chunk: Flor quits and takes her daughter home, upsetting Cristina, who got along well with the Claskys. On their way home, she tells Cristina that she cannot go to the private school anymore, upsetting Cristina even more; she screams in the middle of the street, accusing Flor of ruining her life. Flor loses patience with Cristina after she asks her mother for space, similar to the Claskys asking for space when they cannot solve a problem. Flor explains to her daughter that she must answer the most important question of her life, at a very young age: "Is what you want for yourself to become someone very different than me?" Cristina considers this on their bus ride home, and they make up and embrace.
  Cristina, on her paper in applying to Princeton University, acknowledges that her life rests firmly and happily on the simple fact that she is her mother's daughter.