“So, you got it?”
“Hmm?”
“Your stuff for the week, sweetheart,” she says. “Math test Thursday. You have a vocabulary test Friday. What do you have for social studies?”
“Oh, Clarissa’s party! I can go, right?”
“Emilia,” Mom says, using my name like a sharp-edged sword to make her point. “I need to be able to go on this trip knowing you’re ready for the week.”
“Yes, Mom, you’ve told me, like, a hundred times!”
“And social studies?”
“What about it?”
“What do you have for Mr. Richt’s class this week?”
“I don’t know, something. Maybe a test.”
“Maybe? Do I have to call?”
“No, Mami! Please, can we just talk about something else?”
She lets out a sigh. “Okay, mi amor. What do you want to talk about?”
I ask her about her trip, where she’s going to present this cool new translation app she developed.
“Are you going to speak in front of a ton of people?”
“I hope not!” she says. “I hate speaking in front of people.”
“But you have to talk about it.”
“Oh, I have no problem talking one-on-one,” she says. “I just hate talking in front of big crowds. Me da pánico.”
“You won’t panic, Mom,” I tell her. “It’s going to be awesome.”
“I hope so. It’ll be a game changer.”
I hear the bus rounding the corner, rumbling like a grumpy yellow rhino that hasn’t had coffee yet. Would a rhino drink café con leche? Probably. I wish I had a remote control that could pause the bus for a moment longer.
“It’s time to go, mi amor.” Mom gets up and hugs me.
“I’m going to miss you,” I tell her. Her curls wrap around my shoulders like a dark rain cloud that blocks out the sun and cools the sky.
“I’ll call when I land,” she says, kissing my forehead. “And you call me for anything. Okay?”
“I will,” I say, getting up and heading to the door.
Abuela comes back into the dining room and hands me a waffle wrapped in a napkin. The syrup drips onto the napkin and the paper sticks to the waffle. I try to peel it off, but the syrup has already glued it in place.
“Tienes que desayunar más,” Abuela says.
“Ya comí, Abuela,” I reply, showing her my mostly eaten toast.
She shakes her head. “Pero that tiny piece of bread and that green milkshake aren’t enough,” she says. “You have to have a full stomach at school, Emilia Rosa.”
Mom steps in and takes the waffle out of my hand.
“Aurelia,” Mom says. “We talked about this, remember? Her doctor suggested eliminating sugar to see what effect it has on her inattentiveness.”
“And the café con leche you gave her this morning? That has sugar.”
“It has almond milk and a tiny bit of agave in it.”
Abuela shakes her head, then lets out a humph before taking the waffle from my mom. “Whoever heard of café con leche with agave?” she mutters loudly enough for both of us to hear.
Mom steps around her to hug me one more time. “Don’t let her get to you,” she whispers. Abuela frowns. Mom kisses me on the nose and playfully pats my side. “Love you, baby.”
“Love you too, Mom,” I say, heading outside. “Have a good trip.”
“Thanks, mi amor.”
“Bye, Abuela,” I say, quickly pecking her on the cheek and grabbing my backpack.
“Have a good day, mi’ja,” she responds.
The bus is already in front of our house when I step outside. Its doors swing open, and I turn back to look at Mom one more time.
Abuela calls out and rushes to the bus before I get on. She holds my head, tucks a few loose strands of hair behind my ears, and tightens my bow.
“Perfect,” she says.
I think about taking a deep breath, but I just get on the bus.
It feels like my whole life is changing. Like everything that’s normal is becoming the opposite. We’ve been like this for so long—me, Mom, and Abuela. Now that Mom is leaving and Dad is coming home—with Abuela probably in charge—I’m not sure what to expect.
The stench of a dozen body sprays hits me as I walk onto the bus. Like every morning, I greet Mrs. Loretta, the driver. Like every morning, she asks, “How’s your mama?” then nods and closes the door before I can answer.
