Out on the ice, Lucinda always knew, a split second before it happened, that she was about to fall. Her toe would catch at exactly the wrong moment, or her weight would shift too far to one side, and it didn’t matter how hard she fought to stay upright, she was going to tumble.

  She felt like that now.

  She hadn’t looked at her phone since the night before. She had been too worried about Crybaby to even think about it. And after Raquel brought him home, she was too tired and relieved. It was still sitting on the coffee table, in fact. Silently, she slid out of her chair to go get it.

  Raquel leaped to her feet. “That’s not true. Sylvia left the door open. She even admitted it.”

  There were dozens of unread messages. Lucinda’s hands shook as she scrolled through them. Mom snatched the phone away before she could finish, but Lucinda had seen enough.

  A lot of times at the rink there was someone nearby to help you back up when you fell. But other times, you had to shake off the ice and stand on your own.

  She should have seen this coming. Lucinda looked straight at Raquel. “I don’t know why I listened to you. You think you know what’s best for everyone. You think you can control everything. But you don’t and you can’t.”

  If someone had walked into the kitchen just five minutes later, they probably wouldn’t have known that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Sylvia left, saying she needed some air, and Juliette stormed back to her bedroom, where Raquel guessed she was logging in for school, same as they were about to do. Shaking his head and pulling on his baseball cap, Dad went out to work in the cherry orchard. Not even Mom stayed behind. She headed back to the loft after warning them that they’d talk about it all later.

  Raquel and Lu sat side by side at the kitchen table. Like always. But not.

  “We should probably sign in now,” Lu mumbled, clicking the Join button. Their faces appeared next to the eighteen others that were already on-screen, stacked in little rectangle-shaped windows.

  Sometimes, when her mind wandered in class, Raquel would imagine what might be happening just outside the frame, where she couldn’t see. Like, was Peter’s grandma keeping more than just cockatiels in her apartment? Or, what exactly were Alice’s little brothers up to that made them shriek and holler all day?

  And sometimes she wondered what everyone else was imagining about her and Lu.

  That morning, at least, she had a pretty good idea.

  The first private message came right as Ms. King was welcoming everyone to class.

  So what happened when you brought Crybaby home?

  “Ignore it,” Lu muttered. Raquel closed the chat box.

  But another message flashed on the screen right after the first.

  Is Sylvia still there?

  Raquel pulled the computer toward her.

  Not now.

  Do you mean she’s not there right now? Or you can’t talk about it right now?

  Lu groaned and reached for the keyboard.

  BOTH!

  Not even that stopped them.

  After a while, Raquel raised her hand. She knew the questions would keep coming. And anyway, it was going to be impossible to steer her thoughts toward trade in the ancient Nile Valley the way Ms. King wanted her to.

  “Yes, Raquel?” Ms. King called on her. “Would you like to unmute and give us one example of how trade helped the Egyptian civilization continue to advance?”

  She swallowed. “Oh. No, actually, I was just raising my hand because I’m starting to get a headache. I think it’s from all this screen time?”

  Ms. King frowned and leaned close to the screen. Her eyes darted right and left as if she was trying to peer into the little window that belonged to Lu and Raquel. But of course she couldn’t.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “Is one of your parents nearby to help?”

  “I’m fine,” Raquel added quickly, recognizing the look that grown-ups seemed to get anytime one of them coughed or sneezed lately. “I think I just need a break, if that’s all right?”

  “All right,” Ms. King said after a pause. “Lucinda, you’ll make sure to let me know how your sister is doing?”

  Lu nodded, and Ms. King went on with class. “Someone else. What are some of the ways trade influenced Egyptian civilization? Mira?”

  Lu switched off the camera even though teachers were always asking them not to. For Lu to break a rule like that, even a little rule that didn’t make much sense as far as Raquel could see, she must be really concerned. And if she was really concerned, then it was possible she wouldn’t stay angry forever. Raquel felt a tug at her chest. Like maybe the cord that connected them hadn’t snapped after all.

