So I knew I needed to talk it through with someone.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to Talia before school started, but I hurried to her locker as soon as the lunch bell rang.

“Talia!”

She slammed her locker and when she looked at me her cheeks were pink. At first I was scared I’d done something wrong and she was mad at me, but when she saw me she sighed and smiled and said, “Hey, Libby.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She sighed again and gave her lunch bag a swing. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

I opened my mouth to ask her something else, but right then I remembered the Silent Questions. This was a perfect moment for them. In my brain I asked her every question I had. In my imagination I knew exactly what to say and do to make Talia feel better.

Nonny was right, of course.

After a couple of seconds, Talia started talking again.

“It’s … well, Mr. Gradey keeps bugging me about this Poetry Out Loud contest thing.”

Now it was time for an out-loud question. “What’s that?” I asked.

“Oh, you submit a poem and perform it at this contest and the winners go on to the next round and all that crap.”

“But … you’d be great at that! You’d be amazing!”

Talia huffed. “I probably wouldn’t win. I don’t know. I mean, nobody would care.”

“Would you care? About doing the contest, I mean?”

Talia shrugged, but her eyes weren’t shrugging. Her eyes were swirling.

“Isn’t this sort of what you like? You said you want to be a rap artist, right? Well this is sort of maybe—”

“Who’s ever heard of a Samoan rapper. I mean, there aren’t even hardly any girl rappers. Plus you can’t make a living as a musician anyway.”

I couldn’t think of the right question to ask, or the right thing to say, so I practiced another Silent Question.

Then she said, “Nobody cares what I say anyway.”

The Silent Question had worked again.

“I think they would,” I said. “If they heard you say it.”

Talia gave her lunch bag another swing. “Anyway, so what did you find out?”

“Oh yeah!” I nearly popped out of my boots. “It’s so perfect it’s almost freaky. He’s coming to Boulder! To UC!”

“Who?”

“Trent Hickman. The editor. He’s coming here!”

“No way. Seriously?”

“I know!”

We started walking toward the library.

“So when’s he coming?” Talia asked.

“January twenty-sixth.”

We took a few more steps, both quiet and thoughtful. Then she glanced at me and gave me that mischievous beach bum smile.

“That gives us about two months,” she said, “to formulate a plan.”

Thanksgiving Break

Thanksgiving turned out to be smaller than usual. Sometimes we had friends and extended family over, and sometimes the people who worked with Mom at the bakery, but this year it was only Mom, Dad, Nonny, and me. Plus of course on-the-way-baby Cecilia, if you counted her, which I did.