Meena Meets Her Match

by Karla Manternach

  “Like what?”

  “Like swimming.”

  “And piloting jet planes,” Dad says. “No more of that.”

  “Meena flies planes?” Rosie says. “No fair!”

  “What about doing Lunch Patrol by myself?” I ask. “And going to bed later than Rosie? And making stuff in my workshop?”

  “You can do all that,” Mom says. “Even if you have seizures.”

  I squint at her. “What about everybody spying on me?”

  Mom looks sideways at Dad. “Actually,” she says, “the doctor thinks we went a little overboard with that.”

  My mouth spreads into a big grin. Because if I don’t have people following me around all the time, I have a zillion things to do!

  I have treasures to find, and recycling bins to look through. And let’s face it—my rainbow hair could use a touch-up.

  All that will have to wait, though, because right now I’m starting to feel like a slump. I sink farther into the couch. I’m so tired that if they sent me to bed early one more time, I wouldn’t even mind.

  I still want that story, though. I want to hug Raymond as hard as I can and cuddle up with my family. And if Rosie doesn’t stick her elbow in my face, she can sit right next to me and listen to the one where Eeyore gets a present. It’s nothing but a popped balloon and an empty honey jar—trash that no one else wanted—but it’s the best gift he ever got.

  And after that, when Rosie goes to bed, and I get to stay up later, because I’m nine, and nobody needs to spy on me after all, I have to do one more thing.

  I have to make another valentine.

  19

  My box is ready.

  I carry him to school all by myself. Dad and Rosie don’t wait for me, and I’m so far behind them that I’m almost late. Also, it turns out when you jump for joy in a box of packing peanuts that somebody left on the curb, they break into teeny bits that stick to your body like magnets, no matter how long you stand there trying to brush them off!

  I’m still half a block from school when I hear the first bell ring. Styrofoam dust flies off me while I run the rest of the way. Treasures rattle inside my box. I have just enough time to bust through the front doors, fast-walk to my class, and set my box down on the project table before the late bell rings.

  Eli raises his eyebrows at me. Lin is already picking up worksheets. Aiden is at the sharpener. Mrs. D is counting hands for school lunch—only seven, because those heart-shaped chicken nuggets aren’t fooling anybody.

  When she’s finished, Mrs. D tries to hand me the lunch slip, but I dig in my pocket and hand her a note back instead. Her eyes move back and forth over Mom’s writing. “I guess you’re on your own today,” she says with a smile. She holds out the slip again, but I stick my hands behind my back.

  “Actually, I was hoping Sofía could come with me anyway.”

  Mrs. D tilts her head at me. “Sure, if you want.” She turns to Sofía and holds the slip out to her. At first Sofía doesn’t move. She sits there looking kind of stunned. Finally, she gets up, takes the slip, and heads out of the room.

  I follow her. But as soon as I get out the door, she whirls around to face me. Her flower headband is yellow today, and her eyes are shooting darts at me again. I swallow and wave for her to go first, but she just stands there with her mouth in a hard line until I tuck my chin and head down the hall.

  She follows behind me while I walk to the first classroom. I slow down to let her catch up, but she hangs back even farther. Finally, when we get to the fifth-grade room, I nod at the slip on their door. “You can get it,” I say.

  She crosses her arms.

  I shift to the other foot. “Really,” I say. “Go ahead.”

  “Why? So you can yell at me again?” She turns on her heel and marches down the hall.

  This is going to be harder than I thought.

  I take down the slip and hurry after her. When we get to fourth grade, I wave my hand at the door. “Now it’s your turn,” I say.

  “I don’t want a turn.”

  “Come on,” I say, holding up my slip. “We’re tied one to one. You can still win this thing!”

  She rolls her eyes. But the rest of her doesn’t budge. So finally I sigh and get the slip myself.

  When I close the door behind me, she’s already on the move. I start trailing her down the hall again, thinking like crazy. How am I going to get this girl some slips? “Look,” I say as we pass the third-grade room, “I’m sorry I was mean to you yesterday.”

