The Mystery of the Tenth

by Chantel Acevedo

  “Are you attending the summer session?” Laura asked. She was still wearing the canguro and was now bouncing because Rafaelito had started to make noises. The bouncing seemed to help.

  Ari nodded. “Keeps me busy and out of trouble, my aunt says.” She shrugged and resumed making her bracelet.

  “Callie here is going to Corona Arts, too. Starting Monday,” Papi announced.

  I coughed up a blob of ice cream and didn’t stop coughing until Laura pounded on my back a few times.

  “What?” I asked when I got my voice back.

  “Like she said. Keeping you busy and out of trouble,” Papi said. “Laura and I work all day. Rafaelito goes to day care. I can’t have you home alone for four weeks.”

  “What?!” I hadn’t counted on having to go to summer school, or camp, or whatever this Corona Arts Academy was. And if it was full of strange kids like this Ari, kids who had the nerve to talk back to my father, then I really didn’t want to go. Besides, I had an important muse mission. How was I going to get in and out of school when I needed to?

  Laura cleared her throat, saying she needed to pick up a salad for tomorrow’s dinner, leaving me, Papi, and Ari alone.

  “I can stay home alone. I promise.”

  “No arguments, Callie.”

  “But Papi,” I started.

  “You might have fun,” Ari put in.

  “Nobody asked you,” I shot back.

  Then, silence.

  I wasn’t usually that rude, especially not with a stranger. I chanced a look at Papi, and his face was full of disappointment.

  “Is that how you talk to people in Miami?” Papi asked, his voice low and serious.

  I’m sorry, what? Did he not catch Ari’s attitude a few minutes ago?

  I walked over to the garbage can and threw out my half-eaten ice-cream cone. “I want to go home,” I said.

  “Bien,” Papi said, throwing out his ice cream, too. “Let’s go.”

  But I didn’t mean back to his apartment.

  I heard Papi calling Laura’s name in the bodega and watched as they went to the cash register to pay for a head of lettuce.

  “Hey, Corona Arts isn’t bad,” Ari said, back at work on her bracelet. Unbelievably, she’d just about finished it. “Here,” she said, tying the last knot and handing it to me. The bracelet’s colors reminded me of Miami. Green like the trees, orange like the sun, white like clouds, and Mami’s rice, and my house. My eyes prickled with tears.

  “Like I said, it isn’t bad. And the best part is the Student Showcase. At least, that’s what the kids at school tell me,” said Ari.

  “So you’re new to Corona Arts, too?” I asked, but Ari didn’t answer. She just walked off into the store, trailing her finger over the cans on the nearby shelves.

  “Thanks,” I said out loud, though I couldn’t tell if she’d heard me. I put the friendship bracelet alongside my muse bracelet. They sort of went well together. I tied it off, using my free hand and my teeth.

  “Callie, vamos,” Papi called.

  By now Rafaelito was wailing. Outside the sun was setting, and Laura started to complain about the baby’s “witching hour.” “Sorry in advance, Callie,” she said. “Nobody gets any sleep in our place thanks to him.”

  Great, I thought. The pin-pan-pun awaited, and with a pang I remembered the Great Bed of Ware, and my own bed in Miami. A police car roared by in the distance, the siren blasting.

  Rafaelito cried even harder.

  That night, I called Mami, who wanted to know all about New York City.

  “I haven’t seen much,” I started to say, but I could hear my brothers asking for the phone, and Mami soon handed it over.

  “How’s it going, dork?” Fernando asked.

  I bristled. That was one good thing about being in New York—I didn’t have to deal with the twins’ pranks. “That sticky note joke hurt my feelings, you should know that,” I said.

  Mario spoke up. “Get tough and get even then.”

  “Speaking of tough, how’s Papi treating you?” Fernando asked.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “He’s making me go to summer camp.”

  The twins laughed. “Told you to stay home this summer. You could be watching TV all day instead of going to some camp,” said Fernando.

  I could hear Papi and Laura chatting in the kitchen. “Do you want to talk to Papi?” I asked.

  My brothers were quiet for a moment. “No, that’s okay,” Mario said.

