So I took my phone to the living room and stretched out on the couch, the red and green Christmas lights on the fake tree blinking beside me. I tried to focus on the Google Doc on my Chromebook (thank you, Westburg). Today was so crazy that I’d nearly forgotten that the assembly was tomorrow! Yeah, tomorrow. I stared at the screen, reading the same stuff over and over, and then I must have fallen asleep. Mom tapped me on the arm and told me to go to bed if I was so tired. “You’ll sleep better there,” she said. “C’mon. I’ll be back in a bit. Going to get the boys.” But it was way too early to go to sleep for the night. And I hadn’t even eaten dinner. Just then my phone dinged. Dustin.
31
Dustin had sent a text. But it wasn’t the kind I’d been expecting. You know, another apology or something. Instead he simply wrote: hey, can u leave my sweatshirt in my locker? thx.
Suddenly I was wide awake. I admit—that stung. Like he was erasing me, deleting me. His sweatshirt? Really? I had it stuffed underneath my bed so Mom wouldn’t find it. Now I’d have to dig it out. And smell Dustin all over it. There was the sting again.
I didn’t write back.
My stomach gave a growl, matching my mood. He’d moved on. So would I. Aside from being pissed, I was hungry. So I decided to try to make rice again. Only this time, I used a pinch of salt—which I measured in a spoon first, instead of pouring straight from the container—and set the timer on my phone. I really wanted dinner to be all set before Mom and the boys got home, but that didn’t happen. My brothers burst through the door, slammed down their backpacks, and headed straight to the bathroom.
“Hello?” I called. The toilet flushed.
Benjamin peeked into the kitchen. He still had his coat on and was sprinkled with snow. “Oh no! Liliana is cooking again. Please don’t burn down the apartment this time!”
“Very funny.”
But instead of continuing to bust on me, Benjamin came back into the kitchen. “Need help?” His voice was surprisingly void of sarcasm.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Move it.” He dug in the refrigerator and pulled out some hot dogs. “Here. Cut these up into quarter-inch chunks.”
I did.
Next he microwaved some frozen peas and corn, added those to the rice in the pot. Then he sprinkled in a bit of Sazón seasoning, the one in the orange envelopes that Mom kept in the cupboard between the salt and the thyme.
“Thanks,” I said to my brother the chef.
“No prob. Just keep it on low heat for like ten minutes, and you’re good.”
“You’re really learning a lot in that Kids’ Chef Club, huh?”
“Yeah. When Dad gets back, he won’t even believe it.”
We locked eyes. That’s right, Little Brother, mine said. His look was more guarded, but I could see the tiniest flicker of hope. Then he crowed, “I got skills!” and hightailed it to his room.
Anyway, hello, I had made dinner! Well, we had made dinner. That wasn’t mac and cheese! And I hadn’t set off the smoke detector! Man, Benjamin was right. When Dad got back and saw the boys being all Top Chefs, it was going to blow his mind. In the meantime, I sent Jade a quick text and a picture of the meal. She gave me a thumbs-up and said to save her some.
As wiped as I’d been earlier, when I finally got into bed, I couldn’t sleep. I tried to think through plans for the presentation, but, truth, I kept checking my phone, waiting for another text from Dustin. Something. But, nada. Pathetic! I know. But there it is. I went from mad to sad and back again every two minutes. Were we that disposable? Didn’t he have any feelings at all? I needed to get a grip. So I sent texts to METCO friends. Never thought I’d say that! Brianna sent me some funny-as-hell breakup GIFs—including one of a girl on a couch hitting the remote at the TV, and the caption You canceled. Yeah, I laughed.
* * *
So—I couldn’t focus on our presentation last night, but it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up. I’m not saying I was TOTALLY nervous, but I changed my shirt six times before I headed out for the bus, and then, yeah, for real, I ran back inside one last time and put back on the very first shirt, a pinkish-purple one, that I’d started with. At school, first thing, I bombed over to Mr. Rivera’s office. I guess I was kinda looking for a little final inspiration. A mini pep talk. On my way, a girl I knew from French class, Rosie—who had freckles all over her face, even on her ears—stopped me in the hall. “Hey,” she said. “So… um… I just wanna say it really sucks, what they posted of you. Some people are just ignorant assholes.”
It took me a second to register what she was saying. The meme. She had seen it. Of course she’d seen it. Seemed everyone had.
“Oh… thanks.” I smiled and kept moving. Yeah, some people could be ignorant assholes. But it was good to know she wasn’t one of them.
Mr. Rivera wasn’t in his office, so I poked around his bookshelf while I waited. One had kids that looked like METCO kids on the spine. I pried it out and leafed through it—and, no way, but, WAY—it had activities intended to help groups do exactly what we were trying to do with the assembly. I scanned the pages until one stopped me in my tracks. It was a perfect idea. I’d just need to tweak it a little. I could feel myself getting fired up again, like at the library the other week. I was lasering in on this one thing—the assembly.
* * *
Right after lunch, our METCO group had one last meeting to run through everything. By now, I was amped—in the best way. I came up with a crazy idea that might be—might be…
“I don’t know, y’all,” Ivy was saying as I rushed in, which totally derailed my thoughts. She was biting her red, chipped nails.
“You don’t know what?” Mr. Rivera asked, brow furrowing.
“It just seems like… Like, what’s the point? No one’s going to take us seriously anyway.”
“Facts, bro,” Marquis said.
“Facts!” Rayshawn echoed. Others nodded.
“Except for,” Marquis quickly added, “we did do a lot of work. And we did help you find pictures of famous walls in history.” He made a mic-drop motion with his hand. “And not for nothing, on the Google Doc, I edited the captions you wrote. I’m just sayin’, so…”
“Yeah, but that was after we’d found quotes,” Ivy said. “And not for nothing, if you added the pictures, then you should have written the captions in the first place. We only did it because y’all had left that part blank.”
“True,” I said.
“Yeah, but y’all had them in no real order,” Marquis hit back.
“And don’t forget—I hooked up all the sound equipment with that IT dude,” Biodu added.
“Also true,” I said.
Marquis raised his voice. “Aaaaand some of the captions were in full sentences when others were just like, notes with no punctuation.”
“He said ‘punctuation’! ” Brianna exclaimed.
Ivy cracked a smile. “I’m hip. It was a lot of work. And on the real, I learned some stuff. But what if they just laugh us off the stage?”