Mirabel was helping her mother clear out what had once been the kitchen of the Casita when she saw movement out of the corner of her eye, which caused her to stiffen. Approaching her mother was Senora Hernandez, her teacher. It had just dawned on her that today was a school day, and she was totally sluffing, not that she really cared. She never really cared much about school, especially recently.
"Good afternoon Mirabel, I just talked to your primo about his final project, and I'm going to offer you the same deal as I did him. It isn't your fault that your house collapsed…"
"Yes, it is," Mirabel insisted, "Trust me it's my fault, I'm always messing everything up."
Senora Hernandez frowned, this was one of the many things that she wanted to talk to Julieta and Agustin Madrigal about, should they ever take the time to attend one of the several parent-teacher conferences she had scheduled the past six weeks.
No wonder Mirabel had issues when her parents can't even take an hour out of a week to meet with her teacher to hopefully curtail her failing grade, although she could give them a hard pass on missing the one last night. Having your home fall on top of you and your daughter go missing was a perfectly acceptable excuse. She really shouldn't judge.
"Anyway," she continued, "Seeing as your Final Project was inside Casita when it fell, I am willing to average out the project checkpoint grades for your final grade."
Mirabel stared at her, knowing perfectly well that averaging out the grades wouldn't be doing her any favors. Obviously, Senora Hernandez didn't want to talk to her about her grades, or lack of them, in front of so many people."
"Senora Hernandez," Julieta called out, finally looking up to see the school teacher, "What a sur… we totally spaced the parent-teacher conference again, didn't we?"
"I believe looking for Mirabel was more important," Senora Hernandez insisted, that was true, looking for Mirabel was a good excuse, not like the time she didn't show up to the regular parent-teacher conferences because a farmer broke his leg, or the first one that they scheduled because Senora Garcia had gone into labor, or the time after that when Juancho, bless his little soul, got lost in the woods. Yes, her food was needed, but that didn't mean that she needed to be the one handing it out. If she was an actual doctor or midwife that was actually monitoring the situation she would understand that, but she was just there to hand over an arepa.
"I still feel bad about missing our meeting again," Julieta insisted, "Is there any way we can reschedule… again?"
"Well, considering that school's been canceled for the day, I don't have a mountain of work to do, so I'm available any time tonight. How about seven that will give us a chance to get cleaned up and a bite to eat?"
"Great, I promise you, I will be there, this time I can guarantee that I'll be there. I can't really help in emergencies at the moment now can I?"
"No, you can't."
…
"I am so dead," Mirabel muttered as she watched her parents leave for the parent-teacher conference.
"Que?" Isabela asked, giving her a concerned look.
"It's nothing, really, I just… my grades aren't the best," Mirabel confessed, leaning against the wall and sinking to the ground.
"What are you talking about?"
Mirabel didn't answer as Isabela joined her on the floor.
"You know, I wasn't that great at school either when I was your age, Abuela hired a tutor for me."
"Yeah, well, Science is hard, Math is gibberish, and I need to get full marks on my final project if I'm going to be able to pass English. Which would require a miracle, by the way."
"Camilo told me that your teacher was willing to average out the project checkpoints as your final grade?"
"I'm not good at math, but the ninety-five I got on my one isn't going to compensate for the three zeros I also got."
"How many checkpoints were there?"
"Six," Mirabel confessed, "the other two grades aren't that good either."
Isabela nodded, placing an arm around Mirabel, "Maybe Senora Hernandez will allow you to redo them."
"Yeah, maybe next year," Mirabel said, rolling her eyes at her sister, "Face it, there is nothing that we can do about this."
"You know that's what I said about marrying Mariano," Isabela said, "And the wedding's off, in case you haven't heard."
"Yeah, but this is different, there is no way that we can get me a passing grade."
"Well, I had Senora Hernandez at your age, and I happen to know that you are allowed to redo project checkpoints as often as you want until the final project is due, so you still have, what a week and a half?"
