by Diana Lopez
They talked a bit more and then ate silently for a while. Finally, Patty said, “Check out Roberto. He keeps glancing over. He keeps looking at Erica. He did that during class, too.” She turned to me. “You hurt his feelings when you changed seats. He probably thinks you’re avoiding him.”
I shrugged.
“That’s right,” Iliana said. “You two were acting weird Saturday night. One minute you were dancing, and the next, you were stomping off the floor.”
I still didn’t speak.
“Erica!” Iliana said. “Wake up. Tell us what happened. Did you and Roberto get in a fight?”
“Oh, please,” Shawntae said. “He’s too nice to fight with anyone.”
“Then what’s wrong with Erica?” Iliana wanted to know.
“She thought she was going to be rich,” Shawntae replied, “but her mom didn’t win the lottery after all.”
“That’s not it,” I said.
“Well, why else would you be in a bad mood?” Before I could answer, Shawntae went on, “I don’t blame you. You probably hate me right now for putting those ideas in your head. I shouldn’t have told you about my stupid dream.”
“Are you really worried about the lottery?” Iliana asked me.
“No. I never thought we were going to win.”
“I knew it!” Iliana said. “So you did get in a fight with Roberto. That’s why you guys are acting so weird.”
“They didn’t get in a fight,” Patty said, all impatient. “Erica’s upset about Derek being a flirt.”
“Come on,” Shawntae said. “You don’t need psychic powers to see that she wanted to win the lottery.”
“Or that she had a fight with Roberto,” Iliana insisted.
I couldn’t believe they were talking about me when I was right in front of them.
“Stop it,” I said, but they kept making guesses. I couldn’t believe it. My mood ring—my inanimate mood ring!—knew how I felt better than my friends did. “Stop it!” I shouted.
And they did—they completely froze. All three of them looked at me like I was some stranger wearing an Erica mask.
“How can my friends be so clueless about what’s going on in my life?” They didn’t dare answer. “Sure, if my life were normal, I’d be upset about boys and lotteries, but I can’t think about that right now because my life is not normal. My mom’s sick, remember? I made a promesa to help her, and it isn’t working out. I still need a hundred names to reach my goal, but now I have all this homework because I’m about to fail school. Yes, my grades are awful! And I can’t help thinking that if I don’t keep my promise, my mother will die. Do you hear me? She’ll die!”
With that, I ran out. They tried to stop me, saying they didn’t know and they’re sorry, but I kept moving, straight to the counselor’s office. She’d told me I could go there whenever I needed to, and I desperately needed to right now.
When I got home, I went to the bedroom to check on Carmen. She was sitting on the bed with a box of paper clips, a stack of envelopes, and a ball of rubber bands, which she was slowly taking apart. “Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” she counted.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Seventeen, eighteen,” she went on like a mindless robot.
“Carmen!”
I startled her. She stopped counting and looked up at me. “Don’t interrupt,” she scolded. “I lost my place. Now I have to start over.”
“Why are you counting those rubber bands?”
“Because I’ve already counted the paper clips and envelopes.”
She was about to start again, but I snatched the rubber bands away.
“This has to stop,” I said. “You can’t go through life counting things. At first, I thought you were just acting weird, but now I think you’ve got a real problem. No one counts all the time, not even geniuses.”
That’s when I noticed two book-shaped rectangles beneath her blouse.
“What’s that?” I said, pointing.
She tried to cover up with a pillow.
“Let me see,” I insisted.
She shook her head, so I grabbed the pillow. We played tug-of-war for a while, but since I was stronger, she gave up.
“Okay!” she said. “But don’t laugh.”
She lifted her shirt, and sure enough, she had used athletic wraps to tie two books to her chest.
“What on earth are you doing?” I asked, trying my best not to laugh.
She covered up again. “I was in the library this morning doing more research on breast cancer. Did you know that if your mother has it, you have a greater chance of getting it, too? Some women even have preventive mastectomies, which means they get their breasts removed before they ever have a chance to get sick. But I figure that if I stop developing, I won’t have to worry about it. That’s why I wanted to come home. I’m going to stop my boobs from growing.”
