Ask My Mood Ring How I Feel Page 8

  And who knew there were so many breakable things in our house? Glasses, plates, windows, vases, Chia Pets. Who knew there were so many poisons? Bleach, Windex, hydrogen peroxide, every medicine in the cabinet. I didn’t want Jimmy or Carmen to leave my sight. If something bad happened to them, I’d never forgive myself.

  Once, I spent the whole afternoon in a near panic. When Mom returned, I gave her a giant hug and said, “I’m so glad you’re here! Taking care of kids is hard work. Do you know how many things can go wrong?”

  She just laughed and said, “Well, I’m glad everyone’s still in one piece.”

  By the second week, babysitting my brother and sister felt a little more routine, but that didn’t stop me from imagining all sorts of horrible accidents.

  In the meantime, Carmen kept the bathrooms clean, and I took long walks to get ready for the 5K in October. I felt stronger every week and could walk the whole distance—twice! I was still a little suspicious about the power of promesas, but I was beginning to believe that they worked because Mom was getting better. So maybe a 5K was enough after all.

  “We do stretches in therapy,” she explained at dinner one evening. “That way, my tissues will stay flexible. Otherwise, they’ll get rigid and tight, making it hard for me to move my shoulder around.” She cautiously rolled her shoulder.

  “Soon you’ll be able to carry Jimmy again,” I said.

  “And do your step aerobics tapes,” Carmen added.

  “Are you kidding? I’ll be strong enough to go to the gym and lift weights with all those musclemen.”

  “Let’s not get carried away,” Dad said. “We can’t have some muscleman falling in love with you.”

  “One already has,” Mom replied, winking at him. And then she said something in Spanish, something romantic because Dad blushed.

  3 GRADES

  Soon it was time to return to school. Normally, I loved school—not the classes, but the chance to be with my friends and to see cute guys. Plus, I was going to be in eighth grade, the oldest group on campus, which meant extra privileges, like first choice in the computer lab, a junior high homecoming and prom, and end-of-year field trips. But instead of being excited, I felt bummed. After all, this year my sister was going to junior high too, not because she was old enough but because she was skipping a grade, and, to make matters worse, she was skipping three grades in math. That meant she was taking eighth grade math like me, only she got to take the advanced class.

  Carmen bragged about it nonstop as we got dressed for our first day. “When I met my teachers at registration,” she said, “they didn’t remember you.”

  “Gee,” I replied, all sarcastic. “I wonder why. Wait. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t in their class.”

  “That’s what I figured, since you take the classes for normal people.”

  “You’re the only one who thinks ‘normal’ is an insult.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with it,” she said, “but there’s nothing memorable about it, either.”

  “You mean as memorable as your outfit?” I pointed at her clothes. While I, and everybody else, wore regular T-shirts and jeans to school, Carmen was wearing a pleated skirt, a starched blouse, knee-high socks, and a blazer. The blazer had brass buttons and a patch with a fake coat of arms. She wanted to look like a student at a fancy boarding school, the kind with redbrick and ivy, because she thought she was better than the rest of us.

  “No,” she answered, “I mean memorable like someone with a high IQ, someone like me. But what am I saying? You probably don’t know what ‘IQ’ stands for.”

  I knew it meant “intelligence quotient,” but I said, “It means ‘idiot quotient,’ and you’re right. It’s a perfect description of you.”

  She stuck out her tongue and marched out. Good. Mission accomplished. Privacy at last. Still, I kept thinking about the teachers who did not remember me, how I failed to make an impression. Well, how about this for an impression? For the first day of school, I put on a T-shirt that said, “I’m right 97% of the time. Who cares about the other 4%?”

  Thirty minutes later, Dad dropped us off, and I walked Carmen to her first-period class.

  “You’re on your own from here,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll find your way around since you have such a high IQ.”

  “No problem,” she replied, though she didn’t sound as confident as she usually did.

