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  “You psyched?” Gaz whispered as the lights dimmed.

  “Oh, yeah, absolutely,” Alicia fibbed, forcing a grin.

  As the room grew dark, she heard the sweet music of a conga drum—the kind of shake-your-hips rhythm that she was fairly confident was not part of any waltz or polka. The curtain went up to reveal an all-star assembly of Latin musicians playing a riveting Cuban son. The audience rose like a wave, and everyone began dancing in front of their seats.

  Alicia threw her head back and laughed. “You tricked me!” she guffawed as she slid her arm around her boyfriend’s waist. “And I am not an easy person to trick.”

  “Tell me about it,” laughed Gaz. “Lucky for you I have a weakness for women who are both smart and unbelievably nosy.”

  Alicia tilted her head and planted a kiss on his soft lips. “Gracias, mi amor,” she whispered.

  “You’re welcome, Lici,” Gaz answered, beaming with pride. “But less talking and more dancing.” As he held her hand, Alicia danced and danced. And for a few extraordinary, rhythm-driven hours, she did not think about the SATs or college applications or any of the senior-year responsibilities that had been weighing so heavily on her.

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, the three partners in Amigas Inc. met at Carmen’s house to discuss their mystery quince. Carmen lived on the Canals in Miami, on one of a series of small streets that lined the water. No cars were allowed, and the houses, while packed closely together, were beautiful, and looked as though they had been transplanted from Venice. When the girls were younger, their favorite thing in the world had been to take boat rides in the family’s little turquoise boat. Now they sat on the patio, watching as Carmen’s younger stepsisters rowed around, laughing hysterically, with their friends.

  The contracts for the mystery quince were all signed, and the first payment was in the Amigas account. The girls sat with their Lucite clipboards, which Alicia’s mom had customized with the hot pink Amigas Inc. logo. Breaking out the clipboards was always exciting, but as they sat thumbing through their ten-page events checklists, they were both excited and slightly daunted. Their contact, Julia Centavo, would neither confirm nor deny that their client was, indeed, Carmela Ortega, but the girls were confident nevertheless that they’d cracked their client’s secret identity.

  “I’m megaexcited about planning Carmela’s quinceañera,” Alicia said. “But I’ve got to tell you chicas, I’m pretty stressed about juggling all that work with everything else on my plate—SAT prep, getting letters of recommendation, requesting transcripts, writing college essays. It’s a lot!”

  “Who are you telling?” Jamie demanded.

  “Ugh, I love Ms. Ingber, but she’s making me nuts, the way she has me running and gunning,” Carmen said. “What kind of loca takes AP Spanish literature when she’s applying to art programs?”

  All of the Amigas Inc. crew spoke some degree of Spanish, but the truth was that none of them were actually fluent except for Gaz, who’d grown up in Puerto Rico and come to Miami in the fifth grade. Of the three girls, Carmen spoke Spanish the most fluently—partly because of her dad. She had spent so much time on his telenovela sets that even when her vocabulary failed her, she could throw in an “¡Ay, no digas!” or an energetic “Sinvergüenza” that was so convincing that anyone would have taken her for a native speaker.

  But that was only part of the story. While Alicia and Jamie had decided to place out of their language requirement in junior year, Carmen had continued, studying literature in the work of writers as diverse as Isabel Allende and Federico García Lorca. It gave her a little thrill to read in Spanish, even if it meant she pored over each page with a pen in one hand and a dictionary in the other. And she loved to see the way the over-the-top romances depicted in her father’s films had real cultural roots. To be Latina, she felt every time she opened her current favorite, Eva Luna, was to be in love with love.

  “So, we’re all swamped,” Jamie agreed. “What are we going to do? Binky’s was the biggest-budget quince we ever did. But to do a quince that will be attended by luminaries from our nation’s government, that’s historical. We can’t mess this up.”

  Alicia flinched. Even the thought of a misstep with a quince gave her the chills. It was because she cared so much about each and every girl’s Sweet Fifteen that she sometimes got a little controlling. She hated to admit it, but even though she’d never had a quince herself, she’d gone all quince-zilla on more than one occasion.

