Monday, my parents took us to school thirty minutes early. Carmen made her way to the library, while my parents and I headed to the office for the teacher conference.
“Don’t worry,” Mom said. “I’ll tell them how hard you’ve been working on your service learning project.” I dropped my head. She meant well, but that didn’t stop me from feeling humiliated. How I hated being the dumb kid. For the past month, I had tried my hardest to juggle school with my new responsibilities. I was doing my best, yet here we were, walking through the counselor’s door.
I thought wearing my TGIF T-shirt would make me feel better. It didn’t stand for “Thank God it’s Friday” like most people thought. Instead, TGIF stood for “Thank God I’m fabulous.” At least, that’s what the back of my T-shirt said. But I didn’t feel fabulous. Once again, my mood ring was black for stressed.
We entered the office, the counselor’s desk buried beneath folders, papers, and writing supplies. Luckily, she had a large, round table in the middle of the room. Mr. Leyva waited there, as well as Mrs. Gardner; Mr. Watson, who taught science; and Mrs. Silva, who taught English.
The counselor introduced everyone as we took our seats at the table. Then she began. “We don’t want to alarm you unnecessarily, but since it’s still early in the year, we wanted to touch base before Erica’s situation gets too serious.”
“And what is her situation exactly?” Dad asked.
That’s when my teachers chimed in. Mr. Leyva said I was failing. Mrs. Gardner said I was doing okay in her class but that I was often distracted. Sometimes, she had to call my name twice before she got my attention. And Mr. Watson and Mrs. Silva said that even though I wasn’t failing their classes yet, I was about to because I hadn’t turned in all of my homework assignments.
“Is this true?” Dad asked. “You haven’t done your homework?”
I felt too ashamed to look at him, so I kept my head down and nodded.
“Why aren’t you doing your homework?” he asked.
“I don’t have time,” I said, my voice small.
“What do you mean you don’t have time? As soon as you come home, you should sit at the table and do your work. That’s what Carmen does.”
I looked at him. I could feel the anger like hot laser beams shooting out of my eyes. I could not believe Dad compared me to Carmen in front of all my teachers when every day I worked so hard to escape her shadow. Why was she the perfect one? Why did she get all the credit? At first, I was asking myself these questions, but then I started to ask them aloud.
“Do you really want to know why I’m not like Carmen? Do you really want to know why I can’t find time to do my homework? Do you think it’s because I’m lazy or something?”
“Erica, settle down,” Dad warned, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t about to listen to these people talk about how dumb I was.
“When am I supposed to do my homework? That’s all I’m asking. After I clean up the mess Jimmy makes? After I give him a bath or make him a snack? After I wash the clothes? After I go through the medicine cabinet and pantry and fridge to make a list of things we need from the grocery store? After I put away all those groceries? Or spend all my energy working on my promesa and trying to keep Carmen and Jimmy quiet so they won’t break your precious rules?”
Dad just sighed, but Mom blurted, “This is all my fault!” Her eyes were teary, and I felt horrible because the last thing I wanted was to make her cry.
The counselor and teachers stared at us. They probably thought we were the most messed-up family in the world.
“I have cancer,” Mom admitted, but she couldn’t go on because she was crying. And now, I was crying, my shoulders trembling, too. That’s how upset I felt. Mrs. Silva placed a box of Kleenex before us, so Mom and I could grab tissues.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Mr. Leyva asked once we settled down, and I shrugged because I truly didn’t know. Maybe I thought Mom’s illness didn’t matter to my teachers. Maybe I thought I was strong enough to handle it on my own.
“Erica’s very independent,” Dad said. “She’s like an adult in a kid’s body.”
“And sometimes,” Mom said, “we forget she’s still a teen. She’s so responsible at home.”
“We don’t have to ask her to do anything,” Dad added.
Mom put her arm around me. “We’re sorry, mija. We had no idea you were dealing with so much.”
“We don’t want you to fail school because of us,” Dad said.
“That’s why we’re here,” the counselor explained. “Now that we know what’s going on, we’ll be able to help.”
“I can see how pressure at home is affecting your work,” Mr. Leyva said, “but in math, at least, another factor is interfering with your success.”
“What factor?” I asked, already thinking of “factor” as a math term.
“I’ve discussed your work with your other teachers,” Mr. Leyva went on, “and we all agree that you’re a divergent thinker.”
“Oh, no,” I moaned. I didn’t know what “divergent thinking” meant, but it had to be some kind of learning problem. The last thing I wanted was for Carmen to find out I had a problem with learning.
“It’s not bad,” Mr. Watson said. “In fact, being a divergent thinker is a benefit in many classes.”
