“And you are just after the first-place trophy. That’s all you ever care about. First place this. First place that. Like with the Furry Friends Photo Contest. I thought it was something fun we could do together over holiday break to help the animal shelter, but you shot down every single one of my ideas for the photo with Secret. You’re like a crazed Chihuahua whenever you’re trying to win something. It’s super annoying. Like now with this contest.”
“Hey! That’s not true!” I exclaim. My stomach tightens into a big knot. Is that really the reason? Has it been about Secret and the Furry Friends Photo Contest this whole time? Did I really shoot down all her ideas? I don’t think so. She’s just trying to hurt my feelings. I’m not a crazed Chihuahua!
Great-Gramps told me to listen to her and I’m really trying, but now she’s just being rude. “Whatever, Sara,” I say.
“Whatever,” she says. “So can I talk to your great-gramps now?”
“Sorry, he left.” I hang up the phone, and my head throbs. Talking to her was one big fail.
I hate to admit it, but Ava’s poem was right. My day has been dumpy, and I wish I’d just stayed in bed this morning.
The next day at school, I avoid Sara. When I told Adriana last night that I hung up on Sara, she gave me the world’s longest disappointed stare. It lasted like five minutes and twenty-nine seconds. Finally, she said that I have to apologize, but I don’t see any reason for it. If anything, Sara should apologize to me. She’s the one who called me a crazed Chihuahua and is writing a song about my bisabuelo just to spite me. She wants to win the prize money. She could care less about my great-gramps.
“Well, isn’t that why you chose him too … for the trophy?” Victor says after I complain to him. Victor and I are in second-hour math class. We’re supposed to be working on a group assignment with Diego and Grace, but really they are doing all the problems and Victor and I are talking. “You want to win a trophy and make your mark before you graduate, right? Es lo mismo.”
“It’s not the same,” I growl. “I’m doing it to make a tribute to my bisa. He’s a true trailblazer. Sara, on the other hand, is doing it so she and Hayley can go buy matching leggings. It’s totally different.”
Diego looks up at us in exasperation. “C’mon, you guys, we have to finish these problems before the end of class,” he says. “Forget Sara. If you guys can take problems ten through twenty, we’ll be done.”
Victor nods and gets to work, scribbling computations in the workbook.
I narrow in on the math problems in front of me. Questions number ten to twenty are missing mean, range, and median problems. It’s simple stuff that I can usually knock out in a few minutes, but I can’t stop thinking about Sara and what hanging the phone up on her means. Is it the end of our friendship for good?
I look over at Sara and Hayley huddled over the math handouts. Sara and I had been best friends since we were four years old. Is our friendship range only six years? I stare at the math problems. I can’t make any sense of them.
“Done!” Victor announces. He puts his pencil down. My worksheet is blank. Defeated again.
“With all ten problems?” Diego asks, and leans in to look at Victor’s worksheet.
“How did you get done so fast?” Grace asks.
I put my pencil down with a thud on my desk. I should be the first one done. Instead I’ll be the last, and it’s because I’ve been worrying over stupid Sara. Mrs. Wendy rings her little bell and tells us to wrap it up and turn in our worksheets.
“Here, Allie, take mine.” Victor offers his worksheet.
“No, it’s okay. I’ll stay after if I have to. I’ll get it done.”
“Take it, Allie. It was a group assignment anyway,” Grace adds. “We’re supposed to share.”
“It just so happens that some of us shared more than others,” Diego says. “Just sayin’.”
“Thanks.” I take Victor’s worksheet and quickly start copying down the answers. As I copy, I review all the answers. Everything looks good.
“Wow, Victor. The tutoring program must really be helping you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You said you attend the tutoring program on Saturdays. I can definitely see it’s working. Good job.”
Victor leans back in his chair, narrows his eyes, and gives me this quiet closed-mouth smile like he’s keeping a secret.
