“Okay, please get to the ending, Evie, please,” Nessa pleaded.

“Okay, okay!” Eve skipped ahead. “We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear, and that’s the burden of the year.”

“Nice!” Amina encouraged her.

Eve had lost the rest of them to the TV. “Thanks, Amina.”

Winston leaned in to Eve and said softly, “That poem? It’s really pretty.”

“Isn’t it?” She smiled at him.

“Okay, everybody!” Nessa stood up, and they all held hands. “It’s time!”

And, together, they counted down to a new beginning:

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one …

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Eternal thanks to Melissa Edwards, my outstanding agent, for wholeheartedly supporting this book from the moment I had the idea for it. Thank you to Connie Hsu and Megan Abbate for so sensitively and masterfully helping me find the heart and soul of this story. Thank you to Madison Furr, Mekisha Telfer, Patricia McHugh, Nancee Adams-Taylor, Jessica Warren, and Taylor Pitts for your expertise and hard work, and to the entire team at Roaring Brook Press for your support. And thank you to Cassie Gonzales and Anjali Mehta for the cover of my dreams!

Nick Shoda, your insights made this book better in every way before I’d even written a word. Thank you.

Laura Hoffman-Hernandez, you and your beautiful family have my endless gratitude for sharing your stories with me.

Paul Gross, thank you for helping me deepen Eve’s world.

Thank you to Natalie and Audrey Compare for being two of my most valued readers. You are both destined for greatness, but, more importantly, you are infinitely kind. I can’t wait to see what you choose to do in this world as you grow up.

Thank you to Risa Sang-urai Harms, Sasha Lazare, Brita Loftus, and Kristina Tomlinson for sharing your memories of middle school and girlhood with me.

Alexander Whatley, thank you for debating gender politics (as well as everything else) with me for going on twenty years. I’ve learned a lot.

Kelly Granito, thank you for helping me find the right perspective for this story.

Thank you to Laura Mulcahy for standing by me in middle school and forever after.

Thank you to Margery Ross for making my husband read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret when he was a kid. You raised a mensch. Thank you to David Ross for trading outraged emails with me.

Thank you to my dad, Ernest P. Young, for your gentle nature, your inspirational activist past and present, and for reading my work with such love. Thank you to my mom, M. Brady Mikusko, for infusing my life with anger at injustice and for letting me know that my voice has value.

Thank you to my niece, Claudia Maschio, for keeping me in touch with the reality of life as a young, strong girl.

Thank you to Aunt Kate, Aunt Suzi, Sarah, and my late grandma, Alice, for the lifelong coven.

Thank you to my love, Jonathan, for keeping me in the light.