He went on, and I listened patiently as my teachers explained how I saw lots of possibilities when faced with a problem or task. Mr. Leyva discussed how I wrote six pages to explain elements that might affect the solution to a word problem, and Mrs. Gardner and Mrs. Silva shared how my in-class writing assignments often went beyond the prompts, sometimes going in “new and startling directions.” They said that divergent thinkers didn’t do well on tests that had one answer, “like IQ tests,” the counselor explained. “And multiple choice tests in science,” Mr. Watson added. Divergent thinkers were far more comfortable with essay tests that asked open-ended questions, which, I learned, was a question with no right answer. That part was true. I hated multiple choice tests. I could figure out a way to make every choice correct, so I never finished on time.
“Divergent thinkers have lots of imagination,” Mrs. Silva said.
“The problem with math,” Mr. Leyva explained, “is that it makes more sense to people who are sequential thinkers.” He turned to me. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t do well. You just have to recognize what is and isn’t important when you work through the problems. I know you don’t want to hear this, but working with a good tutor will really help.”
“I don’t mind working with a tutor,” I said, “as long as it’s not Carmen. I am the older sister, and I wouldn’t want to upset the natural order of things.” Everyone laughed at that. Maybe they were starting to understand how hard it was to live with a genius sister.
Together, we made an intervention plan. Mr. Watson and Mrs. Silva were going to let me complete the missing homework assignments. Mrs. Gardner wanted me to move to the front of the class, so I could pay more attention to her lectures. Mr. Leyva was going to tutor me himself, Mondays and Wednesdays, before school started. And my parents were going to make sure I didn’t work too hard at home.
We had just finished our discussion when the nurse peeked in. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but Carmen told me you were here. She isn’t feeling well and would like to go home.”
“What’s the matter?” Mom asked. “Does she have a fever?”
“No, but she says her body aches.”
Dad said, “She was fine this morning.”
“Maybe it’s just nerves,” the nurse said. “In any case, she’s insisting that she’s too sick for school.”
I shook my head. Carmen wasn’t sick. She probably wanted to skip school because she was embarrassed about the party. Someone probably teased her this morning. They must have said something really mean because Carmen never missed school. One year, my parents made her stay home because she had the flu. Instead of being grateful for having people who cared for her, she blamed them for ruining her perfect attendance record. Another time, we got a “bad weather” day due to an ice storm. This meant we got to stay home. All the students celebrated the extra day off. Meanwhile, Carmen wrote a letter to the school superintendent and to the editor of the Express-News. She used a lot of big words, but her message was very simple—bad weather days are a dumb idea. “If you can get the TV stations to announce the day off,” she wrote, “then you can get them to present our lessons. That way, we won’t have time away from school.” If you asked me, Carmen wasn’t sick at all. She probably just wanted attention.
Even though the intervention plan sounded like a good idea, I still felt bummed. How was I going to finish my promesa when I had to catch up on my classes? Even if I didn’t do any chores, I would still need every night this week to catch up.
I was going to try my best to focus on class, so as soon as I stepped into Mrs. Gardner’s room, I took a seat at the front, telling Patty that I needed to concentrate when she asked why I was moving. GumWad came in late, so I didn’t have a chance to explain. Then again, I didn’t want to talk to him because I was still mad about the way he felt sorry for me.
Today, some students were scheduled to show their projects. Luckily, I had an extension till next week because the race was on Saturday. A few of my classmates had poster boards with pictures showing what they did, and others, like GumWad, went high-tech with PowerPoints. He had a few slides about animal shelters, including one with a graph showing how many pets were euthanized each year. Then he had pics of the dogs he found and the happy reunions with their families.
Finally, it was Patty’s turn. She walked up to the front of the class.
“I picked up trash,” she said. “Trust me, it’s not hard to find garbage. It’s everywhere.”
She stared at us as if waiting for us to ask a few questions, but no one’s hand went up. Was that it? Her whole presentation? This was the worst presentation so far. I thought for sure Patty would fail, but then she turned to Mrs. Gardner, who nodded and went into the storage closet. When she came back out, she handed Patty some mobiles.
“So this is what I did with the trash,” she explained. “I used wire hangers to hang stuff from them.”
One had origami birds made from scraps of newspaper and magazines. “It’s called Birds,” Patty said. Another had strings of bottle caps. She held it up. “This one’s Bottle Caps.” A third had aluminum cans that were squished flat. Patty said, “Cans,” as she shook it, making them clink against one another like chimes. The last had three clear plastic bottles. Inside one were small blue things she found—buttons, string, a plastic petal, but mostly candy wrappers. In the other two were red and yellow things. I expected her to say “Plastic bottles,” but instead she said, “I call this Primary Colors.” Then she said, “The whole point is that trash doesn’t have to be ugly. You can find a way to make it nice.” She paused a moment, stared at us again. “And I guess there’s a recycling message here, too.”
