Extra Better YA romance by Lucio Lina Buy a paperback copy on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087L4NG6H Watch me write book 2 in the series LIVE on Youtube Chapter 1 “If you were a demon, what five objects would I need to summon you?” “Five objects?” “One for each corner of the pentagram, Kailani, keep up!” I’m sitting on the floor of Oakland International Airport, leaning against my backpack, waiting on a connecting flight to Phoenix. Next to me, someone’s put a sticker of an outlet on the wall. “It’s a sticker,” I say, as an elderly woman smashes her phone charger against it. “What?” says Kell’s voice in my ear. We’ve been on the phone for forty minutes already, and my flight just got delayed another ten. “Sorry, I was talking to someone here. Okay, I’m thinking...” Five objects to summon me...if I was a demon ... One for each corner of the pentagram... “Do they have to be able to get through TSA security?” I joke. “No, I have to have them here !” “And where are you again?” Kell’s ten years older – twenty-seven – and traveling abroad. Last time she called me I was living in middle of nowhere Washington state and she was in the middle of the Costa Rican jungle. “Vietnam on a slow route to Transylvania!” she says. “Monster hunting, from ghosts to ghouls to vampires.” “Why’d’you need to summon me then?” “Because little sisters are the scariest creatures in the world! Hurry up and pick! My train leaves in ten minutes.” My phone beeps and I check my battery. Ten percent. Pushing myself to my feet and heaving my backpack onto one shoulder, I circle the terminal looking for a real outlet. “Hoop earrings,” I say, adjusting my backpack and feeling my clear lucite J. Crew hoops rustle. “You could summon me with hoop earrings and... dark chocolate... and sunscreen ...” I find an outlet on the floor below the terminal’s glass wall and sit with my back to the sun, pulling my hair over my ears so they don’t burn. “What else?” Kell prompts. Across the room, I watch a little boy with a ladybug backpack start crying because he can’t plug his iPad into the wall. Stooping down to inspect the sticker, his mother scowls and peels it off the wall. Then she picks him up, patting him on the backpack. “Cool bugs,” I decide. “Like a handful of centipedes or giant pill bugs or a scorpion.” “Noted,” Kell says. “And easy to find in Vietnam. And what’s in the last corner, little demon?” The gate attendant makes our first boarding call. Reflexively, my hand reaches into my pocket, making sure I haven’t forgotten my ticket, passport, and wallet. The latter I pull out and open, looking at a shiny orange laminate card. “My last object is my Arizona Fall League season pass.” Kell snorts. I keep hold of my passport and ticket but pocket the card again. “Baseball tickets?” It was my parents’ way of bribing me to move: eight weeks of games, and I could see doubleheaders on the weekends if I was willing to drive between stadiums. Sure middle of nowhere Washington was boring, and very nearly out of radio service, so it was hard to listen to Mariners games unless I sat on the roof, but at least I’d had the same group of friends since pre-k. I might not be afraid of bugs or demons or flying alone but I was terrified of starting my senior year of high school as the new kid. “I’ve got to go,” Kell says. In the background, I hear a train whistle. “I’ll try to check in from –” her words are garbled. “Or summon me there!” I say. “I’ll travel with you!” Kell says something else, but our connection gets cut off. I think it might have been, “I have something new for the book!” but I hope not. Chapter 2 On the plane, I cram my backpack into an overhead bin and pull down my window shade, leaning my head against it and trying to nap. My parents should be in Phoenix by now – they road tripped down with all our stuff. Two more hours and I’ll be with them, but it’s a whole other month before the Fall League baseball season starts. My passport is digging into my hip so I pull it out of my pocket and flick it open, studying my picture and imagining it displayed on a scoreboard, alongside my stats: Kailani Kramer, born in Hawaii, brown hair, brown eyes, tall, flexible enough to be a shortstop (but so uncoordinated I’ve never been able to play organized sports)... I think about Kell and monsters and baseball, and I pull out my phone and send myself a reminder to text her: “What’s the opposite of a vampire? Not a werewolf, because it’d be too hot for those in Phoenix. But I’m doing a reverse-Twilight: Washington to PDX. Clumsy brunette falls in love with a monster and –” Embarrassed, I delete everything and pocket my phone again. Kell is obsessed with falling in love, if I even mention the word around her she’ll go into a frenzy. I sink as low as my seat belt will allow me and wait for take-off with my head buzzing. This year, I just want to keep my head down, make a few friends, and watch a few baseball games. I’m not interested in romance. Besides, it’s