Free Peas and Carrots by Tanita S. Davis Page A

she said disapprovingly, “I beg your pardon?”
    “I don’t mean anything negative or disrespectful,” Hope said carefully, avoiding her mother’s eyes. “It’s just that we’ve already met, and we live in the same house. It would make more sense if Dess got a chance to—”
    “I need to meet new people,” Dess agreed before Hope could finish. She met Ms. Aiello’s frown with an un-Dess-like smile. “Totally fine with me. Thanks, Ms. Aiello.”
    “If that’s okay,” Hope said awkwardly, aware from her mother’s sharp silence that not everyone agreed this was the best plan.
    The vice principal gave a little shrug. “All right, then, if you girls have it figured out. Come on into the office and let’s get to know you…Dessa? Or is it Dess?”
    Hope exhaled in relief as Ms. Aiello herded Dess away, but her mother gave a disgusted
tch
and turned away.
    “Mom,” Hope began, but her mother shook her head.
    “Not now,” she said, hefting the baby seat in one hand and leading Austin toward Ms. Aiello’s office with the other.
    Hope waved again to Austin and shrugged off her mother’s disappointment. It wasn’t that doing one little campus tour would have been that bad, but Hope knew it was a gateway job for what Ms. Aiello really wanted. Just like her mother, Ms. Aiello no doubt wanted Hope to walk around campus and hold Dess’s hand until she made a friend. But seriously, there was
no way.
Hope couldn’t work miracles. Someone as mean and snarly as Dess wasn’t going to
make
friends.
    Like, this morning. Dess had been okay for five minutes in the kitchen, kind of relaxed and nice, and then, boom, she’d asked Hope what the “deal” was with her “bushy hair.” Okay, so she’d smiled like she was joking, but
still.
What kind of question was that? Some African Americans wore their hair in really big crinkly curls, and so what? So what if Hope’s hair wasn’t bleached blond and smooth and straight? It wasn’t
bushy.
She’d just combed it. Or she’d been going to before she’d heard her dad talking to Dess….Anyway, the point was Hope couldn’t
make
people be friends with Dess, no matter what Mom or Ms. Aiello thought.
    Also, all Mom’s talk about how Hope needed to “open up” and “make new friends” was kind of stupid. She didn’t really need more friends—she had Natalie and Liesl Stockton and Jas Singh, when he wasn’t being a total goof, and lots of other kids in her class. Yeah, so her closest friend had left the country. And? Hope had been on her own all summer. Missing Savannah didn’t make her so lonely and desperate that she had to hang out with someone who sniped about her appearance.
    She stalked down the hall, barely acknowledging the many clusters of students. Headwaters Academy was a charter school and catered to kids from all kinds of families: African American, East Asian, Haitian, South Asian, Latino, and Caucasian. Emphasis on math, science, and technology made it a California Distinguished School, but Hope thought of it as just plain school. She tried to see it from Dess’s point of view, wondering what her foster sister would think of it.
    In Mr. Workman’s room, Hope dropped her bag on a desk three rows back, where she usually sat. Fortunately, today that was on the other side of the room from Rob Anguiano, who smelled as if he’d drowned himself in cologne that morning. An empty desk sat next to her, and Hope put her bag on the seat, as if someone was coming back. She didn’t want Dess coming in later and getting the wrong idea, and claiming space right next to her.
    Maybe Dess would be on a totally different track. Maybe they wouldn’t have classes together at all. But at a school this small, no classes together at all was probably asking a little much.
    Hope frowned as she thought of Dess. She wished her mother hadn’t come into the office last night. She needed to have found out more. It was so weird to think of Dess as a secret foster child, with her