The book "Eleven" is about a girl named Rachel.
On her eleventh birthday, Rachel observes 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.
Following her observations, our narrator laments being eleven. If she were older, she believes, she would have been better able to avoid the event that single-handedly ruined her eleventh birthday: her teacher wrongfully accusing her of owning an ugly red sweater.
Rachel describes how Mrs. Price, her teacher, questioned the class about who left the red sweater in the cloakroom for months. According to our narrator, the sweater is ugly, which is probably why nobody would claim it.
Sylvia Saldivar, the quintessentially annoying classmate, suggested that the sweater belonged to Rachel. Mrs. Price immediately agreed. Flustered, Rachel tried to explain that the sweater wasn't hers, but couldn't manage a proper response. '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.'
Mrs. Price dismissed Rachel's denial, placing the sweater on Rachel's desk, and even more maddeningly, claimed that she remembered Rachel wearing it. Rachel, powerless against her teacher's claim, attempted to physically distance herself from the sweater, scooting it over to the very corner of her desk. This small act of defiance irritated Mrs. Price, who insisted that Rachel wear the sweater. Rachel obeyed, but burst into tears, weeping into her own arms as she released the built up frustration.
Before lunch, Phyllis Lopez remembered the sweater was actually hers. Rachel returned it, noticing that Mrs. Price 'pretends like everything is okay.' Rachel muses that though she will celebrate with a cake, and her family will wish her a 'happy birthday,' it's already too late for her to have a happy birthday. She ultimately wishes she were older, because in her mind, being older would mean escape.
