by Diana Lopez
“What’s that?” GumWad asked.
“It’s an operation,” Patty said. “They cut off your breast.”
Iliana, Shawntae, and I winced and crossed our arms over our chests as we imagined the pain. GumWad winced and crossed his arms, too.
Then he said, “My uncle had an operation last year. He had a stone in his gallbladder.”
“How did he get a stone in there?” Shawntae asked.
“I don’t know. He didn’t swallow it, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s something his body made.” He blew and popped a bubble before going on. I couldn’t believe he was chewing gum while eating a paleta. “They took out his gallbladder,” he went on, “and then they put the stone in a little jar with some formaldehyde and gave it to him—like a souvenir. He keeps it by his computer and he named it Bob.”
“That is so weird,” Shawntae said.
“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s like having a pet rock.”
“Yeah!” GumWad smacked a little more quickly. “You’re the first person to get it!”
Maybe I understood pet rocks because of the Chia Pet zoo in my kitchen.
“Is your uncle okay now?” Iliana asked.
GumWad nodded.
“See?” she said to me, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Lots of people have surgery, and they come out okay. I’m sure that’s how it’ll be for your mom.”
“But it makes you wonder,” Patty said. “What do they do with the breast after the operation?”
“Patty!” Shawntae punched her. “That’s so rude!”
I shivered, suddenly feeling cold even though it was ninety-plus degrees. The image of Mom’s breast displayed in a jar on someone’s desk was freaking me out. But Patty had asked a good question: When ladies had mastectomies or when soldiers had arms or legs cut off, where did the body parts go? Were they sent to some crazy scientist’s lab? Or were they thrown away, like garbage? And was that what we became when a part of us died or when our whole body died? I looked at the fruit bar I had thrown on the ground, how quickly it was melting, how the banana had been plucked from its tree.
We sat silently for a while. The Robins knew my mom and were probably feeling worried like me. Soon the skateboarders returned, and I focused on the sounds of their wheels, how they rolled and thudded after jumps.
Finally, Shawntae leaned forward and said, “You’re not going to believe this, but…”
“Not another dream!” I moaned, because this was the one thing that bugged me about Shawntae.
“I can’t help it,” she said. “I have psychic powers. You guys are just jealous because you can’t predict the future like me.”
“It’s not a prediction,” Iliana explained, “when you tell us your dreams after the fact.”
“This isn’t after the fact. I had the dream last week.”
We knew she’d tell us about it, so we slumped in our seats and sighed. Only GumWad seemed interested.
“So what did you dream?” he wanted to know.
Shawntae straightened her shirt and smoothed back her hair like an anchorwoman with a news flash. “I saw Erica’s mom wearing a bikini, but she had a thermometer in her mouth. Who wears a bikini and sticks a thermometer in her mouth? So I thought she was at the beach and the thermometer was a symbol of how hot it was. But now I get it. The thermometer meant she was sick. Like when the nurse takes your temperature.”
“You didn’t have that dream,” I said. “You’re just repeating stuff from our conversation. That’s what you do. You take a few clues, and you make something up.”
“I did have that dream. Last week.”
“Why didn’t you tell me then? This is serious, Shawntae. My mom has cancer. What’s the point of seeing the future if you can’t warn your friends?”
“That’s not how psychic powers work.”
I stood up. “How many times do we have to tell you? You do not have psychic powers!”
I stomped away, heading to my house, but Iliana caught up to me. “Don’t be mad,” she said. “We’re just trying to help.”
“Then tell me why my mom’s sick.” When she didn’t answer, I repeated myself. “Why is she sick, Iliana?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s right. Nobody does,” I said, realizing that I wasn’t angry about Shawntae’s dream. I wasn’t angry with my friends at all. What bugged me, what really bugged me, was that no one knew the answer to the most important question: Why did cancer choose my mom? After all, cancer had always been the big, scary end to bad habits. If you smoked, you got lung cancer and a hole in your throat. If you drank beer, you got liver cancer and yellow eyes. If you went to the pool without sunscreen, you got skin cancer and a dark mole creeping over your body. But what bad habit made breast cancer?
