Alondra
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Synopsis
In this contemporary YA coming-of-age novel from award-winning playwright Gina Femia, Alondra is a bisexual teen girl. She and her friends are wrestling their way through the summer—sometimes on the playgrounds of Coney Island, sometimes with their feelings and at home.
Sixteen-year-old Alonda loves professional wrestling. So when she meets a group of teens with aspirations of wrestling fame in her Coney Island neighborhood, she couldn’t be happier. So as the ragtag team works to put on a show to remember, Alonda leaves behind her old self and becomes Alondra―the Fearless One.
But with her conflicting feelings for King, the handsome leader of their group, and Lexi, the girl with the beautiful smile, Alonda has to ask herself: can she be as fearless outside of the ring as she is inside of it?
Release date: April 18, 2023
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Print pages: 320
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Alondra
Gina Femia
“Yo, yo, yo, what’s up? This is your boy Pretzel coming at you live from Coney Island with the match of the century, the fight of the summer—and it ain’t even really summer yet! Do me a favor and lemme hear you make some noise!!”
“Who d’you think you’re talkin’ to, man?”
“Yeah, nobody’s here but us!”
“I’m just setting the stage—you ever heard’ve dramatic openings?”
It was hot.
Mad hot.
The kinda hot that made the air wet, that crawled its way deep inside Alonda’s skin and, even worse, made her bangs frizz. She couldn’t shake it, couldn’t escape it, and damn, it was only June and already feeling like August. She’d glare at the heat if it had a face to glare at, give it a good cold stare and tell it to eff off or something.
“You gonna call this match or what?”
“Hey, don’t rush me, it’s all a part of the process.”
It was for sure too hot for whoever was making so much noise outside. Alonda stomped over to the window and looked out. If she couldn’t glare at the heat, she could at least glare at them, whoever was disturbing her postschool, pre-Teresa afternoon peace. Teresa was usually home by the time she got home, but if the trains were sucking (as the trains were known to do) it meant Alonda had some time to herself. And she had been reading, sprawled out on the couch in the living room; she especially liked how the late afternoon light hit the window as she read, the peaceful hum of the fridge as it turned on and off scoring the worlds she was visiting in her book, knowing that she wouldn’t be disturbed by any of Teresa’s nonsense—but how was a person supposed to concentrate with all that noise barreling through the window?!
“You know what else is a part of the process? Actually wrestling.”
“Yo, gimme some time! Everybody loves the commentator!”
Being on the fifth floor didn’t help with the heat—the apartment was stifling. She’d felt it as soon as she got home from school, walking up the stairs, the heat getting more and more thick and ominous as she went till she opened the door to her apartment and breathed in the stale, hot air. She’d pulled her thick black hair into a big messy bun as she stomped over to her book, trying to concentrate on the words but using the pages to fan herself every couple of sentences instead.
She pulled up the screen to the window and stuck her head outside it, far as it would go. She could almost trick herself into feeling a breeze that way.
She looked at the playground below—that’s where they were, the disruptors of Alonda’s peace, four of them, all about her age, looked like three guys and a girl, all of them yelling, but two of them in the middle of a wrestling match. Like, full-out pretending to wrestle—the girl, she was short, Black with dark brown skin, her long box braids flying in the air, sun bouncing off the neon pink tank top she wore with baggy denim shorts. She had her arms wrapped around the tallest guy’s waist, pretending to try to flip him over but doing a sloppy job at it.
“Yo, you need to do a tighter grip!” Alonda could hear him say with an eye roll in his voice.
He was really tall, looked like a clear foot taller than the girl, Black with lighter brown skin, and even from the window Alonda could see how toned he was. He wore a tight-fitting gray tank top and gym shorts, looked more prepared for wrestling than the others there.
“All right, here it goes!” the girl said, clearly pretending to try to flip him over, but she was so obviously faking it, her grip was too loose around his waist, and he wasn’t even trying to sell the move, so it didn’t look like he was trapped or struggling to get out of her grip at all. He was just kinda standing there, half-heartedly waving his arms around. Alonda stifled a laugh. He kinda looked like one of those inflatable tubey-looking things that flap their arms around in the wind.
Looked like fun, though.
They were making a ruckus, but nobody around them was really paying attention, everyone going about their business unbothered. Like, Alonda could see Ms. Wong cutting through the park, coming back from the Key Foods prob
ably, worn old Mets cap shielding her face from the sun as she pushed her cart overflowing with grocery bags across the way, Becky from B3 sitting on a bench, purple hair done up in a high ponytail and talking a mile a second into a bedazzled cell phone. It looked like Big Ricky from the apartment downstairs had fallen asleep on a bench that was in a clutch spot of shade, a paper bag in his lap and small boom box whispering out ’90s hip-hop at his feet.