been barely a week since Robbie and I broke up... Kell and I never lived together – she’s my dad’s kid from his first marriage – he left her mom for mine. But she was always involved in my life. When I started middle school, she’d give me “homework.” She’d just graduated college, where she’d mastered taking color-coordinated notes in handwriting so perfect it looked like a font, and she’d send me pages and pages of instructions on how to get through fights with friends, how to deal with my crushes, and how to take the initiative to ask someone out. On the last day of seventh-grade, she surprised me at school (she was supposed to be in New York) and helped me clean out my locker. She wouldn’t let me throw out my science textbook. She took it home, held inside her jacket so it would be protected from the rain, and then sliced it open with a box cutter, taking out all the pages so she could replace them with her handwritten notes. “This is now your bible,” she said proudly. “How to be in love. From an expert.” I was thirteen and only interested in “dating” on certain pre-ordained days, when the cafeteria was decorated with streamers and punch bowls, like Valentine’s or Spring Fling. The rest of the year boys were still too immature. They didn’t wash their gym socks and they still played with finger skateboards on the bus. But Kell was adamant: one day I’d want to fall in love, and she wanted me to do it right. “Loving someone else might be the most fun you ever have in your life – but loving yourself is the most important...” I mostly ignored her advice. As my Lyft pulls up to the new house I realize I never told her about my breakup with Robbie. He’d like this place – because it has a pool – and it’s one-story – and he’s always fantasized about getting his own place and being able to ride his skateboard between the kitchen and his room. “Kailani! How was the flight?” My mom takes my backpack, squishes me with a hug, and hurries me inside. I’m hit with a blast of AC and new paint-smell. “We’re almost done with your room – I mean, just with the boxes–” she holds up her hands in surrender, “We didn’t open them! Or arrange anything! That’s all for you to do. But we’ve finished the mudroom and our bathrooms and the couch is moved in, although we’re gonna need your help to position it correctly. Dad’s set it down crooked...” As she gives me the tour, I grimace, realizing how poorly our old furniture fits into its new home. Everything we own is heavy dark wood with extra padding and overstuffed pillows. Cold weather stuff – for sitting in front of a fire while you listen to the rain. Phoenix gets dust storms – haboobs – but it’s sunny most days. I’m hot just looking at our couch, next to a ladder hung with heavy blankets sitting atop a furry rug. I give it a week before they’re moving things out again, replacing everything with wicker and glass. “Did you talk to Kell?” Mom asks, showing me to my room which has been painted lilac. “She was getting on a train.” “Has Robbie checked in?” I tell her my phone’s dead, and I haven’t checked yet, but I’ll let her know as soon as I’m unpacked. She drops my backpack at the foot of the bed and walks off, calling, “Honey? Do you remember if we packed the candles? I want to light the evergreen one, so the house smells like normal!” Sitting on my bare mattress, surveying my view of the pool and the neighbor’s yard and a hill of cacti in the distance, I wonder why I’m not more upset. Robbie and I had been dating for a year and six months. We spent nearly every day of the summer together – until it got too sad for him to watch my room be slowly devoured by moving boxes. Kell had left me strict instructions for what to do when I fell in love, but I hadn’t followed them with Robbie. She’d wanted me to avoid heartbreak but our break up had barely registered. I stretch my legs and crack my neck, trying to work out a kink I’d developed on the plane. Maybe I was numb, because of the suddenness of our move. Maybe in a week or two, the pain would hit, and I would realize Robbie was my true love and I miss him and I should promise to apply to schools in Washington state to be close to him again. When that happens, I promise myself, I’ll check Kell’s bible. Until then, I get to my knees, pull open the closest box and start piling books onto my shelf – hiding my seventh-grade science textbook at the very back. But then the smell of evergreen wafts toward me from the hall and it hits me: just like the smell of pine leaves in the desert, Robbie and I didn’t fit. Chapter 3 Peanut butter pretzels, black coffee, mascara, amber perfume, and a camera. Kell texts me. And add this question to your list, it’s a need-to-know with boyfriends! I don’t. She sends me a gif of a sparkling pentagram. By the way, guy on the train is so cute. Screenshot this in case he’s my future husband! I unload dinner – plates of chicken shawarma from a place called Pita Jungle – onto mismatched plates. We eat our first