René Peña-Govea’s ‘Estela, Undrowning’ First Chapter Mixes Poetry and Prose for a Stunning Debut

Welcome to “First Chapters,” Cosmo’s column where we shine a spotlight on debut authors who you are definitely going to be obsessed with. And what better way for you to get to know them and their books than with an excerpt of their new release. This round, we’re highlighting René Peña-Govea’s Estella, Undrowning, a new YA novel that brings together the musician-turn-author’s incredible strengths together as she mixes poetry and prose to tell the story of a young woman who finds herself in the ultimate turning point in her life. Struggling with the decision to fight back or to just try to survive, Estela must decide whether or not her voice can change it all for good. Here’s some more info from Quill Tree Books:

In her raw and resonant debut novel, René Peña-Govea seamlessly interweaves prose and poetry to uplift the power of language, the courage to fight injustice, and the complex beauty of finding your people—perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X and Carolina Ixta’s Shut Up, This is Serious.

Estela Morales is one of the only Latinas who tested into San Francisco’s most exclusive public high school. In her senior year, Estela just wants to keep her head down, eke out a passing grade from her racist Spanish teacher, and get into her dream college.

But after placing second in the Latiné Heritage Poetry Contest behind a non-Latino student, Estela is thrust into citywide debates about merit, identity, and diversity.

Things only get messier when her family is threatened with eviction. As Estela’s friends organize against bigotry and her landlady increases the pressure, Estela is suffocating and finds release only in poetry and in a breathless new romance. When tensions finally reach their breaking point, Estela must find a way to undrown the community she loves—and herself.

Ready to see how René brings it all together! Check out an exclusive excerpt below! Just make sure to pre-order Estela, Undrowning before it’s release on March 3, 2026!

Desahogar, a direct translation says to vent, but the literal meaning is to undrown [ . . . ] Letting go of secrets and burdens, unraveling our papelitos guardados [ . . . ]

May we no longer drown from the memories of pain left unsaid.

—David Luis Glisch-Sánchez and Nic Rodríguez-Villafañe, Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice

Chapter One

Monday, August 19

You can’t stay here, you don’t belong, you have to get out, says the letter in the envelope.

Of course, I can’t know for sure, because I didn’t actually read it.

After I slid the envelope under my parents’ bedroom door, I had four minutes to run for this bus, which now sails across 19th Avenue straight into a fog bank. My best friend, Jeli, leans into the aisle to push the stop request button and I realize that I’ve made a mistake. Yes, it’s the first day of senior year, and no, I can’t be late. Still, I should have opened the letter.

I could have made a plan.

Instead, my mind skitters between words, appraising them. My fingers itch for my notebook, primed to purge this feeling.

Destitution, ruination, defenestration,

and the most precise:

eviction.

But the hypothetical words I imagine

in the letter

win;

they pound in my chest:

GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!

I turn to Jeli, but she just glances at her window reflection and sets her face into the tight royal expression she wears at school—her armor.

So, I decide: If I don’t speak this into existence, it might disappear.

Manifesting and shit.

As soon as we get off and the bus swooshes away, the lacy fog wraps its fingers around my neck, and I realize my second mistake. In my rush, I left my puff jacket on my bed. And now, shivering, I face these long gray blocks shrouded in the moisture dreamed up by the Pacific Ocean. Not that I’m a clueless tourist thinking August is the perfect time to show hella skin in San Francisco. It’s more that Jeli and I are southeast Frisco girls, built for basking in the sunshine and hitting up Mitchell’s for macapuno ice cream. We’re not made for this foggy west side of the City, with its flat grid of “safe” numbered avenues. Their cold emptiness feels hostile, and we forget about this place over the summer.

“Steli,” Jeli asks, pulling up her hood, “you good?”

“I just forgot how shitty it was over here,” I say, looping my arm through hers.

“I sure didn’t. I specifically bought this jacket for this raggedy-ass neighborhood.”

“Then you’re my heater,” I say, snuggling up to her.

