Excerpt from The Making of Yolanda la Bruja by Lorraine Avila, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Girl, I'm all the way good. I don't need no more readings today,"

Victory laughs nervously. "Especially not about that white boy."

Loud banging coming off of the radiators connected to the school's old heating system startles us both.

"Be quiet! You mad silly," I say, standing up. I unhook my bag and step towards the sink. Right above the mirror is the Julia De Burgos quote I've learned to love: "Don't let the hand you hold, hold you down." Setting my bag down on the sink, I look at my face in the mirror and reach up into my ears. Other than the cornrows in the front, my curly afro stands proudly in all directions of my face, ending under my breast bones. My hair is a shield on days when it's out, without the front cornrows, because it makes my sound processors invisible to the world. But today all the external parts of my cochlear implants show. I'm not ashamed of having the implants — I know my parents worked hard for me to have them — but sometimes I don't want to be treated like the pretty smart- and- basically- deaf girl.

"It's damn near the end of fall anyway, Yo. Plus, who transfers their senior year? It makes no sense why he is even here." Victory has asked these questions fifty eleven times in the last twenty-four hours.

"It's the end of Libra season, girl. We still got two whole asssigns to go through before it's the end of fall. Stop exaggerating," I laugh.

"Have you seen some people swooning over him? I mean he's kinda eye candy if you're into the quiet and mysterious kinda dude, but I am not buying the story that his daddy wants him to be in a 'diverse school.' " She ignores me.

"I mean —" A bit of my curls have looped around the wire between the transmitter and the processor and I pull on it to free it up. Ouch! When I finish, Victory repeats herself:

"No kid goes to boarding school their whole, entire life and then is transferred to a public school in the twelfth grade."

It's a heavy time right now. Black and Brown folks being killed or harmed by a racist person, or police — at the supermarket, at a festival, in a church, at the movies. Plus, I saw on CNN that so far this year there has been at least one school shooting per week. It makes perfect sense that it feels like there is nowhere we can go to be fully safe anymore. So, I get it. It doesn't feel good to have random kids put into our safe spaces out of the blue like that. I'm with Victory on this one. But, I can't be letting her run with some of her ideas sometimes. If she runs with them, I run with them, and that's a whole lot of anxiety I'd rather not deal with. At the end of the day, if we become tense balls of anxiety, who is that going to help? It's also my birthday, and I just don't want to deal.

"Maybe his dad is clout-chasing, I don't know," I say. Victory sucks her teeth at me, and goes into her bag.

"You know how I live my life, Victory: give everyone a chance until they prove you wrong. And even if they prove you wrong, Mamá says that's why we gifted with community and spirit for — to be able to deal with it. Also, remember what Mrs. Obi taught us about community justice just the other day? If the person wants to change, people have to give them a chance, right? Maybe he is here for all the wrong reasons, but maybe he's trying to start over fresh? Let's give him that for now." Learning about community justice had me thinking of the way our communities would be different if justice was left to us, and not to all the systems that try to categorize us into "bad" and "good" from the moment we enter schools.

"But he isn't part of our 'community,' " Victory makes air quotes. "You think they got spirit, Yoyo?" she whispers. We look at each other like we're scared of who is listening, and then we burst out laughing.

"They don't got our spirit, but shit, if it comes down to it — for the greater good of humanity, I'd be willing to include some of them, you know?" I shrug.

Excerpted from The Making of Yolanda la Bruja by Avila Avila. Copyright © 2023 by Avila Avila. Excerpted by permission of Levine Querido. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.