Seeing Cinderella

by Jenny Lundquist

  Mom said since I was going over there anyway, would I ask Mr. Garcia if we could borrow a lightbulb? “The one in Sarah’s room is burned out. And I completely forgot to buy one at the store today,” she had said.

  But I still had the glasses on, so I read her thoughts and knew she didn’t forget. She just didn’t have enough grocery money to buy one more thing—and she felt horrible for having to ask Mr. Garcia.

  Mom got along with Mr. Garcia okay. Once he’d even helped her fix a flat tire on her car. I didn’t like him, though, and the way he seemed not to notice when his sons shredded all the roses off my mom’s bushes. But the day Sarah kicked a soccer ball and it accidentally bounced off his SUV, he lectured her about respecting other people’s property.

  No one answered the door. Reluctantly, I rang it again, wishing I could just go home. Last week, Mom sent me over to borrow some bread. Mr. Garcia had told me—twice—how happy he was to help someone in need.

  The lock turned, snapping me back to attention. The door opened and Anthony Garcia, Ana’s seven-year-old cousin, peered out at me.

  “Hi, Anthony. Is Ana around?”

  Anthony shrugged and walked back into the house. He left the door open so I followed him inside. He plunked down in front of the TV and hollered “Ana!” Next to him, Miguel, his four-year-old brother, played with Legos.

  I heard keys jangling and turned to see Mr. Garcia walk into the hallway. Gray streaks peppered his dark hair, and lines etched his forehead. I remembered Mom telling me once that he’d married later in life—and then Dad adding that the reason Mrs. Garcia left was probably because she couldn’t “put up” with Mr. Garcia anymore.

  “Hello, Calliope.” Mr. Garcia always called me by my full name. “How are you? I’m afraid we’re all out of bread today.”

  “That’s not why I came,” I said, deciding I would use my allowance and buy the lightbulbs myself after school tomorrow.

  Ana emerged from the kitchen then, wiping her hands on a blue apron she wore. Mr. Garcia said something to her in Spanish, which she answered by saying, “No sé.” I was proud of myself for knowing that meant “I don’t know” in English. Then both of them turned to stare at me.

  Suddenly the already-crowded hallway seemed to shrink and I stepped backward, my hand closing around the doorknob. I wanted to fling the door open and run away from Mr. Garcia’s snobby stare. I didn’t want to tell him that—yet again—my family needed help from his.

  But I forced myself to stay still while Mr. Garcia said, “I haven’t seen your father’s car in a while.”

  “Yeah, he’s away,” I said, hanging my head. “He’s working.”

  “Oh, well that explains why the lawn looks the way it does. I could recommend a good gardener to your mother.”

  “That would be nice,” I said. I didn’t tell him there was no way we could afford a gardener right now. I turned to Ana. “So, I was wondering if you could help me learn Spanish. You don’t have to, it’s just that, my mom thinks I need help and I was wondering if you could tutor me.” My words came out fast, so fast I thought Ana didn’t understand me, because she said nothing. Instead she glanced uncertainly at Mr. Garcia.

  “That’s okay, I understand if you can’t. See you at school.” I turned around, and fumbled with the doorknob. Behind me I heard Mr. Garcia whisper something in Spanish to Ana.

  “No, wait,” Ana said. “You need help with Spanish?”

  I turned back. “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Le ayudaré.” Ana said, and smiled. “That means, ‘I will help you.’”

  Mr. Garcia said good-bye to Anthony and Miguel and began talking to Ana in Spanish. While he spoke Ana nodded and said “Sí.” When he finished, he brushed past me and left.

  “Where is he going?” I asked.

  “He has to work, and he asked me to watch the boys.” Ana paused and then said, “What’s that in your hand?”

  I looked down at the notebook paper clutched in my hand. I’d held it so tight it crumpled.

  “It’s just a story I wrote. I thought you might like to read it. You don’t have to though,” I added quickly. “It’s probably not any good or anything.”

  Normally, I didn’t show my stories to anyone except my dad. I was afraid Mom would get mad and take away my journal. And Ellen never understood why I spent so much time on something unrelated to school.