  She thought about it for a few moments. “We need help,” she said. “But we have a bigger problem. It’s the first of October. We’re graduating in less than a year, and by the sound of it, none of us are going to school in Miami. Who’s going to run Amigas Inc. when we go off to college?”

  The girls looked at one another, and the reality that they were going to split up—not right away, but really soon—hit them like a ton of textbooks.

  “Maybe I won’t get into any schools,” Carmen offered wistfully.

  “Maybe my financial aid won’t come through and I’ll have to go to community college,” Jamie said.

  “And maybe I’ll get a two hundred on my SATs,” Alicia put in. “But since they give you two hundred points for just signing your name, that doesn’t seem likely. No doom and gloom, chicas. We don’t need to derail our futures so Amigas Inc. can live. What we need is a plan.”

  Carmen looked appreciatively at her friend. “What we need is successors.”

  Jamie jumped to her feet. “Let’s have a contest! It should be like The Apprentice. I’m so ready to get all Donald Trump on a bunch of younger chicas. Please, let me be the one who says, ‘You’re fired!’”

  Alicia looked out at Carmen’s little sisters playing around in the rowboat. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  Never one to be shy, Jamie said, “Are you kidding? It’s a genius idea.”

  Alicia gave her friend a playful shove. “Okay, it’s a genius idea. So what do we call this brainstorm?”

  “Amiga Apprentice?” Carmen said.

  Alicia shook her head. “Nah, too derivative.”

  “Countdown to the Quince All-Stars?” Jamie suggested.

  Alicia considered it. “That’s pretty good.”

  Carmen smiled. “No, no, I’ve got it.” She drew a few graffiti-style words on a piece of paper and held the sign up so her friends could see:

  Alicia smiled. “I love it.”

  Jamie did, too. And with the name agreed upon, the search for the next leaders of Amigas Inc. began.

  The next day, the girls put Are You That Chica? signs up all over the school.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Alicia sat on a bench on the quad, reading through the 267 e-mail messages that had flooded the Amigas Inc. in-box. Sure, she looked impeccably well put together in a sky blue fisherman’s sweater and a flirty floral miniskirt. But looks can be deceiving. She was seriously and totally stressed out.

  Sometimes the reality of how big their quince business had gotten just blew her away. Each party took a lot of work, and often Alicia felt as if she needed a degree in family psychology to manage the dynamics of these huge events. For each quince, it was her job to assure the parents that the partners in Amigas Inc. really were old enough and responsible enough to plan the most important birthday their young daughter would ever have. After that, there was the drama of the quince itself—planning a timeline for the event, choosing a theme and a venue, hiring a staff, making and buying dresses for the girl and her damas, and, most challenging of all, gearing up for the inevitable quince-zilla meltdown.

  It didn’t matter if the girl was the calmest, most laid-back chica in the universe. Inevitably, there was a moment when she snapped—if only because she was so uncomfortable with all the attention and fuss. The Amigas Inc. team had experienced that exact kind of “please, no more drama” scene with Valeria, a client of theirs from Austin, Texas. Valeria had followed her own indie beat; she was a girl who loved horses and skateboarding with equal passion. Alicia and her friends had ha
d to work overtime to convince Valeria that a quinceañera could be a uniquely personal experience that had nothing to do with tiaras or princess dresses.

  But even after Valeria had fallen in love with the stylish dress that Carmen had designed for her and the cool ramp Jamie had constructed for her, she had still had a momentary entrance freak-out.

  Entrances and exits were always some of the toughest things to coordinate in a quince, Alicia believed. Every girl wanted to step out looking beautiful and confident, the best version of herself ever. And at the end of the night, every girl wanted to feel like Cinderella in a contemporary version of the story, where she was not forced to go chase a pumpkin for a ride home. While the girls were whizzes at organization and creativity, the quality that really set them apart from other quince planners was their youth; they could identify with their clients, because they knew exactly how it felt to be fifteen.