  Sofía responds with a humph.

  “What? I’m trying to apologize here.”

  “It wasn’t just yesterday.”

  I clench my fists. I feel the lava simmering, and I almost throw up my arms and yell, What about you? What about what you did to me?

  But instead I grit my teeth so hard that my jaw starts to hurt. Luckily, that’s when I remember to breathe. I suck in a big breath all the way down to my toes and let it leak out like I’m a balloon losing all its air.

  Because fine. She’s right, okay? She stopped being my friend, but I stopped being hers right back. I didn’t talk to her. I barely even looked at her. I looked at her clip instead.

  When we get to the second-grade door, she turns and sticks her chin out at me.

  I swallow down the rest of the lava as hard as I can. “Look,” I say. I take another big breath and rush ahead before I chicken out. “I know you don’t want to be friends anymore. I get it. There are a bunch of other things that matter to you more now. And even though that hurts my feelings, I still shouldn’t be mean to you. I shouldn’t keep trying to beat you either. And even if you don’t want to be friends, that doesn’t mean we have to be enemies, does it? That’s all I’m saying.”

  I drop my eyes and wait for her to say something.

  She doesn’t.

  I scratch the front of my neck and rock back on my heels. “That’s it,” I say. “Speech over.”

  The second-grade teacher must have seen us, because just then the door opens, and she swoops over and holds out a slip. I quickly look at Sofía then stick my hands in my pockets and take one giant step backward so Sofía has to take it.

  I let out a breath. Finally! Now it’s two to two!

  When the door closes, Sofía keeps standing there, staring down at the slip in her hand. I watch her forehead wrinkle, and I’m not sure, but I think it might be a crack in her anger.

  When she finally looks at me, her face is in full-on thinking mode, but it still feels like a long time before she asks, “Who says I don’t want to be friends?”

  I blink at her. “You did.”

  “I never said that.”

  “But—” I stutter. Because, okay, I guess she never actually said those words. “You stopped playing with me,” I say. “That’s the same thing.”

  “No, it isn’t. You could have stayed in with me.”

  I scrunch up my nose. “Why would I do that?”

  She stomps her foot. “Because you wanted to hang out with me!”

  “To do extra work? Are you crazy?”

  Her face is getting red, like maybe she’s the one with lava inside her now. I actually take a step away because it looks like she’s gonna blow.

  I take a deep breath and start again. “What I mean is, if you want to get ahead in every single subject, that’s up to you. I won’t stop you.” I swallow. “I was just mad because I missed you so much.”

  Sofía’s eyes get wide. “I wasn’t trying to get ahead. Is that what you thought?”

  I don’t know what to say to that, other than, “Well, yeah.”

  She tips her head back and squeezes her eyes shut. When she finally talks, her voice is tight and shaky. “I don’t stay in to get ahead,” she says. “I stay in because I’m behind.”

  I am not expecting that. “What are you talking about?”

  She groans and covers her face with her hands. “In math,” she says. “I don’t understand what we’re doing half the time. It takes me fo
rever to do the problems, and I still get tons of them wrong. Mrs. D has been giving me extra help and time to work during recess. That’s why I stay in.”

  I can’t believe my ears. “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

  Sofía drops her hands and looks at me. Her lip starts to tremble, and the pain in her eyes is so bright that I almost have to look away. “You think I’m good at everything,” she says. “How could I tell you I’m not?”

  I stare at her. Then I pull myself up straight. I feel fierce—almost angry. This must be how the gazelle feels when she sees the lion coming for her friend. “Sofía María Rodríguez González.” I use all her names so she knows I mean it. “You’re talking to the girl who has never even once clipped to the top of the behavior chart. Why would I care if you’re not good at everything?”

  Her eyes are filling with tears.

  “You’re smart and nice and fun, and you like to make stuff, and you’ve stuck with me since kindergarten. That’s what I care about.”

  She looks down at her feet and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “I thought I wasn’t good enough for you anymore,” I say quietly.

