must contend with the biases of others. That, she cannot control. She must also contend with her mother's feelings of anger, grief, and frustration.

Although the text only hints at why Eugene's mother rebuffs Elena, one thing is clear. Elena cannot change how Eugene's mother thinks. Eugene's mother may feel uncomfortable that Elena does not come from the same social background as her son. The text hints that Eugene's mother is also extremely protective; she does not want her son to form close friendships that cannot endure. Perhaps, there is even a racial component. Taken together, Elena learns that love is a complicated affair, despite her very real feelings.

Elena, by the end of the story, has experienced something of a coming-of-age in her character, as the way she is treated by Eugene's mother has smashed her dreams irrevocably and also forced her to become aware of racism and discrimination and how it operates in her world. Note how Elena responds to the words that Eugene's mother says to her:

I couldn't move. I just stood there in shock at hearing these things said to me in such a honey-drenched voice. I had never heard an accent like hers, except for Eugene's softer version. It was as if she were singing me a little song.

Although Eugene's mother's voice sounds sweet, it does not mask the cruelty that Elena identifies in the words that she utters, and Elena is forced to experience first hand her own grief, but not for the death of JFK, but for the death of her dreams and innocence, as she realises that she lives in a world where she will be treated differently and judged because of her ethnicity.

The personal lesson that Elena learned is that there are different levels of outsiders, and she  would be considered beneath Eugene by his own family.

For Elena, a personal heartbreak converges with a national crisis.  She feels like an outsider, not an American.  When she meets Eugene, she sees her chance at happiness.  He is an outsider like she is, because he is smart and has a strong Southern accent.

The kids at school called him “the hick” and made fun of the way he talked. I knew I was his only friend so far, and I liked that, though I felt sad for him sometimes.

Although Elena feels like she is making progress getting to know Eugene and she has a chance because the other kids consider him an outsider, she learns that this is not really the case.  This lesson is learned symbolically and literally with the assassination of President Kennedy.  Unable to feel as she knows she should feel, Elena wallows in her own grief.  She wants to mourn the president, but she mourns the loss of her own adolescent love. 

That night, I lay in my bed trying to feel the right thing for our dead President. But the tears that came up from a deep source inside me were strictly for me.

She feels even more like an outcast and outsider, more isolated and alone, because of the self-loathing of not grieving the national loss with everyone else.

The contrast of everyday life, and the small matters of teenage love with the large ones of national pain demonstrate how Kennedy’s death touched the lives of every American in different ways.  Elena did grieve, but she was grieving for herself as well.

The moral of the story is that sometimes the outsider is not the one you think.  Kennedy was not the average president.  In many ways, he represented an outsider and immigrant like Elena.  He would have understood her pain and isolation more than she would have realized.

Elena is a Puerto Rican girl who lives in a tall apartment building called El Building in Paterson, New Jersey in the 1960s. Next door to her apartment is a two-story house that she can see from her fire escape. She likes to read out there and secretly watches an elderly Jewish couple eat, read, argue, and live out their lives in the kitchen. She gets caught up in the fantasy of it all and imagines what it would be like to have a house with a kitchen where she could spend her time. She also loves the small backyard and wishes that she could sit out there and relax rather than having to read on a fire escape.

For Elena, the house and the kitchen represent an ideal of happiness, peace and joy. So when a new family from Georgia moves in, she is excited to make friends with the new boy, Eugene. The two new friends like reading books together and find a sense of safety with each other as they attend their predominantly black public school. She pictures herself one day reading at the kitchen table with Eugene, just like the Jewish couple, and experiencing her dream in real life. Things seem to be looking up for Elena due to her friendship with Eugene, so she is even more excited to be invited over to his house to study. Elena's mother tries to warn her by saying the following:

"You are forgetting who you are, Nina. I have seen you staring down at that boy's house. You are heading for humiliation and pain."

When she is turned away by Eugene's mother because of racial prejudice, she learns a valuable lesson. She believed the house was a place of peace and solace, and she didn't expect to experience prejudice from the people inside. Therefore, Elena learns that life does not always turn out the way she expects, and that there is a stark difference between fantasy and reality.