Skateboard Star by Jennifer Torres

Author:Jennifer Torres
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin
Published: 2022-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

• CHAPTER 8 • SEW DISAPPOINTING

Buenas tardes!” Papi calls out when Coco and I get home from school. She brushes by me without a word.

I step through the door and kick off my shoes. “Buenas tardes,” I reply. But nothing feels very good about this afternoon.

Even though it’s been more than a week, Coco still isn’t speaking to me. It isn’t just that I sewed that cat-shaped patch onto her flannel (although, she’s pretty annoyed about that, too). It’s that when she tried to put the shirt on again, it wouldn’t fit over her shoulders. It must have shrunk in the wash!

“A package arrived for you,” Papi says.

“It did?” I had almost given up hope. All of a sudden, the afternoon is looking much better. I run upstairs, hang up my backpack on its special peg in my room, and race back down to find Papi.

“Where is it?” I ask, panting. “The package?”

Before he can answer, I begin rummaging through the pile of mail he has stacked on the kitchen counter. I don’t even bother to keep things in order the way I normally do.

Papi chuckles. “You must be expecting something pretty important.”

Pretty important? That’s an understatement.

“Only the most important thing I can think of,” I tell Papi.

That’s because the Dragon Dress 2.0 is not coming out the way I hoped it would. The silky green fabric I’m using is so slippery that I can’t cut it in a straight line. Nothing is quite the right size even though I measured three times. Measuring is usually one of my specialties.

But just like me, Tía Abuela always has impeccable timing. If that package is from her, it couldn’t have arrived at a more perfect moment. The Sewing Showcase opens this weekend. I’m sure she has sent me exactly what I need to save my dress.

“I set the package aside for you on the coffee table,” Papi said. “I had a feeling you would be excited to open it.”

I spin around on my heel and head straight for the living room. There’s a brown envelope, right where Papi said it would be. And, just like I’d hoped, the stamp on the front says it came from Belize. Even Tía Abuela’s handwriting looks magical, with loopy letters written in shiny gold ink.

But the envelope is smaller than I was expecting. Part of me wished Tía Abuela would send me a finished dress. She probably thought that would be cheating, though. I shake the envelope. Maybe there are new sewing tools inside. Or a new spool of magical thread.

Carlos comes crawling in from the kitchen. “Mine?” he says, reaching for the envelope. I pull it away. Whatever’s inside, I can’t have his sticky hands all over it.

Finally I tear open the envelope, turn it upside down, and shake it out. A note flutters onto the coffee table, but I don’t bother reading it yet. I’m too busy finding what else is in the envelope.

It’s a surprise, all right. A big one. But not the good kind.

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