As far as I knew, Mom lived right. Several times a week, she pushed aside furniture and did a step aerobics tape. She drank eight glasses of water each day, and when she felt like coffee, she drank the decaffeinated kind. She didn’t eat doughnuts or chocolate bars or syrupy pancakes. She never sped past the yellow lights or told lies or cheated or cursed or stole.
And every night—every single night—after saying “sweet dreams” to Carmen and me and singing lullabies to Jimmy, she made the sign of the cross, clasped her hands, and prayed.
30,000 PEOPLE
Most people slept late on Saturdays, but I had a brother who thought he was the six o’clock alarm. Jimmy Gimme’s room was next to the one Carmen and I shared, so I piled pillows over my ears, hoping to drown out his cries. No use. Even if Jimmy were miles away, I’d still hear him scream.
“What’s the matter, mijo?” we heard Mom say. “You’ve got no reason to cry. Everybody loves you, don’t they?”
She must have lifted Jimmy from his bed because he calmed down. I rolled over and found a comfortable spot, hoping to get back to my dream about the guys on my Boyfriend Wish List. But six o’clock was my normal wake-up time, so I was awake, wide awake. That was okay. Daydreams were just as good; even better, since I could put myself into a pretend situation—like imagining Alejandro Guzmán on crutches after breaking his leg while skateboarding and me pushing his wheelchair to the park, then him realizing how sweet and dependable I could be, unlike the girl who dumped him as soon as he wasn’t a cool skateboarder anymore. I was just about to imagine the good part, when Alejandro looked in my eyes, whispered sweet nothings, and leaned in close, then closer, and then…
“Wake up, sleepyheads!” Dad called, stepping into the room and tugging at our feet.
“But it’s Saturday,” I said.
“Yeah.” Carmen yawned. “And we’re still tired.”
I tried to hide beneath the blankets, hoping Dad would feel sorry for me. No such luck. He started to sing. “Hi ho, hi ho.” He marched like one of Snow White’s dwarfs, the whole time singing and stomping.
“Stop it!” I cried, covering my ears for the second time this morning.
“Hi ho. Hi ho,” he kept singing.
“He won’t stop till we get out of bed,” Carmen said. She was right. This wasn’t the first time Dad had tried to annoy us with cheesy Disney songs.
“Okay, okay.” I threw back the covers and sat up. “We’re awake now.”
“Bueno,” Dad said. He stooped over to kiss Carmen’s forehead, and then he kissed mine. “After you get dressed,” he told us, “I want you to pick something special for Mom.”
As soon as he mentioned something special, I thought about my Chia Pets. Then I thought about the brand-new mood ring that had arrived in the mail yesterday.
“Why do we have to pick something special?” Carmen asked.
“Because of her operation,” I said, glad to know an answer before she did.
Dad nodded. “That’s right. We’ve got big plans today. We’re going to the valley.”
The valley was at the southernmost tip of Texas. Carmen and I glanced at each other, both of us wondering why we were driving more than two hundred miles to go
there.
“We leave in forty-five,” Dad said. Then he stepped out, and a few minutes later, I heard him tickling Jimmy.
I sat on the edge of my bed for a minute. Carmen and I shared a big room, split in half by an imaginary line that was as real to us as that bold yellow line down the middle of a street. To the left was my side, and to the right was Carmen’s. We had our own furniture and our own style. Above her bed, Carmen had tacked a poster of the human body labeled with interesting facts like how many miles of blood vessels we had and how many times we blinked each day. Above my bed, I tacked posters of my favorite movies. I updated them periodically, but right now, I had posters from Twilight—one with the guy who played a vampire and another with the guy who turned into a wolf every time the girl of his dreams was in trouble. Carmen didn’t like them since they weren’t educational. But she left them alone because of our invisible line. It was our lifesaver, and we respected it. The only time Carmen crossed to my side was to get to the closet, and the only time I crossed to hers was to get to the door or to wake her up, something I had to do nearly every morning.