  Alicia thought, That’s why I’m struggling. I can’t seem to manage my entrances and exits. Senior year is like being booted from the ball, and applying to college is like not knowing where in the world that pumpkin is going to take you.

  It was still half an hour before homeroom when Jamie approached, looking New York stylish in a cream fedora with a black band; a black T-shirt; skinny jeans; and black platform pumps. “Hey, what’s up?” she asked as she handed Alicia a café con leche.

  “Hey, thanks for the coffee; I need it. I’m so sleepy,” Alicia muttered. “Where’s Carmen?”

  “She and Maxo had to give a tour to middle school students from a mentoring program that Maxo is involved in,” Jamie replied.

  “Had to or volunteered?” Alicia groaned. She knew that everyone in their group had other obligations. But on days like this, when they had an early-morning Amigas Inc. meeting, she got a little annoyed if everyone wasn’t there.

  Jamie shrugged. “Who knows? But I don’t think I have the energy to deal with this contest, and let’s be honest, who could replace us?”

  Patricia Reinoso and her best friend and cousin, Carolina, approached the girls.

  “Hey, can we sit with you, or are you doing SAT prep?” Carolina asked.

  “Yeah,” Patricia chimed in. “You chicas look stressed.”

  Alicia explained that they were completely overwhelmed by the prospect of having to search for the next group of girls to run Amigas Inc.

  “We’re swamped, and we really need to recruit some help—not just to take over the business, but to help plan our mystery quince,” Jamie explained.

  “What’s the mystery quince?” Carolina asked. “That’s a cool theme.”

  Alicia smiled. “It’s not what; it’s who. All we have is a series of anonymous e-mails from the family secretary, Julia Centavo.”

  Patricia rubbed her hands together excitedly. “Oooh, such intrigue. I love it!”

  “Do you have any idea who she is?” Carolina asked.

  Jamie exchanged Can we trust them? glances with Alicia, and Alicia nodded.

  “We actually think it’s Carmela Ortega,” Jamie said proudly.

  “Get out!” Carolina screeched.

  Jamie looked around as if there might be quince spies everywhere. “Shhh,” she whispered. “You can’t tell a soul.”

  “Of course not,” Patricia promised.

  Carolina blushed at the thought of her earlier outburst. “I’m as silent as the grave.”

  “So, how can we help?” Patricia asked. “We’re juniors, and we are so not swamped.”

  Carolina looked thrilled at the idea of participating, “Since you planned our doble quince, we know what kind of skills it takes to pull this thing off.”

  Alicia had never even thought about asking the Reinoso cousins for help, even though she liked both of the girls very much. In the months since their double quince, Carolina and Patricia had become good friends with the amigas—joining them for swims at Alicia’s and shopping trips to South Beach. Alicia’s father was always saying that a strong leader doesn’t try to do every task herself; she delegates to people she trusts and gives them the tools they need to get the job done well. Alicia trusted both Patricia and Carolina. Maybe they could be of help.

  “Could you guys go through these e-mails and pick—I don’t know, the top twenty?” Alicia asked.

  “Sure!” Carolina exclaimed.

  “We’d love to,” added Patricia. She mimicked strutting down an imaginary runway, then struck a fierce and fabulous pose. She spoke as if looking into an imaginary camera. “Are you that chica? We’ll be the judge of that.”

  Jamie shook her head. “No way; this isn’t America’s Next Top Model. This is serious business. We can’t keep girls on the roster just because we want to see the mayhem and the foolishness. We need to cut the locas right away. We’ll meet the top twelve.”

  Alicia said, “I’ll text you the log-in details for the Amigas Inc. e-mail account right now.”

  “Cool, got it.” Carolina flashed a smile as she checked her phone for the deets. “So, when do you need a list of finalists?”

  Alicia opened the calendar on her iPad. “We take the SATs on October twenty-seventh. We could meet on Monday the twenty-ninth. Pick the winners by November fifth. Big day of the quince is December fifteenth. And because it’s my birthday on December sixteenth, I think I’ll take a daylong nap.”

