by Loriel Ryon
Yolanda winced. Of course he liked Sonja’s project more. That was how it always was, Sonja beating her at life.
“I expected more, Yolanda. I’m sorry to say this, but I’m disappointed.”
“I—I—” Yolanda didn’t know what to say. She wanted to tell him what happened, but the words weren’t coming. She couldn’t even think.
“She got stung by a bee and almost died,” Hasik said, the usual smile missing from his face.
Mr. Green looked from Hasik to Yolanda. She nodded and found her voice. “My poster got smashed under the bus today. I got stung and I’m allergic.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Yolanda.” Mr. Green adjusted his glasses. “Even though this is not what I would have liked to have seen from you.” He leaned in. “Wow! Your eye is really swollen. Are you sure you’re okay?”
She nodded and shrugged, covering her eye with her hand. It must look really bad, she thought.
Mr. Green glanced at the crumpled poster board. He picked up the plastic cup and looked at the contents before setting it down. “I’m sorry it’s too late for the judging, but you may redo the poster and turn it in next week for a partial grade.”
Yolanda swallowed hard and sat down, disappointment filling her. She shut her eyes. It wasn’t what she was hoping for. She wouldn’t win the science fair, but at least she wouldn’t fail her favorite class. Mr. Green moved to the next student while Hasik jumped from the table.
“Come on. I want to show you my project.” Hasik grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the other side of the auditorium. “It’s on the healing properties of plants. I’ve got an aloe plant, turmeric, echinacea. Plants are so cool.”
Yolanda walked behind him, dragging her feet before stealing another glance at the crowd around Sonja’s poster.
Five
HASIK was turning over the turmeric root in his hands, smiling, as he told Yolanda about its anti-inflammatory properties, when Mr. Green made the announcement overhead.
“Attention, everyone. It’s time to announce the winner of Elion Junior High’s annual seventh-grade science fair.”
Yolanda glanced at Sonja and Ghita, who stood next to each other, holding hands. Yolanda couldn’t help but wish that she and Ghita were the ones standing next to each other.
Sonja was bouncing up and down again. The bee house was wedged inside Sonja’s backpack under the table. A stray bee flew around her head, darting in and out of the crown of flowers in her hair.
Mr. Green waited for the auditorium to quiet down. “Our first-place winners are … Sanghita Patel and Sonja Rodríguez-O’Connell, with their project on the effects of music on honey production in bees.” Mr. Green clapped his hands.
A sinking feeling washed over Yolanda. No. No. No. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t fair. Her palms started to sweat and her heart pounded.
Sonja walked to the front with her perfect red braids, her perfect bees, and her perfect poster. Her freckled cheeks shone as she and Ghita collected the award.
Yolanda wanted to cry. She had to get out of there now, or she might. Sulking back to her poster, she folded it in half and left the auditorium as fast as she could. It wasn’t just that Sonja had ruined Yolanda’s project, but now she had actually won the science fair.
Science was Yolanda’s thing. And now Sonja had shown her up on that, too. Like she did with the family trait. Like she did with everything. It wasn’t fair. Yolanda bit down hard on the inside of her swollen cheek when Sonja came out of the auditorium, juggling the plants, the bee house, and the poster. Yolanda picked up her own poster and shoved it into the garbage can. It didn’t fit, but it didn’t matter.
Sonja walked over to her. “Can you believe it, Yo? We won.” Sonja’s eyes sparkled. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Yolanda said, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She kept her teeth clenched so she wouldn’t say anything else. Or cry. She might cry.
“Wow, your eye is really swollen. I’m sorry about that.” Sonja shifted the pots and the bee house. “Ghita had to get something from her locker. Do you mind?”
She shoved the three yellow pots toward Yolanda. Yolanda stepped back and let the plants fall to the ground. The ceramic pots shattered on the concrete, spilling dirt and fuchsia blooms everywhere.
“Yo!” Sonja shouted.
Yolanda held her hands up and walked backward. “I’m sure you can fix it, no problem. Just use your bees.”
