Author/Uploaded by Jennifer Torres
Contents Title Page Dedication Contents 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 C...
Contents Title Page Dedication Contents 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 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright Guide Cover Title Page Start of content Dedication Contents Chapter 1 Acknowledgments Copyright Pagebreaks of the print version Cover Page iii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 249 250 251 iv To my tías with love and gratitude 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 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright At first Lucinda Mendoza thought her sister was exaggerating. Raquel could be a little dramatic that way. But maybe it was true. Maybe there weren’t any stories worth digging into at Dad’s house in the middle of California farmland. Was that really such a bad thing? Wasn’t the calm kind of … nice? Especially after months of chaos. Lucinda sat on the grass, her legs stretched in a wide V. She leaned over the left leg, reaching for her toe, and watched Juliette dip a white T-shirt, its front a constellation of knots and rubber bands, into a bucket of bright pink water. Raquel, Lucinda’s twin, knelt next to Jules, notebook open to a clean, blank page, pen raised and ready to make note of anything that happened. Anything at all. Nothing did. Jules swirled the shirt in the water with a stick she had pulled off one of the oak trees that Dad’s small ranch, Los Robles, was named for. “I’m not sure how long it’s supposed to sit in there,” she said, frowning into the punch-colored stew. Raquel peeked over the edge of the bucket. “Let’s start with a few questions while we wait,” she said. She tapped her pen against her teeth. “What gave you the idea to tie-dye your clothes in beet juice in the first place? Is it a trend? Are kids our age trying to get back to the basics? Reviving old-school, all-natural techniques? Giving up fast fashion?” She sat up on her knees. Her eyes glimmered. Lucinda recognized the flash of a new idea. “That could be a great angle, actually,” Raquel continued, scribbling furiously into her notebook. “Are you doing this … beet juice thing … for environmental reasons?” She inched closer to Jules. “To make your own clothes and take action against a system that creates millions of tons of textile waste each year?” This was getting desperate, even for Raquel, who, as editor of their school news site, the Manzanita Mirror, charged toward stories with a stubborn persistence that could be a little intimidating if you weren’t used to it. Lucinda met Jules’s nervous glance, rolled her eyes, and stretched over the other leg. “I guess?” Jules answered finally. “I mean, honestly, I just thought it would be cool to see how it would turn out. Since we have all those beets and everything. I didn’t want them to go to waste. That’s good for the environment, right? Reducing waste?” Lucinda laughed, her brown curls tumbling into her face. Raquel slumped and tossed her notebook and pen beside her. “Don’t be mad,” Jules said, her cheeks turning as red as the beet water. “I do care about the environment. It’s just that I didn’t know all that stuff you were talking about. Let me read about it tonight, then we can do the interview tomorrow.” Raquel pulled a clump of crabgrass out of the dirt. “That’s not how it works,” she said. “I have to find a story, not create one.” She raised her eyes and shrugged. “But I’m not mad. And even if it’s not a story, this is fun to watch.” Jules’s shoulders relaxed. The nervous lines between her eyebrows disappeared. She reached into the bucket and lifted out the shirt. It emerged, dripping, a vibrant flamingo pink. She held it up with a squeal of surprised delight, not seeming to mind that it was staining