  Jamie was always impressed by the way her friend could juggle a dozen things at once. “Watching you plan a quince is like watching a math whiz do some sort of crazy problem in his head,” Jamie declared. “It’s freaky and impressive at the same time.”

  The homeroom bell rang, and the girls said their good-byes. As Alicia walked to her classroom, she thought about how lucky she was to have such a capable group of friends. Sure, she might occasionally act as if the business were a one-woman show. But she knew that the real reason Amigas Inc. rocked was that they were all stars. It would be fun, she decided, to have Carolina and Patricia sit in on this mystery quince show.

  WHILE CAROLINA AND Patricia waded through the masses of wannabe quince planners, the owners of Amigas Inc. applied themselves to some heavy-duty SAT prep. The plan was that every day after school, for the two weeks heading up to the exam, they would meet at the school library.

  “It has to be at the library,” Carmen insisted. “At my house, the racket my little sisters make is too distracting. At Lici’s house, the pool is too distracting. We always say we’re going to study and swim, but we always end up swimming, then not studying.”

  “What about my place?” Jamie asked.

  “I have one word for you.” Carmen grinned.

  Alicia looked at her friend, “I think I’m thinking of the same can’t-study-at-Jamie’s-because-it’s-too-distracting word.”

  In unison, Carmen and Alicia cried, “eBay!”

  It was the first Thursday in October and the perfect day to launch a massive SAT study attack, because it was a half day of school. Classes ended at one, and the girls knew they could get a good four hours of studying in before their eyes rolled back in their heads and their brains stopped working.

  They sat at a large table in the back of the library—away from the watchful glance of Ms. Halisi, the school’s head librarian. It was only a few weeks before the SATs, and the room was humming with seniors trying to get ready. It wasn’t that the librarian maintained a strict no-talking rule. It was more that Ms. Halisi had a no-laughing-in-the-library rule, which Alicia, Jamie, and Carmen found particularly hard to comply with.

  The amigas had all done well on the PSATs, the practice-run College Board tests that students took during junior year. And as a result, every day their mailboxes were flooded with packets and brochures from colleges and universities across the country. Yet the P in PSAT had made the test seem totally not intimidating. The SATs, on the other hand, were such a critical factor in getting into a good college that Alicia liked to think that the S in SATs stood for “sink or swim.”

  She glanced across the wooden desk at Carmen. Her friend
looked as miserable as she felt.

  “Why do we have to take a standardized test?” Jamie mused, staring down at her nails, which she had painted bright green with little white golf tees in honor of Dash’s upcoming tournament. “There’s nothing standard about us!”

  Alicia agreed. “I have no idea. I wish the test was all essays. I cannot wait to write my application essays. That’s the one part I know I will rock.”

  “Of course, you would,” Carmen whispered to her friend as Ms. Halisi walked by. “You’re Miss Verbal Expression. If only I could sketch my entire college application. I could do a darling little capsule collection called Freshman Year at Parsons School of Design.”

  Alicia loved her friend’s creativity. “That would be cool. But even art schools want SAT scores.”

  “But why?” Carmen whined, uncharacteristically for her.

  Alicia cracked open the book of SAT practice tests. “I don’t know why. But I do know that while we have the skillz that pay billz, none of us have photographic memories. So we should start studying. Okay. First question: The policeman exhibited a heedless attitude when dealing with the senior citizen who had just jaywalked across the street. Heedless means: A. thoughtless; B. pleasant; C. friendly; D. bitter.”

  Jamie looked wistfully out the bright picture window and said, “Remind me what we used to do on half-days, back before we were prisoners of the college application system?”

  “I will—as soon as you give me the answer,” Alicia sighed.

  Carmen rested her head on the table and said dreamily, “We used to go to the beach. And we used to go out for frozen yogurt. And we used to go to the mall and take pictures at every photo booth we could find. But that was before, when we were young and carefree.”

  Ever the diligent student, Alicia saw an opening and took it. “Back when we were heedless and young. Heedless meaning…”