The playground area sat in the center of the public park on the corner next to Alonda’s building. It was fine as playgrounds go, a little janky and usually abandoned, but not now. The wrestlers were all gathered in a spot between the jungle gym and the swings where there was mad padding, perfect for cushioning falls and skinning knees without breaking them. They were real, full-on wrestling—real WWE-style wrestling, not the kind that was in the Olympics and shit—or they were at least trying to. They was pretty sloppy at it.
But it was pretty cool.
Unlike this weather.
Alonda eyed the beat-up portable fan out from the corner of her eye. It was on the coffee table, but it was also Teresa’s, and she had deep feelings about Alonda using what she deemed her stuff, so she didn’t wanna risk it—Teresa could be home any second, and Alonda didn’t wanna count on her having a good day, specially since she never seemed to have a good day on any day that ended with the word day. Only thing that seemed to make her less cranky these days was Jim, and he wasn’t going to be around till the weekend, at least.
Alonda stuck her head farther out the window and tried to take in the view. She forgot how good Coney Island could look sometimes. Shit like that happens when you’re in a spot long enough, and Alonda had been here pretty much her whole life. Seventeen years of the same view, the same crummy wallpaper, the same tired floors. Okay, well, technically not this crummy wallpaper or these tired floors; she hadn’t always lived with Teresa. When Mami was alive, she’d lived on the floor below with her, where Big Ricky lived now, but Alonda could barely remember it. Besides, Mami and Teresa had been over each other’s homes so much, she couldn’t really keep track of where her memories took place. Like, she could remember playing on the crappy linoleum floor with plastic blocks that were chewed around the edges (’cause she used to chew whatever she could chew on), and her mom putting on some salsa and dancing so hard that the neighbors downstairs pounded the ceiling, but Teresa was always there, dancing right alongside her mom, so who knew where it was, downstairs or here. And who knew if that was something that actually happened and not just something she dreamed up—Mami and Teresa both dancing, laughing, and happy.
Alonda shook her head, trying to get the memories to fall out her ears. It wasn’t that she didn’t wanna think about her mom, it was just that sometimes memories had a weight to them that she was too tired to carry right now.
“And King tries to swat the Incredible Lexi off his back—”
The commentator’s voice drew her eyes back down where the wrestlers had resumed their match. The girl—she must be Lexi—had somehow climbed her way onto the tall guy’s—King’s—back. He was swinging her around, tryi
ng to get her off him, but she had her legs wrapped around his chest and arms wrapped around his head. Alonda smiled—it was a kinda funny picture.
“Get off!” King shouted, swinging the girl around.
“Say it in character!” Lexi shouted gleefully, not loosening her grip.
“—and it don’t seem to be working…”
“My character’s mad annoyed right now,” King said, continuing to try to swing her off.
“Yo, you need to let go of him! Otherwise you’re just gonna be spinning in circles forever,” another guy shouted from the sidelines, pacing back and forth in frustration. He was shorter than King but taller than the commentator, and sweatier than all of them, his light brown skin looking shiny with sweat even though he wasn’t doing nothing but watching.
“Good! Then I guess that means I’m winning, Spider!” Lexi shouted back at him. Alonda’s mouth twitched into a smile. Spider seemed like a great name for a guy wearing a bright red Spider-Man T-shirt.
“Can’t be winning if nothing’s happening! You’re really cramping my creativity, Lexi,” the commentator shouted back, running a hand alongside his blond, heavily gelled hair. He wore a white T-shirt that looked like it was ten sizes too big for his small frame. Even from the fifth floor, Alonda could see the pink pimples that dotted his white skin.
She’d never seen them before, the wrestlers.
Well, no, that wasn’t true; they all looked vaguely familiar, just like anybody who’d lived here most of their lives, which they probably had. Like, had she seen that guy—King, the one spinning with the girl on his back—the girl the commentator had called the Incredible Lexi … like, had Alonda seen King on a subway platform or seen Lexi hanging out on the boardwalk or even the four of them just chilling at that park on the corner before?
Probably.
But she probably never paid them any attention, especially if they were just walking around or whatever. She usually just blocked people out until they became part of the backdrop of her mind, like the buzz of the city. So yeah, all the wrestlers, they looked vaguely familiar, they were all as much a part of the scenery as Coney Island was—or as she was to the rest of Coney Island, just a fact she took for granted.
They’d never been wrestling before, though.
That, Alonda would’ve remembered.
That would’ve been a reason to pay attention.
