Read How Tía Lola Ended Up Starting Over for Free Online

altogether.
    “Remember, lights out promptly tonight. Now that you’re a big girl, you’re going to have to be a little better about getting yourself out to the bus on time.”
    The hard work of being a double-digit tween has begun.

    Just as Juanita is finishing her homework, the phone rings. She’s already halfway down the stairs when she hears her mother saying, “Let me see if she’s available.” It’s as if Juanita is the president of a company who needs a secretary to schedule her phone conversations.
    Mami has walked the phone out of the kitchen, covering the mouthpiece. “It’s Ming,” she says, and then unbelievably mouths, “Are you done with your homework?”
    “Wow, that’s horrible!” Ming commiserates when Juanita catches her up on what’s been happening since she turned ten. “It sounds like a prison up there.” Ming is nothing if not sympathetic. But sometimes her friend’s sympathy makes Juanita feel even worse. “If my parents treated me like that, I’d—I don’t know—I’d run away from home.”
    That is a great idea! Juanita will run away from home. That’ll make Mami realize she can’t be so hard on a new ten-year-old. “But where can I go?”
    “You can come to our apartment. I’ll hide you in my room. I’ll bring you food from the table. When my parents go to work, you can come out and meet me at school.”
    As improbable as the plan sounds at first, it starts seeming possible the more Ming talks. All together, Juanita got just over a hundred dollars in cash for her birthday. That should cover a one-way bus ticket to New York City. Of course, once Juanita is on that bus, roaring away down the highways of her imagination, the plan becomes a little fuzzier and worrisome. How will Juanita get from the bus station to Ming’s apartment? How will Ming let her in without her parents knowing?
    After she hangs up, and Ming is no longer cheeringher on, Juanita begins to get cold feet. She can’t help remembering how her brother got mugged last spring when they were visiting Papi, and Miguel took off on his own to Madison Square Garden.
    That night, as Tía Lola is tucking her in, Juanita pours out her heart to her aunt. Tía Lola doesn’t lecture Juanita about how, now that she is ten, she shouldn’t entertain such juvenile ideas. In fact, Tía Lola totally understands. “I think everybody should run away at least once in their lives, preferably when they are young and have a lot of energy. Running away takes a lot of energy, you know?”
    Juanita wouldn’t know, but she nods.
    “You can get very homesick, too.” Tía Lola scrunches up her face, thinking really hard. “Hmmm. Let’s see. How can we have the best parts of running away—the freedom, the adventures, the excitement—without the bad parts: the danger, the homesickness, no one to get our meals or tuck us in at night?”
    Juanita is sure glad she confided in her aunt. Running away sounds a lot more complicated than Juanita first thought. “Maybe I can run away somewhere close by, so I can come home whenever I want. What do you think, Tía Lola?”
    Tía Lola thinks this is a brilliant solution. “And I have just the place for you to run away to.”
    “You do?”
    “Tía Lola’s B&B!” Her aunt enumerates all the pluses of this plan: the B&B is empty during the week; Juanita already knows the colonel and the Swords, so she won’t have to break important rules, like not talking to strangers;meals will be provided; she won’t have to miss school and end up flunking fourth grade.
    Juanita already feels a lot better about this revised plan. But what about Ming? “She’ll be so disappointed.”
    “I’m sure Ming is having second thoughts, too,” Tía Lola guesses. “I think it’s just that she misses you so much, she’ll do anything to get to see you.”
    Juanita misses Ming, too, but she doesn’t want to have to run away to New York to get to see her. It’d be so fun if Ming came here instead, and