Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For the first time in my life, I can’t wait to go back to school.

  Bring on the first day of seventh grade!

  I’m no longer a lowly sixth grader with no social media presence thanks to my strict mother, who makes me wear a clunky watch meant for toddlers. I can only text her on it. It’s ridiculous, but my Very Cuban mother got it for me after I started riding my bike to school so she can always track me through GPS.

  Even though I’m still stuck with the embarrassing accessory, Mami says I can get an actual phone if my report card is good.

  And after my awful summer, I plan to make it spectacular. (See? I’m even using vocabulary words now.)

  Needless to say, I am desperate to get out of my crowded house and hang out with Julian and Zoey again. As soon as I get to school, I park my bike alongside the jumble of others and then race to where my best friends wait before first bell.

  “Maggie!” Zoey calls out with a big smile. She has her phone out, playing music.

  Julian’s smile disappears once I get closer. “You are looking … very sweaty today.”

  It’s not even 9:00 a.m. and it’s already like a hundred degrees. Welcome to Miami.

  “I had to ride my bike very fast or else miss telling you both the big news.” I also super missed them. I high-five both of them.

  Zoey and Julian are next-door neighbors and have known each other longer, but the three of us became best friends during a group project in fourth grade. It was about ways to help bees and we crushed it.

  Zoey’s face scrunches up. “Is your big news that you forgot to take a shower?”

  I sniff my shirt. I’m good.

  “Drumroll, please,” I ask, and Zoey taps rapidly against Julian’s backpack. “I’m getting a phone!”

  “Finally!” Julian says, because I’m pretty sure I’m the last person in the history of twelve-year-olds to not have one. Not having a phone means I’m practically invisible. No texts, funny videos, or games. No Maggie to be found anywhere.

  “When do you get it?” Zoey asks. She inherited her older—but definitely still functional—phone thanks to her sister, who is much cooler than my sister, Caro. Zoey’s mom is Haitian American and can be just as strict as mine over anything to do with the internet or pushing for too much independence too fast. We tread new ground with them carefully.

  “As soon as we get our report cards,” I tell them with a big grin.

  Their faces fall. I am not known for my grades.

  “I’m more mature this year,” I hurry to explain. “We’re seventh graders now.”

  We’re no longer the babies of the school. I plan on not only paying attention, but on raising my hand and participating, taking notes in a readable handwriting, and getting way better grades that will prove to my mom how responsible and capable I am now.

  And I’ll get all the way out of my older sister’s shadow.

  This year will be the year people at my school stop referring to me as Carolina’s baby sister.

  It’s going to be awesome.

  “Who do y’all have for homeroom?” Julian asks.

  Zoey and I grab our printed schedules. “Mrs. Delgado,” I say.

  “I’ve got Jones,” Zoey says.

  “Hey, me too.” Julian smiles, high-fiving Zoey.

  I try to hold on to my smile and new-year positivity despite the disappointment of not getting to be in homeroom with my best friends. But it’s fine, because it won’t be like summer when they were busy or off at camp. And I’ll have a phone soon, so I won’t be totally out of the loop anymore. It’s probably way better this way, because I’ll be so bored that I won’t have any choice but to pay attention.

  After checking the updated maps that were mailed along with our schedules, we move with the rest of the crowd toward third hall. Unlike our elementary school, West Memorial Middle is huge.

  I’m pretty sure it’s even bigger than the nearby high school. For some reason, they are always building new elementary schools, and there are a bunch of high schools, including the arts and STEM ones, but there are only, like, three middle schools. It makes no sense, because for three long years, a bunch of us are funneled here until we all get split up again.

  The bell rings, and even though I’m excited about our first day back, I’m disappointed I didn’t get a chance to catch up on everything they did this summer. I’ve been so cut off.

  “Tell me everything y’all did at camp in thirty seconds,” I say quickly.

  “Band camp was terrible,” Zoey says, and I’m a little relieved that she didn’t totally love it. “It was so hot and disgustingly humid.”

  “Yeah, mine, too,” Julian agrees. “It was at the lake, like, right by the Everglades and the mosquitoes were deadly. Almost as bad as their so-called pizza. I’ll just say, I have my doubts as to what they told us was pepperoni.”

  “Aw,” I say, and try to keep the smile out of my voice. My friends weren’t off having fun without me!

  “We got these awful ham-and-cheese sandwiches that were dry, dry, dry,” Zoey says, then laughs. “But then the drumline started a war, and all week we had to be careful or else get cheese slices thrown at us.”

  “That sounds disgusting,” I say, just as Julian laughs, too.

  “We did that with the pepperoni!”

  I don’t have cool or funny stories from my summer. Food fights and lethal mosquitoes somehow sound more fun than being stuck at home with a cranky baby brother and sharing my bedroom with my abuela.

  Because yes, you heard me right: I live with my abuela. Not just, like, live with her in the same house, which is totally normal. A lot of my friends live with their grandparents. But my abuela moved into my bedroom.

