Three

I get off the bus, the humid Port Ballí air fogging up my glasses. I pushed my diary to the bottom of my backpack, but I’m still wondering why the only things that bled were the inked letters on the last thing I wrote. I cleaned my glasses three times with the edge of my hoodie, and the letters still looked fuzzy on the page.

I’m inspecting the page when Juan Carlos runs up to me, his always-bruised knuckles tapping the top of the skateboard in his hands. There’s a little bit of dirt on his black shirt and jeans, probably from his battle with a tree this morning. Juan Carlos’s mom is an eighth-grade science teacher, so he always gets to school earlier than everyone else and rides around the neighborhood before the first bell rings. All the roads and sidewalks in Port Ballí are built over sand, so the unstable, cracked asphalt guarantees that his knees are constantly scabbed and his hands are forever scratched.

Abuelita would cover him completely in Vivaporu.

“Hey, did you know that clown fish can change sex? Like from male to female and female to male?” he asks, tucking his skateboard under his arm. He flips his shaggy black hair out of his eyes and pushes his red-framed glasses up the bridge of his nose with his finger.

“Some people just say good morning, Juanito.” I roll my fingers and try to shake off the weirdness of the kitchen and the bus this morning. I scuff the soles of my shoes on the sidewalk as the gulf wind slaps my ponytail in my face.

I hike the strap of my violin case on my shoulder and walk up the steps to school with Juan Carlos. “They should let you lead all the tours at the wildlife center,” I tell him.

Juan Carlos volunteers at the Port Ballí Wildlife Center and Rescue. He mostly cleans up after sea turtles, fish, and armies of seabirds, which means he’s normally elbow-deep in poop.

I don’t think Abuelita’s Vivaporu could help with that. Even it has its limits.

Juan Carlos holds the door open for me, and we walk into school dodging snotty kindergartners and tripping over distracted first graders. Even though we’re in sixth grade, Port Ballí is small enough that kindergarten through eighth grade are all in the same building. It’s only the high schoolers who have their own booger-free space.

“Is it too early to start a ‘days until summer’ countdown?” Juan Carlos asks. “At least we’re starting back on a Thursday. I think I can survive two days. Maybe.”

I hear a shrill giggle behind me and instantly lower my head, hugging my violin case to my chest.

“Good morning, Fee-Joe,” a high-pitched voice sings over the rumble of kids in the hallway. “Did your family have a good Christmas? I mean, do they celebrate Christmas in Mexico?”

Mocosa Mykenzye saunters toward us, the smirk plastered on her pale face revealing how much her incisors look like snake fangs.

I bite my lip and glance pleadingly at Juan Carlos, my stomach rumbling as my palms sweat.

It doesn’t matter how many times I tell Mykenzye that my last name is pronounced “fay-ho,” she delights in destroying every syllable of it while asking ignorant questions. She posted the New Year’s Eve video of me on Snapchat, and it seems like most of the school watched it, half of them wondering what kind of psycho ritual my family was conducting in our backyard.

“She’s not Mexican, genius,” Juan Carlos says, rolling his eyes in Mykenzye’s direction. She doesn’t respond and keeps strolling down the hallway, showing her phone to the person next to her. They both look at me and laugh.

Juan Carlos turns to me. “Just ignore her.”

I sigh. “That’s a little hard. She’s nonstop.”

“Have you told Mr. Nguyen or any of the other teachers?”

“What’s the point?” I ask, shrugging. “If I tell them she says my name wrong, or makes comments about the food my family eats, or posts weird videos of me, it doesn’t sound like she’s doing anything so terrible. It’s the fact that everything she does just piles one on top of the other.”

Juan Carlos gives me a weak smile and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Want me to put a squid in her hair? You know I can get one.”

I shake my head and laugh. “No. That’s okay.”

My stomach starts to settle as I watch Mykenzye walk away from us, her green-tinged blond hair swinging like a lizard’s tail. Juan Carlos shoves his skateboard into the strap on his backpack and shrugs.

“On to better things than Mocosa Mykenzye. When’s your mariachi tryout?”

