9th grade. October.

Tamarind:

We’re at Dad’s apartment for the weekend. Homecoming Weekend. I am pooped. Denim & Red has been working overtime to organize the events. Everything Spanish red and Denim blue, with Velma the Raptor portrayed on every wall of the school. Students singing The Raptor Beat in the halls. It’s a spirited time.

I’ve been reading more books about college. They all talk about having a hook to get in, like being nationally ranked in an extracurricular activity, which I still haven’t achieved in the past two months. You can also be a legacy at a school, or have an underrepresented ethnic background, both of which increase your chances. I know Mom went to LACal Public a few miles away in the center of Los Angeles, and Dad went to NorCal Public outside of San Francisco. So I have two legacy schools, although, right now, they are both Reaches for me. That’s a new word I learned: Reach. It’s like a school is on the top shelf and I’m not tall enough to grab it, so I have to stand on my tippy-toes to Reach it. Then there are Matches, which means my grades match the grades of the previously admitted class. And Likelies, which are school that are Likely to accept me.

To find out if my ethnic background is underrepresented, I have to find out what it is first. Since everyone in Hennessey Park is some kind of brown, it’s never come up before. So I asked my parents about their ancestry. Mom said her great-grandparents moved from the Philippines to Hawaii, and her grandparents moved from Hawaii to Hennessey Park. Dad said his family has lived in Southern California since it was Mexico.

I asked each of them if anyone in the family was Native American. That’s one of the hot ethnicities for admissions and scholarships. Mom didn’t think so, but she said I could check the Pacific Islander box if it came up. Dad didn't care to do the research to find out, I mentioned the scholarships. Then he immediately set up an account on the Find Me My Ancestors website, and he’s been searching all weekend hoping to strike gold.

Lilo:

Townhouse to myself for the weekend!

I’m still getting used to having no one around for two full days every week. I haven’t lived on my own for over a decade. I had a roommate all through college, and Jencks and I officially met right after graduation, ironically in the town we had both grown up in. We started dating, and then we moved into together after we got engaged. By my calculations, this means I have only spent one year of my life as an independent adult. That’s unsettling.

Becoming the sole head of household has been a shift. When Jencks and I were married, our combined income made us comfortably well off. An economics analyst for a sustainable energy company and a civil engineer for the Town of Hennessey Park could provide a more than satisfactory lifestyle for their family. Separately, though, the cushion is no longer there. Admittedly, Jencks and I each earn incomes above the national average for a family of four. But now we’re each housing a family of three in Southern California, one of the most expensive areas to live in the United States. Our children attend public schools, and we’ve never taken lavish vacations or driven luxury automobiles. Though, if anything were to happen to either of us, or to Tamarind or Grover, or to our retired parents…our plans have changed. And those plans are detailed. Our lawyers made sure of that.

Somehow, Jencks and I have more productive communications about our future now than we did when we married. Though, I do like not having to check in with somebody before I exit my domicile.

Off to Pilates!

Grover:

I got my first quarter grades. I did not do well.

I thought I could hide them since we were at Dad’s for the weekend, but I forgot that Dad was my PTA parent. So he knew report cards would come out this week. I was coasting along Friday and Saturday because Dad was wrapped up in some ancestry project. Then Sunday he announced to me and Tamarind that we weren’t Mexican like he’d thought. We were Chinese and Spanish. Spain Spanish. So we weren’t getting any of that sweet Native American money.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

Then he told us we had to get good grades to get into college. Duh, Dad. And he wanted to check our report cards.

Darn it.

Parents who pay attention are the worst. He was mad about the Cs. I used to get As and Bs in fifth grade, and every year before that. I pointed out the A in P.E. Dad did not respond to that at first. Then he asked me which sports teams I would be joining this year. Darn it. I told him I’d try out for basketball. Try out. That way, if I didn’t get selected, it’s okay, because I tried. Good thinking, Grover.

9th grade. September.

