“Hmm … me llamo Stella,” I say while looking away quickly. “Sorry, I mean I’m Stella.” I say it even faster as I sit back down. I’m about to groan out of embarrassment when I feel my chair start to tilt backward. My eyes grow grande like an elephant, and everything slows down. I try to reach out to grab my desk, but it’s too late.
Crash!
Before I know it, my feet are sticking straight up in the air, and my back is on the ground. I’ve fallen down in front of Stanley—in front of everyone! I close my eyes as I hear the entire class laugh.
I check my arms and legs. Nothing hurts. I think about staying on the ground but decide to crawl up. I poke my eyes above my desk.
“Are you okay, Stella?” Ms. Bell is the only one not laughing.
“Yes,” I whisper.
I look at Stanley. He looks like he wants to laugh, but he is holding it in. There goes my new friend, I think. Who would want a klutz for a friend?
I pull my chair back up and sit down. On top of it, I can’t believe I spoke Spanish instead of English. Doubly embarrassing.
I stare at my drawing and think about escaping through a tiny hole. Or disappearing in a cloud of ink. Today, I really wish I were an octopus.
Chapter Five
“Want a cookie? It has M&M’s in it, Stella. Do you like M&M’s?”
I’m in the middle of drawing sea creatures during class, but I immediately stop what I’m doing to consider the question. Oooo … I do like M&M’s, I think. I look up, dropping my pink colored pencil.
It’s Stanley.
Stanley Mason.
He is holding a box full of cookies. It’s been a few weeks and I’ve managed not to speak to him once since falling down on his first day of class. I’ve just been too embarrassed. Even so, it’s impolite to refuse a cookie, so I nod and grab one. My hand is shaking as I take a bite.
“My mom made them for my birthday.” Stanley grins widely. I notice he has a gap between his front two teeth.
“Oh … Happy birthday,” I mumble.
As I chew, I notice little cookie crumbs and spit fall all over my shirt. I cover my mouth with my hand so I don’t look like a total disaster.
“Thanks, Stella. What are you drawing?”
I shake my head no. I use my cookie-free hand to flip over my drawing. I was trying to draw a blobfish, but it just looks like a pink mess. This will not be the first thing Stanley sees me draw. I only let people look at my drawings when they are perfect.
“Oh, okay,” he says with a frown.
I’m surprised. Why would he care? It’s not like he wants to be friends with a klutz like me.
I feel a little bad, so I mumble, “Thank you for the cookie,” with my hand over my mouth again. Stanley looks happy. He opens his mouth as if he is about to say something else.
Luckily, Ms. Bell says, “Everyone sit down.”
“Stanley, come sit by us,” says Jessica Anderson while Ben Shaw and Chris Pollard wave him over.
I watch Stanley take his seat next to them. My mouth drops open. I’m amazed. In just a couple of weeks, he fits in already! I don’t get it. Stanley also has not once looked sad or scared. Not even for a second! If I had moved to a new city and school, I’d be terrified.
Ms. Bell continues, “In just a little bit we are going to have a special ceremony for Don. Now everyone knows Don, right?”
“Don’s the coolest!” says Ben Shaw.
Everyone agrees. Don, the school custodian, is always singing fun Beach Boys songs while he’s cleaning. He also plays the craziest characters in the school plays, like Santa Claus in our holiday musical.
“Well, Don just became an American citizen, which is really hard! You have to take a big test. Not to mention all the years of waiting.”
Jessica Anderson asks, “What was he before?”
Ms. Bell goes up to the board. She writes a bunch of words I haven’t heard before. In big letters, I see “visa,” “alien,” “resident,” and “citizen.” “Great question. There are a few categories. Some people just come to visit. They get a piece of paper called a visa so they can stay awhile.”
