by Beth Turley
“An A minus?” Just as the panic tore through my chest, I heard laughing from the doorway behind me. When I turned, Summer and Riah had their heads close and their hands clamped over each other’s mouths.
“Extra credit would help. Like the poetry reading, for example?”
I forced myself to look away from whatever was happening in the hall, the way it pushed my heart up into my throat, and turned back to Mrs. Parekh.
“An A minus could ruin my chances of being number one in the class,” I whispered.
Mrs. Parekh leaned against the radiators that ran along the wall of the classroom.
“Elena, you are so bright. Don’t you think the world deserves to hear what you have to say? Because I do.”
I didn’t know what the world deserved to hear, because the only thing I could hear was Summer laughing out in the hall with Riah. The heavy feeling I’d had when she rushed out of my room settled on my shoulders. But she came back, I reminded myself. Even when they hang out, she always comes back. Up her driveway and the creaky wooden stairs to her bedroom, to her window right across from mine.
“If I promise to participate more for the next two weeks, can I improve my grade?” I asked.
“I know your grades mean a lot to you. But I want you to participate because you see that you have important things to share with the class. Not to get an A.”
“I understand. I really do.”
Mrs. Parekh didn’t look convinced, but she nodded.
“All right, Elena. You can go. I’m sure you would hate to be late for your next class.”
I rushed for the door, ready to spill to Summer about what Mrs. Parekh had said. But she wasn’t there. The hallway was almost empty. I was alone and late. I dashed down the hall, wishing I was as fast as Summer so I could catch up with her. We only had two classes together this year, gym and earth science. In earth science, we sat on tall stools next to each other at the lab bench, our textbooks sprawled open in front of us like Spread Your Wings magazines. One time Mr. Collins asked me about the pH level of soil when my hand wasn’t up, and Summer read the answer I’d written in my notebook. She blurted it out before my cheeks could heat up too much, before I could try to stumble through my answer even though it was right there in front of me. Mr. Collins wrinkled his forehead and told her to raise her hand, but when he turned away, Summer just nudged me and smiled.
That’s the way it was with Summer. I let her into the textbooks in my brain, all the information I had stored in there. And when I needed it, she’d give me her voice.
Chapter Three
The Pickleball Paddle
I wrinkled my nose at the dirty-laundry-mixed-with-hairspray smell of the girls’ locker room and made my way to my spot. Summer was already there. She had changed into a loose red tank top and black leggings. She sat on the bench between the rows of lockers, scrolling through her phone. I dialed my locker combination and took my gym clothes out while I filled her in on what had happened in language arts.
“She’s going to Elena-fail you if you don’t read a poem in class?” she asked.
Summer knew an A minus was as bad as an F to me.
“Pretty much.” I held my clothes against my chest. Around me other girls stripped off their school clothes to change, but I had never been able to change in front of people that easily. Not even Summer.
“Why don’t you read Shel Silverstein? Everyone will be laughing too hard at the poem to even notice you,” Summer suggested.
“Right. Standing up in front of the class with everyone laughing at me. That’s exactly what I want.”
Summer smirked and flipped her phone around to show me the screen.
“New strategy. Just ask yourself what Cailin ‘Magnet’ Carter would do.” A picture from Cailin Carter’s page was on Summer’s phone. She knelt on a striped towel in a yellow bikini, her head leaned back to the sun. The caption said quick trip to Miami.
“I wouldn’t be in this position if I was Cailin Carter,” I said. I saw the little red heart that indicated Summer had liked the picture. “I’d be in Miami on a school day. Wearing sunglasses the size of my face.”
Cailin was one of the stars of On the Mat, a new six-episode documentary series about Lone Star Elite, the biggest and best cheerleading gym in Dallas, Texas. The first season came out a few months ago. Everyone was watching and posting about it, and especially about Cailin. She was tiny and pretty and perfect and had a little Southern twang in her honey-sweet voice. For the last six weeks Summer and I had watched a new episode every Thursday after school in her sunroom. We loved it even though neither of us had ever been a cheerleader before. And when Cailin fell out of her stunt at the world championships, my heart ached for her as badly as if it were me.
