Meena Meets Her Match Read online

  To Amelia and Mara—for you, and because of you

  1

  I circle my arm around my President Portrait so nobody can see it.

  In the picture, I’m wearing a fancy suit that’s red, white, and blue. I’m holding a great big cake with squiggly frosting. Here’s what it says at the bottom:

  If I were president, I’d hire a whole team of chefs to bake cakes for me to decorate. They’d make all different flavors of frosting, except for cream cheese, and they’d never try to sneak bananas into the batter to cut back on added sugar, because these people are professionals.

  I peek at the other pictures in our pod. Last time Mrs. D rearranged the room, she put our desks in groups of four, facing one another. My cousin Eli sits on my left. He’s been into nature since we were little, so I’m not surprised to see that if he were president, he’d go around planting trees. Our friend Pedro sits on my right. It turns out if he were president, he’d hang a basketball hoop on the Washington Monument so all the tourists could play.

  Huh. I forgot the president is supposed to do things for other people.

  I glance at Sofía’s picture on the desk across from mine. When Mrs. D picked our new spots, she didn’t know we don’t sit together anymore—not if we can help it. Even though Sofía’s picture looks upside down from here, I can still see stars shining through a night sky on her paper. She’s drawn a bunch of people stretched out on blankets in the grass with roses all around them. Here’s what hers says at the bottom:

  If I were president, I would invite all the fighting countries to the White House for a sleepover. We’d camp out in the Rose Garden, only instead of sleeping, we’d stay up all night talking. In the morning everyone would be friends and there would be peace on earth.

  Okay, I can’t actually read upside down. I just happened to see it when Sofía went to sharpen her pencil and I turned her paper around.

  “Mrs. D?” I ask, waving my hand in the air. “What’s the prize if you win?”

  “It’s not a contest, Meena.”

  “But let’s just say your portrait turns out to be the best one in the class,” I say. “What do you get?”

  “You don’t get anything. I just want you to do your best work.” Mrs. D looks around the classroom. “Does everybody understand that?”

  When Sofía nods, her poufy flower headband bobs up and down. It’s red today and makes her look like a birthday present.

  I tap my pencil against the paper. I don’t care that it isn’t a contest. I want my portrait to be the best one in the class. Mrs. D is hanging these up in the hallway for Presidents’ Day in a couple of weeks, and everybody will see them!

  Maybe I’d better squeeze “peace on earth” in there somewhere.

  I add a couple of more lines at the bottom:

  Also, I’d have the chefs bake enough cupcakes to share with the whole world. I’d add rainbow sprinkles to every single one, because there can never be peace on earth until we stop fighting over who gets the sprinkles.

  There! My portrait is almost perfect now. I just need to color in President Meena’s face and hair.

  I wish I were made up of better colors in real life. When I used to draw pictures of Sofía, I could use the brown crayon for her skin, but I have to use that peachy-blah one for mine. I got to color practically anything I wanted for Sofía’s eyes, too, because they’re this greenish, brownish gold. Every time she wears a different headband, her eyes change—like those rings we got at the carnival that turned different colors when we breathed on them.

  I sigh and start coloring the eyes in my portrait. I make a few dots of light blue, a few dots of tan, and then cover it all up with gray—the worst color in the world.

  Finally, I start on my hair. They don’t even make a crayon boring enough for that. My real hair is this don’t-bother-looking-at-me color that people call “dirty blond,” even when I use an extra pump of shampoo.

  Maybe I’ll cheat a little and use the crayon that reminds me of caramels.

  But before I can even pick a color, Mrs. D says, “Okay, time’s up. Please turn in your portraits.”

  What? I’m not finished!

  Mrs. D starts moving around the room, picking up pictures. I can’t leave my hair white! Across the pod, President Sofía’s hair is gleaming black. She must have rubbed the crayon really hard to get it so dark. And just look at those roses she drew—pink and yellow and red!

