My name is Lucy, Lot 41. Nobody knows me, but they will. I'm like a future superstar. Tomorrow night, at exactly twenty-seven thirty, I’m going to paradise, or maybe to hell, I don't know, but I'm taking this fat freak across town with me. Then watch how I blow up.

"Y antes de morir me quiero, hechar mis versos del alma." They sing that dreary shit all the time here at the Casa Combo. "Before the big bang, I want to tell what it's like to be me." I never really heard it before. Now it's my song. Is anybody listening? I'm talking about the real me, Lucy, not the paper hero they're going to make me on the posters. Like after it happens, they're going to put it out that my name was "Justicia." That's the name they picked, but that sounds so stupid. That's one of the things I wish I could change about this, the names they put out on you after always sound so stupid and fake. I want my real name to be known. I'm scared nobody's even gonna know my name. My real name is Lucy.

My teeth hurt like chinga from all the explosive caps they packed in there. I've been eating soup for three days. Have to be careful. I bite down on something, boom, I'm the king of pop. My face is still kind of swollen on one side. I hope it goes down in time. Gotta look pretty or the fat guy won't let me get next to him.

In a way, it’s like an honor to have been chosen to do it. Everybody’s telling me what an honor it is. I have to admit, it’s exciting, people paying attention to me, giving me stuff, putting like strings of paper flowers around my neck. Superstar. One of the bangers in Chavez’s inner group, the big guys who guard him? He keeps looking at me. I saw him, like three or four times, just looking at me. A couple days ago? Please. An important vato like that wouldn’t have looked twice. I have to say, I like it.

I keep thinking about dying. What it'll feel like at the moment I bite down on the caps. They say there's nothing left of you but your shoes. They say you don't feel anything, that it's instant. One thing I know, none of them have tried it. In all the excitement, I don’t know if it’s really sunk in yet, that I’m going to die. In two weeks I'd have turned seventeen.

My name is Lucy, Lot 41. Can anyone hear me? I don't have much time so I have to write fast. Yesterday they searched my bed and they almost found this t-pad. I was so scared. They'd've probably killed me right then and there for that. That sounds crazy when I think that in less that two days, I'm scheduled to die anyway.

The vatos who searched my rack came up with a razor. It wasn't mine (only a maricon would keep a razor under the bed) and I didn't put it there. It was a plant. I had to think fast and talk faster. I pointed out that since the racks were searched every morning, and I'd been up all night in the yard outside the Casa, doing my "dancing lessons," I wouldn't have had time to hide a razor there, but one of them might have.

That didn't make me too popular with the vatos, and they wanted to kick my ass, killer smile or not, and then maybe kill me, but then Chavez himself showed up, and said this had all been a test, and that I did real good.