“Don’t you buy things with a visa?” asks Jessica. I lock eyes with her for a second, then quickly look away. Although I’ve been in the same class with Jessica since first grade, she makes me nervous. Everyone likes her, but I think she can be mean sometimes. Like when she laughed at me the first day of class for saying words wrong. Then another time, in first grade, she told everyone in our class that I had lice. Everyone believed her except for Jenny. The teacher even made me see the school nurse. And of course, I didn’t have lice. Afterward, Jessica said she was sorry, but I never quite believed her.
Ms. Bell chuckles. “Yes, you do, but that’s a different visa. For instance, people who come here for college get a student visa so they can stay here the entire time they are going to school.
“Then there are residents or legal aliens. They have green cards. They can stay here as long as they want, but they don’t have as many rights as citizens.”
My mouth drops open. I only have a green card. I know because Mom showed it to me when we got it in the mail. I was surprised that it wasn’t green at all. I don’t know too much about how we got it. I remember Mom was really stressed about it. I also remember waiting in line forever. The only part that was fun was getting fingerprints done. Oh, and taking bunches of pictures for it. But still, because of this green card, I’m an alien?
Ms. Bell continues, “After you’ve been a resident for a while you can apply to be a citizen. Then you can vote and be on a jury. You can even run for office!”
“What if you were born here?” asks Michelle.
“Then you’re already a citizen. A natural citizen.”
I gulp again. This explains everything. I’m an alien!
“Since Don works so hard for us, we’re going to surprise him with a celebration in the cafeteria!” Ms. Bell continues. “We’re all going to go quietly and sit in the dark until Don arrives. Then we’ll turn on the lights, stand up, and sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Don’t worry, we will have a projector with the words for you to sing along with. If you guys do well, there might be cake.”
Everyone squeals but me. I always thought I was different, that I didn’t really belong. But now it’s official.
I start picturing all the aliens I’ve seen in movies, trying to find one that isn’t so strange. If I could picture only one cute alien, I might feel better about the word. Instead, as we head out to the cafeteria, I picture all these spiny, crawly, deadly aliens, the ones people run away from.
When we arrive, I notice that the orchestra is on the stage. There are also some banners that read “Way to Go!” and “Congrats!”
Because the whole school is there, I’m able to sit next to Jenny. I feel calmer when I see her, except she’s not alone. She’s sitting next to a girl I’ve never seen before. The new girl has bangs that go across her forehead and is wearing neat red glasses. My heart sinks a little. I want to tell Jenny the bad news that I’m an alien, but I can’t. Not in front of the new girl.
“Stella, this is Anna,” says Jenny.
“Hi, Stella,” Anna says, waving.
I make myself wave back. “Did you guys know about the ceremony?” I ask in a low voice.
“What did she say?” asks Anna, looking at Jenny.
“Stella asked if we knew about the ceremony,” says Jenny.
Jenny can always understand me. It’s been that way since we became best friends in first grade. Never have I ever had to repeat anything to her once.
They turn and both nod at me. Then there’s a long silence. There is so much that I want to say to Jenny, but I can’t. Even if Anna weren’t there, it would be too embarrassing to say out loud.
Just then the school nurse walks by and says, “Here you are, girls,” as she gives us small flags to hold.
A minute later the cafeteria goes dark. The whole group giggles for a second, and the teachers hus
h us. We wait in silence. Finally, we hear Don walking in, saying, “What’s going on?”
The lights turn on, and we stand up to sing. While we’re singing, I can’t help but still feel a little weird, like I shouldn’t be allowed to sing. I wouldn’t be an alien if I were still living in Mexico. I’d be natural there.
As soon as the music ends, Don says, “Thank you. This means so much. I left the Philippines for a better life in the United States. I’m honored to be an American.”
Don looks happy. He is even crying a little bit. I guess it’s because he is no longer an alien.
Everyone applauds right away, except for me. It takes me a second. But I know it would be wrong if I didn’t applaud, so I force myself to lift up my hands and hit them together. Although I might feel bad, I’m still happy for Don, and it’s his big day. As we clap, my mind wonders, If I become a citizen, will I finally feel normal? Will I be as happy as Don looks? That makes me feel a little hopeful. The cake that Ms. Bell promised after the ceremony also helps.