Tamarind:

I handed Miss Bliss a copy of my final schedule: English 9, Spanish 2 (which I tested into), California in the Contemporary World (the required History class for ninth graders), Geometry, Biology (I wasn’t allowed to take AP, which is fine, because science is not my favorite), Digital Storytelling (loving it!), and the required P.E. class called Fitness and Wellness. She pulled up my transcript from Hennessey Park Middle School and noticed my math classes. Since I do better in math than my other classes, Miss Bliss suggested I focus on those as my AP classes. But since I was in Geometry this year, I would need to take Algebra II in tenth grade, Precalculus in eleventh, and that would mean I could take AP Calculus AB my senior year. I couldn’t take AP Calculus BC. Miss Bliss suggested that if I wanted to get to Calculus BC that badly, I could take one or more of my high school math classes as a summer course at a community college. I wrote down in my notebook to look at the South Valley Community College website.

Miss Bliss said that my initial plan to take all APs for the rest of high school was a bit ambitious. I did not want to hear that, because I read online that girls are often discouraged from going after what they want because it’s not ladylike. She explained that if I took only AP classes for the next three years, I wouldn’t have time to build houses for homeless orphans, teach sign language to the elderly, or compete in the International Science Olympics. Whatever activities I chose, I would need time to master them outside of my regular school work. Also, she told me that no student at HP had ever taken all APs, boy or girl, and the ones that tried all burned out before senior year.

Then Miss Bliss asked me about my activities. After visiting each table at the Club Fair during the first week of school, I joined Yoga Club, Cinema Club, and the student division of the Denim & Red Booster Club. I told her I also tried to run for student council homeroom representative, but I lost, so I’ve been reading about politicians who lost their first elections and then went on to rule the world. I also volunteer with Food for the Spirit every other Saturday morning; it’s a service organization with my family’s church, The House of the Universal Spirit, where we collect and distribute canned food for those in need.

“I’m exhausted just listening to you,” Miss Bliss said. “When do you have time for all of this? When do you hang out with your friends?”

I told her that my friends Zinnia and Brimley went to the same church as me, so sometimes they volunteered too. I didn’t tell Miss Bliss this, but Cabot used to work there as well; she was repeatedly named Volunteer of the Year. Though, once she discovered how good she was at soccer, she stopped spending time with us. Ever since we started HP, Cabot has been hanging out with the jocks. HP’s biggest sport is soccer, and her brother Saxby, who’s in 12th grade, is the captain of the Varsity Boys’ team. With Cabot at HP, and she’s probably going to be the captain of the JV Girls’ team, and then later the Varsity Girls’ team (which brings home the most trophies of any organization at HP) the Mendozas will have a dynasty with Saxby as King and Cabot as Princess.

And with me as a Booster, I have the privilege of cheering them on. Go Raptors.

Lilo:

Does every ninth grader have this much work to do every night? I need to check with the Montagues to see if Brimley has the same amount of homework. Oh yeah, I could ask at the PTA meeting this week.

Grover:

I must have gotten every teacher Tamarind ever had at Hennessey Park Middle School, because they’re all like, “You’re Tamarind’s brother? You must be so good at blah blah blah. I’m going to keep my eye on you.”

No!

Take your eyes off me. I’m not my sister.

9th grade. August.

Tamarind:

How am I supposed to become a concert cellist, a nationally ranked athlete, and a Nobel Prize winner by my senior year of high school? According to the book we got at Hennessey Park High School new student orientation yesterday, How to Get into College (by Really Trying), I need to be all of those things at the same time, while getting all As in the hard classes, and getting a near-perfect score on my SATs. Yes, SATs plural. I thought there was only one, but no, there is one for any high school subject I could think of, and I have to take at least three and do well on them to get into a good college.

This afternoon, after I took the placement tests, which no one told me was happening, not even Cabot, even though we've been friends forever, I went to see Miss Bliss, our school’s college counselor, about How to Get into College. When I sat down in her office, the first thing she said to me was, “You read the whole book, Tamarind?”

Um, yeah. You’re the one who gave all of us 150 ninth graders and 50 new transfer students the book yesterday, and we didn't have any homework, so why wouldn't I have read it?

She said that students usually don’t come see her until junior or senior year, and most often it’s because their parents told them to, or they come along.

