The Boy in the Hurricane

By Danny Rodriguez

Are you tired of reading mundane books? Do you wanna feel like you're actually there? Hear the ocean splashing at your ankles whilst your feet sink into the golden sand, or shivering in the cold like you're in a whirlwind of distraught.

Welcome to the virtual roller coaster where Shakespeare becomes a distant memory and the nex

• Language: English
• Publisher: Danny Rodriguez
• Release date: Dec 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781802279818

Book preview

Chapter 1

Two left feet

Ever felt a breeze as cool as a breath mint? As chilled as a birras? Well… for you fuking gringos and putas… That means beer!

Ay bendito, you thought, because you saw a boy on a skateboard with water as high as the highest building in Guaynabo, Soleil, with aeroplane heads, salsa beams, pieces of tarmac, rooftops, bikinis, volleyballs, congas y Guiicharro’s….

Siiiii! Even coquitos, I said it! A half-empty bottle of coquito, you can see the super superfluid, quivering, shuddering side to side in the jar. Like a smooth criminal fighting to get free, like a white beam suffocated by an old whale!

Only to be tamed by a corkscrew that’s been through so many generations; the first generation probably doesn’t even know what generation means!

But like every Boricua, it is its spinach to Popeye, its steroids to Arnie, so they say. It is its pube hair to sissy trump, aka goldilocks, so we firmly believe!

Anyway got caught in the moment when you think of a racist that doesn’t like Latinos, blacks, Asians, or Muslims, but yet he’s got a fake tan line between a crispy golden nugget or maybe just maybe, he applies, so much makeup he redefines the word clown.

Anything to remove himself from the Caucasian community, anything to have special needs. Well your special, (cough) retard. Nos Vemos, come mierda puta!

It makes sense why he is so antagonistic and feminist; black doesn’t crack Goldie…just saying, anyway, back to the boy in the hurricane, with no shade thrown in his direction. No nebulous Carino mi began y tu Algarate y ambabao revolu.

There was a storm, a storm that would compete with Noah, from Noah’s ark storm, in the bible, but this was no ordinary storm.

It felt like the end of times. Like judgement day. The clouds were grey and the sky pitch black, looking Grimm as ever; the boy in the hurricane sounded cool. With him on the skateboard, surfing the sea, whilst the hurricane chases him!

Nevertheless, this was no cool morning, the daybreak being turned to twilight. It was like an overwhelming black sea, never-ending, understanding if you don’t keep paddling…. You’re muerto!

It was lonely, but this boy was no ordinary boy; this boy was Puerto Rican! This stands for love, power, courage, unity, Latino, honour, and Boricua!

He was the embodiment of a stiff-necked, ghetto as fuck Puerto Rican. I’m talking about Arroz con gandules for breakfast, lunch, dinner snacks and sometimes dessert!

However, we will get to that a bit later on; in this epic motion picture, with a stomach full of pastilles covered with a number 21 baseball jersey, pirates, of course.

Buscando acicalao, Roberto Clemente is shining on the back! One of the greatest to ever do it and he’s Puerto Rican! Wepa! Some red combat shorts and some white air force ones. Luciendo Accica’lo!

Por supesto Que sabemos brutal man. He’s a fashion icon, ready for anything… The question remains, though, how did this boy in this impending hurricane find his feet? Growing up, Mateo was far from regular, according to his familiar and classmates. For one, he had two left feet; that’s not the worst; the boy had butter fingers; every inch of him was clumsy. Past tense.

Tripping over laces and invisible hurdles was just Mateo being Mateo, impartial to gravity, one may say.

Which sometimes may put himself into some pretty unhelpful chafe situations. What a fanatic but always an ‘A’ for effort on your clumsy lifestyle, my boy.

It was lonely, but this was no mundane chaco; being alone only brought more clarity, a lone wolf, a one-man Soldado. He’s Puerto Rican, so grandiose; I tend to repeat it again and again and again.

I mean sorry, not sorry. What more exceptional superhero is there? What relentless, ambitious, merely fearing God himself superhero at his epoch, please, divulge me?

There’s an eschelon to this shizni-e, you feel me, cuz…

Yet, the crisis is, folks, with superheroes, there’s an alter ego, a different side to them, one that many use to meld into most of the time, the western society.

The analogous society that colonises, rapes, and murders black people because they have badges. The same institution will scream Black Lives Matter and do nothing when you are in trouble or even instigate it.

Just the following sheep or across the sea scream let’s make America great again come on, dude, you are trying to convince?

America was great before you came, and now you want to keep out the very populace that owns the land? Don’t get me started on your bs.

In any case, this boy in the hurricane hadn’t quite come to terms with his esoteric verisimilitude, not just yet. At least at this point, he was always in peril with his family for boisterous activities.

Yesterday, he made an effort to burn down his school due to his peers claiming his mom was applying too much vapour rub on his bruises.

He loves his mami. But at eight years old, with the island as his playground, he was the suitable person to be in the hurricane.

Regardless of all the terrible occurrences leading up to that juncture, for now, he’s just a typical Latino Algarate chaco.

Playing games like gallito (you line your gallito on the floor, and you take to hit each other, gallito, whichever one ever remains wins!)

Trompo (Trompo or spin top is definitely one of the most typical childhood games in Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, they are made out of cone-shaped wood with a spike on their tip that makes it possible for them to spin.

To play with it, you need to roll the top around a cord, and then drop it and let it loose from the cord to make it spin. The top that keeps on spinning for longer is the one that wins. Puerto Rico’s version of