my hand on the door handle behind me. “Remember you said that when I get back and I’m still set on SNHU. I know what I want.”
Mom folds her arms. “Just humor me,” she says, sounding a little amused.
Fitz
TWO HOURS LATER, I’m in South Station.
Juniper
“THIS IS A terrible idea.”
I hear Tía Sofi in the kitchen as I’m walking toward the stairs. Her voice is brassy, like a trumpet in a parade for which she’s the bandleader and every other member. I vent a breath out through my nose, knowing I’m not escaping this conversation. In fact, I might be having this conversation for the rest of my life.
I turn around, preparing to repeat myself for the thirty-fourth time (not exaggerating), and head for Tía.
The kitchen is like every room in the house, dense with inescapable reminders of every Ramírez who’s ever lived under its roof. There’s turquoise stenciling where the soft yellow walls touch the ceiling, hand-painted by my cousin Isabel, who teaches art at the community college in town. My brothers’ homework clutters the desk my abuelo built with wood from his grandparents’ home. The wide window over the counter lets sunlight leap in and land on the faded photograph of the first Ramírez who came here from the city of Guadalajara, four generations ago, hanging in its heavy frame beside the window.
Tía, wearing an expression of consternation, cups a ceramic blue mug in her hands at the kitchen table. The scene is unbearably familiar, right down to Tía’s posture and the tinny classical guitar coming from the radio I’ve given up begging my parents to replace.
I cross the room, shutting off the music and then turning to face Tía, who’s watching me expectantly. Even though I call her Tía, she’s really my great-aunt. She’s sixty-six and never married or had children of her own, so she’s been like a third grandmother to my brothers and sisters and me. Which means one more source of worry about whether I’m eating enough, where I’m going to college, and, of course, how sex is forbidden until I’m forty.
I walk up to her, waiting for the memories to come. Every time Tía’s wrung her wrinkled hands while watching me from this very table or compulsively checked whether her charcoal hair is contained in the tight bun on top of her head.
I know exactly what Tía’s going to say. Whenever we’ve had this conversation, she introduces the topic without changing a word. Only when we get into the thick of it and she starts anticipating what I’m going to say do the variations emerge. It’s like she’s writing a novel or a play, rewriting drafts of this scene until she gets it perfect.
Today, I’m not playing. I preempt her. “Did you take my college binder?” I ask brusquely. Tía blinks, thrown, while I search the counter and the table for signs of my heavy three-ring binder. I know exactly where I left it—next to my suitcase on my bed. When I got home after running the student government ice cream stand to celebrate the official start of winter break, the binder was gone.
“No, chiquita, I haven’t seen it.” She grimaces, worry lines creasing her forehead. “This trip, I don’t think you should go.”
I grit my teeth. That only took Tía two seconds. Now it’s just a matter of getting away quickly. “I have to visit the schools sometime.” I sigh, circling the table and quickly searching the counters. Hoping for signs of my binder, I glance into the living room. “One of them will be my home for the next four years.”
I don’t need to look at Tía to know her expression has soured. “This is your home, Juniper. Those are schools.”
“What, then, you’d rather I just not go to college?” I challenge.
Tía’s face tightens. “Of course you’re going to college. We live close to some of the finest colleges in the country. Amherst, Hampshire, Smith, UMass Amherst, and—”
“—Mount Holyoke. I know.” The day Tía found my Fiske Guide to Colleges and discovered we lived thirty minutes from the Five College Consortium, my life got way harder. I wander to