differences, I want her to understand me. To want what I want, to respect what I choose. It’s that part of me that pulls me to reply.
“When I’m in college next year, I could be spending all my time with boys and you wouldn’t even know,” I say.
She fixes me with a faraway look. When she speaks, her voice is hard and gentle, like sculpted stone. “Next year is next year,” she says.
I eye her uncertainly, my brows furrowing. Tía’s never been one for riddles. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
“Next year you’ll be eighteen.”
“I’m practically eighteen now.”
“Seventeen is not eighteen, Juniper,” she pronounces, like this mathematical declaration carries infinite weight. “When you’re eighteen, you get to make these choices for yourself.”
I feel the color rise in my cheeks. “I’m old enough to make choices now.” We watch each other confrontationally for a long moment.
Finally, she speaks, her voice settling decisively. “Separate hotel rooms . . . and you’ll take the tamales.”
I scoff, because that’s the best I’m ever going to get with Tía. “I won’t take the tamales!” I call over my shoulder as I leave the living room and head for the stairs.
“Juniper Ramírez,” I hear behind me, “you’re not getting out of this one.”
Juniper
UPSTAIRS, I ESCAPE into my bedroom, the only place where I have an ounce of privacy, despite sharing the room with my sixteen-year-old sister. Marisa is nowhere to be found, probably with her friends or the boyfriend she’s doing a terrible job hiding from the family.
I hunt for the binder in desk drawers of student government flyers and physics homework, though I know I won’t find it. I would have remembered leaving it in my desk. I don’t even venture over to Marisa’s half of the room, which is explosively untidy. She could be hiding the bodies of her enemies or a pet Komodo dragon under her laundry piles, and I would have no idea. I do know she didn’t take my college binder. She’s the only other person in this house eager for me to go to college. She showed me a Pinterest board of her plans for my half of the room. It was . . . overwhelmingly pink.
Right now my side is not pink. It’s cluttered but organized, with certificates and photos and watercolors tacked to the bulletin board next to my towering bookcases. I could draw every detail from memory. The collection of Nancy Drew books on my bookshelf, the photos of my friend Carolyn and me ice-skating in sixth grade, the Keira Knightley Pride & Prejudice poster over the bed—each a thread tying me to a time and place. The bedroom was my dad’s when he was my age, and he’s pointed out to me and Marisa the hole where he nailed his high school baseball medal to the wall.
I love home, I do. I love my bedroom and my family. It’s just, there’s a point where the changelessness of everything becomes enveloping instead of encouraging. There’s a claustrophobia in comfort. The threads become a web, confining the person I want to be to the person I was.
I check again around my suitcase for my binder, but it’s not there. In case it fell off the bed or something, I drop to my knees on the carpet and begin searching the floor.
Something’s out of place. On the floor is my box of old Halloween costume components—Disney tiaras and cat ears and a Ravenclaw robe. It should be sitting on the top shelf of my closet. I spring up from the floor and in two quick paces cross my half of the room to the closet, heart pounding. I check the shelf.
The space behind the costume box is empty.
Without hesitation, I’m bounding into the hall, little bombs of anger bursting behind my eyes. I throw open Callie and Anabel’s door and find my younger sisters on the floor next to their bunk beds. They’re giggling.
“You went through my things?” I demand from the doorway.
Anabel jumps up. Callie twists to face me, caught red-handed. On the floor in front of them is the shoebox