Wrestling was Alonda’s favorite thing in the entire world; it was an unspoken agreement between her and Teresa that every Monday night the TV was hers for three hours and she was not to be interrupted (just like how Alonda left Teresa alone for her Wednesday night Real Housewives of Whatever City marathons). Alonda’d sit in front of the TV on their fuzzy rug with a stack of Oreos and freezing-cold milk, and she’d watch wrestling. And it wasn’t just on Monday nights, either; she filled all her spare moments with it, subscribed to YouTube channels and podcasts that talked at length about all the happenings in the wrestling world, the commercial world, the independent world, even had some action figures hidden under her bed, not that anybody needed to know about their existences or nothing. There was just a few, anyway, left over from wh
en she was a kid, and though she had plenty of opportunities to throw them out, she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.
“Lexi’s got King pinned to the ground—will he tap out?!”
Sometimes, she’d imagine it.
Like, imagine herself in the ring. For real, though, not like what the four in the playground was doing. She imagined herself doing it for real, in the middle of an arena with tens of thousands of fans screaming and cheering, lights flashing, music booming. Entrances were, like, at least a quarter of the fun of it all, and she’d come out scored to something super tight like to Snow Tha Product or Angel Haze or the theme from Jaws, something dope like that. She closed her eyes, letting the image soak her brain.
The beat drops and Alonda enters, raising her hands to the sky, soaking in the cheers from the crowd. Everybody loves her, and she stops every couple of feet to kiss a baby or pose for a picture or just give an encouraging smile to an old lady. She gets to the edge of the ring and tightens her hair into a ponytail (her hair would definitely be pink!) before she leaps into the ring.
The music cuts off, and the crowd quiets down to a rustle as the announcer says,
“The following contest is scheduled for one fall.”
“One fall!” the crowd echoes back, a tradition for the start of any match.
Alonda turns to look at her opponent: her most worthy rival, the Incredible Lexi. Lexi raises her arms as she turns toward the crowd. She’s dressed in all neon-green leather, a stark contrast to Alonda’s sparkly pink outfit.
“At the sound of the bell—”
The air is stretched thin with anticipation.
They turn to face each other.
Alonda hops from foot to foot, ready.
Lexi cracks her knuckles, ready.
“We want a good clean match, all right?”
Alonda can’t help but notice how pretty Lexi is.
“… and here we go!”
The sound of the bell cuts the air in half, and the two are off as they run toward each other and—
“Christ, Alonda, you’re smelling ripe.”
The fantasy burst like a pimple.
Damn.
Teresa was home.
“You hearing me, Alonda, or what?”
Yeah, Alonda heard her, but she didn’t wanna answer. If she could live inside the fantasy for a little bit longer, maybe she could make Teresa disappear, maybe she could go down and wrestle with all of them, maybe—
“What’d I tell you, you gotta put on deodorant when it’s ninety degrees out—”
“I did put on deodo
rant.”
“Then why do I smell you from here?”
“I dunno. It ain’t me,” Alonda said, squaring her shoulders and sticking her head farther out the window.
They were back to arguing out there about whose turn it was.
She could hear the hiss of a spray can followed by the lemony scent of fake flowers. Teresa spraying air freshener all over the place. God, she was being so extra!
“You really shouldn’t have the screen up like that, you’re gonna let all the bugs in,” Teresa grumbled from behind her. When Teresa got annoyed, her vowels kinda exploded out her mouth even more than they already did. She had that old-school Brooklyn-Italian accent, and Alonda knew the deeper the vowels, the more annoyed Teresa was getting, and right now, they was going pretty deep.
“Heat’s killing all the bugs.”
“Yeah, you wish, their wings are like their own personal portable fans, makes ’em, like, cool down so they fly even harder in the summer.”
Alonda rolled her eyes as hard as she could. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“You dunno that’s not how it works.”
Alonda shrugged and stuck her head farther out the window.
“Come on, Alonda, get your head back inside before you fall and smash your head against the sidewalk like a watermelon,” Teresa grumbled. “It’s too hot to figure out how to clean up all that mess.”
“I’m fine,” Alonda shot back. But she did pull her head a little farther back inside. She could hear Teresa shedding her work self for her home self, taking her shirt from her pencil skirt, kicking off her shoes, putting on her raggedy-ass slippers, and switching on her portable fan. She sneaked a glance over her shoulder. Teresa’s dark-blond hair looked limp (and in need of a fresh perm), and her makeup was smudged around her eyes, a big glop of mascara stuck in one of the lashes, and she looked sorta sallow under her olive-toned skin.
Damn, it looked like she had A Day at work.
“Goddamn this heat,” Teresa muttered, throwing her slippers off her feet. “Too hot for me to even keep my slippers on, goddamn, goddamn! Just gonna let my feet stick to the linoleum, I don’t care or—no, even better, just gonna put my feet up so all they gotta touch is air.”
Alonda made a noncommittal throat noise from the window. She was used to Teresa monologuing her grievances. As long as she acted like she was listening, Teresa would keep going and Alonda could keep watching the wrestlers, and the world, outside.