  You have a bunk bed, Maggie, my parents reasoned this summer. They decided that having another baby this year and making me a middle child at the age of twelve was a great idea.

  My parents are not reasonable people.

  * * *

  The rest of the day is a blur of new classes and teachers. Thankfully, with no homework assigned!

  After school, I drop my backpack by the door and start to kick off my shoes.

  “Pick that up,” Mom calls out from somewhere in the kitchen before I even get my left sneaker off. How did she see me? I glare at my tattletale watch.

  “How was your first day?” Mom asks me while she clips coupons at the table. Lucas is strapped to her chest. My six-month-old brother kicks his feet and starts to growl. Last year, I asked my parents for a dog, not a baby brother.

  “Amazing!” I say, and Mom cuts me a look of disbelief.

  I reel my smile in a bit. The day was okay. I had quesadillas for lunch, I picked desks that were in the front row so each of my teachers knows what’s up, and I have classes with both Zoey and Julian. I didn’t get to crack open any of my brand-new notebooks yet or show off my new big brain outlook since it was only the boring first day get-to-know-each-other stuff.

  The door opens and my sister strolls in, wearing sneakers and running clothes. She calls out hellos and then goes right to the water dispenser in the fridge.

  “And how was your day?” I ask her, but she rolls her eyes and points at an earbud before chugging a glass of water.

  “My day was great,” she announces when she’s done, sounding breathless after downing all that water. “Killed it at cross-country, feeling good about my AP classes, and now I’m going to take a shower.” She drops a kiss on Lucas’s head.

  “Don’t use all the hot water,” I tell her.

  “Why?” she asks. “Were you planning to actually wash your hair today?” Instead of a kiss, I get a sharp flick. I scream and she takes off. I rush to run after her.

  “¡No corren en la casa!” Abuela shouts after us.

  Abuela’s really nice, but she can also be really scary.

  Caro makes it to the bathroom before me and slams the door in my face with a victorious laugh.

  “Carolina, please remember that she’s twelve, and you’re sixteen,” Mom calls to Caro from the kitchen, then looks at me. “Will you two ever get along?”

  Breathless, I point at the baby tied to her chest. “Just remember, it was your idea to have another one.”

  Lucas gurgles like an angry goose. Mom scowls at me, and when her eye twitches, I know exactly what she’s about to ask me.

  “Is your room clean?”

  No matter the occasion, it’s her go-to reply whenever we annoy her. Or she wants us out of her hair.

  I escape to my room, but it’s no longer my sanctuary. (Another vocab word from last year.)

  Seventh grade is going to change everything for me. It just has to.

  “¡Levántate, Magdalena, vas a llegar tarde a la escuela!”

  I peek out from beneath my blanket. I am not going to be late for school because I set my new alarm clock. It’s all the way across the room on my desk so I have to get out of bed. Because I am responsible now. My abuela simply likes the bragging rights of being the first one to wake up every morning so she can call the rest of us lazy.

  I start to roll over, but the blank screen on my clock stops me. I am sure I set it, and it definitely had backup batteries.

  Abuela ignores me. She is staging a coup on my room.

  I throw myself out of the bed and down the ladder. In the hallway, I push past Caro to beat her to the bathroom this time.

  “It’s my turn, Maggie!” Caro shouts as I shut the door on her. “Not fair!”

  Abuela doesn’t sleep in her room. Fairness has no place within these walls.

  While Caro aggressively rattles the doorknob and Abuela shouts for both of us to stop yelling, I race through all the essentials.

  Back out in the hallway, my sister is fuming. “Did you even brush your hair?”

  I wince and wave a hand in front of my nose. “You clearly haven’t brushed your teeth.”

  “Nice mustache.”

  “Nice morning breath.”

  Mom scoots past us, Lucas strapped to her chest in a bright yellow wrap. “Well, aren’t we all having a great morning so far?”

  Caro and I do a little shoving dance for dominance before she pushes past me to get inside the bathroom. I follow Mom into the kitchen. She picks up her tiny cup of Cuban coffee and drinks it in one go.

  “Mom.” I lower my voice. “Abuela unplugged my alarm clock.”

  “What?”

  “My clock,” I say again, lowering my voice and looking at where Abuela is listening to the Spanish radio station while buttering slices of toasted Cuban bread. “She unplugged it. And I don’t want to point fingers, but I think she might have stolen the batteries.”

  “I doubt that,” Mom says.

  “When will her room be ready?”

  The tiny house is out in the backyard and is currently just a skeleton of wood and concrete.

  “Soon. This is just temporary, Maggie.”

  This is just temporary is her latest go-to response for everything. But temporary or not, this is the worst.

  Mom searches the table and its mess of school handouts, homework, coupons, and junk mail. “Where is my phone?” she mutters.

  It’s a perfect segue. I grandly gesture to the fridge.

  Mom spares me a quick glance and a smirk. “Love your confidence, and I can’t wait to see that placeholder replaced with the real thing.”