  I left her at the classroom door and made my way through the noisy hall of North Canyon Junior High. My campus was one of the newest on the north side of San Antonio, and like all the new buildings on this side of town, it was built in a hurry to make room for the growing population here. This meant no time for an architect to design interesting archways, windows, or courtyards. Everybody said we went to North Canyon Savings & Loan because our school, a three-story rectangle of bricks between two strip malls, looked like a bank.

  “Hi, Erica.”

  I turned to find Derek beside me. I had seen him at the pool a few weeks ago, but he seemed taller and more muscular now. I glanced at my mood ring. It was purple, the color for love.

  “Where are you headed?” he asked.

  I glanced at my schedule. “Math. Room 215. With Mr. Leyva.”

  “Hey, that’s where I’m going, too.” He seemed so happy to have a class with me. Was this the beginning of a serious romance? He’d never noticed me before, so I couldn’t believe he was walking beside me. “Are you going to try out for the talent show this year?”

  “I really want to,” I answered, “but I sing worse than a cow with a sore throat.”

  He laughed. He said, “You crack me up!” and laughed some more. That had to be a good sign, right? Didn’t guys think girls should have a sense of humor?

  The warning bell rang just as we stepped into class. I scanned the room for Robins. No Patty, Shawntae, GumWad, or Iliana. Bummer.

  “Let’s sit over here,” Derek said, choosing a desk in the middle row.

  Did I hear right? Derek wanted me to sit next to him? So far, this was a terrific first day of school.

  All the students settled into their desks as Mr. Leyva started the class. He had a reputation for being a no-nonsense teacher, but everyone said he was nice as long as you behaved and tried your best. He took roll, and when he got to my name, he said, “Montenegro. Are you related to Carmen Montenegro?”

  “She’s my sister,” I grudgingly admitted.

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you. I’m sure you’re going to breeze through this class.”

  I shrugged as if I didn’t care, but I did care. Was I going to be compared to Carmen in every class? She just started coming to this school. How did he know her already? Was he her math teacher, too? I wanted to change my last name, so my teachers wouldn’t make the connection. After all, having a smart sister didn’t mean I was smart, too. Just ask my T-shirt.

  My second class was social studies with Mrs. Gardner. I sighed with relief because everyone knew how nice she was. On my way to her room, I bumped into GumWad.

  “Hi, Erica,” he said, his mouth all blue from his gum. He studied my T-shirt. “Ha-ha.” He laughed. “That’s funny. You’re really good at being sarcastic. You’re the most sarcastic girl I know.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said. “I’ll put ‘sarcastic’ on my résumé when I apply for a scholarship.”

  “Ha-ha.” He laughed again. “You’re such a natural.”

  Leave it to GumWad to think sarcasm was an admirable quality. I had to change the subject before he started pointing out other “admirable” qualities, like the big zit on my forehead.

  “Do you have Mrs. Gardner for social studies, too?” I asked.

  He showed me his schedule. Yep, we had the same class. And so did Patty. “Hi, guys,” she said. She walked right between us and took a seat near the back of the room. GumWad and I followed, choosing the desks beside her.

  Luckily, social studies is my favorite subject. I love learning about societies and cultures. Last year, for examp
le, my teacher assigned each of us a country and asked us to create a menu featuring that country’s food. I got Kenya, where they drink cow blood mixed with milk. The class was grossed out when I told them, but my teacher said that every culture has weird food, even ours. Like menudo. San Antonio people think it’s delicious, but people from other parts of the country think it’s gross because the main ingredient of menudo is the stomach lining from a cow.

  “Let’s spend today introducing ourselves,” Mrs. Gardner suggested. “Tell us something interesting about your summer.”

  One by one, my classmates shared stories, mostly about places they went for vacation. One girl went to Canada, a city called Banff “where the clouds are below you.” Another girl went to a dude ranch in the Texas Hill Country. “I can ride a horse now,” she exclaimed, “and start a fire with flint.” One guy played on a summer baseball league and made the all-star team. GumWad, of course, went to Disney World. No surprise there, though everyone else seemed interested in his adventures.

