EIGHT YEARS EARLIER

I

don’t understand the point of trigonometry.

I’ve been sitting at my desk in my bedroom, attempting to do problems for the last two hours, and I am no closer to having a good

understanding of the material. More importantly, I don’t understand why I need to know this. Will I ever be at a grocery store and need to know the sine of thirty in order to calculate how much change I’m getting? This is like the most stupid and pointless thing ever. And because of it, I might get my first C of high school.

This is hopeless.

I wish Jade had agreed to study with me. Instead, she is currently getting high with a bunch of losers behind the school. We have always studied math together—it’s what has gotten me through all my high school math classes so far. I need an alternate plan.

I grab the snow globe on my desk and give it a good shake. Little fake snowflakes scatter over a green Statue of Liberty. The globe was a gift from Jade last year. Our high school class went on a class trip into the city for a Broadway show, and she snuck away from the group to get it for me from a souvenir stand. She could have been barred from seeing the show at all for pulling a stunt like that, but she did it anyway. That’s Jade—always willing to take risks.

I slam my trigonometry textbook shut. I lean back in my desk chair, shut my eyes, and rub my fingertips against my temples. Okay, the important thing is not to panic.

Don’t panic, Amy!

I just need to buckle down and study. I can do this. This is going to be fine. Good thing my peach iced tea has a lot of caffeine in it.

I open my eyes, ready to tackle more trigonometry problems. But when I open them, I receive a terrible surprise:

It’s that little girl with the blond curls and frilly pink dress. And she’s standing in the corner of my room.

I blink a few times. It was strange to see that little girl all alone in Ricardo’s. And it was stranger still to see her at the high school. But it is really, really strange to see her in my room.

In fact, it’s impossible.

I stare at the little girl. My lips part, trying to form a question. What are you doing here? But I can’t make myself say it. Because there’s no way a little girl is standing in my room. It’s crazy to even think it. And it’s far more crazy to be talking to her.

“You’re going to fail this test,” she informs me in her sweet little girl voice.

My mouth feels almost too dry to speak. “No…”

Okay, I have done it. I have spoken to the girl who isn’t actually there. “And then you won’t get into any colleges,” she continues. “You will

never go to medical school. Your whole life will be ruined.”

I open my mouth again to respond. Even though this girl isn’t real, I want to tell her she’s wrong. I’m going to pass this test somehow. I’ll get into college, and I’m going to become a doctor like I’ve always wanted. She’s wrong.

Although the fact that she’s here at all makes me seriously worry about my future.

There’s a loud knock at my bedroom door. I jerk my head in the direction of the door just seconds before my mother’s voice rings out: “Amy! Dinner time!”

I look back at the little girl, but she’s gone. I rub my eyes, my head suddenly throbbing. I scan the room, from my Jonas Brothers and Taylor Swift posters on the walls to my pink and green bedspread to my bookcase and the trophy I won last year for my performance on the debate team. But the little girl is nowhere to be seen.

The door to my room cracks open and my mother peeks her head in. “Amy? I told you dinner is ready. Come down.”

“Uh-huh,” I manage.

My mother squints at me. Her graying hair is gathered into a messy bun behind her head. It’s not stylishly messy—just messy. She used to be one of the prettiest of all my friends’ mothers, but it feels like the last two or three years, she suddenly got older all at once. “Are you okay, sweetie?”

“Yeah.” I squeeze my hands into fists, digging my fingernails into the palms of my hands. “I just… I’m having trouble with trigonometry.”

She doesn’t look as concerned as I feel. “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You always worry about your math test, but you always do well in the end.”

“That’s because of Jade.”

My mother’s lips tighten the way they always do whenever I bring up Jade recently. When we were little, she liked Jade. In fact, she was always encouraging me to invite her over. She was always insisting Jade stay for dinner, then afterward, she would drive the two of us to Jade’s house to make sure she got home okay, even though it was only a ten-minute walk. One time, she came in and said we were going to play a game where we cleaned Jade’s house, which we proceeded to do for the next two hours until Jade’s mom came home.

But something has changed. Lately, Mom has been telling me that I shouldn’t hang out with Jade anymore. I don’t know what she would’ve said if I told her about how messy Jade’s house was, or the way her mom had broken that ashtray, but I kept my word and didn’t tell her.

“Maybe we should get you a tutor,” she says. Even though we can’t afford it. Dad got his hours cut back at work, and money has been tight.

“Um,” I say. “It will be fine.” “Are you sure?”

If I asked for a tutor, my mother would get me one in a heartbeat. She always says that nothing is more important than my education. But I don’t want the whole family to be making sacrifices just so I can get a better grade in trigonometry.

“No, don’t worry about it,” I say. “I’m good.”

“I’ll tell you what.” She smiles at me. “Let’s have dinner, and after we eat, I’ll help you with some of the problems.”

“Okay,” I agree, even though the only person in the world worse at math than I am is my mother.

“Don’t worry, Amy. I’m sure you’ll do fine. You always do.”

I’m not so sure I’m going to do fine on this test. But right now, I’m a little less worried about the test than I am about the little girl I keep seeing everywhere I look.