  That does it. Forget boring, no-color hair. If I were president, I’d get rainbow highlights!

  I pick up my red crayon and draw a few streaks. I do the same with orange and yellow. While Mrs. D picks up the papers from the rest of the class, I make a couple of quick slashes of green. When she comes over to our pod, I add blue.

  She’s standing right by my desk now. Eli and Pedro and Sofía hand her their pictures. I just have one more color to go! I grab the purple crayon.

  But all of a sudden my paper looks blurry.

  “Why didn’t you just do what she said?” Eli says.

  I blink a few times, trying to focus.

  “Meena?”

  I try to turn to Eli, but everything seems slow and weird, like I’m underwater. I have to blink again before I can see him clearly. His eyes are big for some reason. “What?” I say. My mouth tastes like I’ve been chewing on tinfoil, and I have to wipe off the bottom of my lip because it feels wet.

  “She asked for your paper three times,” he says. “Why did you keep coloring?”

  Wait, what?

  I whip my head around. Mrs. D was standing by my desk. She was right here. But she’s way in the front of the room now, like she just transported there somehow. She’s standing right by our behavior chart, moving someone’s clip.

  Hang on. That’s my clip!

  “What did I do?” I say.

  She turns back around. “You didn’t follow directions, Meena.”

  “But I’m finished!”

  I grab for my drawing, but it’s different now. There’s purple crayon all over it. It’s not just a few streaks in President Meena’s hair. It’s all over her face, like a little kid scribbled on her!

  How did that happen?

  Everyone watches Mrs. D come back over and pick up my paper. I feel the front of my neck get hot. Even Sofía has a worried crinkle between her eyebrows, as if she cared—as if she’s even talked to me in weeks. Mrs. D squats down next to me and uses her quietest voice. “I like that you get so absorbed in your work, Meena,” she says, “but sometimes your daydreaming gets in the way of being a good listener.”

  I grip the crayon in my hand. “I just didn’t hear you,” I say.

  She makes her disappointed face.

  I put my forehead down on my arms. Mrs. D stays there a few seconds longer before she stands up and walks away.

  It’s not fair. I didn’t do anything! I sneak a look over my arms at the behavior chart. At the start of the day, all our clothespins started out in the middle, at Ready for Anything. But I clipped down to Think About Your Choices for giving myself a Magic Marker manicure during social studies. Now my clothespin is all the way down to Last Chance!

  But one clip is sitting way up at the top of the chart, next to At My Best.

  Sofía clipped up three times today. First, she held the door for the Milk Crate Carriers without being asked. Second, she waited to be excused for recess instead of running to the door when the bell rang. Third, she used her markers responsibly in social studies by coloring her map extra neatly instead of her fingernails.

  Our clips have been going in different directions all year.

  Sofía and I used to be a team. She made sure I remembered my homework, and I made sure she didn’t get caugh
t walking across the top rungs of the monkey bars. She reminded me to give other kids a turn on the swing, and I reminded her that she could use glitter crayons to fill in her pie charts. She made me practice my spelling words, and I made her laugh hard enough to snort strawberry milk through her nose.

  But ever since we got back from winter break, she’s been avoiding me. It’s not like we used to spend every minute together before. She usually played four square at morning recess while I played kickball. She and Nora pranced their horse figurines around during afternoon recess while Pedro and I ran races.

  Middle recess was ours, though. Every day, for three years, Sofía and I jumped rope or played freeze tag or just sat in the tube slide and talked.

  Lately she stays in for Catch Up Club instead of coming out for recess with me. I don’t know why. It’s just for kids who have makeup work to do, and Sofía’s so smart, she could probably leave for college tomorrow. Every time she stays in to work, my stomach feels hot and bubbly, like one of those volcanoes that’s just been sitting there for ages but maybe, someday, could blow.

  Now even her portrait is better than mine. I bury my face back in my arms.

  “I have an exciting new project for you to think about over the weekend,” I hear Mrs. D say. “This one is for Valentine’s Day.”