“Always,” she agrees. “De por vida.” She adjusts her long-legged gait so we’re walking in lockstep. When I don’t say anything else, she studies me, swirling her purple braids. “You sure you’re OK?”

I nod, banishing thoughts of the possible eviction letter.

Frost,

our school,

is solid, chalky,

inescapable:

the opposite of a mirage in an oasis

even though we chose this school,

this vaunted gladiators’ arena

whose size and prestige

multiply its possibilities:

learn Latin or botany

join dragon-boating or fencing,

but you’d better

stand up straight,

flatten your edges

get on your marks;

you’ll have to compete with thousands

of the quickest, sharpest kids.

We’ve done it, but it’s exhausting;

there is no time for breaks,

no feather pillow awaiting you,

just the hard steel of high expectations,

the vertiginous fall from grace

if you lose focus.

One more year,

so Jeli and I take the back way up to Frost,

prolonging our time together,

approaching the giant while it’s sleeping,

snatching ourselves

a small advantage

before battle.

We know

we’ll enter classrooms

forty kids deep

and it will feel like

wading through peanut butter

wearing shoes a size too big.

I snap my mind back from the letter and my cozy room at the bottom of McLaren Park to these windswept avenues and my four AP classes. I have to focus on those instead of on the poems I’m composing in my head. This year, I can’t let anything knock me off the tiny platform where I’m balancing precariously with the top 10 percent of this extra-extra class in this extra-extra school. UC Berkeley,Cal, with its yellow letters blazing bright and painfully in my dreams, has an acceptance rate in the low double digits. One B and they’ll probably toss my application in the trash. Then, Jeli will go to our dream school, and I’ll be left behind. Something pinches my back, like my future self is shoving me forward.

We pass the empty tennis courts, the garden, the soccer fields. In a patch of sun-bleached grass, three short Latinos I don’t know and a slightly taller Asian guy juggle a soccer ball. Tell me why they brought a ball with them on the first day of school. . . .

The Asian guy looks familiar, but I’ve never had any classes with him. He’s kind of cute, but it could be that he moves with lanky grace, sending the ball with the precise amount of force to another waiting limb. The Latinos are probably lotts—juniors or sophomores who got into Frost via the lottery.

“Hey!” Jeli says, and the Asian boy grins, but keeps bouncing the ball against his thigh. He knees it sky-high, which gives him just enough time to side-hug Jeli before the ball plummets back down. When it thumps his leg, he smirks at me like I have food on my face or something. Conclusion: He’s good-looking enough but has a grimy attitude.

“See you later,” Jeli sings.

“Who was that?” I ask, picking at my face.

“El rey chino,” she says. “I mean, Rogelio Chang. He’s a character.”

“With a nickname like that, say less,” I say. “Do I have muffin crumbs on me?”

“Girl, you look fine as hell; stop tripping.”

She’s exaggerating, but I love her for it. A tiny flicker of heat glows in my chest as we snake around the flagpole where Russians in heavy eyeliner riffle through gold-chained purses. At least I get to see Jeli every day now, one perk of coming back to school.

“Senior year!” Jeli says, and raises her fists weakly in mock excitement. I can tell she’s fortifying both of us for our grand lawn entrance just as “Oh my Goddd, bitches, get over here!” hits our eardrums.

Madison’s a rich white girl who talks with the bright pointiness of a black-and-white movie baddie. She’s OK, but she’s coincidentally treated Jeli chummier ever since Jeli joined her on the varsity gymnastics team. And I always feel like Madison’s skating on the surface. Only once, when, at the exact same time, we screamed into the tunnel down by the abandoned pools of Sutro Baths at Lands End, did I glimpse something deeper. Maybe just the exhilaration of being out late at the edge of the world, but maybe some private sadness.

“New and improved Steli and Jeli,” Madison says, crunching us in a hug.

“Hey!” I say, trying to muster excitement as I spit out strands of her wispy corn-silk hair.

