What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine,
and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two,
and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect
to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just
like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel
like you’re still ten. And you are underneath the year that makes you
eleven.
Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part
of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on
your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s
five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will
need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama
when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.
Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the
rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one
inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven
years old is. You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks
even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask
you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve.
That’s the way it is. Only today I wish I didn’t have only eleven years rattling inside me
like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box. Today I wish I was one hundred
and two instead of eleven because if I was one hundred and two I’d have
known what to say when Mrs. Price put the red sweater on my desk.
I would’ve known how to tell her it wasn’t mine instead of just sitting
there with that look on my face and nothing coming out of my mouth.
“Whose is this?” Mrs. Price says, and she holds the red sweater
up in the air for all the class to see. “Whose? It’s been sitting in the
coatroom for a month.”
“Not mine,” says everybody. “Not me.”
“It has to belong to somebody,” Mrs. Price keeps saying, but
nobody can remember. It’s an ugly sweater with red plastic buttons and
a collar and sleeves all stretched out like you could use it for a jump
rope. It’s maybe a thousand years old and even if it belonged to me I
wouldn’t say so.
Maybe because I’m skinny, maybe because she doesn’t like me,
that stupid Sylvia Saldívar says, “I think it belongs to Rachel.” An ugly
sweater like that, all raggedy and old, but Mrs. Price believes her. Mrs.
Price takes the sweater and puts it right on my desk, but when I open
my mouth nothing comes out.
“That’s not, I don’t, you’re not . . . Not mine,” I finally say in a little
voice that was maybe me when I was four.
“Of course it’s yours,” Mrs. Price says. “I remember you wearing it
once.” Because she’s older and the teacher, she’s right and I’m not.
Not mine, not mine, not mine, but Mrs. Price is already turning
to page thirty-two, and math problem number four. I don’t know why
but all of a sudden I’m feeling sick inside, like the part of me that’s three
wants to come out of my eyes, only I squeeze them shut tight and bite
down on my teeth real hard and try to remember today I am eleven,
eleven. Mama is making a cake for me for tonight, and when Papa comes
home everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you.
But when the sick feeling goes away and I open my eyes, the red
sweater’s still sitting there like a big red mountain. I move the red
sweater to the corner of my desk with my ruler. I move my pencil and
books and eraser as far from it as possible. I even move my chair a little
to the right. Not mine, not mine, not mine.
In my head I’m thinking how long till lunchtime, how long till I
can take the red sweater and throw it over the schoolyard fence, or
leave it hanging on a parking meter, or bunch it up into a little ball and
toss it in the alley.

1) In paragraph three, the author includes figurative language. How does the figurative language in the text help the reader understand the character’s feelings about getting older?
2) In paragraph 5, the author stated, “Only today I wish I didn’t have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin can.” What does this figurative language mean and how does it affect the tone of the text?