Reading Standards for Literature > Identifying Themes and Summarizing Stories (CCSS.RL.7.2) Practice Test

Backstage, Maya practiced smiling without showing the shake in her hands. The mirror on the wall was spotted with fingerprints, so her reflection looked like it had been sprinkled with static. She adjusted the shiny sticker on her guitar, a silver oval that caught the light and threw a small, wobbly moon on the floor. online, in quick, edited clips, she looked fearless. In real life, the air tasted like dust and wires, and her chest felt tight.

She could hear the emcee warming up the crowd. Laughter floated through the curtain like bubbles. Maya rubbed her thumb over the frets until her skin squeaked. Earlier that week she had stood at the edge of a rain puddle and tested her song out loud. Her voice had sounded thinner than she hoped, blown by a small wind. She told herself the puddle's ripples made everything look smaller anyway.

When her name was called, the stage felt wider than the gym ever had. She lifted the guitar, and the strap slid, catching at her shoulder. The microphone squealed. A few kids flinched and laughed. Heat climbed up Maya's neck. She started the first chord, and the pick slipped from her fingers, clattering like a dropped coin. For a heartbeat she stared at the silver oval on her guitar, seeing her own face stretched across it, long and strange.

"Guess that's one way to wake the strings," she said, her voice steadier than she felt. A ripple of laughter, not sharp but warm, moved through the bleachers. She set the pick aside and used her fingers. The song came out softer than the version she had practiced, like a secret told to someone trusted. It wasn't perfect. One note buzzed; another sat a little flat. But the quiet pulled people in. Heads tipped. Even the gym lights seemed to lose their glare.

By the end, the laughter from before had turned to something else—hands in a rhythm she could feel in her ribs. When she bowed, she caught a glimpse of herself again, not in the mirror or the metal sticker, but in the dark window above the bleachers. The glass held the shape of the room and her in it, small but solid. Backstage, her hands still trembled, but the shake felt like a humming engine, not a warning. She picked up the fallen pick and slipped it into her pocket, not to hide it, but to keep it, smooth as a river stone.

Luis kept his grandmother's dented seed tin on his desk but slid a book over it whenever friends came by. The lid was scratched with tiny stars she had punched years ago with a nail. After Abuela started forgetting where she had put her keys or why she had opened the fridge, she pressed the tin into his hands and said, "These know their way." He pretended he didn't hear the tremor in her voice.

For the science fair, other students talked about explosions and drones. Luis planned a tidy display: labeled cups, neat rows of seedlings. When he opened the tin, the seeds smelled like dry earth and tea. He felt odd, like he was borrowing a voice. He planted three kinds in the school garden and set up his chart. At home, Abuela asked again about the tin, then smiled when she saw it. "They like to be tucked in," she said, wrapping a tea towel over the lid as if it could be cold.

A sudden frost slipped into town the night before the fair. In the morning, glittered ice leaned on the garden like a clear blanket. Luis remembered Abuela's hands, careful and quick, throwing sheets over tomato cages before a storm. He ran to the school early with old pillowcases and clothespins. His breath came out in clouds as he built small tents over the tender sprouts.

By afternoon, the sun returned, and the gym buzzed with blinking circuits and sugar volcanoes. Luis stood by his tri-fold and waited. His plants looked ordinary, a little bent. A judge in a blue sweater paused. "What's this?" she asked. Luis pointed out the tiny green hooks pushing aside the soil under the tented row. "They weren't there this morning," he said. He didn't say he had almost left the tin at home.

He didn't win first place. A robot shaped like a dog took the ribbon. But after the fair, he walked Abuela to the garden. She touched the little tents, then the new sprouts, and laughed at something only she heard. He realized the tin wasn't only a container; it was a map, a memory, and a promise he was learning to keep. On the way home, he carried it uncovered, stars catching the late light.