I scan the rest of the lawn crew, a group of mostly white kids who populate our AP and honors classes, sprinkled with stoners and skaters who haven’t yet flunked out of ultra-exclusive Frost.

These are basically our secondary friends—seniors who commandeer the sloping lawn in front of the school, whose parties we go to, whose classes we’re in. We’ve drunk their liquor at their impeccable houses and kicked it with them at the beach or the mall for three years, but they’ve never been to our side of town. And we’ve never suggested it.

Our real-deal homegirl, Chloe, bounds over to Jeli and me. “Finally! I thought you guys were gonna be late!”

She’s just as unjustifiably pumped as she is every first day of school, which is part of Chloe Ma’s incandescent charm. Jeli and I were juiced when we saw that Estela Morales and Anjelique Martínez were assigned alphabetically adjacent seats in our ninth-grade English class. But when the girl in front of us in the alphabet, Chloe (Ma), jumped up to read her poem, “Not Your China Doll,” bright with feeling, Jeli met my gaze urgently. Chloe would have to join our sisterhood, our eyes agreed. She’s now the third leg of our triangle, though Jeli and I still read each other’s thoughts better.

“I just wish it were English already,” I say, scanning my schedule on my phone. “Instead, I have Spanish. Which, ugh! I don’t have it with aaaanyone.”

“Have fun with the lotts,” quips Madison, jutting her chin toward the bottom of the lawn. “There are so many of them,” she adds disdainfully.

‘Estela, Undrowning’ by René Peña-Govea

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I stay silent. Is Madison assuming the lotts are in Spanish class? Because they are more likely to be Latino? Does she think I’m like them? I tested in, just like her, just like all the other seniors. The lotts, on the other hand, got in through the lottery, in the period when the school board decided that a public school requiring test scores was unfair. That window lasted only two years, then the new school board reversed that decision, and we reverted right back to testing last year. The freshmen and seniors had to be at the top of our classes in middle school, whereas the sophomore and junior classes got in by dumb luck. Rumor has it they can barely read at grade level. Ever since they started coming here, I’ve been looking over my shoulder, certain that some people think I’m a lott. The lotts do look like me—they’re more Black and brown—whereas freshmen and seniors are more white, Asian, or half white and half Asian.

I know I’m worthy because I tested in. But I still have to overhear the slick comments people make about the lotts. How they’ve conned their way into the best public school in the city, all the more precious because it’s public and free. Everyone knows Frost is the subject of court cases and tugs-of-war and ugly city politics. So, it’s annoying that the lotts got into Frost without truly deserving it. It’s also tiring to have to fend off the suspicion that people are somehow talking about me. It gives me a headache that sneaks all the way down to my chest. The best defense is an offense, though, right? A deflection.

“It’s like a big lott sandwich this year,” I think out loud, picturing the freshman through senior classes smooshed into a Dutch crunch roll.

Jeli looks at me curiously, but Madison laughs.

“Lott sandwich!” she repeats breathlessly, bumping my knuckles.

Chloe clears her throat. “We should probably retire that phrase, though, right? It’s kind of derogatory.”

I swallow. Chloe’s not afraid to call anyone out, even a friend. But I didn’t say anything egregious. “I’m just being descriptive,” I say. “They got in through the lottery, right? We had to test in.”

“And it shows,” Madison says, gesturing toward a pair of slender Black girls performing an elaborate dance for their phones. Like she and her gymnastics girlies don’t do the exact same thing.

Jeli sighs and claps me on the back. I know she didn’t love Madison’s little jab, but she’ll let it go. Maybe she needs a friend on varsity. Maybe she thinks Madison can be that friend even if she’s sometimes questionable. But I just hope Jeli doesn’t think I was being bitchy.

“See you at lunch,” Jeli says to us, and walks back down the path toward her class.

I still feel off-kilter, like I’m wearing those clown shoes, like I don’t know my destination or how to find it. At least the mysterious letter is dissolving into a soft sludge. I walk away from Chloe and Madison toward the big red double doors and brace myself for my first class.