“Two minutes, people,” our gym teacher, Ms. Debra, called out from the head of the locker room. Then the door slammed behind her.
“Oops.” I took my clothes and sneakers and darted into the shower stall, sliding the curtain closed behind me. If I could just change out there with everyone else, I would have been ready to go. But changing feels just like standing up in front of the class and reading a poem. I’d be exposed. Exposed for my thick legs and the way my soft stomach spilled over my waistband. I pulled my T-shirt and sweatpants on as fast as I could and then ran out to the gym. I didn’t like to spend too long in that small stall. Partly because I didn’t want to be late, partly because it smelled like mildew, and partly because of what I’d heard Summer say about me outside the curtain two weeks ago, when she didn’t know I was in there.
I found my spot next to Summer where our class was huddled, pushing away all the sad lyrics that filled my head from the memory.
“We’re playing pickleball.” Ms. Debra had what looked like Ping-Pong equipment in her hand, but the paddle and ball were oversized. “It’s tennis but with a paddle instead of a racket.”
Ms. Debra started to explain the scoring rules and said we’d be playing in teams of two. Summer and I stood at the edge of the circle. I saw Kendra Blair and Sara Smith shift closer to us. Kendra and Sara were on cross-country with Summer, but Summer said they spent most of the spring practices sipping out of their Hydro Flasks and talking to the boys on the team. I’d seen a lot of posts on their pages with filters that gave them cat ears and pink noses, but none of the two of them actually running.
They stopped when Kendra was almost shoulder to shoulder with Summer.
“How’s it going with your replacement best friend?” Kendra asked.
My head jerked toward Summer and then back to Ms. Debra. She was bouncing the ball on her paddle and motioning for us to try that first, to get used to the feeling.
“Shut up, Kendra,” Summer said under her breath.
“Oops, did you not tell Elena yet?” Kendra looked at Sara. She put a hand over her heart and pushed her bottom lip out.
“Aw,” Sara added.
Kendra and Sara were the worst kind of duo. They worked together to get under your skin, to make you spew out secrets, smiling the whole time.
“Grab your equipment.” Ms. Debra pointed to the crates by her feet, one full of paddles, the other full of rubber balls. Kendra and Sara walked away whispering. Summer didn’t move, which made me uneasy, because usually she’d be the first one to make it to the crates. Otherwise we’d get stuck with the cracked paddles.
“What’s she talking about?” I asked.
Summer shook her head.
“I don’t know. It’s Kendra and Sara. Who cares?”
I couldn’t help it. I pictured Summer with Riah outside Mrs. Parekh’s classroom, their hands over each other’s mouths.
“Did she mean Riah?”
Summer’s head snapped toward me.
“Seriously, Elena?” She took off toward the crates. I followed behind, nearly tripping over my feet.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ve just been hanging out with her a lot lately and I didn’t even know you were friends.” The words fell out.
I took a breath and tried to exhale all my clinginess away. Clinginess was like claws digging into Summer’s ribs. Clinginess was what made her say those things in the locker room.
We were at the crates. Only a few paddles and balls were left. Summer picked one up. The words u suck were scratched into the wood. She put it back in the crate.
“We’re on the cross-country team together,” Summer said. “Plus, I’m allowed to have other friends. It doesn’t mean I’m replacing you.”
But I heard what you said in the locker room. The words bubbled up in my throat, but I couldn’t say them. Other partners were set up at the nets. The only paddle left was the u suck one. I took it.
“Forget Kendra,” I said, instead of the things I wanted to. The things that would shine a light on the cracks in our friendship. I’d rather seal them up with superglue. “Be my partner?”
Summer sighed.
“Obviously. But I get to serve first,” she said, as if that were really a question.
I handed her the ball and Summer headed over to one side of the net.
