Four best friends spend Family Week together at an annual gathering of LGBTQ+ families in Provincetown, MA--the largest of its kind across the world--in this middle grade coming-of-age story that celebrates identity, acceptance, and found family. For as long as they can remember,;Mac, Lina, Milo and Avery have celebrated Family Week together in;"the smallest, gayest town in the world"--Provincetown, Massachusetts. But this summer, their big rented beach house feels different.;Avery’s dads are splitting up, and her life feels like it’s falling apart. Mac’s flunked seventh grade, which means everyone is moving on to bigger and better things except for him. Milo’s on his way to a progressive boarding school that lets transgender kids like him play soccer, but it means leaving his twin sister, Lina, and his moms--and the safety of home--behind.; Everything is changing, and for Lina, it feels like it''s happening with or without her. Avery, Milo, and Mac know this is going to be their last summer together. But Lina can''t accept that--and if she can make this the best summer ever, maybe she''ll convince them that there will be a Family Week next year. Good things might not last in the real world, but they do in P-town.... Right?

Autorentext
Sarah Moon is the author of SPARROW and MIDDLETOWN, both of which received critical acclaim. A teacher and college counselor, she lives and works in Brooklyn with her wife and their daughter.

Leseprobe
Saturday

Milo and Lina woke up at the same moment, the same way they had the third Saturday in July ever since they could remember: their moms blaring “We Are Family” through every speaker in the house and laughing hysterically at their own joke.

Milo heard Mom singing at the top of her lungs in Lina’s room and knew that it would be only seconds until Ma opened his door, practically screaming “Good morning! Let’s gooooooo!” as she threw rainbow bead necklaces into his room. They would scatter onto the dictionaries he’d left open on his desk the night before.

Last month, Mom had insisted on going to clean out Gong Gong’s house by herself, after his last stay at the last hospital, his sixth in the last year. “I might be the one with the tattoos,” Ma said, “but Mom is the tough one. She needs to go clean out your Gong Gong’s house by herself. When she gets back, that’s when she’ll fall apart.” Ma was right, of course. The night Mom got back, they ordered food from Mr. Wonton, the place they always ordered from when Gong Gong came to visit, and Mom cried into her broccoli and bean curd. That night, she gave Gong Gong’s dictionaries to Milo. One Hunanese-Vietnamese dictionary from 1945, when Gong Gong’s family moved to Vietnam, and a 1975 Vietnamese-English dictionary from when Gong Gong and Bà moved to New Hampshire.

Milo was supposed to be working on the translation of The Phantom Tollbooth, the book he and Lina had loved as little kids. They were going to make a graphic novel version, Lina doing the pictures and Milo translating each chapter into a different language, but lately he’d just been staying up late with Gong Gong’s old dictionaries and avoiding the illustrations Lina dutifully left him. Last night’s installment, chapter seven, was buried under the dictionaries. He hadn’t even made it past chapter two, and he was leaving for Truegrove in just a few weeks. He pushed it from his mind as he headed into the hall to wait for the bathroom.

“Lina! Hurry up!” Despite the fact that his twin sister always got up later than him, she always managed to sneak into the bathroom seconds before him. It would have been infuriating if it hadn’t been somehow kind of impressive. “Grmpphhhh” came Lina’s still-asleep answer through the door.

“Lina, I swear to god, you know we have like half a second until Ma’s mood goes from ‘We Are Family’ to ‘The Traffic on the Bridge of Doom,’ and if I have to endure two hours waiting to get on the Bourne Bridge while Ma fumes and demands silence so that she can ‘concentrate’ on sitting in traffic, you are dead to me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Milo. I am a delight behind the wheel,” called Ma from her bedroom, coming to the door and raising a single eyebrow at him.

“Totally, ha ha,” said Milo as he banged on the door again. “Lina!” he pleaded. The door opened and Lina pushed past him, looking somewhere between zombie and sloth. This was beyond sleepy, even for Lina.

“Whoa. You okay?”

“Yeah. Tired. All yours.” She went into her room and closed the door. She wasn’t okay, of course. And “tired” didn’t cover it. She hadn’t slept all night. She sat down on her bed like she was trying to cause it harm--punish it for not doing its job last night. But she knew that it wasn’t the fault of twisted sheets or hot pillows. She hadn’t slept that night for the same reason she hadn’t slept so many nights since New Year’s Eve: because she couldn’t stop thinking about Avery. But now the day had finally come. For the first time in a year, she would see Avery, and she had no idea what to do. For the moment, the answer was the same as always: do nothing. She sat and stared at the yellow dots on her blue rug until they blurred, then she closed her eyes. Her door flung open. The knob always hit the same spot on her wall, and the gray paint had started to chip.

Mom walked over the tornado of clothes on the floor and sat next to Lina. “Lina, my love, my cherub, heart of my heart, if you don’t get your butt out of this bed, I will have to join forces with your brother and kill you right there on the Bourne Bridge while Ma takes her cleansing breaths because there’s an iota of traffic--” As if on cue, Ma called up from downstairs.

“Julia! Where are you? Where’s Lina?”

“We’re coming, Em, promise,” Mom said sweetly. She grinned at Lina and nudged her in the ribs. Mom could make Lina smile even when she didn’t want to. She couldn’t quite muster the strength for an actual smile on this little sleep, but she felt her face warm up a little, and she stood up. “Ma knows that there’s never not traffic on the bridge, right? If we leave now or in forty-seven minutes, still, there will be traffic.”

“She knows. Pack quick--we both know you haven’t started yet,” Mom said, tossing Lina’s duffel onto her bed. Lately, Lina hated all her clothes. Nothing felt quite right. Everything was either too tight or too big or too kiddie. She put on her jean shorts and an oversize black T-shirt and flipped her hair to the side to show off her undercut and the cartilage piercing that her moms had let her get for surviving seventh grade (though she knew it was really a pity present for Milo’s imminent departure). She hoped she looked cool and kind of vintage, but her stomach twisted with the fear that she probably just looked like she was trying to look cool and kind of vintage. She started shoving her least horrendous clothes into her bag (mostly from off the floor) and threw a pair of flip-flops on top, along with the new bikini she had begged her parents for (though now, thinking about wearing it in front of Avery made her want to vomit). She added a pair of black shorts and another enormous black T-shirt. Maybe that would be her bathing suit this year.

“Lina!” Ma called from downstairs. Lina could see her standing by the front door, tapping the floor with her foot, tapping her watch with her car key.

“Coming!” …