LITMIR.BIZ

      I stuffed the letter from the bank back into the drawer and slipped into the kitchen to turn the vent out toward Pig Park. The smell of cinnamon and butter escaped into the street.

      Living above Burciaga’s Bakery—and being a Burciaga—meant it was my job to keep the kitchen spotless and to do any other number of things from bringing in the mail to answering the phone.

      I was sort of the Cinderella of crumbs—minus the ugly stepsisters and the singing mice.

      The last thing we needed was mice.

      “How are you doing over there, Masi?” my dad asked.

      “All right,” I said.

      I grabbed a crusty bowl, ran it under hot water and scrubbed hard, scratching at it like it had the kind of itch that requires a good dose of calamine lotion. I tried not to think about the letter.

      It wasn’t so easy.

      See, my dad started the bakery with nothing but an old box of recipes. He liked to say that the bakery, like most of Pig Park, sprouted in the boom and shadow of the American Lard Company. The company had even donated land right in the middle of everything for the park our neighborhood was named after. That’s why our neighborhood got named Pig Park, because pig fat made lard and lard had more or less made our neighborhood.

      As the company grew, so did we. Hundreds of company employees lived and worked here. They ate and shopped here. We baked twice a day just to keep up. That’s until the company closed down, and people left with the jobs.

      “Economic downturn.” That’s how the big wigs at American Lard explained away how our good old Chicago neighborhood got left behind. My dad said that just meant they didn’t think they were making enough money. So they packed up their jobs and took them some other place—like a whole other country.

      Never mind the irony of American Lard made somewhere other than America.

      I knew from that letter in that drawer that with no one to buy the bread, the bakery would close down for good too. We would end up leaving Pig Park like everyone else.

      This is what else I knew: I’d lived in Pig Park my whole entire life. I still had a few friends left. So—even after everything—I couldn’t wrap my head around the bakery closing and us leaving also. It kept me up at night, wondering about tomorrow and the day after. Maybe I would never see my friends again. My family lived upstairs now. Maybe we’d end up homeless.

      My dad was always saying not to think like that, to leave the worrying to him and my mom, but—I just couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help it about as much as I couldn’t help breathing or just being me.

      My dad tied an apron around his waist, rolled his sleeves up and grabbed hold of the masa resting on the counter. Sweat dampened his shirt across his thick broad back. He pounded down on dough the color of dirt clay. “How about some music?”

      “Music?”

      “Yes.”

      “Like what?” I grabbed a dish towel and dried my hands.

      “Anything.”

      I switched on the radio. My dad sang along to that old song, “Amorcitoooo Corazon.” I imagined him making his way down a cobblestone road on a bike—balancing a big basket of freshly baked rolls on his head—belting out the song like in one of those old black and white movies they used to play in the park to bring the neighborhood together.

      “Dad, I like it when you sing. It makes me feel like I am all wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket,” I said. It made me think of how it was before, when things were good and my dad sang all the time.

      My dad sang even louder and smiled like it made him think of it how it was before too.

      I felt a little better.

      I pulled a sheet of ginger pigs from the oven and put them on the counter to cool. There was no ginger in the pig-shaped treats, just homemade molasses that made the cake-style cookies look like ginger bread when they baked. I grabbed one, broke off a piece, and put it in my mouth. It was perfect—warm, plump and moist on the tip of my tongue.

      Sure, I wanted not to worry like my dad said. I’d spent almost every summer of my life in what felt like a 350-degree kitchen. I wanted to spend my summer with my friends outside the bakery for a change. I wanted a chance at being fifteen and “normal.” I wanted to make like nothing was wrong.

      “Ready?” my dad asked. He untied his apron and threw it down on the counter. I listened for my mom’s footsteps on the stairway.

      “Yeah.” I shoved the rest of the treat into my mouth. Something had to happen.

      Chapter 2