  About half the class cheers when she says that. The other half groans. I’m in the groany half. Most of our exciting new projects are really just homework in disguise. We probably have to write a poem about L-O-V-E or do fractions with candy hearts.

  But Mrs. D’s very next words make my head spring back up. “You’re all going to decorate your own valentine box.”

  Decorating is my best subject!

  Sofía whips her head around and looks at me with bright eyes, and for just a second my stomach does a swoop. I almost smile at her.

  Then my brain catches up.

  We don’t do projects together anymore.

  I scowl. The light in Sofía’s eyes fizzles out. She turns back around in her desk.

  “I want you to use your imagination,” Mrs. D says. “Be as creative as you want. Come up with something to wow me. The sky’s the limit.”

  My hand shoots in the air. “What’s the prize if you win?” I say.

  Mrs. D does an extra-long blink. “It’s not a contest, Meena.”

  “Yeah, but if yours just happens to be the best, what do you get?”

  “You get a box full of valentines, like everyone else. And the satisfaction of a job well done.” Mrs. D checks the clock. “You can bring your boxes to school as soon as they’re finished. Just make sure they’re here in time for our Valentine’s Day party next Friday.”

  I sneak another peek at Sofía’s clothespin. Prize or no prize, somebody’s going to make the best valentine box in the class. Sofía might have perfect handwriting. She might have eyes that stay on her paper and feet that stay under her desk. She might want to be alone at the top of the clip chart more than she wants to be my friend.

  But my valentine box will be better than hers.

  It’s my turn to be At My Best.

  2

  What are you going to make?” Eli asks me when school gets out. The sun is so bright that for a second we can hardly see.

  “I don’t know yet,” I say. I blink against the light a bunch of times until I see Sofía’s mom standing at the end of the sidewalk, waiting. She’s wearing her soft black shawl with roses stitched along the edges. It looks like Sofía’s Rose Garden.

  I used to love when she’d wrap me up in one of her big shawl hugs. We never talked much, because I hardly know any Spanish, and her English is hard to understand. But when I went over to Sofía’s, her mom would always look at me with smiling eyes, hold the door wide open, and say my name like a song.

  I feel a squeeze in my chest thinking about it. I don’t want to walk by her now. She hangs so many of Sofía’s worksheets on their refrigerator, you can’t even tell what color it is. She always makes Sofía sit right down and do her homework after school, too. Maybe she’s the reason Sofía decided to stay in for recess to do extra work instead of coming out to play.

  I tug on Eli’s sleeve and pull him in a different direction. “This way,” I say.

  Eli and I would probably be friends even if we weren’t related. He always has muddy circles or grass stains on his jeans, which is my favorite kind of kid.

  We cut across to the playground, our jackets flapping open while we run. It’s been warm enough this week to melt the snow into icy stepping-stones in the grass. We start leaping from one to another.

  Ever since winter break, the sky has been hazy, and the snow has been shrunken and dirty. It’s the worst snow of all—too dry to build with, too crusty to leave footprints. It’s the kind that just lies there in sheets making everything gray. That’s how I’ve been feeling since Sofía stopped being my friend. Hazy. Small. Walking out into fog every day makes me feel like I’m drowning in gray.

  But today the sky is bright blue. The sun flashes off the ice and ripples all around us. When we’re halfway across the playground, we stop and look around. The ground between the patches of snow is still brown, but when I take a big breath, I can smell the mud warming up all around us. Mom says it’s nowhere near spring, but maybe she’s wrong. Maybe the sun will keep melting the ugly snow and turn everything green and colorful again. Maybe it will clear away the gray haze that seeps into me every time I see Sofía. Maybe it will even give me the courage to ask why she isn’t my friend anymore.

  I tip my head and stare up at the sky so all I see is blue.

  “You don’t even have an idea how to decorate your box?” Eli asks. “That’s not like you.”

  “Not yet,” I say, breathing in deep, filling up on blue. “Do you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Really? Already? What?”