This was definitely a new side to Patty. I was so impressed that I beamed, making my mood ring blue for joyful. But the blue didn’t last long because when I went to my next class, I remembered how far behind I was and how I had only a few days before the race. Sure, Mrs. Gardner would be pleased by how many sponsors I’d found, but my personal goal was five hundred. I had to reach it.
So I felt a little preoccupied at lunch. I just stared at my plate while the Robins went on and on about the weekend.
“I think I have two boyfriends now,” Iliana said. “Alejandro and Alan, the boy I met at the hospital. Do you think it’s bad to talk to two boys on the phone if they haven’t officially asked me to be their girlfriend?”
“Apparently not,” Patty said. “Derek talks to a bunch of girls at the same time.”
“Tell me about it,” Shawntae said. “I scratched him off my Boyfriend Wish List as soon as I got home.”
“Join the club,” Patty said.
“We’re all deleting him,” Iliana added. “Right, Erica?”
“Sure, yeah. Derek’s off my Wish List.”
“So what’s up with Roberto?” Patty said. “He moped all during social studies. And instead of eating lunch with us, he’s hanging out with the Ping-Pong crowd from the other night.”
“I guess they’re his new friends,” Shawntae said. “I should have predicted he’d leave the Robins. But I guess I’m not a psychic after all. I’m just like everybody else. Normal.”
“Oh, brother,” Patty said. “It’s not the end of the world. I’m in that ‘everybody else’ category, too, but you don’t see me down in the dumps.”
Iliana said, “Shawntae, you couldn’t be normal if you tried. Who else wears pumps every day? Who else can get a bunch of kids on the dance floor? You’re a natural-born leader. Isn’t she?” She nudged me, but I didn’t say a word. “You’re going to be the first black woman mayor of San Antonio, remember?”
“I guess,” Shawntae said with a bummed-out voice, but then she brightened up. “At least my service learning project went well.”
“It was awesome,” Iliana admitted. “A whole other class came to listen.”
“Thanks to the invitations, the other social studies teacher decided to join us,” Shawntae said. “So I presented in front of two classes!”
“Weren’t you nervous?” Patty asked.
“Are you kidding? I was so nervous, but I kept it under control.”
They talked a bit more and then ate silently for a while. Finally, Patty said, “Check out Roberto. He keeps glancing over. He keeps looking at Erica. He did that during class, too.” She turned to me. “You hurt his feelings when you changed seats. He probably thinks you’re avoiding him.”
I shrugged.
“That’s right,” Iliana said. “You two were acting weird Saturday night. One minute you were dancing, and the next, you were stomping off the floor.”
I still didn’t speak.
“Erica!” Iliana said. “Wake up. Tell us what happened. Did you and Roberto get in a fight?”
“Oh, please,” Shawntae said. “He’s too nice to fight with anyone.”
“Then what’s wrong with Erica?” Iliana wanted to know.
“She thought she was going to be rich,” Shawntae replied, “but her mom didn’t win the lottery after all.”
“That’s not it,” I said.
“Well, why else would you be in a bad mood?” Before I could answer, Shawntae went on, “I don’t blame you. You probably hate me right now for putting those ideas in your head. I shouldn’t have told you about my stupid dream.”
“Are you really worried about the lottery?” Iliana asked me.
“No. I never thought we were going to win.”
“I knew it!” Iliana said. “So you did get in a fight with Roberto. That’s why you guys are acting so weird.”
“They didn’t get in a fight,” Patty said, all impatient. “Erica’s upset about Derek being a flirt.”
“Come on,” Shawntae said. “You don’t need psychic powers to see that she wanted to win the lottery.”
“Or that she had a fight with Roberto,” Iliana insisted.
I couldn’t believe they were talking about me when I was right in front of them.
“Stop it,” I said, but they kept making guesses. I couldn’t believe it. My mood ring—my inanimate mood ring!—knew how I felt better than my friends did. “Stop it!” I shouted.
And they did—they completely froze. All three of them looked at me like I was some stranger wearing an Erica mask.
“How can my friends be so clueless about what’s going on in my life?” They didn’t dare answer. “Sure, if my life were normal, I’d be upset about boys and lotteries, but I can’t think about that right now because my life is not normal. My mom’s sick, remember? I made a promesa to help her, and it isn’t working out. I still need a hundred names to reach my goal, but now I have all this homework because I’m about to fail school. Yes, my grades are awful! And I can’t help thinking that if I don’t keep my promise, my mother will die. Do you hear me? She’ll die!”
