Allie, First at Last by Angela Cervantes

Author:Angela Cervantes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2016-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Monday may be April Fool’s Day, but today, Saturday, March 30, is Adriana’s seventeenth birthday. And since it’s the day she tutors ESL at the community center, my family is taking a huge ice cream cake and a star piñata to the center. Adriana loves celebrating her birthday with all the kids. Last year, some of the older tutors performed a choreographed dance number to her favorite song. At the end, they made all of us get up and dance too. We had a blast. After that, the little kids serenaded her with the Spanish birthday song “Las mañanitas.” It was super cute.

When we get to the center, it’s already decorated with red balloons and there’s a big banner that reads Happy Birthday, Adriana! hung from the ceiling. Mostly, the center is quiet because tutoring is in session. Everyone is either in the English or math room. Only the program manager, Mr. Cushinberry, is there to greet us and show us where to set up the cake. While Aiden and Ava get to work taking red paper plates, napkins, and forks out of the grocery sack, I help Mom prepare the fruit punch because she says she wants to talk to me.

“How’s your Trailblazer contest submission going?” she asks me. “Do you have everything you need?”

“I think so. I worked on it last night. I still have more to do.”

“Good girl. The reason I ask is because I have something for you.” She stops pouring ginger ale into the punch bowl and pulls a camera from her leather bag. “It’s an old camera from work. I thought you could put it to use for your contest.”

“What’s that antique?” Aiden slaps his hands together and points at the camera. “Ha! Now Allie has to lug a clunky camera around all day.”

“Hey, mister! It’s a state-of-the-art digital camera,” my mom says. “You just worry about those napkins.” She turns back to me. “I thought it might help. Those cell phone pictures of yours won’t cut it in a contest like this. I want you to have a fighting chance.” She kisses me on the forehead. “Remember, the best photographers can tell a whole story with one single image.”

“Listen to your mom—she’s an award-winning news anchor and will once again be crowned best news anchor tonight,” Dad says, and kisses my mom’s cheek before jetting off to hang the piñata with Mr. Cushinberry.

I drape the camera around my neck. It’s heavy, but I’d lug a boulder the size of Mexico around my neck if it’d help me win.

“Are you going to win again, Mom?” I ask.

She wipes her hands on her apron. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve won three years in a row. Maybe it’s time someone else won for a change, you know?”

“Would you be upset if you didn’t win?”

“I’m not going to lie, it feels better to win, Alyssa.” She grins slyly. “The recognition is nice. It’s validation for the work I’m doing.”

“And you get a trophy, right?”

“Yes, Alyssa. There’s a trophy involved, but it’s the recognition I value most.

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