The bus hums impatiently while I walk down the aisle to find my seat. Clarissa’s sitting in the middle of the bus, waving at me excitedly.
“Hey, over here!”
She’s by herself in a row, patting the empty space next to her. Mrs. Loretta asks me to take my seat, so I pick up my step. Clarissa scoots over toward the window so there’s room for me and my backpack.
“Hey, Clarissa,” I say.
“How was your weekend, Emi Rose?”
“Good,” I say.
“Your daddy home yet?”
“He comes home today.”
“Oh my capital G-O-D! Are you excited? I bet you are.”
“Yeah,” I say. My shoulders feel heavy all of a sudden.
“Well, what’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing,” I tell her. “I’m excited. Really.”
To be honest, I’m nervous now that my papi is coming home after being gone for over eight months. We hardly ever spoke the whole time he was away. But I don’t want to have a conversation about that.
Clarissa says something about how amazing my dad is, and if I know where he was deployed, and are there any pictures he sent, and the more she goes on, the more the words blend before fading into my own thoughts.
She gets really emotional talking about my dad. She lost hers overseas when we were little, and whenever my dad comes home, she wants to find out everything about his deployment. The truth is, I don’t know much more than she does this time.
Since kindergarten, Clarissa and I have been friends. We used to hang out more in elementary school, but now that we’re in sixth grade, it seems like she’s just interested in talking about stuff she likes. Like my dad and the military, being a substitute mellophone player in pep band, working as a general staff assistant on the yearbook, and throwing “hangs” with a bunch of kids I don’t really care to hang out with.
We sit together on the bus to school, and we have homeroom and social studies together. Sometimes she convinces me to go to a “hang,” but not every time. That would be exhausting.
Mostly I’m with my friend Gustavo. Gus, for short. He moved here from Alabama about two years ago. His dad works in Abuela’s auto shop right behind our house. Sometimes Clarissa gets mad that I’m with Gus so much. I guess that’s why I go to her parties. I don’t want her to feel like I’m not her friend, even though I wish she would still be into stuff that I find fun. Like that summer we binge-watched thirty-nine episodes of Trollhunters, and afterward we made swords and shields and vowed to save the troll market from the evil Morgana.
“I invited seventh graders!” she says, interrupting my thoughts. “You’re coming, right?”
“Where?”
“To my hang, silly!”
“Oh yeah, sure. I think my mom said yes.”
Going from fifth grade to middle school is tough. I know a lot of things have changed, but I can’t always tell what exactly. It’s strange.
My backpack rests half on my lap and half on the seat. Clarissa says something about a guest list, but I notice my math book is popping out in between the two zippers. I have a test on Thursday. Mom said I have to get As or Bs on my tests if I want to hang out with friends on the weekends.
Clarissa talks about her party supplies. She really goes all out—lots of gold balloons, and at least three different donkey piñatas for ever
y party.
“Maybe I’ll get a llama piñata this time! I’ll bet kids’ll love that, huh?”
She always has lots of soda. Her playlists include a bunch of rappers from Atlanta. Actually, most of the TV shows she likes now are either filmed or set in Atlanta.
“I’m a die-hard ATL girl,” she always says.
Clarissa emphasizes the ATL part, which stands for Atlanta. For Halloween this year she and a couple of kids wore their hair in braids and called themselves ATL’s North Side Crew. She thought it was clever. But it was more like she was making a joke to amuse herself.
“Hello?” Clarissa says, tapping my shoulder.
“Hmm?”
“What are you going to wear to my haaaaang? I got this spring dress with roses all over it, and I just thought it was perfect because my middle name is Rose, ya know?”
My middle name is Rose also. Actually, it’s Rosa—same as my mom’s middle name. Emilia Rosa.
“If you get a rose dress, then we can be the two roses!”
On the History Channel, I watched a show about a time in England called the War of the Roses. There were two families fighting for the crown and they had a brutal war for centuries.
