Chapter Three

Even before my alarm goes off, the feeling of something on my forehead startles me out of my slumber.

“Wake up!” Lily whisper- shouts in my face.

I groan and swat her away.

She yanks on my blanket. “Come aaaahn.”

I open one eye to squint at the kit ten- shaped alarm clock beside my bed, which reads 5:58, a full thi rty-two m inutes before my actual alarm is supposed to go off. If I didn’t love Lily so much, I might actually kill her. How dare she steal rest from me when I had so much trouble falling asleep last night?

I was up late. The calendar above my desk was daring me to add something— any thing— mea ningful to it, and I found myself needing to take control. Needing a plan. So I pulled out my notebook and, on the cream- colored first page, wrote this:

Whit’s Totally Definitive Guide to the Perfect Senior Year

1. Make Aiden fall in love with me again.

2. Reignite my friendship with Sophie and Marisol.

3. Ensure that Lily’s freshman year is memorable.

4. Find a way to get my PCOS under control.

5. Get elected president of the Fall Fest committee and make Fall Fest my entire personality.

All five action items really boil down to the same thing: Stop letting life call the shots and take back senior year, so help me Goddess (Beyoncé).

“Good morning, my irritating baby sister,” I say, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and welcoming her round brown face into focus. Her shou lder-length brown hair, curly like mine, is French-bra ided in two, likely by Abuela. Part of me is sad to have missed out on their TV-and-ha ir-bra iding session.

“Aren’t you ready for school yet?” Lily teases. “You’re going to be late.”

“I know I warned you that high school starts a lot earlier than middle school, but this is a bit much, don’t you think?”

She ignores my question and instead says, “I really want to wear my pin k-and-white backpack, but I can’t find it.”

If there’s one thing I love about Lily, it’s her unwavering sincerity.

“Need some help?” I ask.

Lily takes this as permission to pull the rest of my comforter away from me with a grin.

As we tiptoe down the hallway toward her bedroom, the gravity of today hits me. I’ve been so worried about what this day will mean to me that I haven’t given enough thought to what it’ll mean for Lily.

Today, Liliana Margaret Rivera, my baby sister, will officially be joining me at Elmwood High School as an incoming freshman! Meaning: she’s probably feeling just as nervous as I am.

Despite her annoying tendency to wake me up before my alarm (she will get hers, I promise), Lily is a bundle of delight: bright, caring, funny, creative, silly, totally obsessed with Intonation, a Mountain Dew– drinking champion, and autistic. She loves anything related to music, never lets me play with her Nintendo Switch, and purposely gets song lyrics wrong because she knows it bugs me.

I’ll admit that I can be fiercely protective of Lily, as I think many older siblings are. But the fact that sometimes people don’t “get” her makes me even more protective.

Lily can struggle to pick up on certain social cues, and people notice that. They also notice that she isn’t terribly keen on close physical affection, like hugs (though she’s perfectly happy with a high five or fist bump); that her happy mood may turn angry in the blink of an eye; that she rubs her hands together whenever she’s excited. They make assumptions about who she is.

It hurts when our classmates poke fun at her, whether over missed signals or over “uncool” things she’s done. Worse are the classmates who have tried to take advantage of her because she is so trusting. And don’t get me started on the teachers who’ve lacked patience. The best people see all parts of Lily.

I do my best to be there for her whenever I can, and now that we’ll be in the same school again, this will be a little easier. (We’ll need to work on the getting-up -way-too - early thing, though.)

In Lily’s room, we start our search for her backpack in the closet. When that fails, we check her bureau, under the bed, and behind her laundry basket. We nearly turn the room upside down in our quest, making so much noise that we wake Abuela.

She pokes her head into Lily’s disaster of a room. “¿Qué pasó?”

“I need my pin k-and-white backpack!” Lily says.

“We’ve looked everywhere.” I sigh. “Any suggestions?”

“Ay, Lily.” Abuela clucks her tongue, her knees clicking as she kneels near Lily’s bookcase before I can protest. In one swift motion, she reaches behind the shelf and pulls out the backpack. “Here it is.”

“How’d you know exactly where it was?”

Abuela chuckles. “I tell you: Se todo. Now, ¡vámanos! You don’t want to be late.”

This adventure with Lily has eaten up a good chunk of my morning, leaving me next to no time to do what I’d planned. Forget writing a bullet list or leisurely doing my makeup— I’l l be lucky if I manage to diffuse my hair before racing out the door.