Chapter Four
The Letter
The noontime sun beamed through my bedroom window the way it does on the first day of summer vacation, bright yellow and full of freedom. I sat at my desk labeling parts of a cell on a worksheet. Mitochondria, nucleus, cytoplasm. A brain is like a bike—if you ignore it too long it’ll get rusty.
Something small and solid pinged against my window. I smiled down at the worksheet. When I slid open the cloud curtains, Summer was there at the window across from me. A bag of pebbles for her betta fish’s tank sat beside her.
“Let me guess. Homework?” she called out.
“You know I prefer to call it practice in the summer.”
“Can Elena take a break to come out and play?” she said jokingly, in a little kid voice. I don’t know at what age “playing” switches to “hanging out,” but I liked that Summer was the one I’d done it all with.
“Let me just finish this page,” I answered.
“It’s the first day of vacation!” She took another pebble and tossed it. It hit the side of the house and then dropped to the grass.
“I just have one more.…” The sound of rolling tires cut me off. A second later a set of brakes whined with a screech. Roll, screech. Roll, screech. Summer and I gave one frantic glance at each other and then burst away from our windows. The mail was here.
I took off down the stairs, skipping the bottom three steps with a big jump. I landed on the Bienvenidos mat in the doorway.
“Nice moves, Lenny. What’s the rush?”
I turned toward my dad’s voice. He was in the living room kneeling on the carpet in the blue suit he wore for open houses, prying the remote from Edgar’s small fist, his black hair gleaming with gel. Mom sat on the couch with Edgar’s plush clownfish. She wore her scrubs with the crayons on them and her caramel-colored hair was tied up. When I was born, my hair was light and wispy like hers. The baby pictures on our mantel were proof. But as I got older it turned dark and curly like Dad’s and his mom’s, my abuelita.
“The mail’s here,” I said. I opened the front door. Now just the screen stood between me and Summer and the letter from Spread Your Wings. If it was even in there. The instructions said we would find out by the end of June.
“So that’s what it takes to tear you away from your books. A mail truck. Not your old dad coming home to eat lunch with you on the first day of summer.” He turned the volume on the TV down. Little blue mice danced around on the screen. “What do you think, Eddie? Should I leave the Realtor life and join the postal service?”
“I push,” Edgar whined. He reached for the remote.
“Edgar, what about Fishy?” Mom asked, and made the clownfish dance on the couch.
The sound of the tires got closer. I looked through the screen. The truck was at the Goldbergs’ whale-shaped mailbox next door, where Summer was standing. The mail carrier handed her a stack of letters and then drove slowly on to our mailbox. Summer looked in my direction, waving her arms like she was trying to get my attention in a big crowd.
“Sorry, Dad.” I darted barefoot out the door. My legs were shaky as the wind zipped in my ears. Summer was jumping up and down now, wearing a white tank top, hot pink bike shorts, and her sneakers with my good luck signature.
“It’s here!” she screamed. She plucked an envelope out of the stack and dumped the rest into the daffodils by her feet. I made it to my mailbox, my breath coming in quick spurts from the running and the nerves. Summer told me once that on good runs it felt like she could keep going forever, just her and her sneakers pounding against the ground. But I could never go too far without stopping.
I paused with my hand on the black metal mail flap.
“Elena, what are you doing? It’s here,” she said. She shook the cream-colored envelope at me.
“I’m too nervous,” I replied. I couldn’t make my hand move. Summer came closer and held the mailbox with me.
“Together, then,” she said. She smelled like her Sport Strength deodorant, a soapy shower-fresh scent. Summer tugged harder than me when we opened my mailbox, but it felt better to have her there. I flipped through the catalog for Mom and the credit card bill for Dad and the advertisement from the grocery store for Resident. There at the bottom of the stack was the square envelope with the Spread Your Wings logo in the corner. The beige color reminded me of sand, and a set of wings was drawn at the tip of the flap. I squeezed the letter tight like it might fly away.