“So?” Clarissa leans her shoulder into mine. She’s a lot taller than I am. Sometimes I wish I were a bit taller. Clarissa nudges me again and I feel like I’m going to fall off the seat and into the aisle. “You’re so tiny, Emi Rose,” she says. “You just tumble over with the slightest shove.”
“Yeah,” I say, not sure what else to tell her. “So, why do you want to invite seventh graders?”
“Because,” Clarissa says. “It’s almost the end of the year, and I think we need to have some of the more mature kids at the hang. Don’tcha think?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess so.”
Honestly, I don’t think it’s a good idea to invite older kids to hang with sixth graders, but I’m not very good at arguing, and I don’t want to make Clarissa angry.
“Hey.” Clarissa bumps my shoulder again to get my attention. “Did you hear the school board news? They’re talking about moving some kids from Park View to our school next year?”
“Not really. Why?”
“Well, my mom thinks it is not a good idea to overcrowd our school just because another one is at capacity.”
“Won’t it make both schools less crowded?” I tell her.
“Bless your heart, Emi Rose. No! It’ll just make ours more crowded!”
“Oh,” I say, wondering what the big deal is. We barely have students at Merryville Middle anyway.
“And the plan is to move kids from elementary all the way to high school! Here! To Merryville!” Clarissa shouts so loud, it almost makes me cover my ears.
I still don’t understand the problem, but Clarissa seems really passionate about it and I’m not in any mood to disagree. I’m already missing my mom and the day hasn’t even started.
The bus takes us down a few more streets and in the distance, the MERRYVILLE MIDDLE: HOME OF THE SCREAMING EAGLES sign comes into view. The same three flags flap in the wind every weekday morning: our nation’s flag, our state flag, and our school flag. I don’t think Merryville has a town flag. At least, I’ve never seen it.
Merryville is a small city surrounded by woods tucked into Cherokee County right next to Forsyth County and about a forty-two-minute drive to Atlanta. It’s a tiny little blip of a town, and folks around here like the quaintness of it. I’ve heard Clarissa’s mom say that Merryville is one of the last towns the world hasn’t barreled into. I’m not sure what that means, exactly.
Atlanta is the opposite—a big city with a busy downtown area. It’s both the city of trees and the home of serious traffic. Even still, people drive like they’re racing cars.
When my mom takes the I-75, she always speeds up to get past any trucks driving next to us. I just close my eyes and hope we don’t get crushed.
“Earth to Emi Rose!” Clarissa says, waving her hands in my face.
“Hmm?”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?” I ask.
“Staring out into space! You’re acting weird.”
“Oh, sorry,” I tell her.
Kids call me weird and strange all the time—even Clarissa. I’m not weird or strange; I just have what’s called Inattentive Type ADHD, which my doctor says means I have a hard time organizing and paying attention. Sometimes my thoughts wander. Especially when I’m nervous and anxious about something. Like my dad coming home. Or Mom leaving on a trip. But I don’t like being called dumb!
Andrew Stockton called me that once during math class because I was looking out the window at the garbage bins and noticed a rat had climbed out of one. I stared at the rodent and was worried that it might get into the cafeteria and then the whole school would be shut down because of a health hazard.
By the time I decided to mention it to my math teacher, Ms. Brennen, Andrew had said, just out of earshot, “How is Emilia in this math class? She should be in math support with the other dummies!”
I couldn’t stop thinking about the rat. What if it went to the cafeteria for a bite of school lunch? I saw on the bulletin that we were having chicken-fried steak, biscuits, and lumpy gravy that day. What if the rat fell into the fryer and nobody noticed?!
“You poor thing,” Clarissa says, staring at me. “You sure you’re feeling okay, Emi Rose? You seem more distracted than, well, usual.”
“I’m okay.” But really, I can feel my mind racing more than most days.
“Well, anyway,” Clarissa says, “I think we should both wear rose dresses for my hang.”
