STUPID LILA, FRANKIE THOUGHT AS she walked home with her mom. She kicked at every rock and pinecone that crossed her path. She was a good friend. Lila didn’t know what she was talking about.
“What’s up, kiddo?” her mom asked.
“Nothing,” Frankie replied. She kicked another pinecone and sent it shooting out into the road.
“That pinecone might say otherwise.”
“Sorry, pinecone,” Frankie muttered.
Once they got inside, her mom put two pieces of bread into the toaster. She hummed to herself but didn’t say anything. Frankie stewed. And not like the stew that her dad made by dumping a whole bunch of vegetables and potatoes into the slow cooker and letting it warm up all day. No, she was a bubbling-over pot of spicy tomato stew that was splattering all over the kitchen.
Her mom slathered butter all onto the bread, then topped it with sugar and cinnamon. Frankie took her piece and chewed it hard. But it was difficult to stay mad when there was delicious cinnamon-sugar toast in her mouth. So, finally, after not being able to blurt all day, Frankie swallowed her toast and blurted out her problem: “Maya doesn’t want a rat for a pet. She wants a fish! A stupid betta fish. She likes it because it’s pretty, but really it’s boring and it’ll die in two years. Plus you can only have one betta fish, so that’s extra boring. I was counting on her to vote for a rat, but now Lila told her I was just being mean and trying to get her to vote for something she doesn’t even want.”
“I’m having a little trouble following all this. I thought your class was deciding what type of rodent to get.”
Frankie remembered when she’d first told her mom about the class pet. She guessed she had said it was going to be a rodent. “We’re deciding what kind of pet to get, and I want a rodent. A rat.”
“Okay,” her mom said. “So you want a rat and Maya wants a fish, and you think Maya should want a rat?”
“Yes,” Frankie replied firmly, but already her resolve was faltering. Her mom had a way of doing that sometimes. Frankie took another bite of her toast. The sugar stayed on her lips.
“I can see how that might be frustrating for you.” Her mom spoke slowly. “Rodents are pretty great.”
“They are! And rats are especially great. They are like the octopuses of the land!”
“Amazing!” her mom exclaimed. “What does that mean, precisely?”
“Octopuses and rats are both really, really smart.”
Her mom nodded. “You know who else is pretty great? And amazing? And smart?”
Frankie scowled. She knew where this was going. “Maya.”
“Maya,” her mom agreed. “You guys have been friends for a long time. And there have been a lot of things you don’t agree on. She likes blueberry pancakes, and you like chocolate-chip pancakes. Maya likes stories about girls and horses, and you like nonfiction about science.”
“Maya likes her socks to match, and I don’t,” Frankie added.
“Exactly! And that has never been a problem before. You read your books side by side. Maya gives you her single socks when the matching ones get lost. And Dad lets you each drop blueberries or chocolate chips into your pancakes right on the griddle.”
“Or we make our Blueberry Chocolate Flapjacks Extraordinaire,” Frankie said.
“Right!”
“But this is different. This time we can’t both get what we want.”
“Why should Maya have to give up what she wants so that you can have what you want?”
“Because I really, really want it. And Maya only kind of wants a betta fish.”
“I see,” Frankie’s mom replied. Sometimes when her mom said, “I see,” it really meant, “You haven’t convinced me yet.” Frankie’s mom pulled off a piece of her toast, put it into her mouth, and chewed carefully. “When one of my programs isn’t going the way I want it to, I try to see it from a different perspective.” She paused. “Instead of thinking about who wants which pet more, maybe you could think about what matters more to you: having a rat for a class pet or having Maya for a friend.”
“I can’t compare those two things! That’s like comparing whether you want an ice-cream sundae or an all-expenses-paid shark-exploration trip!”
Her mom only raised her eyebrows in reply.
“Oh,” Frankie said, realizing the point her mom was trying to make. “But shouldn’t she wonder the same thing?”
“She’s not asking you to vote for what she wants, right? You guys are friends because of your differences. You’ve never tried to make her more like you before. I wouldn’t start now.”
Frankie’s mom got up, clearing her plate. “I’ve got a little more work to do on my Grabitron project. But if you need to talk more, you know where I am.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
When Frankie had finished her own snack, she went upstairs. She knew that the first step to solving any problem was research. She looked up betta fish. She had to read a lot of articles, slowly and carefully. But eventually she found what she was looking for: the key to getting back into Maya’s heart.