  “What’s the matter? Are you actually sick?”

  Raquel shook her head.

  Lu narrowed her eyes. “You’re not going to try to make Mom and Dad think you’re sick, are you?”

  “No!” Raquel shouted. Then she forced herself to gulp down her frustration. “No. I just want to be outside for a while. Take notes for me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry about Crybaby,” she added, even though the words felt thick in her mouth. “And … all of it.”

  “I know.”

  April sunshine flitted through the cherry blossoms, splashing the sandy soil with light. For once, Raquel didn’t have a plan. She had no idea where she would go, or what she would do. And her first thought when she spotted Dad inspecting leaves in the orchard was to turn on her heel and go someplace else.

  But it was too late. He had spotted her, too.

  “Raquel, ven acá.”

  She stopped. “I know you’re mad at me, and I know I’m supposed to be in class right now, but I couldn’t concentrate and I just thought—”

  “Help me out with something, will you?” he interrupted.

  “Okaaay.” Raquel took a cautious step toward him. “With what?”

  He beckoned her closer. “Checking for aphids. Come see.”

  Dad pulled on a branch to draw it lower. He examined the shoots and then the undersides of the leaves. Raquel stood on tiptoe to see over his arm.

  “Sometimes you find the bugs,” he said. “But if the leaves are curled or yellow, those can be signs, too. This one looks all right.” The branch sprang back up as he let it go.

  “How many do you have to check?” Raquel asked.

  “Oh,” Dad said, and she followed his gaze as it swept the orchard. “All of them.”

  They got to work, leapfrogging each other down the row of trees. At first, Raquel expected he would want to talk to her about Mom or about Sylvia or about all the other secrets he might suspect she still was keeping. But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything. And as she examined the leaves—each one a question she could ask and answer and then let go—she felt her thoughts still and her shoulders relax for the first time since anyone mentioned symptoms and studies and curfews and quarantines.

  “Mom would have let us come anyway,” she said, surprising herself because she hadn’t meant to say it aloud. Although she wasn’t sorry she had.

  “¿Mande?”

  “Mom would have let us come stay here. On our own, I mean. I made Lu tell you she wouldn’t let us come without her. But that wasn’t true.”

  Dad chuckled.

  Raquel let go of the branch she was inspecting and put her hands on her hips. “You already knew?”

  “Mija,” Dad said, “Your mother and I speak almost every day. Who did you think you were fooling?”

  “You do?” She moved on to the next tree. “Then why did you go along with it?”

  “We knew it would be hard. But we also knew it was important to you. So we made a decision to grow through it. Together. Same as we grow through everything.”

  Not long after, they made it to the end of the row. Dad went inside for lunch, but Raquel wasn’t ready. She sat in the dirt, leaning against a tree trunk, and turned on her phone. Ignoring all the text messages, she clicked on the camera library and scrolled through the photos and videos she had taken over the past two months. The empty shelves at the grocery store. The computer screen during the Manzanita Mirror’s very first virtual staff meeting. Mom and Lu in the vegetable patch. Their collection of upcycled face masks. Juliette on her Rollerblades. Sylvia’s face when she tasted the garlic on her orange cake.

  She put the phone back in her pocket and thought about all the pictures that were missing. Of the school play and the chess tournament and the basketball championship and the book fair. Of Juliette’s track meet and Lucinda’s skating competition. No one knew how long All This would last or what would happen next. They could only grow through it together.

  Finally, Raquel heard what she had been waiting for: Sylvia’s footsteps on the gravel driveway. She ran out to meet her.

  “You came back,” she said.

  Sylvia tilted her head. “Of course I did. Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  Raquel didn’t answer right away. She looked over Sylvia’s shoulder, past the gates, and out toward the highway and all the places Sylvia could’ve gone that weren’t back home.

  “No. I knew you would.” She had to come back for Jules, of course. But Raquel knew there was more to it than that. “You seem kind of stubborn.”