  “You’re good enough,” Sofía says. She gives me one of those teary smiles where the mouth turns down instead of up. “You’re better than that.”

  But I don’t feel better than that. I think about all those times she stayed in by herself when everyone else went out. I imagine her sitting alone at her desk, day after day, and my stomach starts to ache.

  This is it, I realize: the Down I was waiting for. The one I wished would happen to Sofía instead of me.

  I wanted something to hurt her. Only it turns out I already had.

  Sofía takes a shuddery breath. Then she turns and starts walking to the first-grade room. This time, when I hurry after her, she slows down so I can walk beside her.

  “Does it help?” I ask. “Staying in, I mean. Are you getting caught up?”

  She sighs. “I’m doing okay with graphs, and I was starting to get the hang of multiplying.” She shakes her head. “But I don’t get dividing at all.”

  “It’s the same as multiplying, only backward.”

  “You sound like Mrs. D. She says I just need to learn the fact families.”

  “Right,” I say, nodding. “Once you know which numbers go together, you just need to make sure they stay that way.” I scratch the back of my neck. “I could help you if you want.”

  Sofía gives me a weak smile. Then she hangs her head. “It probably won’t make any difference. I’ll never get it.”

  “Of course you will,” I say, bumping my shoulder against hers. “You work harder than anybody. And you never give up on anything you care about.” I swallow. “I should have remembered that about you.”

  She glances over and gives me the faintest smile before her eyebrows wrinkle again. “What about you?” she asks. “Are you okay? What’s all this stuff about tumors and fireworks?”

  I wave my hand. “I don’t have a tumor,” I say. “It’s something way less serious.” I slide my eyes over to her. “Maybe I can tell you about it at lunch.”

  “Maybe you can tell me at recess.”

  I stop at the door to the first-grade room. “Don’t you have to stay in?”

  “Mrs. D says I can go out whenever I want a day off.” She bites her lip. “I just didn’t think I had anybody to play with.”

  “Yes, you do,” I say, bouncing on my toes. “Of course you do.”

  I reach into my back pocket, pull out a piece of paper, and try to hand it to her. She stares at it for a few seconds before she finally takes it. She has to unfold it about a million times, because the valentine I made her is as big as a treasure map.

  For a while Sofía just stares at it. I look too, even though it’s upside down to me.

  I wrote her name in the most careful cursive letters I could. S is the swirliest, trickiest letter of all, but it’s also the prettiest. I practiced and practiced until I could make it beautiful, and I used every color in the world for the rest—the red oranges and the yellow greens and the blue violets. I even used black and white, because why shouldn’t they have any fun?

  But she doesn’t look happy. She just stares at the valentine.

  “What if I keep staying in?” she finally says. “What if I’m stuck doing catch-up work for the rest of my life?”

  “Then I’ll stay in with you. I’ll work on handwriting, like you said. I don’t care what we do. I just want to do it with you.”

  She looks up at me through her eyelashes. “Really?”

  “Really.” I hold out my pinky finger.

  She smiles and hooks her pinky finger onto mine. With all the rubber bands on her teeth, it’s the most colorful smile I’ve ever seen.

  We stand there, hooked together and grinning. Then she tilts her head at me. “Your rainbows are brighter today,” she says.

  I give my hair a pat. “I touched it up this morning.”

  For just a second my heart twists inside me. I don’t want to say what I’m thinking. But finally I blurt out, “Your heart hair was better.”

  Because come on. It was.

  Sofía does a shy blink. “Thanks.”

  And just like that, I feel lighter, like I sent one of the last rocks inside my stomach skipping away, and it feels so good that I want to blurt out a bunch of other things, too.

  “I’m sorry I kept trying to beat you at everything,” I say. “And I’m sorry I made it seem like I didn’t want to be friends. And I think your valentine box is the best one in the class.”

  My stomach is so light now, it might just whoosh up and fly away. I grab the knob and fling open the first-grade door.