I nod and face the window across the row as the bus drives by the old train tracks. Trains run through Merryville every hour or so. You can hear the whistle echo through the halls at school and through a bunch of points in town. The river runs just alongside the edge of Main Street. It isn’t much of a river, though. More like a plodding stream, but it’s pretty when it shimmers.
The bus parks at the drop-off and everyone spills outside. I stop at the big rock near the flagpole. There’s a really old plaque drilled into the rock, but I know that it was added to the school entrance recently, because when we did our sixth-grade orientation in the fall, I didn’t notice it. The plaque says MERRYVILLE CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT, and it names 1904 as the year the city district was established.
“Thank you, Mrs. Loretta!” I shout.
She nods and waits for the last kids to get off before swinging the doors shut and driving the bus over to the lot where the second Merryville school bus is already parked.
I turn around and spot Gus waving me over. He’s talking to his friends Chinh and Barry. Clarissa sees her group of friends gathering at the foot of the school entrance steps.
“Do you want to walk to class, Emi Rose?” she asks.
“I’ll catch up with you later,” I tell her. I want to say hi to Gus.
She eyes me, then Gus, who politely waves at her, too. She shakes her head and makes her way to her friends.
“I just don’t know why a nice boy like Chinh hangs out with Barry and Gustavo. Barry has the worst grades in school. You know he’s on probation, right?”
I didn’t know, but by the sound of her exaggerated tone, it’s probably not true. Barry is just quiet. Sometimes I get quiet when I’m thinking about things. I wonder if Barry has trouble focusing, like I do. Does he go to our school counselor, Mrs. Jenkins, for “check-ins” on his work and his classes, too?
Barry waves Gus off after Gus makes a funny face. They look like they’re having a good time.
“And you should be careful with Gustavo, Emi Rose, because I think he lies,” she says. “He says he’s from Alabama, but he doesn’t sound like anyone from Alabama. He barely speaks English.”
“He was born and raised in Alabama, Clarissa.
And he speaks English and Spanish perfectly.”
“Doesn’t sound like it to me,” she says, looking up at the morning sun. “Oh shoot, I forgot my sunscreen! Did you bring some?”
“No. I didn’t put any on.”
“You should wear sunscreen, Emi Rose. Your skin gets redder than mine.”
Clarissa’s mom and my mom and Abuela used to take us to swim class during the summer. They’d sit poolside while we swam. Mom had to hand us a tube of aloe once because we got sunburned so bad, it looked like we had red-hot irons for arms.
“How was your weekend?” Gus asks me, starting our patented handshake. A double back tap of the hand into a high five then a drop into a handshake and topped off with a fist bump.
“Not bad,” I say. We walk into school. “I hung out and saw a couple of movies with this filmmaker buddy of mine.”
“¡Qué padre!” he says. “Seems like a super-brilliant guy.”
“Eh,” I say jokingly. “He’s okay.”
“Very funny,” he says. “Oh, Barry and I are going to the movies on Friday. Wanna come?”
“I think I have something,” I tell him, looking at the calendar on my phone. “Clarissa’s party!”
“Ah,” Gus says, like he took a bite out of a rotten apple. “That . . . sounds fun?”
“I don’t know; it might be. Hey, maybe you can come?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t sound like I’m invited, Emilia. Anyway, if you change your mind, movies at Park View Cinemas!”
“Okay,” I say. “But if I ask Clarissa to invite you, will you consider it?”
“Consider what?” Barry says, popping in from behind.
“Clarissa’s partay.”
“G, we’ve got movie night.”
“I know, that’s what I told Emilia. Plus, I’m not invited.”
“Invited to what?” Chinh walks up without looking away from his phone.
“You’re going to slam into a wall one of these days,” Gus says.
“Huh?”
“There’s obsessed-with-your-phone and then there’s Chinh-level obsession.”
“I’m not obsessed!” Chinh tries to resist looking at his phone, but he can’t help himself.
Each Tiny Spark Page 2