“Señor” Kirkland,

a fossilized white man,

folds himself over his podium, bending at the waist.

My last Spanish class ever

and I’m stuck with this dinosaur

(serves me right for putting it off), but

I couldn’t make myself start Spanish freshman year,

not while trying to prove

I could tread water in all my other classes.

I sure as hell didn’t need the “How does this Latina not know Spanish?” looks

on top of the

“How did this Latina get into this school?” scrutiny,

and I can understand Spanish,

roll my r’s,

soften my vowels

enough not to sound like a gringa,

but Abuelita died when I was seven

and no one spoke Spanish to me after that.

Now, when I try to speak Spanish,

I stutter.

I survive classes by doing extra in parts I don’t speak,

writing three paragraphs instead of one.

I’m not a back-of-the-class kid,

but for Spanish I’ll make an exception.

Except . . . all the prime wall seats are taken, including the one occupied by a smirking-ass, smug-ass, kinda cute Rogelio Chang. He’s poured into the corner behind a king-sized desk that’s double the size of the others. Like he’s the fucking teacher or something.

I realize my hands are on my face, brushing away invisible crumbs, before I abruptly turn away from him. I hate that I’m even wondering how he thinks I look. This class is gonna suck so hard. I take a seat as far back as I can, by an acned white guy named Bradley Mason. He sports a light brown crew cut and is so uptight that he barks at anyone who calls him Brad by mistake. I once heard him say that he took Spanish in middle school only because French was harder and who needs foreign languages anyway, when most of the world speaks English. The implication, of course, was that anyone worth speaking to would speak English.

Sr. Kirkland’s runaway eyebrows furrow and his nasally voice weasels into my ears. He swears that we will master the subjunctive and learn to speak like we’re from Castilla–La Mancha (Spain). The classroom seems to shrink, Alice in Wonderland walls warping inward. This year, Sr. Kirkland says, pounding his podium for emphasis, we will refine and perfect our language. He will not give extra points for participation or cultural projects like some people.

“Don’t even think of making me quesadillas to score brownie points,” he says, sneering.

His essays will be strictly scored, and we will have to give weekly two-minute speeches, with points deducted for grammatical errors. Each pound of his fist pulverizes my dreams of UC Berkeley into the ground.

I can’t let this class tank me.

“O, por cierto, os presento a mi asistente, Rogelio,” Kirkland says, sweeping his hand toward the kingly desk and its occupant.

Rogelio ducks his head in greeting. Fan-fucking-tastic. Now I’ll have Mr. Pompous Teacher’s Assistant witnessing my worst nightmare of a class. How does someone get anointed “El rey chino” anyway? “The Chinese King” . . . the fuck?

“Vale, voy a evaluar vuestra preparación para esta clase.” Sr. Kirkland literally licks his lips with glee as he passes out our “assessment,” which any idiot knows is really a pop quiz. Conjugate the verb “ser” for all subject pronouns in the following tenses: present indicative, preterit, imperfect, and past perfect. My stomach drops. Was my teacher last year, Ms. Mabilog, really that easy? I can probably come up with some of these conjugations, but what even is “past perfect”? Worse, Kirkland is asking us for the most basic of verbs: “to be,” so I’ll look like such a dumbass if I falter. It seems like the whole class, including Bradley, immediately starts writing, and a maroon hatred spreads through my torso. How does Abuelita’s Spanish shrivel to a worthless husk in front of “Señor” Kirkland? How did going to schools in the Avenues, famous for drilling and memorization, let my classmates prove they know more Spanish than me, who practically lives on Calle 24?

I sneak a glance at Rogelio, but he’s looking out the window, tapping a pencil against his knuckle.

“Parad de escribir y devolved vuestros exámenes,” rasps Sr. Kirkland.