dinner together sitting on couch pillows on the dining room floor. “We’re obsessed with this place,” mom says through a mouthful of hummus. “We’ve gotten it every night we’ve been here! And we’re on an iced tea kick, suddenly. I never thought I could do it – doesn’t ice just taste weird? ” (She’s also on a take half a CBD gummy before bed kick because moving is stressful and always makes it hard for her to sleep. It also makes her loopy.) “Ice doesn’t have a taste, baby,” says my dad. “Yes it does. It tastes dusty. But the ice at Pita Jungle–” she rattles her cup like it’s a coin bag at the casino and her eyes light up – “it’s money.” (Money is my mom’s new word for “good.”) “Please stop saying money, mom.” She loves when I play the annoyed teenager. When they were newly-weds, Kell was just starting that phase and one of the things my parents bonded over was all the ways they could annoy her, lovingly. My mom and Kell get along great but I’ve never liked that part of my parents’ origin story. They act like everything Kell and I talk about is “the cutest thing in the world.” They love us, but it feels patronizing. I’ve asked Kell to send me pages for the bible on how to deal with my parents but she’s only interested in dating. (“So we can end up just like them?” I asked her once. That shut her up for a few weeks.) The good thing about my mom taking CBD gummies is, the second they kick in, she blows out the evergreen candles. “They make me think of campfires!” she says. “But if a fire started here, all this chaparral would burrrrrrn. ” (Then she realizes she’s getting paranoid and decides to clean up and get to bed as quickly as possible.) By 8:00 pm my parents have reset the couch cushions and are brushing their teeth, getting ready to turn in. At 8:01, the doorbell rings and my dad opens it, dripping tooth paste down his shirt. “Hello?” “Hi,” says a dark-haired girl in a plaid skirt. “I’m Ruja – the school ambassador?” “Right,” says my dad, swallowing his toothpaste. Ruja and I both grimace. “We thought you’d be coming by in the afternoon–” “I was supposed to, tomorrow, yeah. To give Kailani an early tour of the school. But a bunch of us are going to the movies tonight and we thought she might want to join.” My dad steps aside, to give me a better view of the girl. Mom pokes her groggy head around the corner of their room, down the hall: “I didn’t realize the school had uniforms!” she says, blearily eyeing Ruja’s skirt. “I’ll have to sew Kailani’s uniform!” Ruja laughs, politely, and it sets off a fit of giggles in my mom. Leaving the front door open, my dad joins her in their room and I grab a jacket and meet Ruja on the porch. She lifts her windbreaker to show her skirt’s been rolled at the waist. “It’s not a uniform, I got it for a rave.” I follow her down the driveway, expecting her to lead me to a car but we continue walking down the block, towards the base of the hill I can see from my bedroom window. “Hope you don’t mind I showed up early. Thought a school tour sounded really boring. You should get to know everyone before the back-to-school blues set in,” she rolls her eyes and laughs, then realizes I don’t get the joke. “Oh! I mean Adderall – blue pill – everyone acting weirder than normal. Did you eat? We could run to Pei Wei...” “I did, yeah.” Suddenly regretting my choice of garlic hummus, I feel around in my pocket for a stick of gum and realize I left my phone at home on the dining room floor. “We’re going to a movie?” I ask, wondering if she’ll spot me a box of Junior Mints. “‘ The movies ’” Ruja says, winking like I’ve missed something, again. Ruja leads me to the base of the hill with all the cacti, lit in the last rays of a quickly fading sunset against a deepening blue sky. Some look like they’re waving – and I imagine my dad behind the wheel of the Uhaul, days before, eagerly waving back at them to make my mom giggle. Then – one of the cacti raises both arms and flags down Ruja – and I jump. “Hey!” Blobs that I’d mistaken for rocks stand up, and a few silhouettes that I thought were cactus reveal themselves to be humans as we walk closer. Ruja runs ahead and takes a seat, facing back towards my house. She pats the ground beside her – “C’mon, Kai, pick a movie.” Elevated by the hill, we can see inside every house in my neighborhood. “All the TVs face the hill,” Ruja explains, taking a beer that a boy with kohl-lined eyes hands her. “So that it blocks the sun during the day – no glare – you know? At night we like to spy on people.” Besides the boy with the eyeliner, who sits down on Ruja’s other side, there are five or six people milling around the hill behind us, drinking and laughing. “I’m Hazeem,” says the boy, extending a hand over Ruja’s lap. He’s wearing fishnet arm warmers and a heavy silver chain around his neck. Kell’s question swims in my head, What five items would summon you? But I don’t want him to think I’m stereotyping him, assuming he’s into the occult just because he looks