Alonda heard her pick up the remote.
“TV don’t work,” she said, still facing the window.
“What the hell, why not?”
“Rolling brownout crap. Been happening since I got home, people all using their air conditioners and fans ’cause it’s so hot, probably. We don’t got internet right now, either.”
“Damn, I hate the heat.”
“Yeah, it ruins everything.”
The wrestlers were still yelling at one another, but their words were getting sucked up by the breeze that had finally started blowing, like it remembered they was near the ocean or something and that there should be a breeze blowing
out here. Alonda could almost see the ocean if she squinted hard enough and made her head go a certain angle, if she looked past the corner stores and pizzerias and bodegas; beyond all that, she could see Coney Island stretching in front of her like a kingdom.
“Starting to be a breeze out there,” Alonda reported.
“Yeah?” Teresa asked, perking up a bit.
“Yeah. Looks like it might be a cool night at least.”
Teresa sighed deep. “Thank God. I dunno how much of this I can take. It’s this friggin hot already and it’s barely June, what’s summer gonna be like?” Alonda nodded at the world outside the window. What would Summer be like? Sure, Teresa was talking about the season, but Alonda was talking about the Summer. Like, capital-S Summer. Like, no school, endless days Summer. She could see it stretching out in front of her, as monotonous and never-ending as the ocean. She looked down at the wrestlers.
But maybe it could be different.
“Gonna be like sitting inside an exploding volcano, I think,” Alonda said to the air. She heard Teresa snort behind her.
“Yeah, I think so, too.”
Alonda smiled. She liked making Teresa laugh. Her and Teresa were like the waves of the ocean; sometimes they were chill. Other times, they crashed. And they could change from chill to crashing in the blink of a second.
“What’ve I told you, Alonda, you ain’t a kid no more. You gotta remember deodorant, especially in this heat.”
Like now.
Alonda spun around to face Teresa, crossing her arms. Teresa had the little fan under her shirt, probably trying to dry wherever the sweat leaked into her crevices, under her boobs, inside her armpits.
“For the last time, it ain’t me. You’re smelling, I dunno, the garbage or something, it’s in the kitchen cooking in this heat, we should really get AC.”
Teresa made a face. “We don’t need AC!”
“No, but I—”
“And why’s the garbage baking in the heat inside the kitchen and not downstairs and outside in the alley like it’s supposed to be?”
Alonda felt her tongue roll up into her mouth. Because she hadn’t taken it out yet. Oops.
“I mean, I dunno, it’s just. Leftover garbage, probably.”
“Leftover garbage probably, my ass,” Teresa muttered, taking out her phone and holding it in her hands like it was precious metal. Probably texting Jim if the soft smile on her face indicated anything. She really seemed to like him.
Alonda took advantage of the distraction and nonchalantly whiffed her armpits, and … well, yeah, okay, there was a slight scent, but come on, everything had a slight odor to it right now and she was home, wasn’t she? Nobody was here to smell her except Teresa and her sharp nose that could smell anything and everything, and she could be overly hypercritical of smells, so what’s it matter, damn!
“You do your homework yet?”
“No.” Alonda peeked outside, but the wrestlers had stopped fully, just sitting on the ground
, chilling now. The guy wearing the Spider-Man shirt was holding his comic and gesturing wildly with it while the others watched. The wrestling had looked like fun, but somehow, this looked even better.
“You waiting for an invitation? To do your homework?”
“No.” Alonda allowed herself one last glance out the window before retreating inside, turning her back on the outside world and resigning herself to the living room with Teresa.
“You planning on doing it anytime soon or what?”
“It’s barely five o’clock—I got all night, damn! Besides, it’s all easy stuff. Teachers are mostly already on summer break in their minds.”
“You still got a few weeks of school left, don’t think I don’t know things, I know things, I read the memos from the PTA even though you don’t show ’em to me—”
“Don’t go through my stuff!” Alonda shouted, a little bit vindicated. She knew Teresa had gone through her shit but hadn’t had the evidence until now.
“Uh, excuse me, they email the memos, now, too, just in case they get lost in transit. School knows what’s up. You’re not the only one hip to the twenty-first century, you know,” Teresa said, eyes still glued on her phone. Alonda wrinkled her brow.
“Wait … you have … an email?” she asked, mock confusion in her voice. “An electronic mailing address? Wow, do you know how the internet works? Do you need a lesson? I know it was invented after your olden days.”
Teresa gave her a sharp look. “You trying to be cute with me right now or what?”
“Who? Me? Cute?” Alonda scrunched up her face at Teresa, sticking out her tongue and wagging it around. Teresa swatted her away, but she started smiling.
“Don’t make me laugh. It’s too hot to laugh.”
Alonda stuck her tongue out one final time before she turned and started walking away, ...
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