  Sylvia smiled. “When I really care about something, yes. You’re the same way, I think.”

  Raquel let her chin drop to her chest. “I’m sorry I tried to sabotage everything. I should’ve given you a chance. Like Lu said.”

  “I think I understand why you did it,” Sylvia answered. “And I’m sorry, too.” Raquel looked up. It wasn’t what she was expecting to hear. Sylvia reached for one of the cherry branches and ran her fingers over the pink blossoms. “I was just so set on making this plan of ours work that I didn’t stop to think about how much change you’ve already been through. We should have given you more time to adjust.”

  “It’s just that you were never part of our plan,” Raquel said.

  A few of the petals fluttered down, and one landed on Raquel’s shoulder. Sylvia brushed it off. “I had convinced myself that the three of you girls would be just as excited as I was to be a part of a bigger family. Do you think, maybe, we can have a do-over?” she asked.

  “No such thing as do-overs,” Raquel said. “Sometimes I wish there was, but I don’t think that’s how it works. We can keep trying, though. And since you’re planning to stick around, maybe you can help me with a new project?”

  Lucinda wasn’t expecting to bump into Juliette when she went out for a run on Saturday, just after breakfast in the loft. But she wasn’t surprised, either. All she wanted that morning was to do something that felt usual the way her training routine felt usual. That’s probably what Jules wanted, too.

  She found her in the vegetable patch. Lucinda stopped to watch as Jules sprinted between two rows of garlic. She sped up faster, arms pumping at her sides, until she came to a line drawn in the dirt, pushed off her left foot, and leaped. Jules seemed to float a moment before landing on her heels, far from where she had taken off.

  “That was amazing,” Lucinda said, even though she hadn’t planned to say anything at all. “I wish I could jump like that.”

  Jules looked up from the ground and frowned. “Don’t you and your sister have any more relationships to wreck?” she said. “Do you really have to come out here and interrupt my practice?”

  Now Lucinda wished she had just kept on jogging. But she knew she owed Jules an explanation. And an apology.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She walked over to where Jules was sitting and offered her an arm. Jules took it and pulled herself up. “We got carried away, I guess. And … It’s hard to explain. We didn’t want to lose our dad.”

  Jules dusted off her hands. She pulled a measuring tape out of her pocket and handed one end to Lucinda. “Hold this for me?”

  Then she pulled the other end out and walked it over to the line in the dirt.

  “It’s always been just Mom and me,” Jules went on. “She said living with you two would be kind of like having a team. We might not be exactly the same, and we might not get along all the time, but we would have each other’s backs. I should’ve known it was going to be two-on-one.”

  It reminded Lucinda of something Mom had said the night before in the loft. Lucinda and Raquel spent the night there to talk—and to give everyone some space. What they had gotten so wrong, Mom told them, was that there was never a Team Andrea or a Team Sylvia. They were all on the same side, cheering the girls on.

  Lucinda and Jules lowered the measuring tape to the ground.

  “It’s not two-on-one,” Lucinda said. But they weren’t exactly a team yet, either. “We could try being like … workout partners, maybe?” They could practice a little every day. They could help one another get stronger.

  Jules raised her eyes to the sky. She tapped her finger against her lips. “Hmmm … All right. It’s a deal.” She smiled. “If I’m gonna be stuck with you two, I think I want you on my side.” Then she looked down at the measuring tape. Her shoulders dropped. “Thirteen feet, nine inches.”

  “That’s not good?”

  “It’s not even a personal best, and I’m trying to beat the school record, fourteen feet. Not that it matters since all the meets are canceled.”

  Lucinda hesitated. She didn’t know anything about track and field, but there was something she did notice earlier about Jules’s jump.

  “Don’t get mad,” she said, letting go of the measuring tape and watching it zip back into its case. “But speaking as your workout partner, maybe it would help if you kept your head up when you go into the jump.”

  Jules didn’t respond. Lucinda tilted her chin to demonstrate. “Up. Like this?”