  Ana looked touched as she took the notebook paper and carefully smoothed it out.

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem,” I said, and let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  Ana walked me out to the porch. We decided she’d tutor me during lunch. As I was leaving, I said, “Did you ever join any of those clubs?”

  “No,” Ana said quickly. “I decided I didn’t want to. See you tomorrow.” Then she said good-bye and shut the door.

  As I walked home, I looked up at the stars. They looked like thousands of diamonds twinkling against black velvet. I wondered why Ana had decided not to join any clubs. She had seemed so excited—like middle-school life held endless opportunities for her. What made her change her mind?

  Chapter 8

  Super Freaky Glasses Rule #7

  If you want to catch someone in a lie using your glasses, you’ll have to do it in person.

  ANA WAS A GREAT TUTOR. WE MET A FEW TIMES A WEEK, and she never made fun of my Spanish pronunciation. And she didn’t think I was weird (or rude) when I told her that every time I said, “Me llamo Callie,” I imagined myself riding llamas. Instead Ana laughed and said she thought the English expression “easy as pie” was kind of dumb.

  “I’ve made pies with my abuelita—my grandma,” she said. “Believe me, it’s not easy.”

  One Friday before a big test, I asked Ana if she could help me study. Ana said she was spending the weekend at her Aunt Rosa’s, but she invited me over to spend the day with her there. Ana and Aunt Rosa, a kind woman who reminded me a lot of Ana, took turns quizzing me on Spanish verbs.

  My pronunciation improved, and soon Señora Geck stopped cringing when I spoke in class, and I stopped worrying Mom was going to ground me over my Spanish grade. Which was a good thing. Because I had more important things to worry about.

  I thought not going to the Fall Dance was a wise move. That way all the things I worried would happen, wouldn’t. But I should’ve thought more about what would happen if I didn’t go.

  Which was this: Ellen went with Stacy, and they spent the evening hanging out with a group of girls from their history class. Ellen called her parents from the dance, and asked them if she could spend the night at Stacy’s. According to Stacy, it was way fun. But she totally understood why I didn’t want to go—and thought it was a good idea that I stayed home.

  Riiiight.

  As the days passed, I played detective. When I saw Ellen and Stacy wearing the same shade of nail polish on Monday, I figured that meant they hung out over the weekend. And when my super-sleuth skills spied Ellen not paying attention in math class (a first for Ellen) because she was scribbling a note—a note she never gave to me—I spied on her thoughts and realized she was passing notes with Stacy.

  Ellen and Stacy joined the same clubs, even though I knew from spying on Stacy’s thoughts she didn’t care about any of them.

  Another thing I found out from spying on Stacy’s thoughts: She was always thinking about the girl with the dull blond hair and green rubber-band braces—Green Braces Girl, I called her. Once when Ellen, Stacy, and I were walking down the hall, we saw a bunch of girls laughing at another girl with a bad case of acne. I’d just been glad they weren’t laughing at me. But when I looked over at Stacy, I saw, in the screen hovering next to her, an image of a group of kids laughing at Green Braces Girl in what looked like a school cafeteria. For the millionth time, I’d wondered who Green Braces Girl was, and why Stacy thought about her all the time.

  “What’s this?” I held a folded up piece of paper Ana gave me. We were standing in my kitchen. Cla
ss had dismissed early for a minimum day, and Ana agreed to help me with an extra-credit project Señora Geck assigned. After cooking an authentic Mexican dish, I needed to write a one-page report (in English, thankfully) about what I learned.

  I opened the paper and scanned the page. It was a recipe. “What’s mole sauce?” I said, picturing a furry little creature swimming in red sauce.

  Ana laughed. “It’s not ‘mole’ sauce. It’s ‘moe-lay’ sauce. It’s a traditional Mexican dish. We can make it for your project.”

  “You’re kidding me. Can’t we just buy it in a can or jar or something?” I didn’t want to sound ungrateful, but there were, like, fifteen ingredients on the list. Truthfully, when I agreed to cook something for extra credit, I’d envisioned myself browning ground beef, tossing in some shredded cheese, dumping canned salsa over the whole thing, and wrapping it all up in a tortilla. Voila! Tacos a la Callie!

