English Language Arts: Theme Analysis (TEKS.ELA.9-12.7.A) Practice Test

In the yellow light of the kitchenette, the four of us pretended dinner was only dinner. My brother told a joke that arrived at its punchline out of breath, and my mother, whose hands still trembled from the afternoon bus ride, laughed a second too late. The steam curled up from the rice like a patient ghost. I had rehearsed announcing the job—another city, a start date, a key I would surrender—but every version sounded like a small betrayal delivered on a ceramic plate. "You'll take the extra jar," my mother said, pushing the glass toward me as if generosity could anchor me in place. The lid scraped the table. "Just until you're settled," she added, and then met my eyes quickly, then not at all. My brother's laughter thinned. He folded his napkin into halves and then into halves again. The kettle began to mutter and never quite boiled. I heard my own voice say, "Thanks," in a register I use for strangers. While we ate, I counted the things we were not saying, as if tallying silence made it smaller. The room held its breath with us, and in that stillness, my choice—to keep the news for later—felt like a thread pulled taut through all of us.

On the edge of the Valley, where the wind wove turbines into the horizon and the river braided the border into a question, I stood between the robotics lab and the band hall, holding two futures in one hand. Abuela's stories about the river always bent toward crossings that were part prayer, part dare; she'd trace the air with her finger like water finds the low places. "A name can carry two homes," she'd say, smiling toward something I couldn't see. Dad, if he saw the grease under my nails, would nod like a foreman; if he saw the scuffs on my trumpet case, he'd tap the lid twice, proud and worried in equal measure. "Auditions are Thursday," my friend whispered, already halfway to the band room. In the lab, a motor whirred—small, stubborn, alive. I pressed my palm to the plastic housing and felt it vibrate like a second pulse. When I finally walked, I chose the longer hallway and the open door at its end. "You can do both," Abuela had said last week, then, more quietly, "but both will change you." Under the fluorescent hum, the thought felt less like warning and more like permission to be many things at once.