I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. I know I promised, but this was too funny. My poor sister thought she was going to die, and all I could do was laugh. I couldn’t stop long enough to tell her that she was wasting her time because you can’t stop Mother Nature.
“Quit laughing!” she said, but I couldn’t. Carmen might be smart and she might be developing, but she was still a little kid, especially when it came to the facts of life.
She threw the box of paper clips at me. It hit the wall and the clips rained down. Then she threw the pillow at me. It hit a figurine on my dresser, making it crash to the floor. I couldn’t even get mad.
“Please!” she begged. “Stop laughing!”
I took a deep breath to calm myself. A few chuckles slipped out, but I quickly got them under control. “You’re not going to get cancer,” I finally managed.
“How can you be so sure?”
She was right. I couldn’t make that promise. “Okay, I’m not sure. If there’s one thing I’ve learned,” I said, thinking about Shawntae, “it’s that no one can predict the future. But if you start worrying about it now, you’re never going to enjoy life. Plus, don’t you want boobs? Every girl wants to have nice boobs.”
I went to my dresser, pulled out one of Mom’s bikini tops, and put it against my chest.
“It’s way too big for you,” Carmen said.
“I know, but someday, I’ll be able to wear a bikini like this.” I tossed the top to her. “And so will you.”
She examined it, and then she removed the books from her chest.
“So why do you count?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“I’m not going to make fun of you. I’m just curious. You’re the only person on the planet who counts everything she sees.”
She looked at me. I could tell she was trying to decide whether or not to trust me.
“Counting makes me feel better,” she said. “I ask myself, how many of this? How many of that? And when I count, I get the answer. I like getting answers, especially when…”
“When what?”
“When I’m confused about things.”
“You’re never confused,” I said.
“That’s not true. I’m always confused.”
“About what?”
She gave me a long list, things like friendships and emotions and Mom, mostly Mom. She had the same questions that bothered me, like why was Mom sick and would she get better?
“What do you do when you feel like life is out of control?” she asked me.
I glanced at the notebook GumWad had given me. “I started a diary,” I said, “and it really helps.”
She smiled. Finally, we had something in common.
We picked up the paper clips that had fallen on the floor. It was the first time we had ever cleaned the room together. After a while, Carmen said, “I know we fight a lot, but I’m really glad you’re my sister. I owe you, especially for helping me at Derek’s party.”
I thought about my parent-teacher conference, how I refused to let Carmen help me. But if she owed me one, then maybe tutoring wasn’t really help
ing. Maybe it was a way to pay me back.
I glanced at the mountain of books I’d brought for homework. “Can I show you something?” I asked.
“Sure.”
I reached into my backpack and pulled out the math test. She looked it over, and when she got to the word problems and my six pages of reasons why each needed more information, she started laughing. My paragraphs really cracked her up. Normally, I’d be offended, but I had to admit that my “divergent thinking” did lead me in new, startling, and just plain wrong directions.
When Carmen finally settled down, she said, “Okay, let’s start with number one.”
4 EXTRA ENVELOPES
Thursday afternoon, I sat on the front porch, waiting for my friends and watching Jimmy scribble on the sidewalk with chalk. The Race for the Cure forms were due, and as soon as Dad came home, I was going to turn them in. But my friends made me promise to wait. They said they had a surprise for me.
I pulled the list of sponsors from my manila envelope and tallied up the names—412. In a way, I felt proud. I had talked to every person I knew and a lot of strangers. So I didn’t meet my goal, but hopefully, I’d get credit for trying my best, and in that way, fulfill my promesa.