“We have to present these plants in two weeks at the finals!” Sonja cried, frantically scooping soil back into the pot fragments.
Yolanda turned and ran toward the road.
* * *
Yolanda trudged up the dirt road, replaying the science fair over and over again. How could Sonja and Ghita have won? Because of the bees? It wasn’t fair Sonja had her own swarm of personal pollinators. How was she supposed to compete with that? Sonja showed her up time and time again. It wasn’t fair.
As Yolanda stewed, the night before Wela fell into the sleep crept into her mind. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was all her fault. They had argued. Yolanda had gotten so angry.
Yolanda and Rosalind Franklin had walked over to Wela’s workshop, Rosalind Franklin grunting and snorting at every small plant along the way.
“Come on!” Yolanda held the workshop door open. “I don’t have all night.” The dog skittered in through the open door.
The thick hot air hit her square in the face. Yolanda stepped between the dimly lit shelves filled with rows of scientific journals, glass jars containing a variety of specimens, shadow boxes of pinned insects and butterflies, microscopes, and slides. An old black-and-white photograph of a young Wela, with her long curly hair adorned with butterflies, and Welo, with his flop of black hair, hung crooked on the wall. She stopped and straightened it, then rounded the corner in the main area of the workshop.
Wela sat on a stool, curled over an open notebook. Her electric-white hair cascaded down her back in ribbony curls to her hips, while the butterflies flew around her.
“Wela? I was loo—”
Wela looked up and then glanced at the corner of the room.
Sonja.
She held an orb of fat bumblebees between her palms, her tongue peeking from the corner of her mouth.
Yolanda shuddered. Bees. Why did it have to be bees?
Yolanda started toward Wela. “I’m looking for Welo’s old notes. I thought they’d be where they usually are, but I can’t find them.”
Wela pressed her lips together and held her hand up. “I’m not giving you those. That research was a waste of his time. And mine.”
Yolanda groaned. “He was trying to help. He just wanted to make your life better.” Yolanda gestured toward Sonja, who was concentrating hard on her bees. “He wanted to make our lives better.”
Wela’s eyes narrowed. “Your Welo did some truly awful things because of that thought.”
“What thought?” Yolanda asked. She found it hard to believe that Welo had done anything awful.
“The thought that if he could figure out how to explain this family and the way we are, that somehow it would fix things. I’ll tell you what: It doesn’t matter why we are the way we are. They don’t care.” Wela pointed toward town. She was talking about the townsfolk, the rumors, the whispers.
“Then why do you stay? Why do we live here?” Yolanda said. “If it’s so bad, then why don’t we leave?” Rosalind Franklin licked the sweat dripping down the back of her leg, and Yolanda shook her off. “Stop it, Rosalind Franklin!”
The dog lowered her ears, and Yolanda immediately felt bad for scolding her. She bent down to pet her when she spotted the trash can. The corner of a familiar green notebook was poking out. She walked over to it and pulled out the charred remains of a notebook.
“What did you do?” Yolanda reached inside and pulled out another piece of singed cardboard. Her heart began to race. She pulled out piece after piece, charred and ruined. It couldn’t be. “T
hese were his notes!”
“It’s time we forget about his research.” Wela closed her eyes.
“But this was his life’s work!”
“It’s over. Now, just forget about it.”
Sonja grunted from the corner as the orb of bees began to break apart. “Yo! You broke my concentration!”
The bees zoomed around the room. One flew by Yolanda’s ear. She ducked.
“You shouldn’t be in here.” A look of alarm came over Wela’s face. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I can’t believe you would do that!” The tears welled in Yolanda’s eyes. Welo had been working for years trying to figure out what he could about the family trait. He always helped Wela with her work, the butterflies, all the years of research. How could she burn it all? Why would she do that?
Wela pointed at the door as another bee buzzed right past Yolanda’s head. She ducked again.