goth. “Are you from Stephanie Meyer Washington?” Hazeem asks. “Ruja said you’re from Washington.” She offers him a sip of the beer but he refuses it. “I was from a really small town in the woods,” I say, taking a sip when Ruja offers it to me, next. “Now we’re in Stephanie Meyer Phoenix,” he says. “Did you know that? She lives over on that hill–” He points behind us, across a little league baseball field. “Can we see into her house?” I ask. “I bet she watches those movies every night,” Hazeem says. “I do – but with my own face DeepFaked as Jacob.” Ruja laughs. “That’s the future of movies anyway! Be your own superhero!” “Jacob’s a simp, not a superhero,” says Ruja. “If you wanna have powers you have to be a vampire. What would your powers be, Kai?” I’m reminded of Kell’s questions again. Ruja and Hazeem watch me, eagerly. Robbie and I never played games like this when we were getting to know each other. Kell chastised me for it but it never felt important. I never followed her rules with him and everything turned out fine, anyway. “I think I’d pick teleportation,” I tell Ruja. “It’s a trick question,” she says. “It reveals what you care most about. You want freedom, more than anything else. If you say invisibility , that’s a tell that you’re kinky and you want to be yourself without judgment. If you say shapeshifting... You’re probably also just kinky. If you say you want lazer-beam eyes or to shoot fire from your hands, you need power. If you want to be able to read minds–” “You’re kinky?” Hazeem guesses. “You want to be the best lover in the world because you can always anticipate what your partner wants next?” “Hazeem, don’t ever say the word ‘lover’ again.” “Then how are we supposed to talk about Taylor Swift? How do I order your meat- mhhhm’s pizza at Domino’s? How do I describe to you that scene in It–” “Are you guys dating?” I ask, catching Hazeem's eye and giving him an encouraging smile. “Are you lo –?” “No!” Ruja snaps, loudly, getting the attention of the rest of the group. All heads turn towards us, until she says, “Hey, look! Someone’s watching Ratatouille!” and we all go back to peering into houses. Ruja pulls her legs to her chest, shivering slightly. “Bet you aren’t even cold yet– not compared to Washington.” She doesn’t look that chilly either. In fact, I think she’s blushing. Hazeem stands and pulls off the flannel he has tied around his waist. He offers it to Ruja but she laughs and waves it away. “What? It was just for fashion, anyway!” “You won’t even recognize him on Monday,” she says, gesturing to his chains and black platform shoes. “His parents are cool – they let him wear whatever he wants after hours but school’s sacred, a mecca of learning–” “Racist!” jokes Hazeem. “–and he has to dress to impress.” “So do you,” he points at her skirt. “With the school-girl outfits.” “I like the slutty schoolgirl aesthetic. If my parents saw how high I roll these skirts up they wouldn’t approve of me wearing them–” “So you can see where her mind was at with the superhero question,” Hazeem says. “Kinky, kinky, kinky. Anyway –” he ties his flannel around his waist again. “I have to get to the bakery. You wanna come with?” “Not tonight,” Ruja says. “We can show Kailani next weekend – his parents have an amazing bakery. Sometimes we help them work the nightshift, just for fun. You get to eat all the baklava flakes that fall off when you take ‘em out of the pan!” “Bye, Roo. Nice to meet you, Kailani,” Hazeem says. Someone throws a soft frisbee at the back of his head as he’s leaving and it rebounds into my lap, spilling the beer Ruja’s nursing. “ Hey !” “Sorry!” A blonde-haired boy comes to retrieve it. “Sorry,” he says again, close enough to my face that I can smell the beer on his breath. Suddenly self-conscious that I never found any gum, I turn my face away from Ruja to say: “Hey, look! Someone’s watching that Twilight fight scene where it turns out everything was just a vision!” “You know what that part always makes me think about?” says Ruja, yawning. She gets to her feet and reaches out a hand to help me, almost sloshing beer onto my shoes in the process. “Maybe I’ve done too much bullshit lit-analysis in my life but it always strikes me: everything in our lives is kind of made up, isn’t it? I have woo-woo superstitious grandparents and they’re like: ‘It’s all a dream. It’s just how you see things.’ “You could be in the same relationship and one person could love it and the other could be suffocating. There’s no objective reality, just whatever you believe. Do you think that’s what Stephanie Meyer was going for?” She turns her head towards where Hazeem said her house was, hopefully, as if the author’ll be standing on her balcony, with a megaphone, ready to shout back the answer. “I don’t think she was thinking that deep,” I say, laughing. “You know why there’s that baseball scene? I heard an editor told her she didn’t have enough action, and she heard ‘action’ and thought ‘physical activity!’ ‘Sports!’ So that’s why they randomly play baseball in the middle of a thunderstorm.” Chapter 4 Before we leave the hill, after standing around through the Ratatouille end scene and half of a Harry Potter movie, Ruja tries to give me her phone number but I remember I left my cell at home. She promises to put me and Hazeem into a group chat and to be in touch about coordinating my school tour (“But let’s do it Monday instead of tomorrow. I’m not giving that place an extra second of my energy!”). She’ll meet me out front, early, and make sure I know where all my classes are before homeroom. “And if you only have cold-weather clothes I can lend you a slutty schoolgirl skirt to borrow!” Back home, I collect my phone from the dining room floor and rifle through my boxes until I find linens and pillows. My phone died while I was gone. I plug it in and as I make my bed I watch it light up with missed texts from Kell: Definitely my future husband! You meet anyone yet? Remember the rules but also: you can’t win if you don’t play. So mom must have told her about my breakup with Robbie... Bed made, I lie back on it, kicking my shoes off towards the closet. I wonder if I should tell her I’ve met friends, already. Hostel-hopping, perpetually chatty Kell would be proud of that. I think about how I’d describe them: lover Hazeem, with his eyeliner and lifted boots... and skeptic Ruja in her slutty schoolgirl costume... I sit up, peering at my bookshelf to make sure the bible is well hidden. But from this angle, it looks suspicious: too obviously crammed behind the rest of the books. Too big not to get its own space on the shelf... I stand and examine it from other vantage points: the doorway, by the window, looking into my mirror. It’s too obviously “concealed.” I rifle through my boxes again, looking for magazines to set on top of it... But there’s a nail sticking out of the bookshelf that makes the bible sit at an odd angle... The magazines overtop just make it look worse. I could just leave it out, can’t I? Surely no one would ever want to flip through my seventh-grade science textbook! I pull it out and set it on top of the shelf, obscuring the cover with a bowl of jewelry and a candle. It didn’t make sense to drive my old car down from Washington since it already had so many miles on it and my dad thought it was unlikely to survive the trip. Our old town was hardly two miles long and I’d bought the car myself – off Craigslist – but I didn’t need it. Anywhere I needed to go I could have walked. But my high school here is down the freeway, so first thing Saturday morning my parents go looking for “for sale” signs parked around our neighborhood. I’m not allowed to join, in case I reject something good based on color alone, but they promise whatever they bring back will come with a bag of Pita Jungle. I bring my phone with me into the bathroom to shower, so I can listen to music, where I’m interrupted by a call from an unknown number. Suds in my hair, I wipe my elbow on a towel and use it to press ‘answer.’ “Hello?” “It’s Ruja! Sorry for calling – I need both hands or else I’d text.” “Where are you?” It sounds busy. “Hazeem’s parents’ bakery! You want to meet us here? It’s some kind of – Hazeem, is it a festival or a wedding or what? It’s some kind of party!” “I’m kind of waiting on my parents,” I lie, not feeling up to socializing yet. “They’re picking up my car so I can run errands.” “Totally understand!” Ruja says. “Can we drop by and bring you some shit?” While she talks about the party, I tune her out, rinsing the soap from my hair. Then I turn off the water, wrap myself in a towel and study my face in the mirror. I haven’t unpacked my makeup yet, or bought sunscreen, or found my sunglasses... “Anyway, is now a good time to come by?” “Sure,” I say, trying to remember where I packed my hair dryer. Half an hour later, Ruja pounds on my door. “Sorry!” she says, pushing past me with arms full of white pastry bags. “Had to knock with my foot!” Hazeem follows behind her with a travel tray of iced mint teas and a container of figs. “The tea’s better hot, I think, but honestly – you can’t drink it like that in Phoenix.” His forehead’s as sweaty as the condensation on the cups. I grab three mismatched plates and a stack of leftover Pita Jungle napkins from the kitchen on the way to my room. Inside, I tell Ruja and Hazeem it’s fine if they sit on my unopened boxes, or my bed, wherever they’re more comfortable. “Oooh! Can I help set up?” Hazeem asks. “I love decorating!” I set the teas on my book shelf. “I can see your priorities,” Ruja says, noticing my books are the only box I’ve fully unpacked. “Well, we used to live in the middle of nowhere,” I explain. “With TV that buffers every two and a half minutes and barely within radio range...I used to have to sit on the roof if I wanted to listen to baseball. It was no use watching the games because you’d always be a few minutes behind.” “Why’s that matter?” Ruja asks. (Again with the