  But—call me a genius—I guessed that wasn’t how Ana’s family did it in Mexico.

  “This is my abuelita’s famous recipe. She even won a contest once,” Ana said.

  “Okay.” I looked around the kitchen. No way did we have half the ingredients on the list. I didn’t even know what some of them were. I’d never heard of a guajillo chile before. And really, mixing a chile and a stick of cinnamon together sounded kind of nasty.

  “I don’t think I have enough money for all this.” Mom had given me some money so we could walk to the grocery store, but I was pretty sure I’d need more.

  Ana looked at the list again. “We have most of the spices at home.” She headed for the door. “I’ll get them and be right back.”

  After Ana left I ransacked my kitchen, but the only ingredients I found were limp-looking sticks of celery and snack packs of raisins.

  Ana returned with a brown paper bag full of spices, cans of chicken broth, onions, and what I thought at first was a small onion but turned out to be a head of garlic.

  I grabbed a tote bag, dropped my glasses and money inside and headed for the door, but Ana stopped me.

  “We will wait for Ellen, yes?”

  I’d never made plans to hang out with someone other than Ellen before. I’d felt a little strange. Guilty, almost. So I invited Ellen over too. Ellen said she had a few club meetings after school, but she’d come over as soon as she could.

  “Ellen’s coming later,” I said, and opened the door.

  Ana passed the grocery store Mom and I usually shopped at and headed toward the Mexican market next door. I’d seen the market a million times before, but had never been inside. So I felt weird following behind Ana, like I was an imposter or something.

  Ana passed the meat counter and hanging packages of dried peppers and went straight for the produce section. She picked through a bin of fresh peppers: plucking, weighing, and squeezing until she found just the right ones. While Ana shopped, I glanced around and saw a whole section of yummy-looking pastries. Some of them were even decorated with a thick stripe of green, white, and red frosting to look like the Mexican flag.

  Once we selected our items, Ana handed me the basket and pointed to the cashier. “I want you to say, ‘I want to buy these, please’ in Spanish.”

  “No way. I can barely say my own name in Spanish.”

  “It is easy. You only say, ‘Quiero comprar estos, por favor.’”

  “Only.” I rolled my eyes. “Right.”

  Ana repeated the phrase a few times and then I went up to the counter. I probably butchered every word, but the cashier nodded and smiled as she rang up the items.

  Outside, Ana stopped at a newspaper dispenser. She wanted to buy a paper she said Mr. Garcia liked to read. While she dug around in her pockets for quarters, I waited. The doors to the grocery store slid open, spitting out Raven and one of her Goth friends. Both held candy bars and canned sodas. I thought I heard her friend mutter “conformists,” in a disgusted tone of voice when she saw Ana and me.

  Which I thought was really funny. Raven and her friend were dressed so alike (down to their matching dog collars) they could have been twins.

  Raven and her friend whispered and pointed at us while Ana, oblivious, fed her change into the newspaper dispenser. If Raven could spy on me, I figured I could spy on her. So I took my glasses from my tote bag and slipped them on.

  The air shimmered and the blue screen appeared by Raven, and her thoughts scrolled across: Is that how they dress in Mexico? She thinks she’s so hot she can dress any way she wants and get away with it?

  Raven raised her voice. “Can her clothes be any tackier?”

  “Can your attitude be any snottier?” I shot back.

  I took my glasses off and bit back a smile. After weeks of seeing people’s thoughts, and having to keep quiet, it felt really good to finally say something back.

  “Sensitive, much?” Raven said. “I was just joking. You don’t have to take everything so personally. Besides, I wasn’t talking about you, Four Eyes.”

  Raven and her Goth friend sauntered away, sipping sodas and laughing as they left.

  Ana finished tucking the newspaper into a grocery bag and stood up. “What did she say? I didn’t hear.”

  “We were just talking about . . . how neither of us likes drama.”

