Julieta and the Romeos

Dedication To la Mami, who taught me to write in the dim basement light, sewed into the wee hours, scrubbed, drove, and lifted what needed lifting. When I think I’m trying hard, I remember you. Then I try harder. Thank you for getting us here. Contents Cover Title Page Dedication One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen Twenty Twenty-One Twenty-Two Twenty-Three Twenty-Four Twenty-Five Twenty-Six Twenty-Seven Twenty-Eight Twenty-Nine Thirty Thirty-One Thirty-Two Thirty-Three Acknowledgments About the Author Books by Maria E. Andreu Back Ad Copyright About the Publisher Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes; Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears. What is it else? a madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet. Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene I Maybe? tbd. Not enough data to agree or disagree. One If I could write this story, we would not be at the town pool. I would not be trying to make my flimsy beach towel stretch enough to keep my thighs from sticking to the plastic lounge. Ivy’s island-sized hat would not be poking the side of my head while I blink to get the hastily applied sunscreen out of my watering, stinging eyes. But I’m not writing this story, so here I am. As a reflex, I reach down to pat the side of my mom’s old pink beach bag to feel the outline of my writer’s notebook through it. I won’t take it out and risk slathering it in Coppertone just yet, but the feel of it through the bag reassures me. I will my brain to soak everything in so I can write it all down later, even how the sunscreen is causing a greasy film to obscure half the world. And by “world,” I just mean the Alderton Town Pool, its concrete deck around the ice-blue water, the lap lanes cordoned off so that the oldsters can do laps undisturbed while the loud seventh graders try to jump on each other’s heads. It’s a whole microcosm of our town contained inside a chain-link fence: the kiddie splash pool with the anxious-looking young moms no more than a foot away from big-cheeked babies; the main pool where the middle schoolers’ moms eat carrot sticks and ignore their kids entirely; the highly regulated diving boards you have to pass a test to even touch; the grass we’re on littered with lounge chairs that have seen better days. I am here for one reason and one reason only: Ivy Madigan, best friend extraordinaire and ride-or-die since grammar school. Ivy has impeccable taste in all things, like any girl who has grown up in a princess house. She has just one giant hole in her judgment: she loves it here. I can’t for the life of me understand why. She looks absolutely thrilled. I mean . . . all of us Alderton lifers have loved this place at some point. The only difference is that, for most of us, the love affair ended sometime around first kisses and the onset of BO. But her love glows just as brightly today as it did since she passed her diving test. She’s talking beside me, animated, conspiratorial. “And then she said that if he was going to be like that about it, he was uninvited to her family vacation. Which, you know, it had been a bear for her to convince her parents to even let her ask him to go. This could make things really awkward at the epic party I plan to throw when my parents are away.” “Mm-hmm,” I say absently. Ivy cocks her head at me in disappointment, sunglasses like two giant saucers on her face. “Jules, that is the third bit of major scoop I have laid on you since we sat down, all fresh post-school, and we’ve only been out for two days.” “Makenna, Joshua, fight, check.” “You know I collect all this juicy gossip for you in the hopes of seeing it in a major blockbuster novel someday.” I laugh. “No, you don’t.” “Okay, not only for that reason. But also for that reason.” Ivy and I may seem like unlikely friends to some. With her flawless, salon-highlighted blond hair and baby pink acrylics, she fills out her pastel yellow bikini in a way that gets her free snow cones at the concession stand and adoring looks from the guy who checks passes at the door. I’m firmly under the umbrella so I don’t get burned, am in a very sensible one-piece, and have a selection of three novels, plus my notebook, in my bag for when she inevitably decides she needs to swim laps. But we work, somehow. She listens to all my mad story ideas, encourages me, cheers me on. I come to the pool when she insists and let her drag me to more parties than I’d naturally go to on my own. It’s been a winning formula for a decade. Well, it was more dolls and floaties at the start, plus long, lazy summer afternoons filled with scavenger hunts we used to concoct for one another. But we’ve grown through our various stages together. “Speaking of novels, are you working on anything for your summer school thing yet?” “A, it’s not summer school. B, it hasn’t even started yet.” “It’s summer, and you’re going to school, so . . .” “Please stop calling it summer school. This thing is the most prestigious high school writing intensive in New York. Maybe the country. Led by one of my absolutely favorite writers.” “I didn’t realize old Will was teaching at Fairchild.” “Live writer.” She seems to have taken it personally that I actually liked Macbeth when we were in English class together. She blamed it on my name. Which, thanks, Parents, for inadvertently saddling me with that association. But also I just thought the witches were pretty