  Still, Jules just stared. “I don’t know,” Lucinda added quickly. “It’s this thing my skating coach is always telling me, so I thought—”

  “My head was totally up!” Jules said.

  Lucinda shook her head. “Nope. Sorry. You were definitely looking down.”

  “No way.”

  Lucinda pulled her phone from her waistband. “Do it again, just like you did before, and I’ll record you.”

  Jules jogged over to her starting place, and Lucinda backed up out of the way. She got her camera ready. “Go!”

  Once again, Jules bolted between the garlic rows and jumped. And once again, her head dipped as she came to the line in the dirt.

  Lucinda replayed the video and froze it right as Jules was taking off. “Okay, come look!” Jules peered over her shoulder.

  “Look at what?” It was Raquel. Lucinda hadn’t noticed her walking over from the orange grove and suddenly felt caught between Jules and her sister again. Was Jules still angry? Would Raquel resent that Lucinda was spending time with her? Maybe. But then she remembered, same side.

  “Raquel!” she said, waving her over. “Look at this.” Raquel stood next to her but covered the screen with her hand before Lucinda could press Play.

  “Wait, first, I have to say something,” she started.

  “What? That you’re sorry for being such a jerk?” Juliette asked. “I know. And I’ll let it slide. But just this once.”

  “Really?”

  Juliette shrugged. “I might have tried to scare Marcos off when they first started seeing each other. But they seem pretty determined.”

  “Really?” Raquel said again, less surprised this time and more like she wanted to be let in on a secret.

  This was getting dangerous. Lucinda cleared her throat. “Now that we’re all settled, can we please get back to the video?” She tapped the screen. “Now, Kel, tell me what you notice about Jules’s head. Just as she jumped.”

  “She looked down,” Raquel said right away.

  “UGH!” Jules groaned. “I knew it was going to be two-on-one.” Only, this time she was laughing.

  Lucinda laughed, too. “All right, do it again and this time, think, Up!”

  Jules took off a third time. Lucinda watched her through the camera lens, whispering, “Up, up, up,” as Jules thundered down the row.

  This time when Jules sprang off the ground, she kept her chin tilted up, like an invisible string was pulling her forward.

  She landed and looked over her shoulder. “I think that was farther!”

  “Let’s measure!” Lucinda said, grabbing the measuring tape from where they had dropped it in the dirt. She took one end. Raquel took the other.

  “I don’t want to know,” Jules said, covering her ears.

  Lucinda and Raquel looked at each other.

  “Okay, I do want to know. What is it?” Jules held her breath.

  “Wait!” Lucinda said. “Record it, Kel.” She had a good feeling about this. She ran over to kneel beside Jules.

  “All right.” Raquel took out her phone and aimed it at the two of them as she announced, “Fourteen feet, one inch.”

  Jules and Lucinda screamed.

  “You did it! You beat the record!”

  “Too bad nobody saw,” Jules said.

  Raquel tapped on her phone screen to stop the recording. “We were here. We saw it.”

  Raquel texted Mom for the third time that morning. She knew she should have set more alarms.

  It was Tuesday morning again. The Manzanita Mirror hadn’t posted late all year, and Raquel Mendoza did not intend to break her streak. Everything was ready. She had uploaded the last pictures the night before, Daisy and Lu proofread every page twice, and Ms. King gave her final approval to all the stories.

  This is remarkable work, she wrote to the staff. You all should be very proud of yourselves. You are writing the first draft of history!

  All Raquel had to do was hit Publish. She set the laptop at the center of the kitchen table and arranged the chairs so everyone would have a good view of the screen.

  “Five minutes till we go live!” Sylvia sang out as she crossed the kitchen with a pitcher of juice, squeezed from oranges they picked that morning. Sylvia hadn’t been able to sleep, either, so she and Raquel went out together, when the orchard was still moonlit, to pass the time while they waited for everyone else to wake up.

 

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