I bristle. Kirkland’s use of the Spanish used in Spain, with “vosotros,” announces in every single sentence, You don’t belong here, Chicanita. Apparently, he likes to limit his grading duties, because he tells us to switch quizzes with a partner. I hand mine to Bradley, a shaky hilarity welling up inside me. Kirkland bleats out the answers and I scratch a check mark by each of Bradley’s responses. At the end of the recitation, Bradley tosses back my quiz with a 15/24 circled. I’ve missed every single vosotros and skipped past perfect altogether.

“Vale,” says Kirkland again, “empezaremos nuestros discursos breves.” Oh, hell no! He’s starting our impromptu speeches today, on the first day of school? He shuffles some cards with our names printed on them. Sadistic. This time he licks his finger to select the fateful card.

“Morales, Estela.” He motions upward with his yellow-nailed fingers. He wants me to stand? I rise unsteadily, not sure what to do with my hands. What the hell am I supposed to talk about?

“El tema de hoy,” he intones like a movie God, “es tu formación y tus metas para el dominio del castellano.”

“¿Mi formación?” I repeat. Formation? For a moment I am calmed by the image of Beyoncé and all her dancers synchronizing their steps.

“Sí, tu educación formal o informal en la lengua castellana,” he says indulgently.

Oh, my background? In Spanish. I’m gonna look like a fucking idiot saying my family speaks Spanish after I failed that quiz. I’ve heard that Spanish teachers hate heritage speakers because they think we’re here for an easy A. But am I even a heritage speaker if my parents don’t speak Spanish to me? My dad would get a better grade in AP English than in this stupid class.

“Oh, um,” I say.

Kirkland scribbles something on his pad and stares back at me. He’s not gonna throw me a lifeline. He’s gonna sit there for the whole two minutes and watch me drown.

“Soy Chicana,” I say questioningly, because I’m not sure if that counts as my formation. “Mi abuela habló español, castellano, conmigo, pero ella es muerta.” My grandma used to put “ito” and “ita” at the end of everything, cute-ifying her life. Spanish felt comforting when Abuelita asked if I wanted to drink a “tecito,” or eat a “panecito.” It was nothing like scouring my mind for more Spanish words to summon in this cold and terrifying classroom.

I continue slowly.“Tomé la clase de Ms. Mabilog.” Am I imagining it, or is Kirkland grimacing? Is he throwing shade on his colleague whose class I just mentioned?

“Quiero pasar este clase,” I add, because passing this class is really my only goal for Spanish. My legs quake but Kirkland beams me with his death stare. My dry throat refuses to cough up another word.

I open my mouth but now the air won’t go in. My ribs are somehow too small for my lungs. I try to send signals to my classmates, but they look down dutifully at their desks. Only Rogelio is staring at me, but when I look at him, expecting a jeer, I see something worse: pity.

Kirkland says, “Vale” again, and it echoes me down into that Lands End cave with the tide coming in. “Vale” comes down like a gavel, like an unfavorable decision has been made about my Spanish. I cringe, anticipating the verdict.

Now Kirkland’s giving me feedback. Apparently, he scribbled everything down on his pad and I’m supposed to absorb his advice like an amoeba and become fluent: “Hablaba” versus “habló,” because surely, Abuelita spoke more than once to me in Spanish? He chortles, then rearranges his face when he remembers my grandma is dead. But does that stop him from mentioning that “falleció” is the more respectful way of saying “died,” that “clase” is feminine, or even that native speakers say “eh” instead of “um”? Hell to the no. I feel his words crawling on me like ants. I’m still flailing. I can’t get a deep breath.

Mercifully, the bell rings, and I shove my binder into my backpack and lurch out of the classroom.

But I still can’t breathe.

Kids push around me like a stream around a rock and I start to panic. If I can’t get air in, how am I supposed to make it to my next class? What the hell is wrong with me?

I make myself smaller, lowering myself against a locker to concentrate. Can’t anyone see I’m about to die?

A shadow passes. “Steli?”

But if I can’t breathe, how am I going to talk?