"Yeah, I guess," Mirabel said, slowly, "But the problem is… the final project is an autobiography. One of the checkpoints I'm missing is a collage of pictures of me growing up, and well, there aren't any."
"What? That doesn't make sense, Abuela loves taking pictures, she takes hundreds at all of our birthday parties. Or any major milestone, Dolores and I were late on our first day of school because Abuela took so many pictures."
"I'm lucky if I'm even included in a family portrait," Mirabel pointed out.
"What do you mean, of course, you're included in pictures."
"You guys snapped the last one before I could get across the room, you didn't even notice I wasn't there."
"Come on, I'm sure that you're exaggerating, and there have to be others who don't have many pictures of them just floating around for them to use. What did they do?"
"I don't know. I never thought of that."
"Okay that's one zero explained, and all I can say to that is talk to Senora Hernandez about it, what are the others?"
"I needed to interview three family members about what I was like when I was little, but… everyone was too busy, they didn't have time to answer my questions and Abuela grounded me for disturbing Mama while she was trying to work."
"Okay, that's harsh, but unfortunately I believe you," Isabela said, "What's the last zero?"
"A three thousand word short story about the best day of my life so far," Mirabel said, "I had a multitude of candidates for the Worst day, but the best day, there were no volunteers. Except for that time when I was seven when I went a full day without being yelled at, called names, or beat up, and that was only because I was stuck in the nursery with the flu. I don't think that should count."
Isabela let out a whistle, "You have a very low standard on what is required for a Best Day."
"Thanks," Mira muttered.
"That really wasn't a compliment," Isabela insisted, "What's your next lowest grade?"
"Ugg, thirty percent on a 'Explain your relationship with the other members of your family essay,' I had to write a couple of paragraphs on what I like to do with each member of my family."
"That doesn't sound that hard."
"Oh yeah? You tell me, what do we like to do together?"
Isabela opened her mouth before closing it, "Okay I see your point."
"Face it, I would have been grounded for distracting anybody in this family if they decided that they wanted to spend time with the Reject."
"You shouldn't call yourself that."
"Why not? You called me that for three years before Mama threatened to spank you in the middle of the town square."
"Okay, I see your point," Isabela said slowly, "So what's the next checkpoint?"
"A short story about the worst day of my life, I got a sixty-three on it."
"What did you write about?"
"My gift ceremony, only I didn't quite make the minimum word count and Senora Hernandez said that I needed to add more details."
"And you got a ninety-five on the last checkpoint right?"
"Yeah, it was a questionnaire, 'All about me and my family,' I believe that it was just spelling mistakes on that one," Mirabel insisted, "Senora Hernandez never did give that one back to me."
"Mainly because she was concerned that you got your own birthdate wrong," a new voice said as Julieta slid down to sit on her other side of her, "Why didn't you tell us that you were struggling in school?"
"I didn't want to distract you," Mirabel insisted, "You have an important job in the Encanto, I can't come to you with every single little problem."
"Who told you that you couldn't come to me for help?"
Mirabel looked up, glancing across the church to where Abuela was busy arguing with Bruno about something, before looking down at her lap again.
"Three guesses," Isabela said, her eyes following Mirabel's, "First two don't count."
"Mama?" Julieta asked, "Why would…. Actually, that makes sense, but it doesn't explain the missing assignments."
"Actually it kind of does," Isabela said, draping an arm around her hermanita's shoulders, "I mean Abuela was the one that grounded Mirabel when she bothered you at your stand when she was trying to interview you about her early life, which was part of her assignment."
Julieta frowned, she kind of remembered that Mirabel had tried talking to her while she was busy and her mama had shown up, but she thought that she was helping Mirabel not punishing her.
"Why didn't you tell Abuela that you needed help, or that you needed to interview me?"
"That would actually require her to listen to me," Mirabel pointed out, "Which would be a major miracle."
Julieta ran a hand over her face tiredly, "Just one more thing before I go blow up on your Abuela. How in the world did you get your own birthday wrong?"