Glasses Are Cool

Kaya sat at the kitchen table, eating her cereal very slowly. She poked at the little O's with her spoon, pushing them around like tiny boats in a milk sea.

"Kaya-bear, you're going to miss the bus," her mom said, setting a juice box next to her bowl.

Kaya didn't answer. She just looked at the thing sitting on the table next to her juice box. Her glasses. They were purple with little silver stars on the sides, and they were only three days old, and she did NOT want to put them on.

Day one had been okay because it was a Saturday and she only wore them at home. Day two had been a Sunday, same thing. But today was Monday, and Monday meant school, and school meant everyone would see them.

"What if people laugh?" Kaya whispered.

Her mom knelt down beside her. "What if they don't?"

Kaya thought about that. Then she picked up the glasses, slid them onto her face, and watched the whole kitchen go sharp and bright, like someone had wiped a foggy window clean. She could see the tiny words on the cereal box from all the way across the table. She could see the little ladybug magnet on the refrigerator that she'd always thought was just a red dot.

"Whoa," she said quietly. But then she remembered: school. She dropped the amazement right off her face and went back to frowning.

On the bus, Kaya chose the seat in the very back corner and pressed her forehead against the window. She could see every single leaf on the trees going past. Every. Single. One. Before glasses, trees had just been big green blobs on brown sticks. Now they were — well, they were beautiful.

But she wasn't going to think about that right now.

When the bus stopped at school, Kaya pulled her hood up over her head, tucked her chin down, and walked as fast as she could to Room 12.

She slid into her seat — back row, last desk on the right — and hunched her shoulders up to her ears. Maybe if she made herself small enough, no one would notice.

"Hey, Kaya!" said her friend Amara, spinning around in the seat in front of her. "Oh! You got glasses!"

Kaya's stomach flipped. "Yeah," she mumbled.

"They're PURPLE," Amara said, like purple was the greatest thing ever invented.

"Yeah," Kaya said again, quieter.

Amara opened her mouth to say something else, but then Ms. Reeves started talking, and Amara had to turn back around.

Kaya let out a long breath. Okay. One person had noticed. It was fine. It was fine.

Then something happened.

Ms. Reeves turned to the whiteboard and started writing the morning math problems, the way she did every single day. And every single day before today, Kaya would squint and lean forward and try SO hard to read those numbers. Sometimes she'd copy what the kid next to her was writing. Sometimes she'd just guess.

But today?

Today, from the very last seat in the very back row, Kaya read every number like it was floating right in front of her nose.

Thirty-seven plus forty-five.

She could see it. She could actually SEE it.

Her pencil started moving before she even thought about it. Thirty-seven plus forty-five. She carried the one. Eighty-two. She looked up at the board again. The next problem was already there.

Sixty-three minus twenty-eight.

She could read it instantly. No squinting. No leaning. No guessing.

Kaya's pencil flew across the paper. She finished the first problem, the second, the third, the fourth, and the fifth. She finished before Amara. She finished before everyone.

She set her pencil down and stared at her paper. Every answer, right there. Written by her. From the back of the room.

A little fizzy feeling started in her chest, like she'd swallowed a bubble.

At reading time, Ms. Reeves projected a poem on the big screen at the front of the room. Kaya read along with the class — out loud, with everybody, not mumbling pretend-words a half second behind like she usually did. Her voice rang out clear and right on time.

Ms. Reeves smiled at her. Not a big-deal smile. Just a small, warm, I-hear-you smile.

The fizzy feeling got bigger.

At lunch, Kaya sat with Amara and their friend DeShawn. She had almost forgotten about the glasses, which was funny, because they were literally on her face.

"I like the stars," DeShawn said, pointing at the little silver stars on the sides.

"Thanks," Kaya said, and this time it didn't come out like a mumble. It came out like she meant it.

"My cousin has glasses," DeShawn said. "His are red. He says they make him look like a superhero."

"Do they?" Kaya asked.

"No," DeShawn said. "He looks like DeShawn's cousin Marcus with red glasses." He shrugged. "But he likes them."

Kaya laughed — a real laugh, a loud one — and a piece of her sandwich almost fell out of her mouth, which made Amara laugh too, which made DeShawn laugh, which made them all laugh until Kaya's stomach hurt.

After lunch came science, and Ms. Reeves put a big diagram of the water cycle up on the screen. Arrows and labels and tiny drawings of clouds and rain and rivers.

Before glasses, it would have been a blur of blue smudges.

Now Kaya could read every label. Evaporation. Condensation. Precipitation. Collection.

She raised her hand.

"Yes, Kaya?" Ms. Reeves said, looking a little surprised, because Kaya almost never raised her hand.

"Is precipitation the part where it rains back down?"

"That's exactly right," Ms. Reeves said.

Kaya felt the fizzy feeling rise up from her chest into her cheeks, and she smiled — a real, full, no-hiding-it smile.

At recess, a boy named Jordan from the other third-grade class ran past and shouted, "Hey, four-eyes!" and kept running.

Kaya stopped. The fizzy feeling popped, just like that.

Amara scowled. "He's the worst."

DeShawn shook his head. "He called me 'broccoli head' last week because of my haircut. He just says stuff."

Kaya looked across the playground. She could see Jordan all the way over by the far fence, trying to do a cartwheel and falling on his back. She could see him perfectly, even from here.

"I can see him being terrible at cartwheels from all the way over here," Kaya said.

Amara snorted.

"I can count how many times he falls," Kaya added.

"Do it!" DeShawn said.

"One," Kaya said. Jordan flopped again. "Two." Another flop. "Three. Oh — that one looked like it hurt."

They were all laughing again, and the fizzy feeling came back, even fizzier than before, and Kaya decided something right then and there.

She pushed her glasses up on her nose — the way she'd seen her mom do with her reading glasses, the way Ms. Reeves did when she was about to say something important — and she stood up a little straighter.

On the bus ride home, Kaya sat by the window again. But this time she didn't hunch or hide or pull up her hood. She pressed her face close to the glass and watched the world go by in perfect, crystal, magnificent detail.

She could see a hawk sitting on a telephone wire. She could see the numbers on faraway mailboxes. She could see a little kid in a yard three streets over blowing bubbles that caught the sunlight and turned into tiny rainbows.

Tiny rainbows! She'd been missing tiny rainbows this whole time!

When she got home, her mom was waiting at the door.

"So?" her mom said. "How was it?"

Kaya pushed her purple, silver-starred glasses up on her nose and grinned.

"Mom," she said, "did you know that trees have individual leaves?"

Her mom laughed and wrapped her up in a hug.

And Kaya hugged her back, looking over her mom's shoulder at the big oak tree in the backyard — every leaf, every branch, every single piece of bark, clear and crisp and right there — and she thought that the world had never, ever looked so good.