Jeli grabs my elbows and pulls me into the landing by the stairs, where there’s more room. Weak light pours in through the window, but there’s still not enough air.

Jeli doesn’t say anything else, just comes so close that all I see are her high cheekbones and luminous eyes. She places her hands on my arms, rubbing upward as she breathes in through her nose. Then she rubs down and breathes out through her mouth. Students keep coming down the stairs, fewer now, but more quickly, since the late bell is about to ring. Chloe hops down the stairs toward our class on the ground floor but I know Jeli’s next class is in the Arts building, and she probably has to grab some stuff from her locker, and it’s the first day of school, and the letter is still burning a hole in my brain, and the late bell rings and my chest constricts, but Jeli tightens her grip.

She keeps breathing with me. For me.

Chloe comes closer and moves her hand in small warm circles on my back. Soon, the hallway is empty and my ribs loosen. I start breathing more deeply.

“What’s going on?” Jeli asks in a low, slow voice. She must have learned those calming techniques from watching her mom, Ms. Angelina, work with her pregnant doula clients.

I shake my head, unwilling to spill the tea, Kirkland’s ant words, the letter. I focus on not passing out.

“Steli?” Chloe asks.

“I’m fine,” I squeak, even though I’m not. “I just had a bad Spanish class, and my family got a letter from Mrs. Hawkins’s daughter. She may be kicking us out.”

Jeli looks at me fiercely. “Oh, Steli.”

And I can’t bear it. If I lean into her concern, if I sense its full weight, I will collapse.

“You’re gonna be late,” I say quickly. “Let’s talk about it later.”

“I’m already late.”

But I shake my head, taking more air in. I’m starting to become a person again instead of a waterless fish.

“I didn’t think you had asthma . . .” Jeli says doubtfully.

“I don’t,” I say.

Chloe shoots Jeli a wary look.

“Then, girl, that was most likely a panic attack. Do you want to go to Wellness or something?” Jeli asks.

“Jeli, I’m breathing fine now. I don’t need to go to the Wellness Center to sit in their mood lighting and eat their little snacks on the first day of school. I’m fine.”

Jeli gives me one more skeptical look and says to Chloe, “Keep an eye on her.”

To me she says, “We’ll talk later.”

Ms. Jannecky raises her eyebrows when we walk into AP Environmental Science (APES) but doesn’t say anything. Chloe elbows me, excited about the syllabus topics, and I try to focus on my adorable friend, who actually gets hyped on the first day over “Our Furry Friends: Bees” and “Banning Straws or Toppling Capitalism: The False Dichotomy.”

Not on my breath.

It was just

first-day jitters,

damn fucking Spanish class,

but I handled it

like I always handle the hard days here.

Jeli walked me through it

but I can learn to do it myself,

the brushing of arms

because

I’ve gotten through three long years in this place.

So, whatever it is,

the thing that stole my breath,

It’s

Not

Going

To

Derail me

from my future,

the picture-perfect campus

edged with gingko trees,

from the calm spacious classrooms where

I’ll know I’ve made it;

I’ll finally be

in college,

safe, admitted, accepted.

I won’t let it,

whatever it is,

stop me.

It can’t.

It won’t.

Jeli sends me a whole line of cookie emojis right before lunch. I walk through the long gray breezeway on the edge of the courtyard full of picnic tables, and into the small corner of the cafeteria where the beanery is located. The beanery, which sells food rather than offering free lunch, probably sold actual beans when the school first opened a hundred and fifty years ago. But now it slings Jeli’s favorite comfort food, these cookies that I swear should be spelled coooookies for their size.

“Hurry!” Jeli urges, beckoning me from the head of the line.

“OK, OK,” I say when I sneak in behind her.

“One or two?” she asks, all business. “Yo te invito.”

“I’m good with one. Ms. Angelina’s kale smoothie didn’t fill you up?”