  That’s how I feel about my watch. “I was thinking we could have a conversation about my bike-riding privileges?”

  Conversations are a very big deal in my family. Whenever there is a major change, we all sit down and talk it out. Like when Mom and Dad told us Lucas was coming or that Abuelo was really sick.

  I hated that conversation.

  Soon after, Abuela moved in with us.

  But it’s time for another major change! A good one this time, because not only am I going to get a phone this year, I’m also going to convince my parents to let me ride my bike to Dolphin Park after school. Lots of kids from my school hang out there and it’s right by Julian and Zoey’s neighborhood.

  My strict Cuban parents need to realize that I’m not a baby anymore.

  “Didn’t we just have a conversation?” Mom asks, distracted as she bounces a fussy Lucas and opens one of the letters.

  “Yes, about getting a phone.”

  I need to be careful. If I ask for too much too quickly, this will all blow up in my face. But Zoey reasoned that phone and bike privileges would go hand in hand. And she’s very responsible.

  “Dolphin Park is only like five blocks away. Zoey and Julian hang out there all the time.”

  Mom resumes her search. “Five blocks is pretty far away, Maggie. You also just got your watch.”

  “A phone does way more than a watch and that’s important.” I try to not shake my wrist with the offending piece of technology at her.

  If it was some cool spy gadget thing, I could understand. But it doesn’t hack locks or communicate with the aging superhero who has decided to take me on as an apprentice. It’s useless.

  “Plus, Caro got her phone when she was twelve.”

  Mom makes a considering sound. My heart jumps with hope.

  It’s true that my older sister got hers at my age, but the thing is, my sister has always been perfect. Good grades, responsible, polite to old people, star athlete. The total worst!

  While I am messy and … forgetful.

  Mimicking my mother’s voice even as she searches for her phone, I say, “Responsibility leads to independence and growth and it’s important that I have a phone in case of an emergency.”

  Mom stops. Her hand goes to Lucas’s head. “What kind of emergency?”

  Pivot, Maggie! Pivot!

  “The regular, very mild kind of emergency, Mom.”

  “Wait a minute. Dolphin Park?” she asks, sounding dangerously doubtful now. “You want to go to the ocean by yourself?”

  Panic worms in. I want a phone so bad. Everyone has one! Not just for fun, but for safety reasons—even Zoey’s little sister has one, and she’s in fourth grade! “This is Miami—we’re all right next to the ocean. I’m only talking a couple extra blocks, and if I have a phone, you’ll always be able to reach me.”

  “I can reach you now.” She points at the cursed watch.

  “Mami, please.” I try not to whine.

  “No te preocupes,” Abuela says coolly. “Yo siempre sé dónde ella está.” She raises the saltshaker like it’s answer enough.

  She says she’ll always know when we cross it.

  I look at Mom. Her lips twitch, but she says nothing to reason with her mother.

  Caro walks into the kitchen in her running clothes again. The high school’s first bell isn’t for an hour, but she does cross-country and they apparently meet before school. “Who needs a phone when you have brujería?” Caro points out unhelpfully.

  On days like this, I wish Dad was home instead of away, working offshore doing crane stuff for a salvage company. He would be on my side. Someone has to be.

  Responsible Perfect Caro hands Mom her phone. “It was on the bathroom sink.”

  “Ay dios, I’m losing everything lately.”

  Is this irony? I need to double-check.

  “Good thing Lucas is always tied to you,” I joke.

  Mom scowls and her eye twitches. I swallow hard. Not the time to be on her bad side. But at least I know if she asks, my room is clean. It’s the one plus side to sharing space with my tidy abuela.

  “Mom, I promise I’ll be safe and my grades this semester are going to blow your mind.”

  “I suppose … Dolphin Park isn’t too far.”

  Caro glances at the clock. “Aren’t you late for school, Ms. Report Card?”

  I jump out of my chair and grab my backpack.

  “I didn’t say yes!” Mom insists.

  “You will!” I hurry to yank on my shoes by the front door.

  “Magdalena!” My poor sleep-deprived mother probably wishes Dad was home, too, especially for backup.

  “I can’t be late, Mom!”

  I race out the door to my bike in the garage and the future promise of freedom.

  * * *

  This time when I reach Zoey and Julian, they’re both on their phones.

  I glance around and notice most people are wearing some kind of headphones or earbuds while they wait for first bell. I have a pair of wired black ones Mom bought me that I use for my laptop. It’s a hand-me-down laptop that I used when I had to do virtual classes. It has a million parental blocks, but at least I can play BioBuild online with my friends.

  But when I get a phone and on the family data plan, I’ll be able to listen to music all the time, too. I won’t be stuck listening to Mom’s boring podcasts, Dad’s old emo punk stuff, or Abuela’s ancient Cuban songs anymore.

  “Hello!” I call out, snapping my fingers in front of Zoey and Julian.

  Zoey yanks out her headphones so I can hear the song, and it’s the same one she was listening to yesterday. I, of course, don’t know it.

 

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