  I recalled how they’d reacted when they’d learned our baby brother’s new name. Rafael, named after my dad. They didn’t say anything, but I know they were thinking it—how come neither one of them got his name? I remembered when Papi left, how Mario and Fernando had teamed up against our dad, shouting at him and, later, refusing to talk with him on the phone.

  But my brothers were tough. They didn’t complain. If they were feeling some kind of way about Papi, they kept it to themselves to spare Mami and me. I looked up to them, which is why I hated the tears that sprang to my eyes every once in a while.

  “Have fun at camp,” Fernando added, breaking the silence. Then we hung up.

  Papi stuck his head into my room. “Was that the boys?” he asked. I nodded. “Ay, I wanted to talk with them,” he said, disappointment all over his face.

  “They’re busy, I guess,” I said.

  Papi came over and sat beside me on the pin-pan-pun. It squealed and dropped several inches. He slung his arm around me and squeezed. “I’m glad you’re here, Callie.” Then he dropped a loud kiss on the top of my head.

  “Me, too, Papi,” I said.

  When he left the room, I searched my feelings. Was it even true? Was I glad to be in New York? In Miami, I knew exactly what to expect. Miami Callie had it all figured out. Miami Callie could sometimes forget that her parents were divorced, or that her aunt was dead, because in Miami, everything was familiar and comfortable. In New York, it was all different. New York Callie was all mixed up, like food that didn’t belong together on one plate. Mami would describe it as an “arroz con mango” situation. And in New York, that’s exactly what I felt like—a big old dish of mangoes and rice, all mushed together.

  What had Mario said? “Get tough and get even.” I had nothing to get even for, but I could get tough. I’d be going to a new school in a few days, full of new kids, in a new city. Could I be tough? I really hoped so.

  Chapter 6

  Corona Arts Academy

  Getting ready for summer camp was a lot like preparing for the start of a new school year. Over the weekend, Papi and Laura had taken me shopping, and they’d bought me a few new outfits, and a little backpack for my phone, keys, and a just-for-me subway MetroCard preloaded with some money. “Your official New York ID,” Papi had said, handing it over.

  The night before camp, I’d set out a pair of new white jeans and a plain blue T-shirt to wear, and made sure my bag had everything I needed. It felt good to be prepared, but inside, I was still all rice and mangoes.

  Papi, Laura, and I walked over to Corona Arts right after breakfast. Rafaelito sat snug in his sling the whole way. Corona Arts looked like any other school. It was a big two-story building, with a flagpole outside, and “Slow! Children Crossing” signs up and down the street.

  “Why summer school?” I whined. We’d had a great weekend, going to the top of the Empire State Building, visiting Times Square at night when it was all lit up like a carnival, and finally, visiting Grand Central Terminal’s whispering gallery. In a tiled area of the station, Papi had stood on one end of an arched wall and whispered, “I love you, Callie.” I could hear him clear across the big room near another arch! Papi called it an “acoustic oddity.” Maya would have been able to explain how it worked in detail, but I just thought it was super cool.

  But Papi and Laura had to go to work now, and summer camp was directly in my future.

  “Oh, come on,” Papi said. “It’s an arts program. You always loved art!”

  “Yeah, ba
ck when the only thing I had to do was color inside the lines.” I was feeling grouchy. Rafaelito was, as advertised, not a good sleeper. He cried all night, and the pin-pan-pun was springy and uncomfortable after all.

  “Look at the art,” Laura said encouragingly. She was pointing at a pair of sculptures that flanked the front doors. They were papier-mâché bulls, their horns sculpted out of pipe cleaners.

  “I’m looking,” I said, and left it at that. What I really wanted to say was that I didn’t need to go to an arts program, not when I got to hang out with the Muses of dance and music, drama and comedy, science and history, and love songs and sacred hymns on the regular.

  Well, maybe not so regularly. I touched my bracelet and wondered what the rest of the Muse Squad was up to, and when Clio would call us to our new headquarters. I hadn’t heard from anybody in days. And it wasn’t just the muses. I hadn’t been able to get hold of Maya either, except for last night, when she’d texted me a GIF from the movie Apollo 13, along with a big thumbs-up emoji. I guess she was having fun at Space Camp.