Then why would you give us the book now?

Miss Bliss said that the principal told her that the parents of last year’s senior class said that they wished they’d had more information about the college process earlier. So the principal declared that every student at HP would a copy of How to Get into College, which should solve that problem.

When Miss Bliss stopped talking, I handed her a copy of my current class schedule and another piece of paper with the classes I actually wanted to take over the next four years, including APs. I’d start with AP Microeconomics this year, then in 10^th grade I’d take AP Chemistry, AP Computer Science, AP U.S. History, AP Macroeconomics and AP Statistics. In 11^th grade—

Then she stopped me and said there were no AP classes for ninth graders at HP. Exceptions were rarely granted.

What? But the book—did she not read what the book said?

Miss Bliss said I should have fun during ninth grade, explore new things, find out what I like to do.

I like school and getting good grades. Good, not great. At Hennessey Park Middle School, my name was synonymous with B+. A for effort, but B+ for final grade.

Miss Bliss said my schedule might change anyway, depending on the results of the placement exams I had taken in math, English, and Spanish, the foreign language that I decide to keep learning instead of switching to Chinese or Japanese. She asked me to come back to her office in two weeks, once I had started my classes, and we’d “map out a logical progression for your high school career.” I told her that would make me feel better. She even typed it into her calendar on her computer, so I typed the meeting into the calendar on my phone. Very official.

I told Brimley he should meet with Miss Bliss, too, since she’s really nice. Brimley didn't understand why he should talk to a college counselor when he’s just started high school. When we met up with Zinnia at the Monkey Bar to get smoothies, she agreed with me, although she didn’t know who her college counselor was. It’s weird that she’s going to Moreno for high school, only because Zinnia, Brimley, and I have been in the same class almost every year, and we've been best friends since kindergarten. But it does make sense for Zinnia to go to a school for the arts since she is the most amazing dancer I have ever known. Zinnia’s mother says she could pirouette before she could walk. I wonder how many AP classes the Moreno kids are allowed to take…

Lilo:

Thank goodness I had the day off yesterday. Not that I got anything done that I wanted to do. The move exhausted me. I had planned to spend yesterday organizing our new townhouse, which I’m still surprised was cheaper than our old house. A slight downgrade in a Southern California neighborhood makes a world of difference, surprisingly for the better, in this case. Same school district, since Hennessey Park is so small, but new address, new people to meet, new parking regulations to learn. The townhouse came with a tandem parking space in the underground garage, but we’re a one-car family now. That is, until Tamarind gets her license and possibly inherits a grandparent’s pre-owned sedan.

I barely got both kids out of the house. You’d think if the schools were requiring them to attend orientations that they would provide school buses, but no. Luckily I had arranged for Tamarind and Grover to carpool with the Montagues, which unfortunately did not stop Tamarind from grouching at me at the crack of dawn because I was still in my pajamas while she was fully dressed and ready to go. Conversely, Grover looked at me like I had two heads when I told him to shut off his video game and eat something before he had to leave.

I love my children, and I’m glad they are living with me during the week, but sometimes they drive me up a wall. You can call me a bad mother if you like, free speech and all, but I don’t think I’ll miss them this weekend when they are with Jencks. Let their father deal with their pubescent mood swings for two days. Maybe then I’ll have the time to figure out which box I packed my clean underwear in.

Grover:

I don’t see why I had to go to school yesterday. Real school doesn't start till next week. I don’t understand why Mom was busting my chops. I put on my clothes before Mr. Montague showed up and ate my breakfast in the car. No problem.

All we did at orientation was get our books, P.E. uniforms, and meet new people. I could've met them next week. I could've taken a tour of the school next week. I didn't even need a tour. I've been there before. I was there two months ago for Tamarind’s graduation. It still looks like the same Hennessey Park Middle School to me. Do our teachers think all sixth graders are too dumb to recognize the school that their older sisters went to for three years?

It wasn't all bad. We got pizza for lunch. And during the assembly, the vice-principal farted. If school was only pizza and farts, I’d be set for life.