I put my name on the top of my worksheet, but I feel bad because none of it is my work. As I turn it in to Mrs. Wendy, I promise myself I’ll make it up somehow. Before leaving the classroom, I pause at the poster of Gwendolyn Brooks. I bet the whole time she was writing her book of poetry that won the Pulitzer Prize, Gwendolyn didn’t waste one single second worrying about any backstabbing friends. If I’m ever going to win first place, I have to stop freaking out about Sara.
Gwendolyn Brooks was thirteen years old when she published her first poem. That’s three years older than me. Twenty years later, she won the big enchilada: the Pulitzer. She spent twenty years writing poems before winning that big award. I haven’t been doing anything for five or even two years. The only poems I’ve written have been for school assignments. In fourth grade, I wrote a rhyming poem about how my life was like strawberry ice cream. Cool and sweet. Rosy like my dreams. Life is a frozen treat. Strawberry ice cream.
I got an A for it.
This last year at Sendak has not even been close to sweet like strawberry ice cream. Instead, it’s been like a scoop of ice cream dropped splat on the sidewalk.
Anyway, I have a feeling that a rhyming poem comparing my bisabuelo to ice cream isn’t going to cut it for this contest. Nor will a bunch of selfies I’ve taken with my phone. I need real war photos. Black-and-white war photos. Luckily, I have my bisa’s photo album. Now I just need to find some facts about the war and tell my Bisa’s trailblazing story as a super-awesome war hero.
In the library, I’ve gathered a tower of books for my project. There are so many books that I’m starting to feel like they will tumble and cover me in an information avalanche. Where do I even start?
On the wall across from me there’s a poster of an Olympic runner crossing the finish line. It says Billy Mills, First American to win the 10,000 meter gold medal.
“Need some help?” Victor plops down across from me at the table. His eyes follow my gaze to the poster.
“Yes, help me to understand why everywhere I go there are people like this Billy Mills guy winning medals, being the first at something amazing, being turned into posters and taped up onto walls just to taunt me.”
“I think it’s cool. I remember seeing a video about this guy,” Victor says. “No one thought he’d win. He came all the way from the middle of the pack to win the race in the last seconds. Super fast.” Victor smiles at the picture like it’s him crossing the finish line. “Hey, if you want to win a race, I could help you. I mean, we’d have to train every day. We should start with an easy 5K run—”
“No, it’s not that. I just need all the help I can get to beat Sara and win this contest.”
Victor eyes the tower of books. “Are you planning to read all these books?”
“Not really, I just need some facts.”
“Let me make this simpler for you,” Victor says, and then he stands up and picks up the tower of books, leaving only two on the table.
“What are you doing?” I ask in the quietest scream I can manage because we are in the library. The last thing I need is to have Mrs. Chambers, the librarian, kick me out. Victor takes the books to the restock shelf. Mrs. Chambers is going to love that! We’ll both be kicked out for sure.
When he comes back, I’m red-hot. “Why are you always sabotaging me?”
“I’m helping you. You have two very good books right there. That’s enough. The only other thing you need to do is to talk to your bisabuelo, take some photos, create a storyboard telling his story, organize it on Prezi, and submit it.”
I look down at the books. He’s right. “A storyboard
.” I write that down in my notebook. “That’s genius. Thanks.” I just have to win this contest. “My bisabuelo loaned me his photo album. It’s full of really cool pictures from his time in the war.”
“Can I see it sometime? That sounds awesome.”
I nod. “Sure, I’ll let you see it when I’m done. Anyway, if I can’t win with his photos and his story, then I’m never going to win and I’ll have to accept that I’m not a true Velasco. Do you think I could be adopted?”
Victor shakes his head and snorts. “Okay, you’re going overboard now.”
We sit there silent for a few seconds.
“Thank you for wanting to help me,” I finally say. I open one of the books left on the table. It’s full of photographs of destroyed European cities and D-day photos. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” He also opens a book.
“Are you helping me because you still feel guilty about ruining my volcano project? Because if so—”
Victor winces. “I still feel really bad about that.”
“You don’t have to feel guilty. I forgave you already.”
