Party Favors and Perfectionism

 

  Sitting in the back seat of his friend’s mom’s car, Martín shoved a handful of sour gummies into his mouth. His tongue tingled.

  “Here we are.” His friend’s mom parked in front of Martín’s house.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Porter,” Martín mumbled between sticky chews.

  “You are most welcome,” she replied. “It looks like you boys had a great time.”

  Martín and his friend Henry were covered in confetti, which was plastered to their faces by sweat.

  “Laser tag was awesome!” Henry said, and gave Martín a fist bump.

  “Bye!” Martín stepped out of the car. He laughed as the car pulled away with Henry’s chocolate-smeared face smooshed against the window making silly faces.

  Martín hadn’t expected to make friends so quickly.

  In Mexico, he’d had one friend, a great friend! Arturo. Martín had never really connected that much with his other classmates. And anyway, Arturo was awesome, so it suited him just fine. Martín’s twin sister, Emma, was the social one, the one who never had trouble meeting new people.

  But for some reason, Martín had found it a lot easier to make friends in his new school here in the US. Everyone was so friendly, and there were so many activities and fun things to do in school and after school. Martín had signed up for every activity he could, and he even enjoyed his classes.

  He was good in PE and always had people to eat lunch with. Before he knew it, everyone in the school seemed to know who he was.

  It was weird. And not just because he had a ton of friends. It was weird because the exact opposite seemed to have happened with Emma.

  She had made exactly zero friends. In Mexico, Emma was always surrounded by friends and talking nonstop. Mami even had to set a phone time limit because Emma would spend hours chatting with her friends.

  Now, though, his sister hardly ever talked to anyone. She didn’t join any of the after-school activities (even though Martín knew there were some Emma would love!). She always sat alone at lunch. Emma didn’t even want to go to the birthday party she just got invited to. She said the only reason she was even invited was because people felt bad for her because she was the new kid but that they didn’t really want to be her friend.

  Martín wasn’t sure that was true. He thought that maybe she was worried they wouldn’t like her. But it hardly mattered anyway. A party was a party. What better way to make friends than chasing after each other with laser guns for an hour?

  He reached into his goodie bag as he stepped into the house.

  “Not until after dinner!” Mami called out to him from the kitchen. It was like she had X-ray vision!

  She came out to greet him, and even though she was smiling, Martín knew she was serious about the candy. He put it back into his bag and swallowed the remainder of his sour gummies.

  “How was the party?” Abuela asked. She had arrived the day before from Mexico for a visit and would be staying for a week.

  “It was great,” he told her.

  Next to Abuela on the couch, Emma rolled her eyes. She had started doing that a lot lately.

  “Of course it was,” Emma said. “You think everything here is great.”

  “Well…” He sort of did.

  “Anyway.” Emma turned to Abuela. “As I was saying, school is terrible. The classes are so boring, and everyone is really mean.”

  “Are they really?” Abuela asked. “Didn’t you just get invited to your classmate’s birthday party?”

  “Well, maybe not mean. But they can’t understand me when I talk; they sometimes laugh at how I say things.”

  Martín knew that part was true. He and his sister both had pretty strong Spanish accents, and they didn’t always pronounce things the way others did. It didn’t bother Martín, but Emma was a “perfectionist.”

  He’d recently learned that word, and it described his sister exactly. She was someone who wanted everything to be perfect. And when it wasn’t, it stressed her out. Which was tough when you expected yourself to be perfect because, well, nobody was perfect.

  Emma was so worried about doing everything right and fitting in perfectly that she wasn’t doing anything right and wasn’t fitting in at all. The problem was all the worrying!

  Abuela put her hand on Emma’s shoulder and said, “So, what do you like about being here?”

  Emma sighed. “I like Nacho.” The dog looked up from where he had been sleeping on the carpet.

  “I like Nacho too,” Abuela said. The dog began happily wagging his tail.

  “But that’s the only thing,” Emma said, and she crossed her arms.

  “Abuela,” Martín said, hoping to move the conversation into something more interesting. “I brought you something from the party.” He held out a pair of earrings.

  “You got earrings at a party?”

  “They’re not real,” Martín told her. “But they glow in the dark. That was the theme of the party.”

  “Oh.” She studied them closely. “Well, they’re lovely. Thank you.”

  Abuela promptly clipped them onto her earlobes. Martín thought they looked a bit funny on his grandmother’s ancient ears, and Emma must have agreed because she started giggling. Abuela didn’t mind, though. She smiled and peered into Martín’s bag.

  “What else do you have in there?”

  “Some candies, a pencil, a super-bouncy ball.”

  “What is this?” Abuela poked at something shaped like a hand with a long sticky rope attached to it.

  “Oh!” Martín pulled out the sticky rubber hand and smacked it onto the ceiling. Abuela burst out laughing.

  “It’s a sticky hand!” Martín grinned as he tugged at it and it smacked back at him.

  “Yeah, that’s great,” Emma said. Martín could tell she was about to start complaining again. Fortunately, that was the exact moment when Dad walked in.

  “Hola, mis amores!” he called out.