You're My Sol

Chapter 10

I was walking with Marisol on the way to precalc. "I don't mean to sound insensitive, but where's your family from? If you guys can speak Spanish and all," I asked.

"Well, I'm half Mexican, on my dad's side. And my aunt is my dad's sister, so that's why they speak Spanish. My grandparents immigrated here from Mexico and had my dad and my aunt. So they spoke Spanish and passed it down. My mom was always so confused as a kid when I talked to my dad... it was kinda funny," Marisol explained.

Suddenly, she stopped dead in the middle of the hallway. Tears started leaking down her face.

What.

Did this have to do with her family? Did she not like talking about it?

"Hey, it's okay. You don't have to talk about your family if it makes you upset," I said.

She nodded, wiping the tears from her face. "Thanks," she whispered. "My family is a sensitive subject for me..."

We walked into the classroom.

"I'm sorry--I won't bring it up again. Just remember, if you want to talk about it, you can always come to me."

A thought popped into my head. "Ooh--we're getting our tests back today!" I exclaimed.

We slid into our seats just as Mr. Lenn passed back the tests. "Great work," he said to Marisol.

Marisol flipped the page over and squealed. I leaned over. A 96%.

"Congrats!" I said, giving her a high five. That was impressive.

I flipped my page over anxiously, remembering how poorly I did while taking the test. My face fell when I saw the number. 63%.

"What did you get?" Marisol whispered.

"A 63," I said, tears welling up in my eyes. I tried to blink them away. It was just a test, it didn't matter.

But it did. I needed to get good grades. That's what made me Penelope. I needed to be perfect. I needed to get good grades by any means necessary.

I swallowed my pride. "Hey, Marisol?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you... um... could you help me? I did really bad and I was wondering..."

"If I could tutor you?" She fake pondered. "Hmmm... I don't know..."

I rolled my eyes.

"Of course I will!"

"Thanks, wanna go to the library tomorrow?" I asked.

"Sure," Marisol said.

"Ladies, do you have something you'd like to share with the class?" Mr. Lenn asked, pausing his lecture on logarithms or something.

I shook my head.

"Hm? No?" He gave us a stern look. "Then keep quiet."

The rest of the class chuckled. I smiled. At least I wasn't a "stuck up bitch" this time.

* * *

"Running is so nice," Marisol said.

I felt the breeze on my skin, the pounding of my feet on the ground. I couldn't help but agree.

We were doing warmups for track practice. We did good in our last couple of meets, but the next one was against a notoriously fast school. We were training extra hard to get ready.

"You know, I get up early every morning to run," Marisol said.

I almost stopped dead in the middle of the track. "You what?" I practically yelled.