Born of starlight and shadows

~Part one (b) Out of place~

"Stella?" Maria knocked on my bedroom door. "Mom says to tell you that dinner's ready."

I glanced down at my watch and was surprised to find that it was already five thirty. They say time flies when you're having fun, but time can also slip away from you surprisingly fast when you're focused on a task, such as struggling through the "real-world" problems on my geometry worksheet. An hour had gone by while I tried to recall the trigonometric functions we'd talked about in first period, and now I had even less time to complete all my other homework.

By the time I was finished with dinner, I'd only have a little time before I'd have to leave to go to my art class, then-

Calm down, Stella. You will have plenty of time to do everything, I told myself.

"Okay, I'm coming," I said to Maria.

She looked at the many papers neatly stacked on my desk. "Are you still doing homework?"

I nodded. "Yeah. I'll probably be finished in, oh, maybe three hours, depending on how much longer it takes for me to finish geometry and what time I get home from my art lesson."

"So you have hours of homework every night?" Maria asked.

"Pretty much, yes," I said.

"Now that's just cruel," Maria said.

"That's high school for you," I said.

Maria shook her head. "And I thought fifth grade was bad."

"Sorry, kid, but things are going to get a lot harder for you in just a year or so," I said. "That's when middle school starts, and middle school might be even worse than high school."

"I thought I told you not to call me 'kid,'" Maria said, pretending to be annoyed. "A kid is a baby goat. And besides, I'll be eleven in a few months. That's basically a preteen, and teenagers are almost adults."

"The way some of them act would lead you to think otherwise," I said.

"Why do you say 'them' and not 'us?'" Maria asked. "You're a teenager, too."

I sighed. "I know."

Maria imitated me, sighing much more dramatically, I was sure, than I had actually.

"I know," she repeated in an airy voice, through with plenty more of the theatrical arm waving she was fond of.

She made her voice normal once more. "So why're you sighing dramatically about being a teenager, anyway? Is it really that bad?"

"You're calling me dramatic?" I asked.

"Where do you think I learned it from?" Maria asked.

"Me?" I guessed.

Maria rolled her eyes. "Yes, you, Stella. You're my big sister. Whatever you do, I can't help but notice."

"That's kind of a scary thought," I said. "You notice everything I do, even the things I'm not proud of. You might pick up some bad habit from me, and eventually become trapped in an endless cycle that you can't break away from. Then that would be all my fault, and-"

"See what I mean?" Maria asked, cutting me off. "That was pretty dramatic. But seriously, what bad habits? You get all A's on every single report card."

"While that may be true," I acknowledged, "I'm far from perfect, all right?"

"I know," Maria said. "No one's perfect. But seriously, even if you think that most other teenagers don't behave very well, I want to be like you when I'm one."