“Why do you spend so much time with her? Why not me?” Yolanda’s heart began to beat faster, and the familiar tightness in her chest squeezed so hard she couldn’t breathe. “Because I didn’t get one? Is that why?” The rage surged down her arms and out her fingertips. Her heart thumped in her chest, and it took everything in her not to scream.
“If only we had helped him!” She flicked an old pile of spiral notebooks from the counter, letting the loose papers flutter to the ground. “Maybe he could have finished his work and they wouldn’t hate us.”
Wela shook her head and held out her arms, her voice softened. “There are some things you will understand in time, mija. But right now … right now you have to trust me.”
“Trust you? How could I? Look what you’ve done!” Yolanda kicked over the trash can full of the charred remains and walked out into the cool desert night, leaving Wela and Sonja alone in the workshop.
With the bees.
Six
THE HEAT radiated up from the asphalt, a wiggling mirage in the distance. The sky was vast and blue, the kind of blue that reminded Yolanda of the turquoise stone at her neck. Her fingertips brushed across the smooth stone of the bolo tie. She and Sonja had bought it for Welo for his birthday to match the turquoise on his rattlesnake-skin belt. Yolanda had worn it every day since he died. Her heart ached when she thought of him being gone forever and of Wela lying in the very same bed, dying. She would never get to ask him another question or help him feed the butterflies. She would never get to help him in the workshop again. And now it was looking like she wasn’t going to get to do that with Wela either.
Her breath quickened as she walked along the pavement toward Rowley Road. Before making the turn up the dusty road, she passed by Mr. Patel’s nursery. The sun was hot, and beads of sweat moistened the back of her neck. A ruby-colored car drove by, kicking up a cloud of dust as its wheels crunched along the road. Someone coughed. She turned around.
Hasik. His sneakers were untied and his brow was glistening in the heat.
Yolanda stopped. “Are you following me?”
He looked up. “You dropped this.” He held out his hand. It was her poster. “And I also live on this road.”
“I didn’t drop it.” She crossed her arms, turned around, and continued walking.
He jogged to catch up to her, his shoes scraping against the dirt. “You worked hard on it, and you’re going to need it for the redo.” Hasik held out his hand until she took the poster from him.
She stuffed it into her backpack.
“Your shoes are untied,” Yolanda said.
Hasik stopped to tie them. Then he ran to catch up with her. “So, what’s your thing? Your gift?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.” She wasn’t supposed to talk about that. Ever. Wela had made that abundantly clear. She continued trudging up the dirt road.
The trait was supposed to be a secret. A family secret Wela made sure she and Sonja knew not to talk about in front of anyone. But the townsfolk were not so easy to avoid.
Whenever someone heard that Yolanda and Sonja were Josefa Rodríguez’s granddaughters, they grew too curious, and inevitably the conversation turned to Wela’s butterflies and whether or not the rumors of the brujas were true. Then they would ask why Wela brought the drought.
Yolanda had grown so angry one time, she yelled at the school secretary that it was none of her business. The secretary told the principal, who called Wela. Wela had arrived in a fury, the butterflies following her right into the building. After she’d had a word with the principal and explained that she only studied butterflies, she’d told Yolanda that she needed to be more careful.
“We cannot lose our temper with these people. And we cannot tell them the truth. The butterflies are my science experiments only,” Wela had said. “The truth is too dangerous.”
She had made Yolanda promise not to talk about it with other people again.
“Oh, come on,” Hasik said. “My dad has been supplying your grandmother with milkweed for years. The butterflies are always around her, in her hair—I know they aren’t just for research or whatever she says. And the plants? How does she bring them back to life like that? I told my dad he should hire her to work at the nursery.” Hasik chuckled. “And Sonja? The bees? It’s kind of hard to ignore.”
Yolanda dug her fingernails into her palms. Wela would freak out if she heard Hasik talking about this. But then again, Wela was asleep—and maybe dying. Yolanda shuddered.
“I tried to get Ghita to tell me, but she won’t say a word.”
