Cammie pulls the door open, and we enter a vapor cloud of spicy meat and fried things, causing me to salivate instantly. We grab our regular booth in the back. When we go to Ace’s with Cammie — something we’ve done nearly weekly since Cammie got a bright shiny Ford Fusion on her birthday sophomore year — our whole bill is half price, since Ace is her cousin (and he’s actually Uriel, but “Uri’s Famous Burritos” seems a clear marketing fail).

“We have to get nachos,” Cammie says. “Uri changed the cheese sauce and it’s amazing.” She’s applying Dr Pepper lip balm and looking at something on her phone; she doesn’t need to read the menu. “Guys, the final count from the instrument drive was forty-six! Damn. We do good work.”

Cammie is president of Sister Symphonies, an organization at our high school that collects used instruments to donate to less fortunate schools. She may look like her father — dark hair and brows, olive skin, wide gleaming smile — but personality-wise, she’s a carbon copy of her mother: confident, extroverted, and ambitious. Her mom is president of the PTO, and I would wager any amount of money that twenty-five years from now, Cammie will be, too. She can rope anyone into anything. Case in point: she got us all to join Sister Symphonies, and none of us even plays an instrument. Except Cammie, who of course is first chair violin in the symphony.

“It was the free cake you got the French bakery to donate,” Syd says, not looking up from the menu. “People get kind of stupid about cake. It was brilliant to include that on the flyers.”

“Oh my god,” Erin says, glancing up with her nearly perfectly round blue eyes. “Did you try the one with the hazelnut buttercream? I hurt myself on that one.”

“I was too busy mainlining the chocolate mousse cupcakes,” Syd says, laying down her menu. “Does anyone want to get the chipotle chicken burrito and go halfsies with me on the chorizo-and-egg one?”

“I will,” Cammie says, gathering the menus. “I’ll go order. Zo, I’m guessing you want the usual?”

I always get the carnitas burrito, but today for some reason I’m eyeing the Inferno: Chile de árbol-simmered pork, hot Hatch chiles, Chihuahua cheese, and a ghost chile and habanero sauce. Highly inadvisable. “I’ll have the Inferno,” I tell Cammie, handing her the menu.

“No.” She shakes her head. “You will die.”

“I saw someone eat one of those once, Zoe,” Syd tells me. “The man was crying.”

“Well, maybe I feel like crying,” I say. I kind of do, but I’m not ready to tell them why. Until I can talk about what’s happening to Jonah without crying, it is not up for discussion.

“It’s your funeral,” Cammie says, striding off to the counter.