“Here we go!” Gaby yells on the next curve.

“Cut it out!” I snap at her, and push against her with all my strength. And when I get mad, I have a lot of strength. Rebecca, who’s on the aisle, tips right out. She lands with a thud on the dirty floor of the bus.

“You’re so rude, Mercedes,” Rebecca yells. “Look at my pants.”

Even though we were supposed to leave our phones in our lockers, Gaby pulls out hers. She snaps a picture.

“Gaby!” Rebecca shrieks. “You’re going to get us in trouble!”

Mrs. Ellingham strides down the aisle toward us, leaning on the backs of the seats for balance. “That’s enough, girls. Gaby, hand me the phone. You know better than that. Get up, Rebecca. I’m going to separate you three.”

And that’s how I end up sitting next to Ruben Hernandez, who is the second quietest kid in seventh grade after Sunny Li. When he actually talks out loud, he speaks English with a rickety accent because he’s from Mexico and hasn’t been in Santa Cruz for very long. On every curve, he braces himself so he won’t bump into me. Good.

I watch the ocean go by out the window, feeling us getting closer and closer to Northern Madrone College and Frank Gómez. What will he be like? Will he be loud and confident like me? Or will he be nervous and serious like Mattie? Will he know which of us is which? I picture us walking into his office and saying, Hi, we’re your daughters. Matilde and Mercedes. Nice to meet you. And he’ll be so happy to see us, he’ll leap out of his chair and hug us both so tight we won’t be able to breathe. You’re here at last! he’ll say. Wait—I suppose he’ll have a Spanish accent. I rewind my imagining and replay it with Frank sounding a little bit like Ruben. The only Spanish words I know are from watching Dora the Explorer. I glance at Ruben. Maybe I should ask him how to say, “We’re your daughters” in Spanish.