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farm work anymore, so their family had come to L.A. looking for industrial work for her mother and aunt.
    Then she said, “Did you ever get to West Point?”
    I’d felt my mouth drop open slightly and couldn’t answer right away. First, because she must have heard that secondhand; I knew I hadn’t told her about what had been, back then, an unlikely dream. Second, because it brought up the fresh pain of saying,
Yes, I was there; no, I didn’t finish
.
    â€œYeah,” I said. “I was at West Point for a while.”
    She said, “So what happened?”
    â€œDidn’t make it all four years,” I said. “That’s a story for another time.”
    Sometime after midnight we were in her car, or what I thought was her car. I was driving and she was in the passenger seat, leaning forward laughing, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s wedged between her thighs. I forget what story I’d been telling or she’d been telling, just that we were both laughing and laughing and then she’d said, “Slow down, okay,
esa?
You’re speeding. We can’t afford to get pulled over.”
    And I’d joked, “Why, is this car stolen?”
    And she’d said, “Yeah, it is.”
    That was when I sobered up and really looked at her, and I realized that what I’d been registering as a birthmark high on her cheekbone wasn’t; it was three tiny dots, the tattoo that symbolized
la vida loca
, the gang life.
    At that point I had a choice: I could have drawn on the battered last of my West Point ideals, said,
This isn’t cool
, and then found a place to pull over and walk away.
    Instead, I said, “For how long?”
    Serena knew I meant how long had she been in the life. She said, “Since I was fourteen.”
    I said: “I’ll slow down.”
    That was how I learned what happened to her in the eighth grade .
    Gang life is popularly associated with the cities, but it’s been inthe rural areas a long time. In our small school, Serena had drawn the attention of Lita, a leader in a girls’ gang. She recruited Serena, who’d said no, she couldn’t, her parents wouldn’t understand.
    The next day, Serena heard that Lita had called her out. Serena’s refusal to join had been a loss of face for Lita, a slur on her pride. From now until Serena gave in and let herself be initiated, no day would pass without the prospect of a fight with Lita or one of Lita’s girls.
    Serena wasn’t stupid. She chose to have sisters instead of enemies.
    â€œLooking back,” Serena told me, “it was the best thing that could have happened. I wouldn’t have wanted to come to L.A. a total virgin. When I got here, I knew the life. Well, sort of. Nothing can prepare you for what it’s like in L.A.”
    What most people don’t realize about urban gangs is how small their individual territories actually are. Many people have the vague idea that Gang A is on the East Side and Gang B on the West Side. In truth, the part of L.A. that Serena and her family moved to was like a checkerboard: Various Latino gangs—or rather, small splinters of the gangs, called sets or cliques—were spread out in small pockets throughout. A gang member could walk for only a few blocks, be in enemy territory, then a few more blocks and be safe again. Bitter, fatal rivals lived right on top of each other. It was impossible to ever feel truly secure.
    It also made the question of gang allegiance an open one. Regardless of who controlled your particular stretch of your particular street, there was always a chance you could claim a different clique or an entirely different gang.
    But virtually every young person claimed. Everyone needed protection,
familia
. Those who had no gang affiliation were in the worst of all worlds: considered untrustworthy by everyone, always at risk of being attacked, with no one backing them up.
    Serena’s older brothers