subjective reality shit!) And Hazeem and I both shush her, so I know he must also be a sports fan. “Why’d you move here, then?” she asks, offering me the container of figs. I take two and sit on my bed. “My dad’s job was letting him work remotely. He wanted me to grow up in a small town like he and my mom did, with all the same kids all through school... But with me about to leave for college they realized they needed to be somewhere with better cell service. I was going to have a great excuse not to have to FaceTime them, but now... “When my dad mentioned he was thinking of moving, his job found him a raise to come here. ” “What are you thinking of studying?” Ruja asks. “You mean, ‘What’s my dream job?’” I say, screwing up my nose and thinking again of Kell’s endless questions. Hazeem laughs. “You’re a capitalist pig, Ruja!” He opens the bag of baklava and passes it between us. “It’s a normal question!” she smarts, taking her time choosing a sweet. “Hazeem’s going to expand the bakery,” she tells me, shoving a baklava into her mouth. “I want to be in finance for, like, three years and then just day trade and ride a motorcycle around–” her mouth’s so full of honey, it takes me a minute to figure out that she says, “– Asia .” “In your tiny skirt?” I joke, taking a handful of pastry for myself. “I want boys up and down the South China sea to have pin-up tattoos of me!” She strikes a pose, sitting on her knees and sticking out her butt on top of my ‘Summer Clothes’ box. I cover my mouth to laugh and Hazeem snorts. “Anyway,” I say. “I don’t know what my dream job is but I know what my hobby’ll be.” “That’s a much better answer anyway,” says Hazeem. “What is it?” “I love...” I hesitate to admit it, “...weird bugs, actually. Like giant beetles and scorpions and spiders – which aren’t technically insects–” “They’re aliens,” nods Hazeem, motioning for me to continue. “–and I want to breed weird colored things and pin them and make huge framed collages. Like paintings but they’re made out of bugs.” “Like mandalas and things?” Ruja asks. “Or like what Chuck Close does, with the little dots – but all the dots are ladybugs. You know there are something like five hundred different colors they can be? Or a Chris Uphues heart but colored with butterfly wings, with roaches for the eyes and centipedes lined up end to end for the outline.” Hazeem shudders and Ruja laughs at him. “So you’re going to be the weirdo with a garage full of bug-breeding-tubs?” she asks. “I guess!” I shrug. “And I’ll make you send me things from the jungle,” I tease her. “You’ll be my buyer.” She scrunches up her nose. “And your squisher.” Hazeem shudders again. “Have you made any of this art yet?” he stands and peers into the box he was just sitting on. “Hidden under these towels? Or behind the book shelf?” I’m suddenly relieved I had the foresight to move the bible, as Hazeem’s eyes scan my room. “No weird bug painting yet,” I say fake-sadly. “But my sister’s overseas right now. I told her to be on the lookout and send anything weird she finds back. I do need some artwork above my bed. I was thinking I could do a beach-scape but the palm trees are made of tarantu–” “Stop!” Ruja and Hazeem say together. I smile, satisfied I finally got under her skin. Hazeem reaches for the iced tea on top of my bookshelf – giving an exaggerated body shake to illustrate how much I’ve creeped him out – and knocks over the tray. He manages to hold onto one tea, and catch another as it topples off the shelf, but a third goes crashing onto my jewelry bowl and its lid pops off, soaking the bible! I lunge for it but Ruja is closer. She moves the candle off its top, shaking out the wet pages and says– “Hey–?” Holding the soggy book upside down, so the pages splay out, she notices they’re all different colors. It’s clear that my seventh-grade textbook has been hollowed out... “What is this?” Ruja asks. I throw myself back onto the bed, hiding my face behind a pillow, resigned to the fact they’re going to look through it. “Ugh! Don’t! It’s my sisters! Don’t look – it’s so embarrassing!” Every few pages are a different kind of paper. Sometimes Kell wrote on airplane napkins, or graph paper, or colored card stock... Whenever I get a new piece, I shove it between the bindings – and whenever she visits, she takes the time to carefully glue them in and number the new chapters in silver gel pen. At first, because so many of the pages are pink, Ruja seems to think this is a Mean Girls burn book thing. “Keep yourself busy with friends...” she reads. “Ruja, seriously, don’t. It’s not that interesting.” “Is this a guidebook to something? It’s like a girl manual...” she says, passing it to Hazeem to inspect. “My sister Kell’s ten years older than me. When I hit middle school she went on an advice kick. This is... so embarrassing... but it’s... her rules for being in...” I whisper the last word: “ love .” “Ooooooh!” Hazeem and Ruja say, in unison. “Does it work?” Ruja asks. “I don’t