At least she kept one promise, Yolanda thought, pursing her lips. What’s the point of all the secrets anyway? Who cares if he knows?
“I didn’t get a gift,” Yolanda said simply.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a bummer.”
“I don’t know … I guess it should bother me—but it doesn’t.” Yolanda could feel the lie bubbling up in her gut, threatening to expose her. Of course she wanted one. Why wouldn’t she want one? It’s what was supposed to make her a Rodríguez.
“Oh man, that would bother me.” Hasik shook his head. “If Ghita had a cool gift and I didn’t, I’d be mad.”
“Well, that’s the difference between you and me, then.” Yolanda tightened the straps on her backpack and picked up her pace.
Hasik held his arms out. “Aren’t you going to walk with me?”
“Why?” Yolanda called over her shoulder.
“Because I returned your poster.”
“So?”
“So I returned your poster, and most people would be thankful and maybe talk to the other person.”
“Fine—” Yolanda paused, waiting for him to catch up. “Gosh, you can be really annoying.”
Hasik smiled. His bright white teeth glowed against his brown skin, and Yolanda felt a pinch in her stomach. He didn’t seem bothered by her calling him annoying. “What happened between you and Ghita? Why aren’t you friends anymore?” he asked.
Yolanda looked at him blankly. He was so nosy.
“Let me guess—you don’t want to talk about it?” Hasik cocked his head from side to side playfully.
Yolanda crossed her arms over her chest. “No, I don’t.”
“Okay, okay but”—his voice softened—“she really misses you.”
She does? Yolanda thought hopefully. Then she shook her head. “She has Sonja now. She doesn’t miss me. And I don’t miss her.”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t! You are talking about it.”
“Fine. No problem.” Hasik held up his hands in defeat. “We can talk about something else.” Hasik lowered his voice. “Let’s talk about something non-controversial. Like—what are you doing this afternoon?”
Yolanda breathed a sigh of relief and started to walk again. She wanted to lie, but for some reason, even though he was pushy and slightly annoying, Hasik was kind and she felt comfortable with him. “I want to see if there is any update on my dad. He was supposed to be coming home, but the
y called him for a dangerous mission in Afghanistan a few weeks ago. We haven’t heard anything.”
She’d been waiting for a call. He always called. But so far there had been no word.
Mamá and Dad had met in the army, on their first tour of Afghanistan. After Mamá died giving birth to the girls, Dad had gone back every few years on mission after mission, leaving the girls in the care of their abuelos.
The morning he left the last time, Yolanda pulled the blue star flag from the drawer and handed it to him.
“You hang it,” she said, stone-faced. “Since you are leaving us again.”
Her dad took the flag from her, touched the shiny blue star in the center, and kneeled in front of her. “Yolanda, this is my last tour. I promise.” His face looked different. The reddish beard that had covered his face over the past few months was gone. He didn’t even look like her dad anymore.
The lump in her throat kept her from being able to speak. If she spoke, she might cry. She crossed her arms and waited.
Her dad stood up.
“You can’t leave now. Not after—Welo.” Yolanda clamped her mouth shut. She really didn’t want to cry. “If you leave—then you hang it.” She had never asked him to stay before, but she’d been certain there was no way he would leave them. How could he? After everything they had just gone through?
Her dad sighed and wiped the sweat from his naked pale cheek. He walked to the window and hung the flag. Then he picked up his desert camouflage bag, slung it over his shoulder, and kissed Yolanda on the cheek. “I have a duty.”
Yolanda stood stiff and stunned. How could he do this? How could he leave them at a time like this?
“I’ll take it down when I get back, and we can put it away for the last time,” he said. “Promise.” He touched her shoulder lightly and squeezed it just so before walking through the kitchen and out of her life.
Yolanda watched from the window, tears finally streaming down her cheeks. Rosalind Franklin anxiously licked at them. Wela and Sonja sent him off with tears, hugs, and kisses at the front door. Her dad briefly looked up at the window, a solemn expression on his face, before climbing into his truck and driving away.