  “You’ll see. I need some glue, though. The good stuff.” He looks at me sideways. “Can I borrow yours?”

  “You know I’m not allowed to bring that to school anymore.”

  “Well, that’s weird, because somebody glued my container of crackers shut before lunch.”

  I giggle. “I shared my Flaming Crunchers with you.”

  “That’s why I wasn’t mad.” He holds out his hand.

  I shrug off my backpack and reach inside, past wadded-up papers and wrappers and socks. There are crumbs at the bottom that used to be graham crackers and sticky suckers I’m still planning to finish. Finally, I feel the zipper of my pencil bag. I pull it open and take out my secret bottle of You-Must-Be-Crazy Glue. “Just don’t tell anyone,” I say. “And don’t get it on your fingers. And if it drips, be careful where you set it down, because it will pretty much live there forever.”

  Eli reaches. I hold it behind my back. “Trade you,” I say.

  He grins, then he digs into his pocket, pulls out a foil packet of Banana Burst gum, and pops out a little square. My mouth starts to water at the thought of the fruity explosion. We trade, and I slip it in my pocket for later. I want to chew it now, but Mom doesn’t believe in sugar-full gum, and she can smell it from a mile away.

  We start hopping again. The light keeps flickering across the ice as we go. It almost looks like sparks—like the sun is setting the ice on fire.

  It’s pretty, but it’s also making me dizzy. My head is woozy, and everything is starting to spin. Eli is getting farther and farther ahead of me. “You coming?” he calls back to me.

  I need to stop and rub my eyes.

  And just like that, Eli is standing in front of me again. He was ahead of me. I just saw him! Now he’s right here, frowning. Blurry.

  “What are you staring at?” he asks.

  My head feels fuzzy. I taste metal, just like when Mrs. D flashed across the room. “Nothing,” I say. I blink a few times, trying to focus.

  We start hopping again, but I’m off balance for some reason. I can usually beat Eli, but I can’t seem to keep up anymore. I try to concentrate. I keep my head do
wn, my eyes on my feet, but I keep landing on the melted edges of the ice instead of the dry spots in the middle.

  By the time we make it across the soccer field, my head is feeling better, but my feet are cold and wet and sloshing around inside my shoes.

  This is the spot where Eli goes right and I go left. He starts walking backward away from me. “You want to come over tomorrow?” he asks.

  That perks me up a little. “Can we work on our igloo?” I say. “I picked up a whole bunch more milk jugs. We might have enough to start on the roof.”

  “Sure,” he says. “See you later.” He heads off down the street.

  I stamp my wet feet on the sidewalk and turn the other way. My house is only a few blocks from here, and now that I’m a third grader, I’m allowed to walk by myself, as long as I go straight home and stay on the sidewalk.

  I do most of those things, most of the time—except on recycling day, when I might accidentally stop and fill my backpack with cool stuff from the bins.

  Today I take my time walking. The fuzziness in my head is almost gone. I breathe the tinny smell of the melting snow, listen to icicles drip from the houses and the water trickling in the eaves. Once in a while a car drives by, and the tires make a sticky sound on the street.

  I start playing my walking game: trying to spot every color of the rainbow. I made it up a few weeks ago. Every time Sofía stayed inside for recess again instead of playing with me, I felt sad and gray, like someone had pulled a plug and drained out all the colors in the world. I started looking for color on my way home. I imagined sucking it in through a straw. I felt it feeding me, lighting me up from the inside, coating me like invisible armor.

  Today, with the bright blue sky and the diamond sparkle of ice, I feel less starved for color, but I want to fill the rest of the way up. I see a slash of orange spray paint where the sidewalk is broken and a tuft of green in the dead grass. Two colors, right off the bat! I head to the street to look for more. There’s a drink lid caught in some mucky leaves in the gutter. I watch the water swirl around it in a little stream. The water makes a metallic echo as it drizzles down through a grate.