Jeli rolls her eyes in answer and counts out crisp dollar bills. “You’d never know we live in a quote unquote food desert the way the produce be flowing at my house,” she says. “I know I should be grateful for my mom’s healthy breakfasts, and I am, I am. But girl, I missed these. My preciouusss,” she coos, waggling her fingers toward the cookies.

The cafeteria lady hands us giant cookies, which drape over translucent squares of wax paper. We walk back to the lawn to eat our cookies and sink into the grass, licking traces of melted chocolate from our fingers.

“Soooo, how are you?” Jeli asks me, carefully wiping the corners of her mouth.

“I’m really fine now.” I almost convince myself, but I’m not convincing Jeli. She looks at me dubiously.

“I don’t even know what the letter is about, exactly,” I add.

“Well, when you find out, you know we’ll figure it out,” she says.

My heart squeezes, grateful to Jeli. But this could be some real shit.

“I don’t know if we can . . . like if they really want us to move . . .” I break off. If we get evicted, we will probably face rents that are double what my parents pay now because of how long they’ve been in the apartment and how quickly prices have gone up in San Francisco. We’d have to leave the City for a place I can’t even locate on a map. For another city in the Bay Area: Vallejo, Concord, Antioch. None of them known as “THE City,” not my city, not my home.

“We don’t know anything yet,” Jeli says slowly, looking deep into my eyes. “It’s out of your hands.” Jeli, like any Frisco kid, knows how dire it is, knows how high rent is if you’re not a single techie or extremely wealthy. But she has metaphorically taken a heavy box out of my hands and placed it cleanly on a table so it’s not my responsibility, at least for the moment. It’s always been like that with Jeli. She’s a buffer against the things that would hurt me.

“Can you promise me you’ll go to Wellness if it happens again in school when I’m not with you?” Jeli asks.

I nod but don’t promise out loud. It’s never happened before; why would it happen again? And I can’t even think about Jeli and Chloe not being there to rescue me. What would I have done?

I didn’t know the unwritten rules of sixth grade,

how any eagerness

painted a target on your back,

and I committed the sin of raising my hand

when the teacher asked who had read The House on Mango Street,

and describing it in two sentences.

Afterward in the cafeteria

I approached Cristina Álvarez and Imelda Castillo’s table.

“Is this seat taken?”

They looked at me with their shiny hair

and gold crosses under pristine white shirts

and burst out laughing.

“Bruh, why do you talk white, though?” Cristina said, loudly enough for

everyone to hush.

“Go read the dictionary,” Imelda cackled,

and I backed away,

I ate alone,

and in gym class

felt Jeli staring at me.

I was ready to push her, bite her, do anything

to rid myself of

the stench of weakness,

but Jeli whispered, “I read that book too,”

and I almost cried from the kindness.

She was the weird Blaxican kid,

a collector of words, like me,

not allowed TV,

who also spoke too white

and not enough Spanish to be cool,

and after we met

I never again

tried to sit with the shiny Latinas,

girls with hair like waterfalls

who spit sunflower seeds between the gaps in their teeth,

with rings on their fingers

whose Spanish sounded like snakes whistling over stones.

At Frost,

those girls aren’t here.

They didn’t make it

while I did,

and I never have to worry about them again.

It’s the last—and best—period of the day, English with Chloe and Jeli, but my schedule says Álvarez. My breath scrapes against my ribs, trying to escape, and I struggle to slow it down. Just when I was thinking about Cristina Álvarez. What’s this teacher going to be like? It’s the first time I’ve seen a Spanish name on one of my high school schedules.

A teacher leans against her desk, ankles crossed. Her hair is cut short, and she wears a black suede skirt and large silver hoops. She looks intently at each student through her cat’s-eye glasses and says nothing about a seating chart. Chloe, Jeli, and I take seats next to each other.

