At dinner that night, neither Pedro nor Rosella said a word or seemed the least bit interested in eating.

Instead, the twins each held a book from Mila's room and were trying to read them.

"I can't even pronounce any of these things!" Rosella whined, finally speaking as she was looking into a book about chemistry. "How does anyone expect me to know this?"

"Technically, no one would expect you to even learn from that book until you are at least in the eighth grade." said Tech, who was joining the family that night. After the first one was a disaster and Mila and Tech made up, they decided to give it another try, this time making sure it was strictly the family.

"What about learning this?" Pedro complained, looking in a book on how to speak Latin. "I don't know much about history or languages, but I'm pretty sure no one speaks Latin anymore."

"Rosella, Pedro, the dinner table isn't even the place to be reading." Julieta said.

"Why are you guys trying to learn those things, anyway?" Mila said. "Not that there's anything wrong with learning. I find it amazing you want to learn, but it looks like you're trying to master it all in minutes."

"It's what our teachers want us to do." Rosella said.

"What?" said many family members.

"The teacher kept asking us to answer questions today." Pedro said.

"Like she expected us to know everything." Rosella said. "She asked me to solve a two-digit multiplication problem, and then she said, When Mila was a student, she solved a geometry problem many of the sixth graders kept miscalculating. Or something like that."

"And how am I supposed to know how to make a salt lick?" Pedro said. "I don't even know what that is!"

"They even made us take an IQ test at recess." Rosella said. "I'm not Mila!"

"Rosie-" Mila started.

"Don't talk to me!" Rosella exclaimed. "Why couldn't you be a normal kid?!"

Rosella then started crying and ran upstairs, not bothering to eat anything.

"Rosella!" Bruno cried, going after his daughter.

Pedro hid under his blanket in shame as he walked away from the table.

Mila held her head in her hands.

"How could I not anticipate this would happen?" Mila wondered out loud.

"You didn't do anything wrong." Tech said.

Mila looked at her boyfriend and said, "But my brain is a problem for my siblings, apparently. It's abundantly clear that their teachers' behavior comes from my history of solving complex equations and comprehending and processing new information faster than the average child, displaying more unmistakably when I was the twins' age. And now the teachers are expecting my brother and sister to be as intelligent as I am. They're not exactly child geniuses, but they're not dumb. If anything, they're both smart in their own ways."

"I'm not very smart." Pedro said. "I could barely answer anything in class today."

"Pedro, you're just still learning." Alicia said. "Being book smart isn't for everyone."

"It's true." Tech said. "Some are smart when it comes to creativity, others are smart at being kind, others at physical activity. Some simply have more common sense than others, which I believe your teachers are lacking when it comes to children."

"But I've been trying to read like Mila, and I can barely tell the words apart sometimes. Today, I couldn't read a lot of words the teacher wrote because all the letters looked all mixed up to me. And sometimes I read a word wrong."

That raised a bit of concern in Mila. In the weeks nearing the twins' first day of school, she'd been teaching them to read so it would help them do better in school. But during those lessons, she noticed Pedro seemed to have a lot of trouble learning to read certain words.

Based on an eye exam she gave him, it was made clear to her Pedro's eyes were fine. But based on how decoding words appeared to be a struggle at times, Mila began to wonder if maybe her brother was dyslexic.

It was a possibility. Her Tio Ricardo was found to be dyslexic when he was seven years old, and it sometimes made it hard for him to learn to read music and even simple words in books. According to Alicia, dyslexia had a tendency to hit the second-born children in the family, but in some rare occasions, like this one, it potentially hit the third child.

"Pedro... I think there's actually a chance you might have dyslexia." Mila confessed.

"What's that?" Pedro asked.

"Dyslexia is a very common neurobiological condition in which an individual has difficulty learning to read or interpret words, letters, and other symbols." Tech explained. "But it does not affect general intelligence."

"Putting it more simply," said Mila. "It just means you may take longer than some others to learn how to read and maybe do math sometimes. But it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. Everyone learns differently."

"But it doesn't matter because I'm related to you." Pedro grumbled, getting up from the table. "Why couldn't you be ravage like us?"

"You mean 'average?'" Mila corrected.

Pedro shouted in frustration and ran up to his room.

Mila cringed. Correcting his vocabulary might not have been such a smart decision.

"And that right there is proof that even the smartest people don't always make the smartest decisions." Mila sighed. "Why did I not think something like this would happen?"

"It isn't your fault." said Tech, kissing his girlfriend's hand. "According to my research, most children do tend to have hard first days of school due to personal insecurities."

"That is true." Mila said, standing up. "And one thing I don't need a ton of research to know is that those insecurities will eat away at my poor hermanitos if they don't receive proper treatment soon. And I'm gonna have to have a word with those teachers who apparently don't realize that the chances of a 500 IQ are one in ten million."

And so, Mila excused herself and went to go see Pedro. Her boyfriend, on the other hand, decided to check on Rosella.


Rosella lay face-down on her pillow and cried as some of the instruments in her room began to play sad music. Namely the piano playing "When She Loved Me."

Rosella could recall a time when things were perfect between her and Mila. They had each other through thick and thin. The two of them were as close as sisters could ever hope to be, and all Rosella wanted was to grow up to be something amazing like Mila. She was her role model, but now her teachers and probably everyone else expected her to be exactly like her sister. But that was the problem. She and Mila weren't even twins, and even if they were, they were two different people.

Reading might have come easily for Rosella, but she just wasn't as interested in reading every single book on every subject like Mila was at her age. She was more interested in making music than anything else, and wanted to earn anything that would help her get better at it.