know!” I say, snatching it out of Hazeem’s hands. It barely got wet – the thick cover absorbed most of the spill – and I’m half-relieved, half-annoyed with myself for caring that the book isn’t damaged. “Kell lives her life as if someone’s going to make a movie about it. Everything she does is very purposeful. If I’d followed her advice to a T I’d have gotten my first boyfriend in eighth grade, and fallen in love every year since, so that by senior year I’d be ready for a real relationship – whatever that is.” I think the explanation is stupid, but Ruja and Hazeem are riveted, their eyes glued to me. So, I continue, begrudgingly: “Then, we break up for college. Another four boyfriends in four years. One really serious one after that , break off an engagement next–” “Jeez,” says Ruja. “Is that what Kell did?” “She’s got these very strict rules for not losing yourself when you’re with someone – that she totally didn ’t follow when she was young – she just wants to make sure I don’t mess up.” “Aww,” says Ruja. “She’s like your sister-mom.” “My parents don’t know about this!” I snap. “Please don’t tell them, they think everything Kell and I do is so cute . Cute! I’ve never consulted the book before, and I’m afraid, if I ever did need it I’d be too embarrassed to use it if everyone knew.” “It’s not embarrassing!” Hazeem says. “It’s solid advice.” “But my parents used to tease me for being a control-freak. I like to know how things are going to turn out before I commit to them. They wouldn’t see this as savvy, they’d tease me for needing to be in total control of something as intangible as –” I can’t bring myself to say love again ... “So this book is a huge secret.” “But it was right out on your desk!” Hazeem says. “Like, very accessible. At the ready .” “It wasn’t!” I snap again. “Oh my god, I would have hid it better but I didn’t know where! I didn’t want it to look suspicious if my mom came snooping...” “What?” asks Ruja, “If she was sniffing around for weed or something?” I laugh, even though I’m trying to be serious. “Exactly, yeah. Not to confiscate but just to use for herself.” Briefly, I explain my mom’s newfound interest in CBD gummies. Stupidly, I call it a “love affair” and that gets us back on the topic of the bible again. “You call it the bible?” Ruja grins. “Kell calls it the bible. I never think about it this much, I promise !” “Yet you unpacked it first...” Hazeem says and Ruja pounces, pointing at me: “Exactly!” She jumps to her feet and gestures to the neatly arranged bookshelf – aside from my bed, it’s the only finished part of my room. “This is like the superpower question all over again! What do you care most about? Your books! It’s the first thing you put together in your new room, with the bible right on top!” “Guys, seriously. I didn’t think about it that hard.” “But subconsciously you did! ” Ruja says. “Your kink is that book,” Hazeem giggles. Ruja stands excitedly. Today, her schoolgirl skirt is hot pink and she rolls and unrolls it as she paces: “We should do an experiment! All three of us should use this book to fall in love this year and –” “That’s not even how it works.” I interrupt. (I hate that I’m even indulging them!) “It’s not a guide for falling in love. It’s just a list of things you should do when you’re already in it.” “To keep your man?” Hazeem asks. “No, not at all. To keep your...” I search for the word. “Sanity!” Ruja shouts, pointing, like it’s an SAT prep quiz. She grabs the book off my lap and flips through it again. “ Keep yourself busy, develop a new hobby, compliment yourself ...” She reads the chapter headings. “ Ask yourself: ‘Am I doing this because it makes me happy or because it distracts me from being sad?’ Ooh I could get a tattoo of that... But this all sounds like stuff you do in a breakup, not when you’re still together.” A picture of Kell shakes loose, tumbling onto the floor at my feet. I bend and pick it up: Kell smiling, next to an elephant; the cute elephant handler in the background smiling at her... “That’s exactly Kell’s point,” I say, studying the photo. “Act like you’re broken up, as soon as you’re together. Make more time for your friends, work on yourself. Don’t get wrapped up in the relationship, just let it be a nice extra. A relationship should fit into the life you already have. You shouldn’t let it change anything fundamental, and you shouldn’t have to force it.” “Right,” says Ruja sarcastically. “Don’t let it inspire big life decisions like having babies, moving in together, or getting married!” She rolls her eyes and snaps the book closed. “Oh sorry,” she says, noticing the photo on my lap. “Let me put it back in there...” “I get it,” Hazeem says. “She’s not saying don’t make big changes, just don’t lose yourself when you do it. You have to still be your own person, totally. You just happen to be in a relationship, too. My parents are like that,” he tells me, taking the book from Ruja and resetting it on my shelf. “They work together and they