“Have you showered yet?” I ask Lily. She ignores me and searches through her backpack instead. “Lily.”

“No,” she confesses.

“Shoot,” I mutter. “Well, hurry!”

Abuela corrals Lily toward the bathroom and I rush to the kitchen to grab some breakfast, mind racing. I have a full day of classes, including several AP courses I’m hoping will translate into college credit. And I need to show Lily around the school and make sure she can get to and from her classes and locker okay. And I promised Marisol and Sophie I’d meet them in the courtyard before the day even starts.

While I wait for Lily to finish her shower, I decide to text Aiden. It’s his first day of school, too.

Me: Good luck today!

Aiden: With what?

Oh, you sweet, sweet himbo.

Me: Isn’t it your first day at your new school?

Aiden: Oh, yeah. But I’m not worried! That makes one of us.

I wish he would send me a little encouragement back, even something small. But then I remember number one on my list, Make Aiden fall in love with me again, and push past that.

Me: You shouldn’t be! You’ll be great.

I try not to explode when Aiden like-reacts my text. It’s fine. Lily is taking her sweet, sweet time in the shower, and at this rate, I’m not going to have time to stop for a PSL on the drive; I may not even be able to meet up with Sophie and Marisol.

I march over to the bathroom and knock on the door. Lily’s voice rings out in between the steady thrum of the shower as if she’s performing a one -woman concert.

“Lily!” I shout. “I need to get in there, too!”

No answer. I knock again, more forcefully this time. When there’s still no response, I call out, “Abuela! Lily’s taking forever!”

Abuela emerges from her bedroom shaking her head. “I’ve told Lily no Intonation in the morning. It gets her too distracted!”

This family’s love for that boy band knows no limits. The three of us bonded over the five -member group ages ago, and our love is just as strong now as it ever was (though the older I get, the shyer I am about admitting that in public).

Abuelo loved to tease us about “our boys” and how often we would dance and sing along to their music. I was head over heels in love with them. I had committed everything about them— from their favorite colors to their bir thdays— to memory; I made social media accounts dedicated to them; and I was even convinced I would someday marry Rider. (The wedding colors would be varying hues of his favorite color, green. Obviously.) Lily was similarly enthralled, though her number one was Lucas. Henry, the clean- cut , religious member of the band, was Abuela’s cariño— so much so that sometimes we would joke that Abuelo should watch out.

We’ve been to two of their concerts, memorized the lyrics to all of their songs, and were appropriately devastated when they announced their sudden breakup during my sophomore year of high school. Lily took it the hardest of us all, and Intonation remains her favorite band ever. She plays their music nea r-incessantly, and talks about them as if they still perform. If only.

So believe me: I get why their music inspires my little sister to put on her own concert. If she feels anything like me, Intonation still sparks the most intense nostalgia, reminding us of simpler times, a shared love among the three of us, and the playful ribbing from Abuelo, which I think we all miss deeply.

But she needs to hurry up so I can have the shower. When the bathroom door finally bursts open, I glance at the clock. We’re absolutely, one hundred percent going to be late.

I pull up my group text with Marisol and Sophie.

Me: I’m so sorry, but I can’t make it to the courtyard this morning

Sophie: But it’s tradition!!!

Me: I know! I want to be there SO BADLY.

Me: Lily has been hogging the shower and I’m just now getting in. I’ll make it up you!

Neither of my friends replies, and I kind of don’t blame them.

I take a cold shower and then dash out the door with Lily in tow. By the time we make it to school, we’re not just pumpkin spice lat te-less; we’ve missed homeroom. I have to literally run to get Lily to her first class before speeding to the other side of the school to find my own.

As I plop into the only open seat, sweating and out of breath, I realize that this one misstep has swiftly taken me out of the running for perfect attendance for the entire year.

So much for getting things back on track.

At least I look cute . . . But this moment of sel f- con fidence doesn’t last very long.

In second period, Brock Moore, one of the baseball kids, loudly clears his throat and says, “Whoa, Whit. You look . . . di fferent.” He makes a show of puffing out his cheeks. Only his best friend, Dom Taylor, laughs, but still.

All I can manage is an exaggerated eye roll at him, unwilling to let him see that my insides are shaking. I tell myself that at least I’ve gotten the first pointed insult out of the way. Now I can move on.

Throughout the day, I do my best to ignore the sideways glances, not-so -subtle lookbacks, and wide- eyed exchanges between friends and teachers.

I may have given up diets, but sometimes I wish I could give up this cruel society, too.