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photo credit: my sister maribel, who likes to highlight the sad, sad state of our desert home. incidentally, this picture was taken across the street from the el centro public library, where i would check out danielle steel novels five at a time, but never managed to find those books on the u.s. constitution and photosynthesis that i desperately sought as a young academic seeking to do her town good. next door was the hotel, as shown, that advertised air conditioning on those neon lights that failed to work. i recall that the mother of a fourth-grade classmate was murdered there. stabbed, i believe. i also remember when rhiannon, the classmate, would wear white pumps while the rest of us wore sneakers with the velcro straps, and how one day, as we waited in line for our free and reduced price government lunches, some kid called her out on it. like, hey, why you wearin' high heels. and rhiannon, with her blond locks, simply smiled and shrugged. or she said eff you with her eyes. the memory's fuzzy.