  Sofía walks into the classroom and steps up to the teacher. She looks over her shoulder at me. I give her a thumbs-up.

  Then she takes the lunch slip. Her third.

  When she comes back, I hold up my two slips—one in each hand—and grin.

  “You win,” I say.

  20

  In the afternoon we take turns putting valentines in one another’s boxes. Mrs. D lets me go first, because nothing will fit in my box until I open him up, take out all the beautiful trash, and put a bit of it into everyone’s beautiful boxes.

  I put the Easter grass in Eli’s box to make it more nature-y. I give the red cheese wax to Pedro because it matches his scribbles. When I get to Sofía’s flamingo, I dump in all the beads I found in the mud so we can make new bracelets together. These will be stronger. This time I think they’ll last. But even if they do break, we’ll pick up the pieces and put them right back together again.

  When I’m finished, I step back and take a long look at all our projects. Each one is so different from the others! Eli’s is the woodiest. Pedro’s is the messiest. Sofía’s is definitely the prettiest. But I don’t really know which box is the best. Maybe nobody’s. Maybe everybody’s.

  Although mine is pretty great.

  He looks fierce and colorful and proud of himself. There’s no other box like him in the class. Maybe in the world. Before I go to my seat, I give him a little tap on the head. “Pleased to meet you,” I whisper.

  When I’m done, I watch the other kids give out their valentines. Whenever they get to mine and they have to open the egg carton and let their cards drop inside, everyone smiles. Some of them even giggle. That makes me feel happy all the way to my toes.

  When we’re all done, Mrs. D puts on some music. Maddy passes out cupcakes, Aiden gives everyone a juice box, and we carry our boxes back to our desks to read all our valentines. I open the trapdoor on mine and watch the little envelopes slide out the back.

  I gasp. Because just like that, I get one more Inspiration.

  I wasn’t even planning on one of those!

  I look around the pod of desks. “You guys,” I say. Eli and Pedro and Sofía stop opening valentines and look at me. “Watch.”

  I feed an envelope back in through his teeth. I open the trapdoor and wat
ch it slide out the back. I look back at everyone, kind of breathless.

  “He poops valentines,” I say.

  Pedro yelps. Sofía covers her mouth. Eli leaps up, slips a valentine into my box, then pulls the tab so it slides out again.

  They’re laughing now. And they all want a turn at feeding him. The next thing I know, everyone is crowding around my desk, feeding my box. And even though Mrs. D groans and shakes her head when she sees what we’re doing, she just turns up the music, goes to the clip chart, and moves all our clothespins back to the start.

  This is my kind of party!

  I move out of the way so everybody can have a turn with my box.

  But before I do, I grab the folded-up valentine that just slid out the back. I’d know that handwriting anywhere. It says my name in perfect cursive, in every color of the rainbow. I open it up and see Sofía’s bar graph. It looks like colorful skyscrapers—high ones and low, red and pink and purple. Beneath them, I read something that’s the best Up of all:

  We’ve had our ups and downs, but I still want to be friends.

  Can tabs are taped all over the page.

  I look up. Sofía is smiling at me over the top of everybody’s heads. I smile back. And I may not have rubber bands on my teeth, but it feels like my most colorful smile.

  This is definitely one of my Ups. Right now. Right this minute.

  I don’t know what I’ll have next, an Up or a Down.

  But I’m Ready for Anything.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the amazing team at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers who helped make this a better book! Thank you especially to my enthusiastic editor, Krista Vitola, and her assistant, Catherine Laudone. Heartfelt thanks also to Rayner Alencar for so beautifully capturing the spirit of this story and the characters who fill it.

  I am grateful to Emily Mitchell of Wernick & Pratt Agency. You’re a dream come true—professional, responsive, and funny. I’m so lucky to be working with you!

  Thanks to everyone who offered feedback on early drafts: my family, critique groups (WritersInk and Sunday Writers), and Michele Simonson. Special thanks to Beth Pierce for reviewing my medical facts.