  What was I going to say when it was my turn? My family didn’t see the Carlsbad Caverns after all, and for the first time since I could remember, we skipped going to the coast, to Malaquite Beach, our favorite spot. We didn’t even have a Fourth of July picnic.

  “And how about you?” Mrs. Gardner asked Patty. “Did anything interesting happen to you?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Patty said. “Lots of stuff.” She looked at the ceiling as if to read her past there. “I startled a skunk. That was lots of fun. Then I got a bad sunburn and spent a whole week peeling off dead skin. And then”—she tapped her chin—“I threw up after getting eighth place in a hot dog eating contest.”

  “How many people were competing?” a guy asked.

  “Including me?”

  He nodded.

  “Eight.”

  The whole class laughed—Mrs. Gardner too, even though I could tell she was trying to hold it in. Then she said, “And how about you, Erica?”

  Suddenly all eyes were upon me. “I didn’t go anywhere exciting,” I said.

  Patty punched me. “Yes, you did. Tell them about that miracle place where you saw those human scalps.”

  “They weren’t scalps. They were braids of hair.”

  “And teeth and bones and little baby feet,” Patty added.

  Everyone leaned forward to hear more. “You’re exaggerating,” I said. “There was a jar with teeth but there weren’t any bones. And the baby feet were made of this metal called pewter.” I went on, sharing the story about the suicide pilot and how the church had burned except for the statue. I described the little doll in the Aztec sundial above hundreds of candles. “And after praying,” I explained, “people leave gifts at El Cuarto de Milagros, the Miracle Room.”

  “Why did you go?” a girl asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Don’t people go there when someone’s sick?”

  I looked down, not wanting to answer.

  “Sometimes people go because it’s an interesting place,” GumWad said. “No one has to be sick. Anyone can go.”

  “I’m just asking,” the girl said, all offended.

  When the teacher turned her attention to someone else, Patty whispered to GumWad, “Good save.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said, giving him a grateful smile. Once in a while, between the silly things he did or said, GumWad acted like the coolest friend.

  6 QUIET RULES

  After school, Carmen and I found Mom leaning back on the recliner with her legs outstretched on the footrest. This had been a first day for her, too. Her surgery had been about seven weeks ago, and now that she had healed, it was time to start radiation therapy. So I wasn’t surprised to find her resting, a pillow on her lap and a glass of water on the side table. Meanwhile, Jimmy, who had spent the day with Grandma, was on the floor breaking up his train track.

  “I feel sapped,” Mom said.

  Carmen and I kissed her. Then I sat on the floor with Jimmy while Carmen grabbed the laptop and surfed the Internet.

  “According to this website,” she explained, “fatigue is the most common side effect of radiation therapy.”

  “I believe it,” Mom said sleepily.

  Carmen surfed the Net a little longer. Then she asked, “So what’s it like at the cancer center? How do they ‘nuke’ your cells?”

  I wasn’t sure Mom wanted to discuss this, so I said, “You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want.”

  “It’s okay,” Mom said. “I don’t mind talking about it.” She pointed at the afghan on the couch. I gave it to her, and she spread it over her lap. “The therapists take me to a room with a machine called a linear accelerator. They put me on a bed, only it’s not soft and comfy like a real bed. It’s more like a table. They position me, just so, making me lift my arm over my head, and they move the gantry, the part of the machine where the radiation beam comes out. They point it right where my breast used to be.”

  “Can you see the beam?” Carmen asked.

  “No, it’s invisible.”

  “But doesn’t it scare you to know that something invisible is hitting your body?”

  I wanted to tell Carmen to quit being nosy, but I was curious, too. I’d probably ask the same questions if my sister weren’t around.