Chapter Six
Once a week, I leave my regular class for speech class. Speech is where I learn to speak properly. This means how all the letters and words are supposed to sound in English. At least that’s what my speech teacher, Ms. Thompson, says.
“Good morning, Stella!” Ms. Thompson says as I enter the room. Ms. Thompson is seated at the center of a bean-shaped table in a small room. As usual, she is dressed like a ballet teacher, in a black turtleneck and with her red hair pulled back in a bun.
“Good morning, Ms. Thompson,” I say as I hesitantly sit down across from her.
“How is your dad doing?”
“Good,” I say, looking down while tapping my fingers on the table.
When I first started seeing Ms. Thompson, she would come over to our apartment for after-school lessons. This was when I was in kindergarten. Dad would be home during the lessons because Mom worked. Ms. Thompson got along really well with Dad. He is very likable. He can always make people laugh, even if they can’t quite understand what he says all the time. Dad speaks English worse than I do. He even talked to Ms. Thompson about taking speech classes to improve his pronunciation, but it never happened.
Back then, my parents had just divorced and Dad still lived in Chicago. He had a job, but it was only part-time at a karaoke store that his friend owned. When I asked him what he did there, he said that he kept inventory of the machines they sold. I don’t know what that means, but I do know that when absolutely no one else was in the store, I’d sing while he stared at the computer. He didn’t work there long though. Dad has never been good at keeping jobs. He lived in his own tiny apartment then. It was the size of my room with a kitchen!
“Is he still in Colorado?”
“Yes,” I say, grabbing my cheeks with my hands. They feel warm.
A couple of years ago, Dad’s brother, my Tío Carlos, gave Dad a job at his store in Colorado. Now Dad lives in his own house and goes skiing almost every day in winter. I know because he shows me pictures he takes with his professional camera.
“Is your dad visiting for the holidays?” she asks.
I shake my head no.
“Too bad. It would be good for you to be together,” she says.
I sigh. I can never tell her what I really think, like that I don’t want my parents to get back together, or that I don’t really miss my dad. It would sound mean. But why should I? All they did was argue about secret “grown-up things.” What the “grown-up things” were about I don’t know, but I do know it made Mom sad, which is not good at all. Nick tells me he’ll explain to me when I’m older.
And I don’t really miss Dad because he never keeps his promises. When he still lived in Chicago, he promised to teach me how to ride a bike, but he never did. He’d also forget to pick up Nick and me from school half the time, especially when he got a girlfriend. Walking home in the snow with a heavy backpack is never fun. Now when it comes to my birthday, I just get free things from my uncle’s store. If I ask my dad for anything, even a book, it never comes.
“Sí,” I say, hoping a short answer will make the conversation end. I just wish she would stop asking so many questions.
“No Spanish right now, Stella.” She always says that when I accidentally say a word in Spanish.
“It’s not like I even speak that much anyway…” I mutter.
“What’s that, Stella? Make sure to enunciate.” She lifts up her hand to her mouth.
“Nothing,” I say. I hope that was clear enough.
Just then the other students, Janelle and Roman, walk into the room. Finally, a break for me. I scribble swirls on my notebook page as she asks them how they are doing. Roman talks for a while. He is all excited that his family is going back home to Russia for the holidays. Roman is always jazzed to talk since he just graduated from ESL classes to regular classes.
We begin today’s session like we normally do, with mouth exercises. We puff up our cheeks like puffer fish and follow that with deep breathing. That’s to make sure we are speaking from our stomachs.
Then we practice our “th” and “busy bees” over and over. Since day one, Ms. Thompson has been correcting my pronunciations using a bag full of flash cards that have pictures of clowns, bees, and other things. I remember it took a really long time for her to agree that I was saying “three” and “tree” differently.
From there we go through the alphabet, which isn’t too bad even though there are a couple of letters, like the vowels, that sound different in Spanish.
“For good measure,” she says.
