Red Wagon | Teen Ink

Red Wagon

August 7, 2009
By dreamer10 SILVER, Newfields, New Hampshire
dreamer10 SILVER, Newfields, New Hampshire
6 articles 0 photos 2 comments

Fifty cents and a pair of spanking new sunglasses will be yours senorita.
Scruffy clothes, scruffy face and even scruffier hair. Just a little boy and a red wagon filled with garbage and other junk nobody else wanted. I had seen his type before. A sad face and an even sadder story and next you knew your money was gone.
First the glasses and now a broken strand of fake pearls, a mirror with a crack in the corner, a doll with uneven hair and a smudged face, one lady’s glove, once ivory now a pale yellow. All for a small price the boy wheedles. Please, I haven’t eaten in two days and there are seven others like me at home.
I can tell Rachel is going for her purse. The boy’s eyes light up greedily and I snatch Rachel’s wrist. One look at what you’ve got in there and he’ll never leave. Probably has friends up the block too. The scruffy boy is looking at us innocently with round eyes and batting long lashes. Rachel pouts. She hates when I’m right. We back up slowly shaking our heads. Only a nickel, a dime, fifty cents or a dollar! We turn and run fast now away from the scruffy boy with the red wagon and bags full of trash. A high thin voice, wait! Senoritas! Senoritas!

The author's comments:
So, this was actually a school assignment for my freshman English class. We were reading The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros and the assignment was to write a piece in Cisneros's writing style (like that she used in House on Mango Street). This was mine.

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