  “Yes,” Mom answered. “I was a bit scared because after they prepped me for treatment, they said, ‘Don’t move.’ And then they walked out. They can’t turn on the machine until they’re in another room behind a thick wall that protects them from radiation. There isn’t even a window. They’ve got cameras to see me, but I can’t see them. I just hear their voices when they tell me they’re turning on the beam now.” She paused a minute, and I mind-traveled to a spaceship filled with mad scientists doing experiments on people because that’s how I imagined the room Mom described. “When I sat up after my treatment,” Mom continued, “I noticed all the ‘caution’ signs with the symbol for radiation. One even said, ‘Danger! Radiation Treatment Area.’ The therapists wear these things called dosimeter badges that change color if they’re exposed. So I knew we were working with some very dangerous stuff, and I kept wondering if I was crazy for doing this. You may not realize, but I grew up during the Cold War.”

  “We had a cold war?” I asked, imagining battlefields in Alaska with weapons that hurled sharp, lethal icicles.

  “We called it the Cold War,” Mom explained, “because we fought with threats instead of weapons. The United States and the Soviet Union had made enough nuclear bombs to destroy the entire world, so we lived in fear of bombs falling from the sky, especially here in San Antonio, with all its military bases. We constantly heard about radiation sickness, how it made you burn from the inside out.”

  Carmen and I squirmed. “That’s awful,” I said.

  “You know what the funny thing is?” Mom said. “I grew up thinking that radiation caused cancer, not cured it. I mean, it does cause cancer, doesn’t it? Isn’t that why the therapists have to leave the room? I’m sure there’s a joke here somewhere.” She laughed to herself.

  “So does it hurt?” Carmen wanted to know.

  “A little,” Mom said. “Let me show you.” She lifted her shirt and her arm, showing us the side of her body. The skin there was red, like a bad sunburn.

  “It itches,” Mom said. “But don’t worry. They tell me it’s perfectly normal to get a rash like this.”

  She covered up again and placed the pillow behind her head.

  Meanwhile Carmen returned to the laptop, probably looking for information about burned skin as a side effect. “It says you might get nausea, too,” she said. “You might lose weight or damage healthy tissue.”

  Mom nodded, her eyes droopy now. “The doctors mentioned that.” She lifted the afghan to her chin and closed her eyes. I could tell Carmen wanted to say something else, so I lifted a finger to my lips and said, “Shhh.” Jimmy mimicked me, putting his finger to his lips and saying, “shhh,” too.

  “It’s only five o’clock,” Carmen w
hispered, worriedly. “Are you sure Mom should sleep? She hasn’t eaten dinner.”

  “It’s okay,” I assured her. “She might feel nauseated, remember?”

  Carmen glanced at the computer again, clicked a few more times, then said, “Maybe I should go clean the bathroom.”

  She was still cleaning for her promesa, and each time she cleaned, she also counted something. So far, she had counted the tiles around the bathtub, the stripes on all our towels, and the number of ingredients in toothpaste, deodorant, hairspray, mouthwash, and soap. She even took a roll of toilet paper one day and counted out each square. She was acting weird. She always acted weird, but all this counting was even weirder.

  I shouldn’t complain, though. At least Carmen was doing her promesa. At least it was challenging, because no bathroom stayed clean forever. I was working on mine too, but it wasn’t as challenging as Carmen’s.

  Soon, Jimmy wanted cartoons, so I switched the TV to Nickelodeon, and he and I danced when some funny-looking aliens started to sing. That’s when Dad came home. As soon as he saw Mom sleeping on the recliner while Jimmy and I jumped around, he grabbed the remote and turned off the TV. Immediately, Jimmy said, “Gimme cartoon! Gimme cartoon!”

  Dad shook his head, so Jimmy started to cry.

  “Take him to your room,” Dad told me.

  I wanted to say that we were having fun, that Jimmy was being good, but Dad didn’t give me a chance.

  “Take him before he wakes up Mom.”

  I obeyed and picked up Jimmy. He didn’t want to go to my room, so he started to bawl.

  “Gimme cartoon!” he cried.