Lupe Morales liked me. It was a miracle.

Lupe was a straight-A student, the smartest kid in school. She could read in Spanish or English. She could write in both languages. She had even won awards for her stories. And for her photos. She wanted to be a news reporter, so she took a camera and a notebook everywhere.

I was not a straight-A student. Not even straight-B! I was lucky if I was straight-C. When I tried to read, the words kept moving around. The letters were always jumping. I couldn't remember things I read. If someone read to me, then it was better. But in school, they expected you to read everything yourself. Not be read to like a little kid. So I had problems.

But Lupe didn't care. She actually liked me!

I once asked her why she liked me. She said, "You're a good person, Jacob. You're solid. You're honest. And I do think you're smart. Not school smart, but smart at other things."

I didn't think so, but I was sure glad she did. I called her Loop for short, because when she wasn't writing or taking pictures, she was knitting. Making loops with yarn. Loop after loop after loop. Add them all up, and they turned into sweaters. She was so good that she could knit in the dark, without even looking at her hands.

"Why do you knit all the time?" I once asked her.

"I hate doing nothing," she said. "Knitting keeps me busy. And I like what I make."

"I like what you make, too," I said. She was wearing a sweater she made. It looked great on her!

Her parents owned a store on South Broad Street, the main street in our town. They sold Mexican groceries. I loved the delicious smells in that store. Her mother made enchiladas, tacos, and tamales. She sold them to workers who were far from home, far away from their families back in Mexico. Every day at lunchtime there was a line down the block.

When I started going out with Lupe, my mother told me, "I know this is your first real girlfriend. She's a nice, smart girl. And I don't want to hear about any trouble with her. You better behave yourself. If you know what I mean."

"I know what you mean," I said.

My mother didn't have to worry. Lupe's brother Geraldo had muscles on top of muscles. He told me, "If you ever make my sister cry, your face will never look the same. You will have to eat all your food without any teeth. If you know what I mean."

"I know what you mean," I said. And I treated her like the queen she was.

When we got to the hospital, my dad was in a room by himself, with a plastic bag of medicine attached to a pole next to him. The clear liquid dripped slowly through a tube, from the bag into his arm.

I sat on the edge of a green chair. My dad was sleeping. I patted his skinny arm. "Hi, Dad."

He didn't wake up. He just slept.

A doctor came in. She was holding a folder full of papers. "Mrs. Gardner?"

My mom stood up.

"And, uh..." She looked at a folder of papers she was carrying. "Jacob?"

"Yeah," I said. I stood up, too.

"No, no, you can sit down. Please. Thank you for bringing your son in today, Mrs. Gardner. I'm glad we have this chance to talk."

We sat down. She started talking. All kinds of medical stuff. Names of medicines, tests, different kinds of x-rays to look inside my dad's body. The one word that made it into my head was this one:

CANCER.

I stopped thinking when I heard it. Stopped listening. It was like everything inside me just froze.

Cancer?

"Is he going to die?" I interrupted.

The doctor looked at me. Right into my eyes. "We don't know," she said. "He is very ill. But we'll do everything we can to help him."

My mother started crying.

I just stayed frozen.

The doctor kept talking. She said that once they figured out the right treatment for my dad, he could probably come home from the hospital. Nurses could come visit him at the house. For a while, though, he would stay in the hospital.

He had already been in a lot of pain at home and now he was finally getting relief from it. That was what the bag of medicine on the pole was. Pain relief.

Now I knew why he had been so quiet. He had been in pain, but he didn't want us to know.

"Can't you, like, operate on him and take it out?" I asked.

"No. Unfortunately, the cancer has spread too much. We can't take it out without taking out too many of the organs he needs."

I actually don't remember much after that. Don't remember driving home, or talking to my mom, or going to bed.

In the middle of the night, I woke up.

What am I feeling? I asked myself.

What I felt was scared. Really scared, because he was sick. Because he might die.

But I didn't want to be scared. It was scary to be scared. So instead, I got mad. Really mad. Mad that my dad was sick. Mad that he might die.

I got up in the dark and got dressed. Put on my socks and shoes. Went into the hall.

Opened the door, and went outside.

All was quiet. Everyone was sleeping but me.

I had never been outside by myself in the middle of the night before. Normally, I would have been kind of worried to be out on the street alone in the dark, but cancer was scarier.

And it made me so mad that I wasn't scared of the dark anymore.

I went down the street. Walked a few blocks. I found myself in an alley behind an old, run-down building that no one used anymore.

Someone had broken one of its windows.

I wondered how it would feel to smash a window like that. Before I knew it, I had a rock in my hand. That was one thing I was good at. I could throw and hit anything I wanted to, pretty much every time. I had been good at that since I was little.

I threw the rock. It hit the window just right.

Smash! The sound echoed down the street.

Man, did that feel good. It was like I was breaking my dad's cancer. Breaking my fear. I wished I could do another one. But I didn't want to get caught. So I ran.

Back home, back inside, pajamas on, pretending to be asleep. I lay there with my eyes closed tight, trying hard to sleep. Trying to close my eyes so tight that no tears could get out.

I thought about my dad for the longest time. Then, finally, I fell asleep for real.