Shine On, Luz Véliz! by Rebecca Balcarcel

Author:Rebecca Balcarcel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC

Dad sputters up to the school in his lawn-care pickup truck. It’s not that landscaping isn’t a cool job or anything, but the truck is as long as three cars and as loud as four. Its trailer bed, loaded with lawn mowers and weed eaters, stretches for miles, it seems like, and the muffler rumbles so loud that we have to shout to be heard even inside the cab. I wish he’d brought the white car, or the Véliz Verde minivan that he uses to check on workers around town. This pickup is from the old days, when his business was small.

We climb in the truck, with me squished in the middle.

“A good day, girls?” Dad shouts. He squeezes my shoulder. When we saw each other this morning, he offered to take me to the library sometime soon. It was nice to hear, though there’s definitely still some weirdness between us. At least he’s not asking about my leg.

“Yeah, good day,” I yell. It’s too hard to talk over the engine noise. Even Solana just waves.

I’m glad we can’t talk, because after the 8-Ball Announcement Fiasco, I’m not ready to tell him about Robotics Club or my Showcase plan. Besides, he might give me that sad face—the one he tries to hide when I do anything besides soccer.

Maybe I can unveil my big coding project when it’s done and make him see that I can be good at something else, too. Not just a simple 8-Ball, but something impressive. I think that’s what he wants most. For me to be really great at something. Something he can be proud of.

At home, Solana and I drop our backpacks inside the door and head for the kitchen. I open the pantry. Not much in there except some round, hard, pancake-looking things that Dad brought from the Central American grocery. I’m not sure what they are. I check out the fridge. We’re in luck! There’s leftover cake, and a note from Mom saying, “Go ahead and eat the welcome cake. Snack rules waived today. ” Her list of approved snacks is flipped over to the blank side.

This time, the cake is a perfect ten on the sweetness scale. We both eat the icing flowers first.

As I eat my last bite, Solana disappears down the hall. She comes back with something in her arms, something I’ve seen once before. Her sketchbook.

I don’t know if it’s been under her pillow since that first day, but now she opens it.

Guatemalan scenes fill the pages. Purple volcanoes, a canoe on what has to be Lake Atitlán, and close-ups of a marimba. I’m stunned by the realism. Everything looks three-dimensional.

The most eye-catching page shows huge kites, tall as houses, decorated with all kinds of patterns.

“What are these?” I ask, my voice coming out breathy with awe.

“Barriletes de Sumpango.”

“Dad has talked about this!” I remember him saying that he went to Sumpango as a kid to see giant kites. He said they were big, but whoa. I had no idea.

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