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The youngest child is always the favorite. Isabela has known this in her bones; she’s known it since before she learned to walk, before she learned to speak, because she was only one month old when Dolores was born, and suddenly Isabela wasn’t the favorite anymore.
At age five, Isabela gets her gift. Flowers grow wherever she touches — on the walls, ruining Casita’s wallpaper. In the kitchen, ruining her mother’s life-saving food. In the pages of Tía Pepa’s favorite books, turning her mood sour and flooding Casita with rain.
At dinner, Abuela says, “You must learn to control yourself, Isabela. Flowers are pretty to look at, but you must be sure they always serve a purpose. There is no point in having something pretty if it sabotages something else.”
And Isabela nods, her cheeks burning, and Abuela takes a bite of her food and squeaks when a cactus grows in the middle of her spoon, its spikes sinking into her tongue.
That’s when Tío Bruno scoops Isabela up and ushers her away. He’s smiling, using his ‘everything’s fine’ voice that he thinks nobody can see through.
“Let’s go play in my room,” he says lightly, and Isabela can already hear Abuela fuming in the dining room, so she doesn’t argue. She goes into Tío Bruno’s room, the ugliest room in the house — tall forbidding cliffs with no foliage at all, dead trees and dark skies and caves filled with shadows, and sand as far as the eye can see.
“Go crazy, kid,” Bruno says.
Isabela frowns. She looks down at the sand, wiggles her toes. She looks up at the cliffs, so unlike the verdant mountains and valleys all around Casita.
She closes her eyes. She thinks of Abuela scolding her; she thinks of her mother nodding along, Tía Pepa casting beady looks her way, her father giving her a watery smile and refusing a hug: Sorry, kid, I’m allergic to pollen. Something wells up inside her, caught somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
When she opens her eyes, there are flowers blooming in the sand.
“Not bad,” Tío Bruno says.
One month after Isabela gets her gift, it’s Dolores’ turn. Super-hearing. This, Isabela thinks, will surely put Dolores on the outs. Adults hate nothing more than being eavesdropped on. They have secrets; they have private conversations; they know things they don’t want the kids to hear.
But for some reason, nobody minds. Dolores isn’t scolded for her gift; she’s praised. She tells Abuela about fights brewing down in the village; she knows who stole the candelabras from the churchhouse; she knows who’s been sneaking into the fields and ruining their neighbors’ crops; she knows who’s dissatisfied with their service from the Madrigals, and she knows how to make it better.
And at breakfast, she looks up, she meets Isabela’s eyes, and she says matter-of-factly, “I heard you yelling into your pillow last night, Isa.”
Isabela stiffens. All eyes are suddenly on her.
“Are you okay?” Dolores asks, her voice wispy and small. Isabela glares at her; across the table, little cacti pop up everywhere, and Abuela hastily removes her plate from the wooden surface.
“Perhaps you ought to go to your room, Isa,” Tía Pepa suggests.
Dolores looks from her mother to Abuela, her eyes wide. “Are you in trouble again?” she asks Isabela, and Isabela’s face flushes an ugly shade of red. She pushes away from the table, mumbling an excuse as she leaves, and nobody tries to stop her. When breakfast is over, Dolores comes up to see her, knocks on the door, stands outside shuffling her feet.
“You’re not the only one,” Dolores whispers. “I heard Tío Bruno crying, too.”
It doesn’t make Isabela feel better. She’s lying in her room, her face pressed to the pillow again. This time, she knows better than to scream. She knows better than to cry.
She doesn’t have that option anymore.
Luisa isn’t the youngest, but her gift is the most useful, and when Abuela talks about her, her face glows. Luisa is practical; Luisa is strong; Luisa can help people.
A flower, Isabela learns, doesn’t help. A flower just looks pretty.
Camilo is the youngest, the favorite. He makes everyone laugh — even when they’re angry with him, all he has to do is crack a joke or pull a face, and everything is forgiven. Isabela tries it; it doesn’t work for her.
Camilo tries to cheer her up. He morphs into her, flips his hair over his shoulder, twirls on his tiptoes — and everyone laughs, and all Isabela sees is her own bad posture, the embarrassing way she bites her bottom lip when she’s thinking too hard, the way her eyes go dim and vacuous when nobody is speaking to her. Camilo shows her all the flaws she never saw before.
She goes into her room that night and suddenly Casita has provided her with a full-length mirror. So she uses it. She fixes her appearance; she practices her expressions, her gestures, her poses, the same way she practices her flowers.
She erases the flaws.
Mirabel is the youngest, and Mirabel is the favorite in a way none of the others have been. Their father takes her everywhere; their mother always wants her in the kitchen to help. She is Luisa’s best friend, her little shadow. She makes Camilo laugh when no one else does. She’s naturally quiet, never hurts Dolores’ ears. When she’s clumsy, it brightens Tía Pepa’s mood; when she asks Tío Félix to teach her how to dance, he grins and lets her balance on his toes, and he clasps her little hands in his and shows her how to dance the joropo.
And Abuela — Abuela, who always seems so distant — sneaks into the nursery at bedtime to tuck Mirabel in, to read her a story. Isa leans against the door sometimes, presses her ear to the wood grain and listens, imagines that she’s the one in that bed, her head in Abuela’s lap, Abuela’s fingers running through her hair. She imagines flowers popping up all over her scalp — different colors, some imperfect, missing petals. But in her imagination, Abuela lets it go. She doesn’t comb through the flowers and pluck out the misfits. She lets them stay.
Mirabel is perfect. Mirabel is the favorite.
And then Mirabel turns five, and doesn’t get a gift, and suddenly Mirabel isn’t the favorite anymore. Isa watches as her family members pull away one by one, as they grow awkward around Mirabel the same way they’re awkward with Bruno.
Misfits, Isa learns, don’t get to be favorites. And when Bruno leaves, she learns another lesson: the misfits always, always , get plucked. Only the perfect ones are safe.
She retreats into her bedroom and stands before her mirror. She learns how to hide her sweating palms by conjuring a bouquet to fill her hands. She thinks the most horrible things — berates herself until she wants to cry — and watches the mirror the whole time to make sure her smile never breaks and the flowers in her hair never die.
She perfects another pose.