He nods at me. “It’s that and something else.” He looks down at the book. “I’m going to be the first in my family to graduate from high school someday. So I know how you feel wanting to do your best for your family.”
“The first to graduate from high school?” I regret how surprised I sound, but it’s out there and I can’t shove it back into my mouth now. “Sorry, I just mean—”
“I know. Everyone at Sendak has parents that are super educated and rich. My parents never went higher than sixth grade. I’m like Billy Mills. I’m starting out the underdog, but I’m going to catch up. I have to.”
“But why only sixth grade?”
“They were poor in Mexico. My dad had to work to help his family and couldn’t finish school. My mom lived in a small village where the nearest school was in a whole other city. Even though she wanted to go, her family didn’t have money to send her and her brothers. You’ve been to Mexico, right? You know how it is for the poor families there.”
“Yes, I know.” And I really do. Two years ago, my family and I traveled with my bisabuelo to the town in Mexico where his mother was born. Now that I think of it, that’s one of the last trips my bisabuelo went on before the doctor told him traveling was too much of a health risk. While there, we mostly stayed near a beach resort area with fancy shops, but when searching for his mom’s community, we visited areas where there were no paved roads and homes made of cement blocks, plastic bags, and ragged pieces of wood and tin. Children in ripped clothes sold gum and plastic flowers in the streets.
I lower my head because Victor’s story is sad. I feel bad for anyone who can’t get everything they need. I complain a lot about school, but at least I get to go to school and don’t have to spend all day selling gum in the streets just to eat. And my school is air-conditioned on hot days, and has bathrooms with running water, a cafeteria that serves pizza, a big soccer field, and a library filled with books and computers.
“It’s up to me to be the first and show my little brother and sisters that they can do it too,” Victor says. “I’ve applied for Bishop Crest Middle.”
“That’s where I’m going!” I say excitedly. “That’s where all of my family goes.” It’s also where all the Sendak students go as long as they don’t royally mess up at Sendak and their families can afford it, which most of them can. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but how will you afford it? Do you have a secret stash of gold somewhere?” I joke.
“That’s why I need a scholarship big-time. If I don’t, I’ll have to go to another school and we won’t see each other.”
“I’m sure you’ll get a scholarship.” I smile. I don’t want to be the one to crush his dream. “But we’ll be friends no matter where you go,” I say. I really mean that.
“Thanks, Allie. The thing is, I’m not going to stop at high school. I plan to go to this big college called MIT to study engineering. How about you? Do you think you’ll go to Harvard like Adriana?”
“Well …” I frown. He still thinks Adriana is going to leave me and our family for a stupid ivy school in Massachusetts. “First things first, I have to win this contest. I have to make my mark at Sendak.”
“You’ve got this, Allie,” Victor says. “Just don’t ever give up.”
“I won’t give up if you don’t give up,” I say back to him.
“You’ve got a deal.” Victor holds out his hand to seal it with a handshake. I shake his hand but can’t help giggling.
I turn a few more pages of the war book in front of me. Victor turns some pages too. I smile at him when he’s not looking. Did Billy Mills have someone in his life like Victor? A friend that helped him cross the finish line? I bet he did. Somehow when I’m around Victor, I feel ready to win a hundred prizes.
The first thing I do when I get to Bisabuelo’s house is give him a big smooch on his cheek and grab his scrapbook. Next week is the deadline, and I don’t want to waste a moment.
At the dinner table, I draw up a storyboard and start pulling photos from his photo album. My favorite photos are of him as a young soldier. I find one of him with another soldier standing in a foxhole with shovels in their hands.
“How deep were the foxholes, Bisa?”
He comes over and sits with me at the table. He takes the photo from my hand and gazes long at it. “They had to be deep enough for a soldier to sleep, sit, and stand in. So about six feet deep,” Bisa says. He hands the photo back to me. “Whenever we weren’t in combat, it seemed like we were digging these holes. We slept, ate, and played cards in them.”