  Papi gave me a kiss on the top of my head and a little shove in the direction of the front door.

  “Dale,” he whispered. “Que tu puedes.”

  I looked back at them. Laura was smiling, Rafaelito was drooling, and Papi had his arm around them both.

  You can do it, Papi had said. I took a deep breath, turned around, and pushed open the front doors.

  It may have looked like every other school on the outside, but inside, Corona Arts was nothing at all like a regular school. Salsa music was blaring from the speakers, and a wide circle of students were dancing a rueda right there in the center of the school. They formed six couples and were dancing together, synchronized, every so often switching partners. It was awesome.

  I peered down a hallway and saw students painting lockers—there were landscapes, and portraits, and abstract shapes. They chatted as they worked, dipping into palettes loaded with more colors than I could name.

  A loud knocking sound drew me to another set of doors, and when I pushed through them, I saw a theater, and a bunch of kids on a stage, hammering away at sets. They were building a castle, complete with a turret.

  And down the center aisle of the theater was a beautiful runner made of bright red and silver thread, with tassels on either end. It sparkled like Christmas. That’s where I saw her—Ari—sewing on the last of the tassels.

  There’s nothing like a familiar face in a new place. I hadn’t realized I’d been grinding my back teeth until I saw her. Feeling a bit more relaxed, I went down one of the rows of seats and stood off to the side.

  “Hey, Ari!”

  “Hey,” she said without looking up. “Welcome to Corona Arts. Have you found your poets yet?”

  She still hadn’t looked at me. How did she know it even was me?

  “Um, no? Do I need to find poets for some reason?”

  I watched as Ari tied the final knot in the fat tassel she was holding. She looked up at me at last and stood, her knees creaking like a grown-up’s.

  “The poets are your artist group. I saw your name on the class list. From the look on your face, not a first choice, I gather? The other groups were probably full, is the thing. I’m with textile arts,” she said, flashing her armful of bracelets at me. “Those kids are set design,” she added, nodding toward the people onstage. “There’s dance, visual arts, musicians, singers. Then there’s the poets.” She said that last one with a wiggle of her eyebrows.

  “Poets?”

  “And you don’t even know it!” Ari added, laughing to herself. “Come on.”

  I followed her out of the theater. We passed the kids dancing the rueda, and even though I couldn’t dance, I watched them longingly. That seemed so fun. We marched past the painters, who were now flicking globs of paint at each other. Also, fun. But poetry?

  I know, I know. My secret identity was Muse of the epic poem. But that just meant I was good at hero-making. That’s what epic poems do. They tell the stories of great heroes. It didn’t mean I wrote actual poems.

  Poetry sounded like homework.

  And homework is such a pain.

  Ari led me to a staircase, and as we climbed farther away from the noise downstairs, everything grew quiet. “Corona Arts has been around for a long time. It relies mostly on rich donors for the supplies, the teacher salaries, the camp scholarships, which everyone is on. Most of the kids here are from Queens. Nobody’s paying a lot for summer camp, you know?”

  I nodded. Papi was an AC installation contractor. Laura worked as an office assistant at Queensborough Community College. Rafaelito’s day care was expensive enough, as were my plane tickets. I thought about Ari’s aunt, owning the bodega. I wondered what her parents did for a living.

  Ari stopped at a window on the stair landing. It was dirty, so she rubbed off a clean spot with her elbow. Beyond was Queens—all brick buildings and storefronts. Off to the right I spotted the rocket at the Hall of Science.

  “I love Queens. It’s definitely better than the place I was before this,” Ari said.

  “Where were you be—”

  She cut me off. “And this school has been the best. But there are rumors that the donors are pulling out. That they aren’t impressed with what we’re doing here.”

  “How could they not be impressed? Everybody is so talented!”

  Ari shrugged. “I’ve only been here since January, but from what I’ve seen, I think everyone is really talented, too. The donors are coming to the Student Showcase in a few weeks. It’s a chance to show them Corona Arts is worth investing in.”

