Brighter Than the Sun by Daniel Aleman

Author:Daniel Aleman [ALEMAN, DANIEL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2023-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS, I TRY MY HARDEST to be Sol. It’s easy, somehow—almost like slipping on an old coat that you didn’t remember you had in the back of your closet.

“I swear to God, I don’t know how it happened,” Tony says in the cafeteria on Monday. “But when I got home, my underwear was full of sand. Like, full of sand.”

“I don’t think I had that problem,” I reply, in between bites of pizza.

“None of us did,” Olivia says to me quietly. “Well, no one except for Tony and Ana María. I’m pretty sure they were fooling around somewhere when they said they were going to the bathroom.”

I let out a small laugh. It feels nice to understand what everyone is talking about when they tell stories about the weekend. It’s nice to be a part of the conversation, to lean forward and say, “What?” whenever I don’t hear someone else’s comments, instead of pretending I did and nodding awkwardly.

Even in the stockroom, I can feel something has shifted. When Bill passes by the big table, nosing around as he always does to make sure everyone is doing their job correctly, he stops the second he sees me inserting a security tag into a silky blouse.

“Nicely done,” he says to me. Nick taught me a while ago that, when working with silk or satin, I shouldn’t insert the tag directly through the fabric. Instead, I inserted it in the label on the inside of the shirt.

For a moment, I hold my breath, waiting for Bill to say something else, but he simply moves on.

“It’s what I’ve been saying all along,” Nick says to me, throwing me a sideways smile. “You’re an expert.”

The only issue is that schoolwork is starting to pile up, and even though I’ve tried my best to do homework between my shifts at Wallen’s, it’s still not enough. I’m sitting in the bio classroom on Thursday when, suddenly, Mr. Vázquez says, “Everyone please hand over your essays!” and my heart stops. I vaguely remember there was an essay I needed to work on for bio, but when I try to think about the details of what it’s about or when it was due, my mind comes up blank.

While everyone around me starts shuffling, walking up to Mr. Vázquez’s desk to drop off their essays, my neck starts feeling very hot. And after class, when I have to go up to him and ask if I can get an extension, he gives me a stern look that makes my hands sweat uncontrollably.

“You can have one more day, but that’s it,” he says.

“Thank you, Mr. Vázquez. Thank you so much.”

It is while I’m making my way down to Ari’s after school that I realize just what this one-day extension will mean. Because there are other things that have been piling up—a trigonometry quiz that I need to study for, another essay for history, and an entire book I have to read for English lit before the start of next week.

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