“Gimme car!” Jimmy said, pointing to a toy truck at my feet. I kicked it to him. He rolled it across the curvy line he’d drawn on the sidewalk. The line looped over itself and sometimes trailed off into the grass, but Jimmy kept following it, making zooming sounds as he pushed his truck. And I thought, if I were to draw a line of my life, it wouldn’t be straight like the timelines in my history book but tangled like the squiggle Jimmy drew on the sidewalk because you had to change directions sometimes, trail off the normal path—like the way Carmen did eighth-grade math even though she was supposed to be in elementary school, or the way I took care of Mom when she was supposed to take care of me. Maybe there was no such thing as a normal path. Maybe we all traveled through confused squiggles instead.
A sedan pulled into the driveway, and after turning off the engine, Shawntae’s mother got out.
“The gang’s all here,” she announced, and when the other car doors opened, all the Robins, even GumWad, stepped out.
“Hi, everyone,” I said. “I didn’t know all of you were coming.”
“Are you ready for the surprise?” Shawntae asked.
“Sure, what is it?”
She laughed. “Not so fast. It’s for your mom, too.”
I told Jimmy to go get her, so he ran in, calling, “Mommy! Mommy!” A few moments later, Mom and Carmen came outside.
“Close your eyes,” Iliana told us.
Mom, Carmen, Jimmy, and I closed our eyes. When the Robins told us to open them, we saw a white banner with bright pink letters that said, “Race for Lisa.”
“I love it!” Mom said, clapping her hands like a kid who had just opened a birthday present. She gave Shawntae’s mother a hug, and then she hugged each of the Robins.
“Look on the other side,” GumWad said as they turned the banner around.
Dozens had signed their names. I didn’t recognize every signature, but many were familiar. My teachers, classmates, even guys on my Boyfriend Wish List. I scanned the names, finally finding Iliana, Shawntae, Patty, and Roberto.
“There’s more,” Patty said. She reached into the car and pulled out four manila envelopes.
“We felt really bad the other day when you got mad at us,” Iliana explained. “There we were talking about silly things when the whole time, you’ve been dealing with some big problems.”
“Then we thought about the times you helped us,” Shawntae said. “Like when you made those invitations for me.”
“And when you helped with my English homework,” Patty said.
“And when you found my first dog,” GumWad added.
“And when you went to the hospital to help me with the kids,” Iliana said.
“But you never asked us for help,” Shawntae went on. “So when you said you were short one hundred names, we decided to pitch in.”
“We didn’t think it’d be hard,” GumWad said, “if we each got twenty-five people to sign up.”
“I got all my relatives to sponsor you,” Patty said.
“I set up a fund-raising campaign on my Facebook page,” Shawntae said. “Lots of people responded.”
“I asked my brothers,” Iliana told me. “They think you’re cute, like another little sister, and when they heard about your promesa, they asked their whole football team to help.”
“I went back to the people who had lost their dogs,” GumWad said. “They were more than happy to donate the reward money.”
I took the envelopes and peeked inside. Each had extra sponsor forms, checks, and real money. With the extra names from the Robins, I knew I had reached my goal.
“Thank you,” Carmen and Mom said.
And I said it, too. “Thanks. This means so much to me. I know you helped because you care about me and not for other reasons”—I looked at GumWad—“like feeling sorry for me.”
His smile told me that he knew I was apologizing for the night of Derek’s party.
“Why don’t we take the banner inside,” Mom suggested, “so we can sign it, too.”
“Good idea,” Shawntae’s mom said.
We headed toward the house. Everyone went in, but before GumWad and I entered, I grabbed his sleeve to hold him back.
“I’m sorry you wasted all your quarters on me,” I said when we were alone.
“They weren’t wasted,” he answered. “I like helping out. Besides, I really needed to get rid of my gumball machine.”
“You got rid of it?”
“Yep.”
“What a coincidence,” I said. “I just got rid of all my Chia Pets. I didn’t throw them away. I just passed them along to children at the hospital.”
“Even Scooby?” GumWad wondered. “He was my favorite.”
“Sorry. Even Scooby.”
“Do you miss them?” he asked.
“I thought I would, but no, I don’t miss them at all. Do you miss your gumball machine?”
