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  FIVE MONTHS LATER, the amigas met up at the Lucky Strike Lanes and Lounge once again. Alicia, Jamie, and Carmen sat on one side of a leather banquette, Patricia and Carolina on the other. Gaz and Dash were battling furiously in the lanes as Maxo looked on from the sidelines, amused.

  Gaz, handsome in a white linen shirt and khakis, lifted his bowling ball in an elaborate, show-offy pose, then proceeded to bowl his fifth strike in a row. “See, Dash,” he crowed, “¡Así, se hace!”

  Dash pretended to look crestfallen. “I just don’t get it. How can I tear it up on the golf course and fail so miserably at a nonsport like bowling?”

  But Gaz was far from through with him. “That’s your problem, hombre. Your elitism is hanging you up. You gotta humble yourself for the game, ’cause this ‘nonsport’ is kicking your booty!”

  Maxo nodded in agreement. “I think my man here has a point.”

  In the lounge area behind the lanes, the chicas weren’t paying attention to the boys or their rivalry. A waitress delivered plates of nachos and smoothies to the candlelit table, and the girls dived in.

  “I can’t believe it’s already May,” Alicia exclaimed, incredulous that their senior year was almost over. She was rocking a very cute pale pink T-shirt dress that looked kind of fabulous with her funky tan bowling shoes.

  “Totally. I mean, it seems like just yesterday that we had you entirely believing that we were planning a quinceañera for the ambassador to Mexico’s daughter,” Jamie teased. She was wearing a crisp white shirt, one of Dash’s ties, and a fitted navy blazer and navy shorts.

  Carmen gave her best friend a hug. “Little did you know that we had a much more important, much more fabulous client—namely, you!”

  Alicia sat up straight. “And I love you all for lying to me, deceiving me, and giving me the most memorable quince ever. Speaking of which, as of September, Carolina and Patricia will officially take over as codirectors of Amigas Inc. And in honor of their—ahem—ascension, we have a little present.”

  Alicia reached into her bag and pulled out two custom-made tiaras. The words Amigas Inc. were written in silver script atop a feathery pink base. She handed a crown to each of the Reinoso girls.

  “Love it!” Carolina cried, immediately putting on her crown.

  True to her edgier style, Patricia first mussed up her hair, then put her crown on, so that it tilted to one side like a fedora. “I think that I might dye the feathers black,” she mused, “so it’s much more downtown. Then I think I will wear it everywhere. Gracias, chicas.”

  “So, how many quinces have we lined up for the summer?” Jamie asked Alicia.

  Alicia threw her hands up in the air. “I swear, being so good at our jobs is a blessing and a curse.”

  “Meaning…?” Jamie pressed.

  “Meaning that we’ve got six quinces on the books between now and August fifth, when we’ve got to leave for freshman orientation,” Alicia explained.

  “I’m kind of bummed about being a freshman all over again,” Jamie complained. “Once we got through the madness of SATs, college applications, and planning Lici’s quince, being a senior kind of rocked.”

  Dash, Gaz, and Maxo joined the group, and Dash said, “Being a freshman is not so bad. Especially since you’ll be at Stanford in sunny California with your boyfriend, who’ll be a sophomore transfer student.”

  Alicia and Carmen were still in shock that their Jamie—South Bronx Jamie, boogie-down Jamie, graffiti-art-and-Jackson-Pollock-loving Jamie—was dating a champion golf player and was planning on majoring in East Asian studies and attending Stanford. But if there was one thing that planning twenty-five quinceañeras had taught the partners of Amigas Inc., it was this: it really was a girl’s prerogative to change her mind.

  Carmen, in contrast, was the definition of tried-and-true. Since she’d first seen an episode of Project Runway in junior high, she’d wanted to go to New York to study fashion design. And now, here she was, on her way to Parsons School of Design, and none of the others in the original Amigas Inc.—Alicia, Jamie, or Gaz—nor either of the new amigas—Patricia or Carolina—had any doubt that they would someday be able to walk into a store and buy the latest Carmen Ramirez-Ruben design.

  Alicia was headed for Harvard, ready to follow in her parents’ footsteps academically, but also ready to blaze her own trail as an entrepreneur. She’d had coffee several times with Serena Shih, the Harvard rep who’d initially gotten her interested in the joint BA/MBA program, and she was excited at the thought of spending her freshman year developing what she thought might be her first big project: an Amigas Inc. quince planning kit that could be sold nationwide.

  Gaz sat next to her, whispering flirtatious things in her ear. She vacillated between wanting him to continue and fearing that she was blushing so hard everyone could tell what he was saying to her. Gaz had received and accepted a full scholarship to MIT, just a T train ride away from Alicia’s campus at Harvard.

  Alicia could hardly believe how many adventures she and her friends had experienced since they’d first decided to do a good deed and help a new girl in town plan her quince. It seemed fitting that they were all meeting up at a place called Lucky Strike, because it had indeed been lucky that they had all met, that they had become friends, that they had started a business together that had just kept growing. None of the original Amigas Inc. members were fifteen-year-olds anymore, but a quinceañera was about so much more than the number of candles on the cake. A quince was about becoming a woman. And in that definition of the term, Jamie, Alicia, and Carmen were all still very much in the midst of the party. And as Alicia looked at her friends, she could only hope that the growing up, and all the fun that went with it, would go on and on.

  When I first came up with the idea for the Amigas series, I thought about the many Latina women who, like Alicia, Jamie, and Carmen, had started out as entrepreneurial teenagers. Who, through hard work, imagination, and dedication, were able to take their passions and talents and become role models and successful adults. For me, Jennifer Lopez is such a woman. She has incredible drive and an amazing work ethic, qualities she shares with the girls in Amigas. They, too, needed an equal amount of determination to turn their quince-party-planning business into a huge success.

  So, to get a better sense of this connection, I sat down with Jennifer, and we talked about quinces and what it was like for her as a Latina girl growing up in New York City. Here are some more of her answers….

  —J. Startz

  1.When you were a senior in high school, did you have a clear sense of what you wanted to pursue as a career in the future?

  I didn’t know exactly what I was going to pursue, but I did know that I loved to dance and to perform in front of an audience, as I had already done a couple of musical plays at the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club and at my high school in the Bronx.

  2.What extracurricular activity did you participate in that helped you zero in on what interested you the most?

  I took up dancing and starred in a couple of plays in high school and at the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club, a local community organization for kids that had a performing arts program in New York.

  3.What would you say to teenagers who develop a passion for a particular career interest at an early age? Through your own personal experience, what advice would you offer them as to how to nourish and excel in their passion?

  My advice would be to study hard and try to become the best at what you want to do.