Room to Dream by Kelly Yang

Author:Kelly Yang [Yang, Kelly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

In English, Ms. Swann passed out our school photo packets. As usual, there was an order form inside, along with small sample photos. I took a look at my individual sample photo and smiled. It would be so cool to have this next to my name in my column!

“Hey! I’ll trade you for one of yours,” Jason said. “After you order them.”

Maybe, I thought, but didn’t reply. I didn’t want Jason getting the wrong idea about us.

Instead, I turned to the sample group photo. Lupe’s face and my face were practically hidden in the back row. I wondered if she was looking at this too and feeling similarly bummed.

When I got home that afternoon, I called her.

“Hey …” I said when she picked up the phone. “It’s me.”

“Hi!” Lupe said. “What’s up?”

“Have you seen it? Our photo?” I stared at the sample group photo on the front desk. Every time I thought about that day and that photographer, it made me furious all over again.

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad.”

“Are your parents buying it?” I asked.

“Nah …”

“Mine either,” I said with a sigh. I’d shown the packet to my mom, but she took one look at the prices and shook her head.

“I’m still going to keep the sample and put it up by my desk,” Lupe said. “As a reminder.”

“Of what?”

“Of how hard we have to work so they can never hide us again, even if they want to.”

Timidly, I asked her how geometry was going.

“Great,” Lupe said. “It’s actually less work than I thought.”

I sat up. “So you can come back to the front desk?”

“Well, I still have a lot to do for English. Oh, and, Mia! I overheard the college counselor talking, and guess what he said? The only way to get into good colleges is to do extracurricular activities after school! We have to do, like, Math Olympiad and Model United Nations and stuff. But those are so expensive! You have to travel and everything. What are we going to do?”

“There’s plenty of time to worry about all that later,” I said. “College is in a million years. Besides, we already have an extracurricular after school,” I reminded her. “And it’s suffering right now.”

There was a long pause.

“I know,” Lupe finally said. “How’s it going? What’s the latest?”

I shook my head, not feeling like recapping it all, as if she was one of our paper investors, people who had invested money but rarely came around. She was supposed to be my partner, right here next to me, going through the thick of things together.

Instead I end our conversation with an invitation: “Come back and I’ll tell you.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.