Summer and I faced each other. Our envelopes were the same size and shape, and in my heart I knew that meant what was inside must be the same too. I’d read once on a college message board that acceptance letters and rejection letters looked different. My stomach squirmed like it did before a big test, or when Mom made me small-talk with relatives.
“On three?” I asked.
Summer nodded.
“One, two…,” she started.
“Three.”
I dug my finger under the flap and tore it open, my hands too shaky to be careful about it. The top of the envelope turned jagged like teeth. I pulled out the letter, letting the envelope fall to the ground. The paper was folded. I looked up and saw that Summer was already reading hers, ahead of me like always. I looked down.
Congratulations, Elena. You have been chosen as a Flyer for the September issue of Spread Your Wings!
“Ahh!” I squealed like an animal on one of Edgar’s cartoons. Like a person can only squeal when something so blissfully amazing happens you don’t care what you sound like. My heart was pounding when I closed the space between Summer and me and wrapped my arms around her neck. “Summer! We’re going to be Flyers!”
Summer was stiff. Her arms didn’t loop around me. They hung limp by her sides. When I looked down I could see the letter pinched between her fingers, my name in cursive peeking out from the side of her shoe.
“I didn’t get picked,” she mumbled. I pulled back and held my own letter tighter.
“What?”
“I. Didn’t. Get. Picked.” I’d never heard her words sound that way before. They were slow and enunciated. Broken-glass sharp. She dropped her letter into the daffodils with the rest of her mail.
“Oh,” I said.
My head spun like when I learned something big and new, but when it was school the information would straighten out with enough studying. I didn’t see how this would ever make sense. Summer’s face was pink, her freckles like angry orange splotches, her mouth a hard-set line.
“I’m so happy for you, Elena.” But she didn’t sound happy for me, and she didn’t look happy. A breeze too chilly for the end of June blew by. “Read me your letter.”
Diagnosis: only half of a dream coming true. Treatment: act like it’s not coming true at all.
“No, that’s okay,” I said.
“Don’t do that. Don’t downplay yourself like you always do.” I tried not to notice how harsh her voice sounded on the “al
ways.” “Read it to me.”
I lifted my letter.
“ ‘Congratulations, Elena. You have been chosen as a Flyer for the September issue of Spread Your Wings! We can’t wait to see you in New York City. Your fellow Flyers will be Whitney Richards, eleven, Harlow Yoshida, twelve, and Cailin Carter, thirteen. We have set up a virtual chat for you all to get acquainted before your arrival. You will be…’ ”
“Cailin Carter? Like, from On the Mat?” Summer asked, eyes wide.
“I’m sure it’s not,” I said. Because if it was that Cailin, there was no way I should have been picked. Cailin Carter was a celebrity. And I did parts-of-a-cell worksheets during summer vacation.
“Keep going,” Summer said. The storminess in her face was starting to pass but not enough for me to be sure we’d be okay. And I needed us to be okay. I needed to know there’d be more days of watching TV in her sunroom, more pebbles tossed at each other’s windows. I’d held on to those small moments so tightly lately, desperate not to let the distance between us grow wider.
“ ‘The program will begin with your arrival on Sunday, July twelfth, and conclude on Friday, July seventeenth. You will help the Spread Your Wings staff put together the issue, spend time developing your writing, and, of course, explore the city.’ ” I skipped a whole paragraph about travel arrangements. My throat was too dry to read much more. “ ‘We can’t wait to meet you. Fly high, The Spread Your Wings Internship Team.’ ”
Summer kicked some of the soil around the daffodils. Dust covered the spot on her sneaker where my signature was.
“That’s amazing,” she said softly.
“I’m not going to go.”
Her head shot up.
“You are absolutely going, Elena Martinez.”
“That’s only two weeks away. I just don’t see how…”
She put her hands on my shoulders and squeezed.
“You are going if I have to pull you there by your ponytail. You are going if I have to pack you in a box and mail you to New York.” She looked down at me, her green eyes fierce under her long orange eyelashes.