My Antonia Chapter Mimic

I chose chapter 6 from the book, and this is my current-day rewrite of it:
Today was a great day to be alive. It was one of those mid-spring days when the sun’s rays are gently warming your skin, and the shade of the trees falls perfectly on your face to give your eyes some relief from the sun. The only thing keeping me from a perfect world commercial was an iced tea ripened with the sweetest sugars from Hawaii.
Around the late afternoon Karime came over like she does every day. I gave her some lemonade, but I guess they didn’t have that back in Mexico. She perched her lips on the first sip, but got acquainted with the drink over the next few. She asked me a word for it, and I told her ‘lemonade’, but it came off as ‘leh-mo-a’
We went up to the roof of the complex because most people haven’t figured out the emergency alarm doesn’t actually go off. We laid on the roof for about 30 minutes in quiet solitude. We didn’t talk or move or anything-just lay there, breathing. Then Karime sat up and tucked her legs under her folded arms. The wind was blowing her hair back as if it wanted to feel the softness of her tame, black hair.
She began telling me about her home before she moved here. She told me about a little puppy she had. Its name was tomato, but I don’t remember the Spanish name for it. She named it that because it always ate the first tomatoes before they ever ripened. She said back in Mexico dogs were everywhere. “Everyone have dog back home. Here they no allow dog. This make me sad.” Our complex doesn’t allow dogs. The man that owns these apartments is a frugal, old man with no hair who only makes these pointless rules because it’s his form of revenge on the rest of the world. “I want dog so badly” she thought out loud. She turned to me, “My dad buy me dog. He…he…” She stopped. She searched, and tried to think of a word. She tried gestures, and movements, but I didn’t know what she wanted to say. It pained her, I could tell, and she couldn’t handle the stress of not knowing how to tell me what she was thinking. She was embarrassed.
Down in the street a policeman drove by. Karime got very scared, and hide below the cement railing that encompassed the roof like a wrap-around porch. Her breathing quickened, she yanked my arm so I was hidden too, and she held my hand tightly. A few seconds after he had driven away, she peeked her head above the railing. She cautiously sat up, but still sat in a stressful, ready to run position. “Why you not scared?” she asked. “Because they are here to protect us” I replied. Her face was overcome with confusion, and left over fear; she searched my face for meaning behind my answer. “They bad. My padre say they very bad. He say they beat people who only been good for whole life.”
I had no answer for her. It never occurred to me that maybe she wasn’t supposed to be here. How could I tell her that those men were here to protect me, but not her? To even make her leave. It was many years before I understood why her father would not tell her this.
After she calmed down a little, we walked down from the roof to the hidden creek in the woods. We sat on the edge of a little cliff that hung above the creek like it was peering into the water to look at itself. The wind blew through the trees like a winding whirlwind of cool breath. Karime folded up her legs again, and tucked her arms away into the warmness of her shirt, where she could keep her dark skin secret from the now chilly air. Night was beginning to fall on the world like the first blanket of fresh snow in the winter. I took off my over shirt, and wrapped it around her shoulders.

~Jasmine Marie~