I tuck a frizzy strand of hair behind my ear as a freckled second grader runs down the hall dangling a squirming worm between his fingers. “Three weeks. We start practice again today.”

Three days a week after school, the sixth graders who want to play mariachi in seventh and eighth grade have practice. I can’t wait to dive back into the noise of violins, trumpets, and guitars after winter break. It’s always a good distraction from whichever way Mocosa Mykenzye decides to wriggle under my skin that day like a maggot.

“Ugh. Move, please,” a voice mumbles behind us.

I turn and see Keisha pick up a first grader attempting to tie his shoe for the fifth time and move him out of her way. She runs up to us, hiking a long athletic bag on her shoulder. “You think I could fit him in my fencing bag?”

I chuckle. “Why in the world would you want to do that?”

Keisha shrugs and wrinkles her nose, bobbing her purple glasses up and down. “I don’t know. First graders make good sparring dummies. They’re squishy.”

Juan Carlos gives Keisha a high five. “Did that Houston coach ever come see you over break?”

Keisha shakes her head. “Not yet. He’ll be at my tournament in a week or so.” Gripping her fencing bag tighter, she nods. “I’ll be ready.”

I slap her on the back. It’s her goal to make it into the Junior Olympics, and being on the Houston Daggers elite team is a step toward that.

Juan Carlos turns to Keisha. “Remember—stab, stab, stab. Simple.”

“There’s a little more to it than that,” Keisha says, lunging toward Juan Carlos and poking him in the stomach with her index finger. “Syed’s been helping me practice my flèche.”

Resisting the urge to roll my eyes at the mention of Syed, I pull Red Panda and Moon Bear out of my backpack and thrust it at Keisha.

The school bell erupts over the noise in the hallway, and I jump as Keisha takes the book. I’m still on edge from this morning.

We start to walk down the hallway when Juan Carlos leans in and whispers, “Hey, no judgment here, but aren’t you a little old to bring a doll to school?”

I look at Juan Carlos, and he juts his chin at my backpack. As I slide it off my shoulder, my eyes widen as Abuelita’s effigy sticks halfway out of my bag, like it’s trying to free itself and crawl up the back of my neck.

“What the frijoles?” I mutter. I didn’t see it when I got my diary out of my bag on the bus or when I took out Keisha’s book. Did Liset put it in there as a joke? Did it crawl from my pile of dirty clothes and into my backpack? Dolls can’t do that, right?

Mykenzye has shown that New Year’s Eve video to everyone in school. I don’t need her to catch me with a doll in the middle of the hallway. My family has already embarrassed me enough.

Keisha pulls the doll out of my bag, her fingers wrapping around a flowery arm, and she immediately gasps. She drops it to the scratched tile floor and clutches her hand.

“Ow! It stung me! What kind of fabric is on that thing?”

I bend down and pick the doll off the floor, glancing at Keisha’s arm. I blink as a black splotch in the shape of a crocodile appears on her dark brown skin just above her wrist.

I think I might throw up.

“Did your abuela make that?” Juan Carlos asks, reaching for the doll. I clutch it to my chest, not wanting him to touch it too.

“Yeah, it’s from New Year’s Eve,” I tell them, shoving the effigy into my backpack. “I have no idea how it got in there. It’s so weird.”

If both Keisha and I got a mark right after touching the effigy Abuelita made, something has to be wrong with it. But what do the marks mean?

I look from Juan Carlos to Keisha. She hasn’t noticed the small black mark on her skin yet. I fight the urge to inspect every inch of fabric on the doll, because I don’t want Mocosa Mykenzye seeing me holding a toy in the middle of the hallway. I shove it back into my bag instead.

Just as the tardy bell rings, we race into our first period, Mr. Nguyen’s math class. I plop down in my seat between Keisha and Juan Carlos as our teacher announces a “welcome back to school” quiz over fractions.

I groan. Mr. Nguyen clearly has a different idea of “welcome” than I do.

Juan Carlos lays his head on his desk, but Keisha smiles and cracks her knuckles.

Mr. Nguyen passes out the quizzes, walking up and down each aisle. The class hushes as heads bow over papers and pencils scribble. The wind outside picks up and taps a long oak branch against the classroom window.

