which she has now already told us

fifteen times.

“Just because you’ve watched a musical,

doesn’t mean you’d be good

at being in a musical,” Lizard says.

“Besides, Mr. Delgado isn’t doing

the Disney version with the Disney songs.

He has some other version of his own.”

Zari has a great big beautiful voice.

Actually, she doesn’t say that about herself.

So I say it:

“Zari has a great big beautiful voice.”

“But Zari doesn’t look like Alice,” Veronica says.

“Alice has blond hair, and—well…”

She doesn’t finish the sentence,

but I know she means, “Zari is Black.”

“Who says Alice has blond hair?” Lizard demands.

“She just does,” Veronica says. “She’s blond in the movie.”

“She’s not blond in my head,” Lizard says.

“In my head Alice could totally look like Zari.”

Zari gives Lizard a small smile.

Sometimes I’m extra glad I’m best friends with Lizard.

But Sometimes I’m Not

“You know who looks like Alice?” Zoey says.

When nobody answers, she points at me.

“Bumble?!” Lizard says.

She makes it sound like, in her head,

I’m the only person in the world

who could never be Alice.

“Her hair is blond,” Zoey says. “Well, dishwater blond.

She’s even wearing a black headband.”

“Anybody can wear a black headband!” Lizard says.

“Millions of people wear black headbands!”

Zoey doesn’t give up.

“Plus, Betsy has, I don’t know, a wondering kind of face.”

I never thought of anybody else thinking

about what kind of face I have.

It makes me feel like I’m real, like I exist,

not just in my own head but in the world.

“Anyway,” Lizard says, “Bumble can’t sing.

Zari should be Alice.”

I agree.

Zari should be Alice.

But part of me wants to say to Lizard,

“Maybe I can sing,

and you just never listened.

Maybe I do have a wondering kind of face,

and you just never noticed.”

What I Start Wondering Now

I was in a play once,

last year in fifth grade,

because everyone in the class was in it.

It was a play about immigrants coming to Ellis Island.

I was a girl from Poland.

I wore a flowered kerchief over my head

and clutched an old-fashioned suitcase

one of the class parents had donated as a prop.

On the night of the play,

the lights were so bright when it was my turn to come onstage

that I felt terrified and lost and confused, but excited, too,

just like a Polish girl named Zofia would have felt,

waiting in a long line of immigrants

to see if she would be welcomed into her new country.

After I said my lines

the audience clapped for me,

and for Zofia, and for me being Zofia.

So when Zoey said what she said about me at lunch,

I started wondering if

maybe…maybe…