I fixed my bed and washed up. Carmen still hadn’t moved. I nudged her. She groaned. I nudged her again. And one more time. If it weren’t for me, Carmen would lie in bed till noon.
“Hurry up!” I told her.
She mumbled, but she managed to sit up. After stretching a bit, she made her way to the closet, while I picked out my own outfit. Today, I selected a T-shirt that pictured a chicken and an egg with legs racing through victory tape, a photo finish, with the caption, “Which came first?” I modeled it for Carmen, but she wasn’t impressed. Why did I even try?
Carmen put on jeans, but instead of blue, they were pink—only Carmen said they were fuchsia. And she wore a T-shirt like me, but she wore it inside out. On purpose!
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.
“I’m a nonconformist,” she announced. “And in case you’re wondering, it means I don’t follow rules.”
“I wasn’t wondering,” I said, even though I was. “And besides, you follow rules. I can think of a trillion rules you follow.”
“Really? A trillion? Do you even know how many zeroes that has?”
I pulled my hair. I actually pulled my hair! It was too early for this. “Stop it, already! Don’t you get it? I’m exaggerating.”
“Where I come from, we call that ‘hyperbole.’ ”
“And where do you come from? Please tell me. Because last time I looked, you and I came from the same place.”
“That depends on how you define ‘place.’ It doesn’t have to be a physical location. It can be—”
“Mom!” I yelled. “Dad!”
“What is it?” they called from the other room.
“Carmen’s getting on my nerves!”
“Just ignore her.”
Easier said than done. Even though I could never have the last word with Carmen, I could have the longest, most intense stare. So that’s what I did. I stared at her, and she stared back. We were two growling dogs waiting to see who’d back down first. Carmen might have a dictionary, a calculator, and the entire Wikipedia in her head, but she was still my little sister. No way could she outlast my stare-down. Finally, after the longest two minutes of my life, she looked away. Gotcha!
Okay, quit wasting time, I told myself. Find something special. It’s for Mom.
“I guess I’ll pick one of my awards,” Carmen said, studying a bookshelf where she kept trophies, ribbons, and binders with every assignment from every teacher she’d ever had in her entire life. “This one’s special, don’t you think?”
She held out her spelling bee trophy. Last year, Carmen was the best speller in the district. Our whole family followed her to Austin for the state competition. She made it all the way to finals before the word “eidetic” tripped her up. It sounded a lot easier to spell than “confabulation,” which she got right, no problem, so I was surprised she missed it. Then I learned that “eidetic” meant having a super-duper memory, which cracked me up. Imagine a girl with an almost perfect memory missing the word “eidetic” at the spelling bee. I made a joke about it, and she cried. I felt horrible. Sure, my sister really got on my nerves, but when she cried, I went into big-sister guard-dog mode. Same with Jimmy.
“You should pick an award, too,” Carmen said. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t have one.”
I was about to point out the bike rodeo ribbon I won in third grade, but she beat me to it.
“That one doesn’t count,” she said, “since it’s for participation. They give those so people like you won’t feel bad. It’s to help your self-esteem.”
“At least I signed up,” I said, remembering how I knocked down every cone on the obstacle course. “At least I tried.”
“That’s about all you did.”
I threw a pillow at her. She caught it and tossed it back. I threw it again, this time harder and with a secret wish that instead of a pillow, I’d thrown an ink balloon. That’s right. A balloon filled with ink instead of water.
“Don’t get mad at me,” Carmen said. “It’s not my fault you don’t have something special.” For a second, I thought about asking her to spell “eidetic”—just a friendly reminder to put her in her place—but if I knew Carmen, she had memorized the spelling by now.