  That answer seemed to satisfy Ana, and I was glad. How could I explain Raven was making fun of the way Ana dressed? Personally, I didn’t think Raven should talk, since she couldn’t be bothered to wear something non-black. But Raven’s clothes fit her, and most of Ana’s didn’t. Ana seemed to have only a handful of outfits: jeans that were too short, colorful stretch pants, a few T-shirts, skirts that were way too long, and the pair of too-short overalls she wore today.

  I figured Ana’s family in Mexico was probably poor, especially since her dad was sick.

  So what was I supposed to do? Tell Ana to tell her uncle she needed trendier clothes?

  On the walk back home, Ana asked me why I didn’t like drama.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes I feel like there’s this all-seeing eye just waiting for me to screw up.”

  “You mean God?”

  “No. I mean the entire student body of Pacificview. They’re not as nice as God.”

  “Maybe,” Ana said. “But I think you are too scared sometimes. Like with the paint crew last week.”

  Last week, the paint crew started working on set pieces, beginning with the pumpkin patch near Cinderella’s cottage. Most students dove right in with the orange paint. Their pumpkins looked like ginormous tangerines. I hung back, mixing the orange and white and brown paints until I had a perfect pumpkin shade. Ana watched me, and after a few minutes she whispered, “Show the others.” But I kept quiet, until Gretchen Baxter glanced over and said, “Hey everyone, look at Callie.” Since then, the crew regularly asked me how to mix colors, fix splatters, and paint shadows—all the things I learned from my dad.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said finally.

  Back home, I took orders from Ana. I chopped onions until my eyes stung, and diced garlic until my hands reeked. Ana was amazing. She fried sesame seeds, toasted almonds, crushed tomatoes with her bare hands, and melted chocolate. After a while we had a large pot of red bubbly sauce that smelled sharp and sweet at the same time. Maybe I’d been wrong about peppers and cinnamon sticks not belonging together. Maybe in the right environment, they were just what the other one needed.

  Ana told me her uncle really appreciated Mexican home cooking. I asked if she ever cooked like this for the Garcias.

  Ana shrugged. “Tío says the more I cook and save money on food, the more money he can send to my parents.”

  That sounded weird to me. Mom was always complaining about money lately. But that didn’t mean I got stuck cooking every night.

  But when I said that to Ana, she replied, “I think maybe my family is different from yours. My list is a little longer.” Then she pointed to the Post-it note of chores my mother had left for me by the phone.

  “Oh, okay.”
I guessed Ana was right—her family was different from mine. There was a lot about her, and her culture, that I didn’t understand. So I decided to change the subject.

  “I wonder where Ellen is?” I asked, looking at the clock above the kitchen table. Her club meetings had to have ended by now.

  Ana glanced up at the clock too, and her eyes widened. “Four fifty?” Quickly, she wiped her hands off on a towel. “I have to go.”

  “Go? You’re not eating with us? You’ve done most of the work.”

  “I was supposed to make dinner for everyone tonight.”

  Ana headed for the door and I called, “Wait. What if we split the mole sauce? It’s almost done anyway, and there’s a ton. You take half and I’ll take half.”

  Ana paused, and I could see relief in her eyes. “Okay. Gracias, thank you.”

  As soon as I put a lid on Ana’s half of the sauce she scooped up the plastic container, calling “Gracias” again over her shoulder and streaking out the kitchen door.

  After Ana left I decided to call Ellen and find out why she’d never shown up. A giggling voice picked up on the other line.

  “Hello?” It was Ellen.

  “Hey, it’s me. When are you coming over?”

  “Um . . .” There were hushed whispers on the other line, and a bubbling laugh I was sure belonged to Stacy.

  “For dinner, remember? My extra-credit project?”

  “Oh, Callie, I’m so totally sorry.” Ellen’s voice sounded sugary sweet. “When I got home, Tara was here. She flew home a few days early for the weekend. She said we could go with her to the mall. We thought it would be fun.”

  “Who is we?” I asked, but I was pretty sure I knew.

  “Me and Tara,” Ellen said quickly. “We.”

  Deciding to perform an experiment, I reached for my tote bag and slipped on my glasses. I held the phone out in front of me and asked in a loud, clear voice, “So you can’t come over tonight because you and Tara are hanging out? Just the two of you?”