I do well except for V and B. It’s been three years and she still doesn’t like how I say V and B.
Despite how annoying it can be, speech class can also be a little escape. I get to leave my class and be in a small, quiet room with just two other kids. It’s especially good now, since I keep turning roja around Stanley. The other day, he asked me what time it was. I was so surprised I spilled my bucket of colored pencils on the floor.
After the alphabet, we practice big words.
“Stella, can you say ‘refrigerator’?” Ms. Thompson asks.
I nod and stare at her as I say, “Refrigerator.”
“Good, Stella! Maybe just a little louder next time?”
I groan. People are always telling me to speak up. I can never really figure out why. It sounds loud in my head.
“Janelle, can you say ‘refrigerator’?”
Janelle says a word I don’t recognize.
At least I sound better than her, I think. Then I feel a little bad. Janelle gets made fun of by some of the kids at school. She has a lisp, which makes everything she says hard to understand. She always sounds like she’s eating a peanut butter sandwich. Despite everything, Janelle is still really friendly and kind. I always try to be extra nice to her in speech and wave to her at recess.
I look up at the clock. Only thirty minutes left. Good. I’m really excited to get back to class today. We are going to play math games to see who can add, subtract, and multiply the fastest. I am really good at it, and it’s the only time I like Ms. Bell calling me in front of the class.
I love showing people that I’m smart whenever I can. Numbers are also easy to say, not like letters. Whenever I hear someone spell a word out loud, my brain goes weird. It slows down like the gears on a rusty bike. I worry people think I look stupid, which I hate.
After we practice other big words like “conditioner” and “computer,” Ms. Thompson sends us back to class. “Before you go, here is a treat for working so hard.”
Ms. Thompson gives us stickers when we do a good job, and they are excellent stickers. Sometimes, if we do really well, she even has the ones that you can scratch and sniff. I have a binder filled with them at home. When I look at or think of my binder, I feel a little better about Ms. Thompson. Each sticker shows how much I’ve improved my speech all because of her.
I get two scratch-and-sniff stickers today: a strawberry one and a grape one for my
collection.
“Thank you, Ms. Thompson,” I say, looking her in the eyes.
“You’re welcome, my dear,” she says, looking back.
I smell my stickers as I leave the room.
I race back from speech and find Ms. Bell standing in front of the class. Everyone is in a new seat. She mixes us around when we’re playing math games so we can go against new students.
“Perfect timing, Stella! We’re about to start.” She points to an empty chair.
“Why don’t you take a seat at the table with Jessica Anderson and Ben Shaw?”
I walk over to the table and try to sit down, but Jessica won’t move over. I clear my throat, hoping she’ll take the hint. I want to say something to Jessica, but I’m afraid she’ll say something mean. Ben finally moves over to make space for me. I like Ben. He’s so easygoing. He just likes making everyone laugh.
Ms. Bell looks at Stanley and says, “Now, Stanley, this is your first time. So just try to do your best. Everyone else, you know the drill.”
Stanley says, “Yes, ma’am.”
Ms. Bell laughs. “What good manners you have, Stanley.”
There’s a gold whistle around Ms. Bell’s neck that she blows to start each round. At the beginning of each round, she turns over a card with a math problem. Ms. Bell says we’re playing spelling-bee style. I’ll have to take her word for it since I’ve never done a spelling bee before. Whoever gets the answer right goes to the next round until there are only two players left. The questions start really easy, like two plus two equals four, but they get way harder toward the end.
“Ready?” Ms. Bell blows the whistle.
A few kids get knocked out right away, but I get all the answers correct. I feel proud that everyone can see that I’m smart. Before I know it, I’m at the last round, and it’s me, Michelle, and Stanley. I’m stunned. Michelle is always good at math, but Stanley? I didn’t expect Stanley to be this good at math. As Michelle sits down, I start to feel a little nervous. It’s now Stanley Mason with me in the last round. Everyone is cheering for Stanley.
Stella Diaz Has Something to Say Page 2