Sincerely Sicily


 
 
 
 
 Dedication
 For the young Black girls who don’t know it yet but will soon learn that seeing themselves represented in books matters.
 
 
 Contents
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 One: Sicily Jordan
 Two: My Fave
 Three: Shirley Chisholm Middle School
 Four: Mi Familia
 Five: Day Two
 Six: The Gift
 Seven: Chisholm Is Talking
 Eight: So Easy
 Nine: What Are You?
 Ten: Enrique Is Right
 Eleven: Why Is She Here?
 Twelve: Cousins
 Thirteen: I Can’t Stand Her
 Fourteen: Timelines
 Fifteen: Battle
 Sixteen: DM
 Seventeen: Black Panamanian
 Eighteen: What’s So Wrong with Having Braids?
 Nineteen: Ideas
 Twenty: Race and Culture
 Twenty-One: Up All Night
 Twenty-Two: Una Fiesta
 Twenty-Three: I Thought We Were BFFs
 Twenty-Four: Practice Makes Perfect
 Twenty-Five: I’m Over It
 Twenty-Six: Afro
 Twenty-Seven: I Miss My Friend
 Twenty-Eight: I’m Gonna Do It
 Twenty-Nine: 8:00 p.m.
 Thirty: Te Amo, Sicily
 Thirty-One: They Actually Understand
 Sicily’s Glossary of All Things Spanish and Panamanian
 Author’s Note
 Acknowledgments
 About the Author
 Copyright
 About the Publisher
 
 
 One
 
 Sicily Jordan
 DEMANDING TO SEE the email only shows me how real this all is. Pa’s phone trembles in my hands as I read it for myself. I almost can’t get past the words:
 
 SICILY JORDAN is registered and has been placed in a sixth-grade class.
 
 It’s like all of a sudden, they are the only words I’ve ever learned in my entire life.
 My fingers grip the phone tighter and tighter as I keep reading those words over and over, hoping for them to change magically. It’s because of them that Ma and Pa decided that I’m going to Shirley Chisholm instead of Ravenwood Middle School.
 “Que ridículo,” Abuela Belén says, as she rubs my shoulder. “They can’t send an email a week before school starts and expect you to change all the plans you’ve already made.”
 I stretch myself out on the couch and rest my head on Abuela’s lap, closing my eyes before my tears spill over. Abuela has been spending a lot more time with us since coming back from her trip to Panamá a few months ago. Ma isn’t a fan of Abuela being here so much, but I’m glad she’s here at this moment—I need her.
 “Sicily. Are you really going to cry?” My older brother, Enrique, says from where he is lying on the living room floor. “About a school?”
 My eyes fly open.
 “Shut up!” I shout at him.
 Ma gives me that look I know all too well, the one that says, Calm down before I calm you down. So I quickly look back at the phone still in my hand and read the sentence one more time before forcing myself to look at the rest of the email.
 
 Fr: [email protected]
 To: [email protected]
 Subject: Shirley Chisholm Middle School Is Open!
 
 Hello MR. ENRIQUE JORDAN SR.,
 
 Since the beginning of the calendar year, construction has been diligently taking place on 15 acres of land at the corner of Broadway and 7th Street.
 While it was a tight deadline, I am pleased to inform you that Shirley Chisholm Middle School will open next week, in time for the beginning of the school year. Since your address is within our new school zone, your child SICILY JORDAN is registered and has been placed in a sixth-grade class. If you have already made other arrangements for your child’s schooling, please let us know as soon as possible, and we will unenroll your child.
 Although we are ready to open, we are still in the process of adding to our campus. Because of this, sixth-grade classes will be held in portable classrooms, where students will stay with the same teacher for every subject.
 Starting tomorrow, between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., you and your child can visit the campus to take a tour and pick up a copy of the school handbook. Additional emails regarding school rules, dress code, and classroom assignments will be sent out in the following days.
 Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
 
 Looking forward to a great year,
 Principal Cynthia Rivas
 Shirley Chisholm Middle School
 
 At the end of fifth grade, rumors started going around about the new middle school opening in time for sixth grade. The rest of the Tether Squad—Evelyn, Samara, and Alexis—didn’t worry about it because they live closer to Ravenwood Middle School and knew for sure that’s where they’d be going. I wasn’t as confident.
 Unlike my friends, I live right on the very border of the newly drawn district zone. The fear of being separated from the Tether Squad, especially Evelyn, planted itself in the back of my mind and sat there all summer, driving me crazy whenever we passed by the campus construction site. Every time I saw it, I prayed that it wouldn’t open in time for the upcoming school year. My parents were also concerned about the timing, so they enrolled me at Ravenwood, which put all my fears to rest.
 Even when the school started coming together fast in July, Pa and Ma never mentioned it, so I didn’t let it bother me. I knew the new school would open at some point. I figured by the time it did, I would be in seventh or eighth grade and my parents would just let me stay at Ravenwood since I’d already be there.
 I should have known something would happen to mess up my plans. I’m not giving up though. I force myself to sit upright on the couch, then cough to get air circulating through my body again.
 Think, Sicily, think.
 I decide to go with the most obvious thing. The thing they seem to have forgotten. “We already have a plan. That’s why you enrolled me at Ravenwood with everyone else.”
 “We enrolled you at Ravenwood because it was our only option at the time,” Ma says. “It was going to be a huge scheduling issue for us. It’s