The Rifle
- There's one family member we haven't heard much about yet—Magda—but that's about to change. Manny tells us that his sister has one true love: her records.
- Magda buys the records with her hard-earned money doing laundry, which isn't exactly her favorite job ever. Her pal Linda says that Magda needs to flirt with their boss more so that he'll treat her better. Ugh.
- One day, sometime after Grandma dies, Dad is back at Rico's and Mom is cleaning up at Grandma's, so Manny and Magda are the only older siblings home. Magda is getting gussied up to sneak off with her secret boyfriend, and she bribes Manny to babysit Pedi while she's gone.
- After Magda leaves, Manny finds some dominoes for Pedi to play with. While he's searching for the dominoes, though, he also happens across Dad's rifle. Apparently Dad hired a lawyer to help him get it back.
- When Pedi asks Manny where Magda went, and Manny comes up with a lie about getting root beer, that smarty-pants little Pedi gets suspicious—she knows her big brother is fibbing and she's about to throw a tantrum to make him pay for it.
- Manny and Pedi begin a little dance where she looks like she's about to lose it and he tries to stare her into smithereens. After awhile, Pedi admits that Manny isn't a liar and then falls asleep on him.
- Now that his little sister is asleep, Manny goes back to his Dad's gun.
- While Manny is playing around with the gun, there's a bullet that won't load… until it suddenly does, and the gun goes off. Yikes. Adding to the scariness of the situation is the fact that Pedi has just woken up and walked into the room at the same time. So let's make that a double yikes.
- Manny is afraid he's killed his little sister, but fortunately she's okay, though she's pretty freaked out. Manny gets her to sleep again.
- When Magda gets home, Manny doesn't say a word to her about the whole almost-shooting-his-sis shenanigan since, well, he's scared out of his mind.
- Magda is about to start bugging Manny for details when Mom comes home. And then, just when Pedi is about to rat Manny out, Mom is distracted by Magda's skimpy clothes and they get into a huge fight. Mom doesn't want Magda to repeat her own life, since she ended up pregnant at sixteen and running off with Dad. Magda gets super upset, but it looks like our main man is off the hook. Boy is he on a lucky streak.
- Later that night, Mom is cleaning every inch of the house while Manny lies around and just thinks. And what's he thinking about? All kinds of stuff: how cute Maria from school is; about climbing the huge tree in the Big Lawn one day; how Nardo is never around; about Mom and her cleaning streaks; Dad and how stuck he is; about Grandma's new eye glasses back in the day, and her newfound ability to watch Mexican movies; and about the bullet that almost killed Pedi.