“Sometimes.” He got this faraway look on his face as if he were remembering special moments with gumballs. I couldn’t help laughing a bit.
“Erica! Roberto!” Shawntae called. “You’re missing all the fun!”
“Coming!” we called back.
And then GumWad said, “You should call me Roberto from now on too, since I’m not chewing gum anymore.”
I held out my hand, so he could shake it. “It’s a deal,” I said.
He smiled. I had to admit he had cute dimples, cuter since he didn’t have an annoying gumball in his mouth. And, like Iliana often said, he could be really sweet sometimes. I could never add GumWad to my Boyfriend Wish List, but maybe, someday, I could add Roberto.
500 NAMES IN PINK
The big day arrived! Dad dropped Carmen, Mom, and me near the Race for the Cure festivities, while he and Jimmy searched for a parking spot. The “Race for Lisa” group planned to meet by the flagpole fifteen minutes before the starting gun went off. We had arrived an hour early, so we had time to look around. Mom wanted to see the sights too, but she quickly got out of breath.
“And to think I wanted to do the whole walk,” she said. She lifted a foot to show off her tennis shoes. “Next year,” she vowed.
I gave her a hug. “Next year, you and I will run the 5K.”
“We sure will,” she agreed. “But for now, I’m going to sit over there.” She pointed toward a row of chairs in front of a stage where an emcee introduced a speaker from the city council. I was glad Mom had come, even though she didn’t feel well enough to walk the 5K. She planned to sit near the finish line and cheer for us. “You girls look around, okay?”
“Okay,” we said.
Carmen and I walked through the parking lot of the Alamodome, San Antonio’s big stadium. The newspaper article I had seen in the valley said that last year, thirty thousand people came.
&nb
sp; “I wonder how many people are here today,” I said to Carmen.
“I don’t know,” she answered, “but I don’t plan to count them.” I smiled, glad that she was getting closer to normal.
Nearly everyone wore the official T-shirt, including Carmen and me. Some people went beyond the shirt by dyeing their hair or wearing pink wigs. One lady had wrapped a pink boa around her neck. She kept sneaking up to people and tickling them with its feathers. Other ladies wore pink bracelets or earrings. And the dogs had pink collars or leashes. One man had dyed his poodle so it looked like a ball of cotton candy on legs. There were so many shades—the pinks you find on roses, lipstick, bubble gum, pencil erasers, and pigs. Even the guys wore pink.
Carmen and I made our way to a tent called the Pink Hat Café. It served strawberry yogurt, apples, bananas, bagels, Gatorade, water, and pink lemonade. Then we peeked through the windows of a giant inflatable castle filled with kids jumping around, and we visited a booth where a woman painted the breast cancer awareness ribbon on our cheeks. At another booth, we got autographs from Spurs and Silver Stars players, and farther down the aisle, we laughed at people singing out of tune with a karaoke machine.
Then, we found the Tribute Tent. When we went inside, Carmen said, “It’s just like el cuarto de milagros.”
I had to agree. I felt as if we had traveled back in time to the day we visited the valley and left our special items at the shrine. Lining each side of the tent were walls. One was called the Wall of Hope, and the other was called the Memory Wall. They had bulletin boards so people could tack up pictures and letters. I saw photos of smiling women, and some of women who were bald from chemotherapy or had arms swollen like my mom’s. The letters on the Wall of Hope were mostly prayers, and some were promesas. One woman promised to work at a soup kitchen every day for a year. One husband promised to stop watching TV. And a child promised to do his homework “forever and ever.” Other letters were thank-you notes or narratives from women who had survived cancer. On the Memory Wall, people who had lost someone wrote letters, many addressed to the women who had died. “We miss you,” some said, or “We wish you were here,” or “Can you believe that Señora Chavez is dating a younger man?” And, just like in el cuarto de milagros, tables were filled with roses, hundreds of pink roses; and teddy bears, candles, balloons, greeting cards, and small statues of saints; and souvenirs like thimbles, refrigerator magnets, baseball caps; and T-shirts from all over the world.