  I thought of everything I’d seen so far. And the day was just starting. Ari looked pretty dejected, but there was just something about her. Something . . . heroic.

  “But you want to save this school, right?” I asked.

  Ari nodded. “I want to save a lot of things.”

  I pictured Ari at the Student Showcase, the whole school applauding as she held a check with enough zeroes in it to save the school. The picture in my head got clearer and clearer.

  Ari’s dark eyes met mine. They were shiny, but her stare was intense. She took a step away from me. Then another.

  I faltered. “Okay,” I said. In my head, the picture of Ari grew more detailed and more vivid. “I bet you can do it. I think you can help save this school, show those donors how awesome this place can be. I’ll help,” I said, putting as much cheer into my voice as I could.

  Ari stared at me for a tick, then burst out laughing.

  “You are super, and I mean super weird,” she said.

  “I get that a lot,” I admitted. I let the image in my head fade to nothing.

  Ari narrowed her eyes at me. “Come on, poet. If you want to help me save Corona Arts, you’d better start your scribbling.”

  I followed her to a classroom that had only one other person in it. The girl had dark brown hair in a bun, with a pencil sticking out of it. She was wearing a Wonder Woman T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Her head popped up as soon as we walked in.

  “Maris, meet your new poet.”

  “I’m Callie,” I said, and waved.

  Maris regarded me with a serious expression. “I wish my name was Emily, but Maris will have to do. I’m going to change it when I get older—I decided at the age of six, as soon as I read Dickinson.”

  “Dickinson?” I asked.

  At that, Maris groaned, threw down the pen she was holding, and stalked out of the room.

  “Don’t mind her. You just insulted her favorite poet, Emily Dickinson. She’ll get over it,” Ari said. Then she spun me around and clapped me on the back. “Have fun poem-ing!” she sang as she skipped out of the room.

  Here’s how my first day at Corona Arts went.

  First, I insulted Maris Emad by not realizing that Emily Dickinson was a pretty famous poet. It was just me and Maris in the poet group, and the fact that she didn’t speak to me for the first two hours of camp made things pretty awkward.

/>   I met Mr. Theo, our artist group leader, who had us writing limericks all morning. Mine went like this:

  There was a young girl from Miami

  Who wished she was home in her jammies.

  She thought poems were cursed,

  They’re the absolute worst.

  In French, the word “friend” is called “amie.”

  I’d never thought of it before, but rhyming words with “Miami” was almost impossible. I figured they’d be impressed that I’d done the limerick at all, but Mr. Theo scowled after I read it, and Maris wondered out loud if I wouldn’t rather be with the theater kids, “the comedic actors, in fact.”

  I felt like a jerk, of course.

  We had tacos for lunch in the school courtyard, and I watched as the dance kids picked up the rueda again. Meanwhile, Maris sat beside me, complaining about her tenth revision of a poem and how it was “killing her soul.”

  There was more poem-ing after lunch. Mr. Theo taught us how to write ghazals, which have a complicated rhyme scheme. I think I understood what Maris meant by a poem “killing her soul.” She was having a hard time of it, too. Once or twice, if I noticed Maris struggling to get a line just right, I tried to give her a little muse boost. Just the tiniest push, a snapshot in my head of Maris smiling when she got a good idea. Magic usually made me feel like the top of my head was coming off. But this kind? Helping someone find the perfect word, or the best metaphor? That felt like the softest buzz on my skin, like goose bumps, or an unexpected breeze.

  We wrapped up the afternoon by sharing our ghazals-in-progress. Halfway through reading mine, my bracelet caught fire. Not actual fire, of course—it just warmed up slowly to the point that it started to sting a bit. I had to get to the Hall of Science!

  Clio couldn’t have timed it better. A bell rang, announcing the end of the day. “Don’t forget to work on your ghazals!” Mr. Theo called as we made for the exit.

  I heard Maris grumble goodbye. She was clearly still mad about my limerick. I’d have to make it up to her somehow, but right now I needed to run.

  “Bye!” I called back, and raced out the door. Students were clogging up the hallways, and I snaked around them as quick as I could. But when I reached the front doors and pushed outside, I was completely confused.