I look over my quiz and breathe a sigh of relief. I’m pretty sure I can multiply these fractions. I start to write my answer to the first question when the tip of my pencil snaps off on my paper, leaving a dark gray slash.

I look at the window as I hop up to sharpen my pencil, and I spot five thick moths beating their wings against the glass. Weird. I thought those only came out at night around streetlights.

Returning to my seat, I try to write, but the sharp tip of my pencil snaps off again, flies across the aisle, and smacks Juan Carlos in the cheek.

He looks at me and raises his eyebrow.

I mouth “sorry” and examine my pencil. This has to be one of those pencils from the dollar store that Mami buys in bulk for her students—they never work. But before I can find a way to fix my pencil situation, the sound of water fills the classroom.

Drip

I glance around, trying to find the source. There aren’t any faucets in Mr. Nguyen’s classroom. Where is that noise coming from?

No one else has noticed the sound either. They’re all focused on the quiz, like I should be. I check out the window, looking for rain, but all I see is more moths beating against the glass with their spotted brown wings.

Reaching into my bag, I pull out my pencil case. It feels softer in my hands than usual, and when I unzip it, a horde of wriggling black worms crawl out onto my fingers. I scream, dropping my pencil case to the floor.

Everyone in class stares at me.

“Mari, is everything all right?” Mr. Nguyen asks, standing up from his desk.

I look down at the case. Eight yellow pencils lay scattered across the floor.

“Um, yes sir. I, uh . . . it’s nothing,” I stammer, taking off my glasses and cleaning them on the edge of my hoodie.

“You are so weird,” I hear Mykenzye whisper behind me, making my cheeks flush.

I collect my pencils and take a deep breath, trying to concentrate on my quiz, but I can’t get the image of the worms out of my mind or the sound of water out of my ears.

Drip

Looking over the first question again, I figure out the answer and start to write “three-fifths” on my paper. The tip of my new pencil snaps off again, as if someone is flicking the end of it every time I start to write.

All of a sudden, the rhythm of the drips increases, a steady flow like the rush of a creek. I scan the room, but every student is hunched over their quiz, scribbling away. And it’s still a bright day, sunlight peeking in through the wings of the moths that have gathered on the window glass.

The flow of water gets louder now, thundering waves crashing on a beach. I bring my hands to my ears and squeeze my eyes shut. My stomach rolls, and I think I might throw up all over my quiz.

And then, silence.

The moths fly away from the window as Mr. Nguyen announces it’s time to turn in our quizzes. I stare at my blank paper, acid rising in my throat. I can picture Mami’s arched eyebrow and hear the click of her tongue as I show her my failing grade.

The bell rings, and we trudge to our next class. I keep my eyes on the pipes hanging from the ceiling in our old school building, wondering if they’re going to burst any second, flooding the hallways.

When we arrive in our social studies class, our teacher, Ms. Faruqi, looks more excited than I’ve ever seen her.

It’s never good when teachers are excited.

She clears her throat, and I prepare for the worst.

“Good morning, class. Today, I get to tell you about my favorite project,” she announces. “Every year, the sixth grade has a world fair, where each student presents information about a country they’ve chosen. It can be any country you want. In March, we’ll have a showcase in the cafeteria. I can’t wait to see what you all come up with. We’ve had some absolutely wonderful projects in years past.”

Mykenzye mutters behind me, “Bet that one messes up and lets it slip that her family’s here illegally from Mexico.”

I clench the sides of my desk. I want to scream that my family is from Cuba, but I know it’s pointless. For as obviously as my family makes their Cubanity known, Mykenzye just doesn’t care. We’re all the same to her. And she’s ignorant enough to treat being undocumented like an insult, which is stupid.

I look over at Keisha and watch her scratch her arm, just above her wrist. Her fingers push the sleeves of her T-shirt up, and she spots the black mark, a long crocodile crawling up her arm, exactly like mine. Keisha’s eyebrows raise as she rubs her thumb over the mark again and again.

I’ve got bigger problems than Mykenzye now.