She walked out cradling her trophy. That brat. Maybe I didn’t have any awards, but I did have something special. I had a whole baker’s rack of Chia Pets. But with so many to choose from and so little time, I knew I had to pick something else. I had my new mood ring, but I hated to give it up, especially because I still had to learn what the different colors meant. I searched through my jewelry box, not the top shelf, where I kept my earrings and bracelets, but the secret compartment beneath. This was where I kept the spearmint gum wrapper from a piece that David Bara once offered me. I had a crush on him last year. I also kept a pencil with Alex Herrera’s tooth marks. I’d saved it after he left it on his desk one day. I’d had a crush on him, too. And I’d had a crush on Allen Gibbs, so I stole one of his homework assignments when the teacher accidentally gave it to me. It was stuck behind my paper. I noticed it right away, but I didn’t say anything when Allen said, “Hey, where’s my assignment?”
I looked lovingly at each of these “souvenirs,” but I wasn’t planning to give Mom a gum wrapper, a chewed pencil, or a strange boy’s homework. I had something else in mind, so I picked up an envelope that Iliana had given me last spring.
“This made me think of you,” she’d said. “We’re supposed to pass it along.”
Inside the envelope was a pink note card that said, “Friends are forever.” The envelope also contained a black pebble, a small crystal, and a “kindness” coin with a happy face that said, “You made me smile! Pass this smile along!”
I don’t know why I kept it instead of following the directions. Then again, I liked remembering that Iliana chose me over all the other people in the world, over all the Robins too, and it made me feel special. Special like Mom.
I put the envelope in my pocket and went to the living room, where I found Carmen pulling crayons from Jimmy’s hands while Dad complained about Mom’s rainbow-striped bikini top.
“You’re not wearing that today,” he told her.
“Yes, I am. I explained already. I bought one for each day before my surgery.”
“But, Lisa, we’re going to a church.”
“I know. I’ll put a shirt over it when we get there.”
Carmen finally freed the last crayon from Jimmy. “Why are we going to a church all the way in the valley?” she asked.
“We’re going to a shrine to say special prayers,” Mom said.
“Can’t we say special prayers here?”
“Yes, but this is different.”
“Why?”
“Quit being a pest,” I told her.
Dad sighed. I thought he was going to scold me, but instead he answered Carmen’s question. “Because a miracle happened at th
at church. There used to be another church there, but it was destroyed when a man crashed his plane into it. Over a hundred people were at mass when the church burned to the ground, but no one, except for the pilot, got hurt.”
“There’s another part,” Mom went on. “The statue of La Virgen de San Juan was also spared. La Virgen has healing powers. She’s helped many people in my family over the years.”
Even though I thought the story was amazing, I wasn’t convinced it was a miracle, but since it meant so much to Mom, I didn’t say anything.
“Now let’s get going,” Dad said. “You girls take Jimmy to the car while your mother changes into something more appropriate.”
“I am wearing something appropriate!” I heard Mom say as Carmen and I chased Jimmy, who had run out of the house screaming, “Gimme bye-bye! Gimme bye-bye!” as soon as he’d heard “car.”
Jimmy liked going bye-bye, but he hated the car seat. In order for us to strap him in, Carmen had to hold down his arms while I buckled the straps.
Finally, Mom and Dad came out. Mom must have won the argument because she was still wearing her bikini top. She looked beautiful, in my opinion, with her long flowing hair, curvy jeans, high-heeled shoes, flat stomach, firm shoulders, and breasts as full as the ones on Victoria’s Secret models. I wanted to look like her someday. I wanted her hair, face, legs, and stomach. But did I want her breasts? I would have said yes a week ago, but now I wasn’t sure.
The drive between San Antonio and the valley was nothing but flat land and cows. We finally reached the shrine around noon. For some reason, I thought it would look like the Alamo, but it was much bigger and more modern. The first thing I noticed was a giant mural facing the highway. It pictured Jesus in a blue robe, standing over the Virgin Mary. Her robe was also blue and was spread out like a triangular tent. She wore a crown and stood on a gold crescent moon.