The foxholes look big enough for a coffin to fit, but I don’t say this to him. “Was it hard, Bisa? To sleep in them?”
He nods. “Over time you learn to live with the dirt, the rain, the mud. All of that is better than bullets,” he says, and gives me a wink. I don’t know what to say to that. I’m just grateful that a bullet never got him. “I think I have what I need, Bisa. I’ve picked out my favorite photos. There’s just one more I need. I would like a photo of you with your Medal of Honor award. I think that will be the game changer. A photo of you, as you are now, holding the medal.”
“You think so, eh?”
“It will show all that you’ve achieved in life—”
The doorbell rings. Bisa leaves the table to answer it. In walk Sara and Hayley. I feel every muscle in my neck tense up, so I hover over the scrapbook trying to look super focused. When Sara passes me to head into the kitchen for a glass of lemonade, she gives me a cold “Hi, Allie.” I don’t say anything back, and Bisabuelo notices. He pats my shoulder. Out of respect to him, I mind my manners and greet them both with a curt “Hey.”
I suppose I should be happy Sara said anything to me at all, especially since I hung up on her, but her presence at my bisa’s home is like an enemy invasion. I wish I had a foxhole to hide in right now. When they have their glasses full of lemonade, they head back to the living room. From the corner of my eye, I see Sara take a seat on the couch and pull out her pen and notebook.
“Allie, mija. Why don’t you come join us?” Bisabuelo yells to me. “You girls don’t mind, do you?”
After a few seconds, Sara finally speaks up. “I don’t mind, Bisabuelo.”
“No, I don’t mind, Mr. Velasco,” Hayley says.
“Qué bueno.”
I grab my glass of lemonade and take a seat on the chair next to him.
“Bisabuelo, thank you for letting us come over. I’m writing a song about you for the Trailblazer contest. I’m sure Allie told you about it?”
Bisabuelo nods.
“I’d like to make it a Mexican corrido, in tribute to you.”
I roll my eyes. She should be writing a song about someone in her own family and leave mine alone!
“Mija, I’m happy to help. And you know I love a good corrido,” Bisa says. “We go back a long way … Allie, how long have you and Sar
ita been friends?”
I stare at the ice cubes in my lemonade. “Since we were four, I guess. I don’t remember.”
“So many years!” Bisabuelo smiles.
“That’s right.” Sara nods.
“That’s very special when you have friends like that.” Bisabuelo looks back and forth at both of us. “All my childhood friends are dead. Somehow, I’ve outlived them all. Can you believe that, girls? In the shape I’m in?” He taps his cane that’s leaned up against the La-Z-Boy.
Sara and Hayley giggle. I count the cushions on Bisa’s couch.
“So I need to know your story. Can you tell me about the war?” Sara asks in a gentle voice that reminds me of the old Sara. She used to have a kind voice. Now at school she talks like Hayley. It’s high-pitched and annoying like an alarm clock, but there’s no snooze button on either of them. I wish there was, I’d push it right now. “I know it can be hard for you to talk about the war, but I remember from the documentary that—”
“You’ve seen the documentary?” Bisabuelo asks, surprised.
“Our class went on a field trip to see it,” Sara answers.
“I’m so sorry. How boring for you.”
“No, I liked it. All of us liked it,” Sara says, and looks at me and Hayley.
“It was better than having to read a book about the war,” Hayley says, and my bisabuelo thinks that’s so funny that he laughs and smacks his thigh.
“Well, that and the fact that it was a documentary about someone we know,” Sara adds, and then she looks at me with a slight smile. “After we watched it, everyone begged Allie to get your autograph. Remember, Allie?”
I nod but don’t smile back. “Yeah.”
“We were going to charge the other kids for it, but at the last minute, we chickened out,” Sara confesses. I gasp. I can’t believe she’s telling him this. Even though we didn’t go through with it, I’ve never told Bisa about our autograph plot because I know he wouldn’t approve. We were going to charge everyone at school a dollar each for the autographed postcards so that we could throw an end-of-year dance party with a DJ and everything.
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