“Welcome to AP English,” Ms. Álvarez finally says, as she closes the door. “Of course, we will prepare for your Advanced Placement exam,” she says, smiling at Chester Xiao, who sits ramrod straight next to an even stiffer Bradley. “But you will also burnish your communication skills. I expect you to complete personal insight questions for college but also as a statement of purpose for yourself moving out of high school. You are more than your grades, college acceptance letters, and test scores,” she says, catching Chester’s head tilt. “Really.”

Chloe leans forward.

“For the writing assessment, please take out a piece of paper and write about this theme on no less than one side of college-ruled paper: ‘What people might not know about me just by looking at me,’” Ms. Álvarez dictates, writing the prompt on the board.

Jeli starts writing immediately, but I’m hella cranky.

She really wants us to open up like that on the first day.

What level of intimacy does she demand?

Does she want me to write that I,

a little brown girl from

the other side of town,

have collected words since I was eight

after I begged Papi to buy me a word-a-day calendar

and a notebook to copy down my favorite ones?

That I hold words like “ersatz” and “coruscations”

on the tip of my tongue

like chocolate jewels?

Or would she prefer a sob story

about my uneducated parents?

Nah,

no one would be shocked that Mami works at Safeway Grocery

or that Papi’s a street sweeper with Public Works;

they can also probably guess

I’ll be the first one to make it through college,

but maybe not

that Mami writes protest songs,

that Papi completes a crossword puzzle every day.

WHAT DO I WRITE?

What People Might Not Know About Me

Many people may look at me and assume I fit into the box designated for Latinas that is in fact not spacious enough for me or my ambitions. I plan to vanquish the statistics that dictate we are destined to languish in menial jobs, unwanted pregnancies, and cycles of inexorable poverty.Let Ms. Álvarez see how many sesquipedalian (big) words I can use. My family also disproves many of the stereotypes associated with their ethnicity. My dad never finished college, but that does not mean he doesn’t value education. In fact, he is an autodidact who has taught himself so many things I have lost count. He has the best vocabulary of anyone I know even though he is a blue-collar worker. I feel itchy as the timer winds down. And my mother is a politically involved musician. Mami was only twenty when I was born, just missing the cutoff of teenage mom. I saw online that Cristina had a kid. I erase “unwanted pregnancies,” then write it back in at the last minute. Stupid Cristina with her doughy little baby.I seek to distinguish myself by rising above negative stereotypes.I finish, whisking eraser shreds off my paper roughly. This assignment is bullshit.

“I don’t know about her,” I say to Chloe and Jeli after we leave class. What I don’t say is, Why does our first Latina teacher seem so unserious about our academics?What I do say is “She might get all wishy-washy and not really prep us for the test. I’d rather have Smith; his AP exam pass rate is unreal.”

“I’m so sick of preparing for tests,” counters Chloe. “At least it seems like she wants to get to know us.”

“Hard agree,” says Jeli. “How many of these teachers are just coasting, teaching the same dry material year after year? She seems like she’ll take care of business, just with a personal twist.”

“I’m trying to get a five on the AP, is all I know,” I insist. “Knock out college units and save money like our college counselors said we could.”

“Steli, you know you’ll ace it.” Chloe laughs. “Just enjoy yourself a little.”

“Still waiting for me after gymnastics, Stel?” Jeli asks.

The letter surges back up to the front of my body, wrapping itself around my chest and hardening like papier-mâché.

I shake my head no mutely.

“Hey,” says Jeli, rubbing my arms again and breathing in deeply, “I’ll call you after practice, OK?”

I inhale, and the letter stretches, but I can still feel it binding my lungs.

I need to get home. I need to read the letter.

I won’t be able to breathe normally until I do.

ADAPTED FROM ESTELA, UNDROWNING BY RENÉ PEÑA-GOVEA, TO BE PUBLISHED ON MARCH 3, 2026, BY QUILL TREE BOOKS, AN IMPRINT OF HARPERCOLLINS. COPYRIGHT © 2026 BY RENÉ PEÑA-GOVEA.

Estela, Undrowning, by René Peña-Govea will be released on March 3, 2026 from Quill Tree Books. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:

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