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If I were to step through my window, which is barricaded by my blinds, the white strips folded down to bar the glass, I could head to my car and drive to Castle Play. Instead, I peek through my blinds, the entire neighborhood shadowed by darkness. No way would my parents let me go out right now.

I sigh, slouching as I finish studying one more chapter of my SAT textbook. Next week, we have a practice exam. SMARTake wants to prepare us for the real exam by giving us a practice one.

I keep thinking back to Nora’s texts.

Summer vacay should be about trying new things, having FUN.

As badly as I want to do this, I doubt it’s possible with my workload. I’m lucky enough to participate in this competition. Or maybe I’m just determined.

Guess I’m missing those old times, because once I finish studying, I walk into Aprilette’s room. In my elementary school days, I’d knock on her door and ask if I could hang out with her and her friends. Sometimes she’d let me, usually when they were playing a board game or watching boy band videos, and if it were only her Filipina friends, we’d all speak to each other in Tagalog. Other times she’d say I wouldn’t be interested, which, I noticed, overhearing what I could through her door, were usually times when her friends talked about stuff like cute boys or who did well/who did poorly at their volleyball games. Sports aren’t my thing, but I did want to beg her to let me join their conversations about cute boys, all so I could get advice on how to speak to them without blanking. In the end, I chose not to ask because I didn’t think I was cool enough.

Above Aprilette’s bed, her Sarah Geronimo and One Direction posters are taped on her walls, her hearts penned around Zayn’s face. Right beside them are her straight-A ribbons and Student of the Month certificates. Her bed, the entirety color-coordinated in aqua, is smooth and neatly made, the same way she left it before driving off to San Francisco. My mom thinks my Atè left everything here in case she wants to visit again (this is probably wishful thinking). My dad, who believes we should let Aprilette live her life in NorCal just as she dreamed, thinks my Atè didn’t want to lug so many things with her. I just think she wanted to leave her past behind and embrace her present life.

I smirk at my Atè’s smoothed-down blanket as I consider putting on my Converse and jumping on it just to mess with her. I snicker imagining the sheer horror on her face if I actually jumped on her bed, even if she’ll probably never sleep in it again. Of course, I won’t do so because that’s too mean.

Each step the carpet feels soft and fuzzy beneath my feet. Passing by her bookshelf of Jenny Han books, the top surface lined with first-place trophies from science fairs and volleyball games, I slide open her closet. I’m being nosy, but Aprilette is more than a four-hour drive away, and her room is the closest I can get to reuniting with her. Beneath her rack of short-sleeved dresses, pencil skirts, and perfectly blue jeans—her closet is organized by color, each consistently arranged from blouses to dresses—there’s a red circular box. I shouldn’t be snooping, but I uncap the lid anyway.

Inside the box is a sketchbook paged with all her fashion designs. I smile thinking back to the days we’d watch Project Runway on Amazon Prime while munching on lumpia shanghai and rice. Aprilette was interested in the fashion design. I was simply interested in the final designs while my mom wanted to know who’d win. My dad wasn’t interested in design or the competition, he just wanted to spend time with us.

I flip through her sketchbook and study each design. On one page, there are varying stages of a dress that progress from a sleeveless top to an almost full dress. What’s missing is the bottom hem and the rest of the scale-like design. There are fades where the dress’s hem should be completed. My Atè must’ve been debating whether to add a frill, leave it solid, or incorporate a line, all of which are erased because she couldn’t decide. I wish she would’ve picked one or even made three different designs with each of the hemlines. Why did she erase and give up? This is a question I don’t stop asking as I continue flipping through pages, from a blouse with cute but incomplete ruffles buttoned at the front, to a pencil skirt with erasures at its waistline, as if Aprilette couldn’t decide between adding a button or a zipper. Her designs had potential to be cute. I imagine what each design would have looked like had they been completed.

Guess I can’t know unless the original designer finishes them herself.

Chapter Nineteen

While I enjoy talking to my Atè via Zoom, I sometimes think she follows her routine so often her stories start sounding the same. Haven’t you already told me this? I think as she tells me about how she smoked Piolo in another rock-climbing match. But I know she’s telling me a different one, albeit with similar details to her previous stories, because she started off by saying “So here’s what I did today.”

“Yeah, you go, Atè!” I cheer when she finishes. I say this at least once every Zoom talk.

“Salamat, Emi,” she says. “What’d you do today?”

My mind captures the moment from earlier, when I was presenting onstage, speaking loud enough that I didn’t need to project. I already told Nora, my words jumbling together as I relayed the story with a pitch similar to Alvin and the Chipmunks. I even told Jase, dividing the story up in separate messages because I had so much to say. I wish I could do the same with my Atè, just like I did when I told her my crush Jason Wyatt tore up my love note. But instead, I worry she’ll expose my secret to our parents, and it pains me that I can’t even talk about something so exciting, something that means so much to me, to my own sister.

Instead, I tell her a story with details I’m pretty sure I give every time we talk. Worked on summer AP homework, studied for the SATs, had my homework checkups with Mom, and had my practice quizzes with Dad. She asks me about my SAT prep class and volunteer shift at WCH, which I also gloss over with my usual answers—lots of work, really busy.

Suddenly, I remember her sketchbook, each page illustrated with fashion designs left unfinished. They’re as clear in my mind as a gloss photograph.

“Atè, remember when you wanted to be a fashion designer?” I ask.

She shoots me a pointed look, the kind she’d give whenever I entered her room with a bag of Clover Chips. “It was just a stupid dream.”

She narrows her eyes as if to say Where are you going with this? I should probably say never mind, mahal kita, Atè. But for some reason, I keep going.

“Well, I really liked your designs.”

“They were terrible.”

“I didn’t think so. I wished you had finished them.”

“It’s not like I could get anywhere with a skill in fashion design, not that I was very skilled anyway.”

“I don’t think skill matters, Atè. You enjoyed sketching them, I could tell.”

“Your point?”

“My point is that you could sketch fashion designs for fun. You don’t have to be a fashion designer. It could be your hobby.”