have the same hobbies. My mom used to tell me, Hazeem, marriage is like business. I have a job but it’s not who I am. I’m in a relationship but I’m not just one half of something. I’m a whole person who goes to work and stays in love and has a family – but I could leave it all in a moment so go clean your room!” I laugh, wanting to change the subject, but Ruja and Hazeem are still hungrily eyeing the book. Chapter 5 My parents find a car and make a verbal agreement to buy it. “It’s yellow! A little yellow truck!” says my mom. I think of telling Kell because it’s an excellent color for the movie version of her life (where I make a brief cameo, maybe dropping her off at an airport...) but my last text to her didn’t go through. Wherever she is, she must not have service. Mom says the car’s three blocks away but something’s wrong with the air conditioning. The owner can’t in good conscious sell it without replacing it first because the temperature’s going to be in the high-nineties this week. “He was really nice,” my mom says but I ignore her, picturing a sweaty, greasy- lipped middle-aged mechanic in a wife beater. “As long as I have it in time for baseball season, I’m golden,” I say. “And school,” my mom says, with a raised eyebrow. Sunday I avoid Ruja and Hazeem until 7:30, trying to enjoy my last minutes of silence before the summer’s over. My new school is nearly five times bigger than the last. Our lockers are going to be outside, in the heat, and suddenly I’m worried about things I didn’t have to think about in Washington – Will I smell weird? Sweat through my clothes? How will my hair look in the humidity? Ruja wanted to take me back to school shopping but I’m used to wearing jeans and a windbreaker every day – I don’t think I know how to walk, or sit, in belt-length skirts and platform sandals. I was never nervous about the transition between elementary and middle school, or middle to high school because I was with the same group of kids my whole life. But now, by the end of dinner on the last night of summer, my stomach is fully sour at the thought of being the new kid. I text the group chat and ask them to meet me at the baseball field I saw on the other side of the hill. There’s a t-ball practice going on, with nine or ten-year-olds. “This is fun for you?” Hazeem asks. “Even when they’re so uncoordinated?” He’s wearing extra-thick eyeliner, and it’s so hot outside it’s smearing under his eyes. We watch a kid swing a bat that’s almost as long as he is – and miss. “It smells fun,” I say, leaning back in the bleachers and closing my eyes. “The cut grass and the infield dirt and eyeblack – not the kind Hazeem’s wearing...” I grin at him. “It reminds me of the good stuff.” “She’s bibleing us,” Ruja says, knowingly. “We’re in a new relationship with her but she’s not going to let us forget her old self! She’s got to introduce us to everything she likes, put it all on the table straight away, so we can take it or leave it–” “I’m not doing that!” I smirk. “I just don’t have a car and it’s not dark enough yet to go to the movies. Where else could I have walked?” “Oooh look!” Ruja raises her sunglasses, pointing to a blue-black beetle crawling alongside the dugout. “What’s that one called?” “It’s a stink beetle.” We watch it cautiously climb the rungs of chain link fence behind home plate. “ Or ,” she overemphasizes, “It’s a smiley face’s eyebrow or a piece of the lines of a peace sign. Right? See, Kai, I’ve got you figured out.” “Sure, Ruja. Go collect a couple dozen and I’ll make some artwork for you.” The kid loses his grip on his bat and it flies behind him, slamming into the fence. The stink bug falls off and gets stuck on its back. Hazeem reaches out with his foot and pokes it gently back onto its belly, and it sets off towards the shade of the dugout again. Hazeem pulls out his phone, putting a hand to his forehead to shield out the sun and squints. “What’s that? Ruja snaps and he jumps, anticipating another bug. She grabs the phone from his hand. “You’re on dating apps ?” “I’m eighteen next weekend! I just logged in a little early to check out the offerings. I haven’t been messaging anyone yet.” “The offerings ?” “What’s your bio?” I ask. As Hazeem darts for his phone, Ruja dodges him, checking him with her elbow. Using the shade of their bodies to read, she scrolls quickly through his profile, laughing. “Give it back!” She lets him take it. “It’s too late, I saw everything.” She turns conspiratorially to me, peering over the top of her sunglasses and smirking. “His main photo’s a picture of him holding a tray of pastries – it’s actually a really cute one–” “ Thank you–” “–and the bio says something like, ‘I’m even sweeter than these–’” “It does not!” “Read it to us then,” Ruja teases him, but Hazeem shuts off his phone and shoves it back in his pocket, pretending to be mad at her. He sticks out his tongue. “And you need more goth photos,” she suggests. “So you aren’t a catfish.” “I had one.” “I didn’