With that, I ran out. They tried to stop me, saying they didn’t know and they’re sorry, but I kept moving, straight to the counselor’s office. She’d told me I could go there whenever I needed to, and I desperately needed to right now.
When I got home, I went to the bedroom to check on Carmen. She was sitting on the bed with a box of paper clips, a stack of envelopes, and a ball of rubber bands, which she was slowly taking apart. “Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” she counted.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Seventeen, eighteen,” she went on like a mindless robot.
“Carmen!”
I startled her. She stopped counting and looked up at me. “Don’t interrupt,” she scolded. “I lost my place. Now I have to start over.”
“Why are you counting those rubber bands?”
“Because I’ve already counted the paper clips and envelopes.”
She was about to start again, but I snatched the rubber bands away.
“This has to stop,” I said. “You can’t go through life counting things. At first, I thought you were just acting weird, but now I think you’ve got a real problem. No one counts all the time, not even geniuses.”
That’s when I noticed two book-shaped rectangles beneath her blouse.
“What’s that?” I said, pointing.
She tried to cover up with a pillow.
“Let me see,” I insisted.
She shook her head, so I grabbed the pillow. We played tug-of-war for a while, but since I was stronger, she gave up.
“Okay!” she said. “But don’t laugh.”
She lifted her shirt, and sure enough, she had used athletic wraps to tie two books to her chest.
“What on earth are you doing?” I asked, trying my best not to laugh.
She covered up again. “I was in the library this morning doing more research on breast cancer. Did you know that if your mother has it, you have a greater chance of getting it, too? Some women even have preventive mastectomies, which means they get their breasts removed before they ever have a chance to get sick. But I figure that if I stop developing, I won’t have to worry about it. That’s why I wanted to come home. I’m going to stop my boobs from growing.”
I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. I know I promised, but this was too funny. My poor sister thought she was going to die, and all I could do was laugh. I couldn’t stop long enough to tell her that she was wasting her time because you can’t stop Mother Nature.
“Quit laughing!” she said, but I couldn’t. Carmen might be smart and she might be developing, but she was still a little kid, especially when it came to the facts of life.
She threw the box of paper clips at me. It hit the wall and the clips rained down. Then she threw the pillow at me. It hit a figurine on my dresser, making it crash to the floor. I couldn’t even get mad.
“Please!” she begged. “Stop laughing!”
I took a deep breath to calm myself. A few chuckles slipped out, but I quickly got them under control. “You’re not going to get cancer,” I finally managed.
“How can you be so sure?”
She was right. I couldn’t make that promise. “Okay, I’m not sure. If there’s one thing I’ve learned,” I said, thinking about Shawntae, “it’s that no one can predict the future. But if you start worrying about it now, you’re never going to enjoy life. Plus, don’t you want boobs? Every girl wants to have nice boobs.”
I went to my dresser, pulled out one of Mom’s bikini tops, and put it against my chest.
“It’s way too big for you,” Carmen said.
“I know, but someday, I’ll be able to wear a bikini like this.” I tossed the top to her. “And so will you.”
She examined it, and then she removed the books from her chest.
“So why do you count?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“I’m not going to make fun of you. I’m just curious. You’re the only person on the planet who counts everything she sees.”
She looked at me. I could tell she was trying to decide whether or not to trust me.
“Counting makes me feel better,” she said. “I ask myself, how many of this? How many of that? And when I count, I get the answer. I like getting answers, especially when…”
“When what?”
“When I’m confused about things.”
“You’re never confused,” I said.
“That’s not true. I’m always confused.”
“About what?”
She gave me a long list, things like friendships and emotions and Mom, mostly Mom. She had the same questions that bothered me, like why was Mom sick and would she get better?
“What do you do when you feel like life is out of control?” she asked me.
I glanced at the notebook GumWad had given me. “I started a diary,” I said, “and it really helps.”
She smiled. Finally, we had something in common.
We picked up the paper clips that had fallen on the floor. It was the first time we had ever cleaned the room together. After a while, Carmen said, “I know we fight a lot, but I’m really glad you’re my sister. I owe you, especially for helping me at Derek’s party.”
I thought about my parent-teacher conference, how I refused to let Carmen help me. But if she owed me one, then maybe tutoring wasn’t really helping. Maybe it was a way to pay me back.
I glanced at the mountain of books I’d brought for homework. “Can I show you something?” I asked.
“Sure.”
I reached into my backpack and pulled out the math test. She looked it over, and when she got to the word problems and my six pages of reasons why each needed more information, she started laughing. My paragraphs really cracked her up. Normally, I’d be offended, but I had to admit that my “divergent thinking” did lead me in new, startling, and just plain wrong directions.
When Carmen finally settled down, she said, “Okay, let’s start with number one.”