitches!” Mono says.
Javi floors it, and we lurch through a red light.
“Easy, cabrón!” I shout over the horns. “We can’t kick their asses if we’re dead!”
Javi laughs crazy. “Stop being a pussy, pussy!”
The Caddy pulls through a CVS parking lot, then takes off down another street. Javi tries to keep up. He scrapes over a curb when we make a turn, throwing all of us in the back on top of each other.
“Shit, Javi, you made me spill the Jack!” Cucaracha moans. Javi just throws his foot down on the gas again.
We catch up after about a block, and this kid in the back of the Caddy drops his pants and presses his ass up against the glass. That sets Javi off again.
The Caddy swings into a big empty lot by this run-down park.• Javi plows through the patchy grass and dirt to the other side.• Before he even stops, the rest of us grab our shit.
“Let’s school these fuckers!” Eddie calls as we pile out.
“Hell, yeah!” I shout, swinging a chain.• On the other side of the park, a big Chevy Tahoe pulls up with more of the Crazy Crew kiddies.
Now that I’m outside and I can move, I’m feeling good, strong. We roll in a kind of whacked dance, pushing across the field toward them, throwing our signs up.• Our blue and white is on our tats, and maybe on our undershirts and rags. Eddie and a few of the boys are wearing blue and silver jerseys. But these fools are decked out like it’s dirty Valentine’s Day, brown and red popping out everywhere--shoelaces, pants, hats, sunglasses, even. Pinche posers.
They walk toward us looking cocky since they’ve got us outnumbered.• But these are soft midtown boys. We’ll whip them fast.
We start throwing our bricks and chains at them. They dodge and shout shit. Their guys have pipes, but I can tell they don’t know how to fight. Babies. They’ll be running scared soon.
Chuy hits this tall, fat dude with a brick. I start smacking another guy’s legs with the chain. •He yelps and runs without even throwing a punch.
We keep pushing toward them, pitching our stuff, then going after it again.
I’m smacking around this one dude when I see a light-skinned punk going hardcore after my brother Eddie. Eddie’s older than me, but I’m stronger, so I go bail him out.
“Chinga con mi hermano, and you mess with me!” I say. I block the dude’s blows and whip the chain around his legs. He crashes to the ground.
Eddie kicks him in the gut and slaps my hand. “La Mara Salvatrucha controla!” he shouts. He spits on the fool lying there, whimpering like a puppy.
Eddie goes after another punk, and I look around there’s a bat lying in the grass not far off. I jog over to it, feeling like a fucking king now that the fight is rolling. I’m reaching for the bat when I see something red flash out of the corner of my eye. I look, but there’s nothing. A second later, I think I see it again. I shake my head in case something ain’t right in there. I turn quick and catch sight of the red again. And then--
——
The opening chapter of The Knife and the Butterfly pushes the reader into Azael’s rough world and sets up a key tension in the novel: now (Azael’s in some kind of messed-up facility) and the then (what happened before he got there). The rest of the novel shifts back and forth between the two times, giving glimpses of Azael’s life and what brought him—and the other main character, Lexi—to this place.
In the first chapter, I wanted to throw down the gauntlet—no easing the reader into Azael’s world. But don’t worry: it’s not all gangs and violence and cussing. If I let Azael’s bravado come on full force here—he definitely thinks he is one macho badass—it’s precisely so that the reader can see that stereotype undo itself in the rest of the novel.
Azael is much more than a gangbanger.
Maybe you can’t imagine him cutting his little sister’s fingernails… or buying groceries for his friend’s mom… or cutting a picture out of National Geographic… or reading a girl’s journal… or praying… or saving an enemy. But by the end of the novel, you’ll see that Azael can do all these things and more. He’s a complicated character, one you’ll learn to care about, I swear.
Ditto for Lexi, the other character who’s central to The Knife and the Butterfly. I’m not going to lie; I hated her at first. I couldn’t stand how she throws herself at boys, how disrespectful and ungrateful she is, how her attitude is so big it casts its own shadow. But it turns out she has her own secrets and fears and memories that—even if they didn’t stop us (and Azael) from wanting to roll our eyes—make us see how she got to be who she is.
Making my characters dig around in the past has other bonuses, too. Because Azael and Lexi have to face where they’ve come from and how they got where they are so that they can move forward, each in their own way.
Interviews, excerpts, guest posts, and secrets (including two truths and a lie) coming throughout Ashley’s The Knife and the Butterfly blog tour. See the full tour schedule here
Ashley lives in Paris with her family at the moment, but she’s as close as a message. She loves hearing from readers! Check out her blog, follow her on twitter @ashleyhopeperez or find her on facebook
That was a very exciting passage, I was crushed when I realized Chapter 2 wasn't included ;D And food for thought: how many of us judge gangbangers or people who "look like gangbangers" in one second? Chew on that. Thank you so much for stopping by once again Ashley!