"It will be okay, Rosella." said Bruno, patting his youngest daughter on the back. "It was just your first day."

"What's the use?" Rosella whined. "All my teachers are gonna want me to be Mila. They might as well fail me all the time. I don't wanna go to school ever again!"

"Rosella..." Bruno sighed. He wasn't sure what to do at this point.

Part of Mila being so smart was that she discovered many ways to deal with her own problems at school, and sometimes she tended to unleash any emotions she had on dancing or inventing. So, Bruno didn't have much previous experience with a child struggling in school.

That was when someone else came in.

"Mind if I cut in?" Tech asked.

Bruno wasn't sure what his daughter's boyfriend could do to help, but he was willing to try almost anything at this point. He couldn't stand seeing his little girl so upset, especially after everything else she was forced to endure.

"Pardon me, Rosella?" Tech said gently.

"What do you want?" Rosella said. "I can't answer math problems."

"Well, that's not the kind of question I have for you." Tech said. "My question is, who are you?"

Rosella was confused.

"From what you and your brother described; it sounds like your teachers are mistaking you for smaller versions of Milagro. And while I'm no expert on the science of your world, it's clear to me you're not even a clone. You're a unique individual."

"No one else seems to think so." Rosella said. "I can read good, but history makes me fall asleep. And Mila makes science fun... but I get so confused sometimes."

"Tell me, what's something that you are good at even without your sister's assistance?"

Rosella wiped her tears and thought about it, and she started to realize what her sister's boyfriend was trying to tell her. Mila knew who she was as a person; an intelligent, creative young scientist who was determined to make life easier, safer, and more fun for everyone. Every time she invented something, it had a purpose, and she hardly ever struggled when she created, calculated, and even built the frame and power source for her newest invention.

However, as much as Rosella liked building inventions and learning science with her sister, her real passion was music. Even before she got her gift, Rosella loved music more than any other hobby. As a baby, her favorite toy was her rattle, which she shook like a maraca and sometimes used as a drumstick to make a beat on whatever hard surface she could find. When she got older, she found herself fascinated by different instruments. And on the first time Alicia brought her to dance class, she felt happiness she'd never imagined existed as she danced her heart out and even played the instruments a little after class was over

"Music." Rosella said. "It's my favorite thing to do. Singing, dancing, and playing instruments. All things musical."

"Perhaps that's what you need to show your teachers. If not for them, for yourself. You can show them who Rosella Madrigal really is."

Rosella started to perk up a little, and she hugged the clone in gratitude for comforting her. Tech returned the gesture. Bruno was surprised, but also very grateful. If he couldn't see what made Mila choose him above every man in the Encanto who ever asked her out, he could definitely see now.


Meanwhile, Pedro hid under his blanket on his bed, crying. He tried looking at a book, hoping he could read the words, but he felt his head cramping something awful.

"AGH! Why can't I do this?!" Pedro cried.

"Les Miserables is one of the longest novels with a lot of big words." Mila said. "Any five-year-old dyslexic or not would struggle with it."

Pedro just turned his back and hid under his blanket again.

"Pedro..." Mila started.

"Are you gonna give me some big-worded pep talk?" Pedro grumbled. "Or am I too dumb to even understand small words?"

"Pedro, you are not dumb. You're a very smart little boy. You don't need to be like me or Albert Einstein, Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, or Galileo or any of those geniuses. I'm not even like them. And you don't need to be like me either. You are special in your own way."

"Says who?"

"Says your whole family. And you should believe that too. You know how I know you're smart?"

Pedro still didn't look at his sister, but Mila kept talking anyway.

"Because every time you saw that anyone had a bad dream, you figured out why they were having that dream and how to make it go away. That took not only a creative mind, but a compassionate heart too."

Pedro then started to look at Mila.

"But what about my reading trouble?" Pedro asked.

"Well... first we'll talk to Mami and Papi and your teachers and get you tested. If we find out you're dyslexic, you'll get some extra assistance. Schools tend to take notice when students are struggling, and it's their job to make sure every student is able to learn, even if it takes some longer than others."

"But you never struggle."

"That's not entirely true. Believe it or not, I struggled while learning foreign languages. Especially Japanese and Chinese. Their writings look so similar, I often mixed up certain words and symbols similarly to how your mind sometimes gets letters mixed up. Dyslexia is different for everyone who has it, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. Like your anxiety. Remember when Boba helped you through that?"

Pedro did remember. It was amazing, even to Pedro, that a total stranger was able to get him to open up to other kids when not even his hyper-intelligent sister could. In part, it was because Boba had anxiety himself, and thus held an understanding of what Pedro was going through. And the rest simply because of compassion.

Boba cared for his little sister the way Mila cared for her little twin siblings, and learned a lot about how a little compassion could go a long way. Oftentimes, family were some of the most trusted people in an individual's life, but sometimes there came a moment when someone who was not even related to the one in need had their eyes open enough to know exactly what to do.

"But he can read." Pedro said. "What's the chance he's dyslexic too?"

"Well, one of our friends might be, but like you, they don't say anything because they're afraid they'll be teased and treated differently." Mila shrugged. "But you can trust, hermanito, nothing will change in how much I care about you. And I plan to help you through this. I can't promise I can turn you and Rosella into geniuses, but I can promise I won't let either of you go through school feeling like you aren't smart enough. You're each intelligent in your own way, and you just need the right help to unlock the people inside each of you."

Pedro got up and hugged his big sister, and Mila happily returned the gesture, giving her brother a kiss.

"Tomorrow is a new day, Pedro. We'll walk to school together, and we'll make it a better day."