I’ll research for you. I groan the next morning in the living room. The embarrassing memory of those words is nothing compared to the memory of our kiss. I kissed another player. Why? Why? No, even worse, I spent hours of my own time researching for him.

Done obsessing about him, I shut off my phone and spot one lone cup from yesterday’s Souper Bowl Sunday, used and forgotten on the mantel. Snatching it, I march the cup into the kitchen, where my parents are putting away the dry platters. Dad mentions to Mom, “Hey, your sister emailed about Viola’s graduation again.”

Mom breathes out, irked as usual by this phantom aunt I’ve rarely seen, the only person who elicits that impatient, verging on hostile sigh. It’s an eye roll set to sound. I echo that annoyed sigh now, as I plunk the cup hard next to the sink. My parents startle at the same time, then Mom asks, “Where’s your hat?”

“Baseball caps are in the hat family,” I tell her, touching the brim.

“Wait! That’s mine,” Roz says as soon as she looks up from the book of Robert Frost poems that she was supposed to have read over the summer. She scowls, holds out her hand, and wriggles her fingers expectantly. “Did you go in my room?”

“Yeah, it was on your floor next to my Firefly vest,” I tell her.

“Give it back!”

“Princess, let her wear it now,” Dad says.

“But it’s special. The Princeton coach—”

“Fine.” I barely swipe the cap off my head before she grabs it out of my hand. Of course she does. Roz sets it down, not on her head but next to my dessert plate that, once upon a time, had housed the corner piece of brownie, reserved for me. Empty, of course. What’s mine is Roz’s, what’s hers is never mine, house rules, always has been, always will be.

I ask, more rhetorically than anything, “Where’s my brownie? She ate my brownie.”

“There’s more,” Mom says, gesturing to the leftovers, all of them center pieces. It may just be a brownie, but the injustice burns.

Dad leans against the sink and says casually, “So, Viola, honey, we were thinking.”

A trickle of dread skitters down my spine at those famous last words: “We were thinking.” Those words tip me off that they have a proposal, no veto allowed. Like a meerkat sensing danger, too, Roz jerks her head up from her book. Her eyebrows raise like twin caution flags as she meets my eyes.

Brownie wars forgotten, we are both remembering the infamous “we were thinking” of years past.

…

WE WERE THINKING: CHRISTMAS EDITION

Mom: We were thinking that since we represent several clean energy companies, we should support a more ecological Earth.

Dad: So we were thinking that we won’t chop down a Christmas tree this year.

Translation: Not chopping down a Christmas tree in the Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest (sanctioned with a tree-cutting permit) meant rosemary plants that went bald indoors, then an olive tree that lost the war with the heater, followed by a beady-eyed, partridge-like bird on a pear tree that dropped all its leaves (scared to death, like the rest of us). Our garden outside has become the burial ground of Christmases past.

…

WE WERE THINKING: PARIAH EDITION

“We were thinking that since your skin reacted so quickly to the light again,” Dad continues as he hands Mom the newly scrubbed cup to dry.

Mom: When you weren’t wearing your hat yesterday. And had your blinds up.

Dad: At this early stage, it’s best if we play it safe with your condition.

Mom: So we were thinking that it would be wise for you to carry an umbrella at school tomorrow just in case.

Dad: Better safe than sorry, right?

…

Flushed as if she’s the one who’s hypersensitive to the sun, Roz slams her poetry book shut and huffs, “No way.”

“You’ll get used to carrying an umbrella. Everyone will after the first day. You might even start a trend,” Dad says as if he, Mr. Khaki Pants, somehow has become a street-fashion trend spotter.

Roz scoffs; I second that scoff.

“Doesn’t that seem a little extreme?” I ask, digging hard in my mental closet of random but useful scientific facts my parents can’t contest or debate. Victory! “I mean, don’t you think we should have a control case to test what my skin can tolerate?”

My parents may exchange an impressed look, but as it turns out, being impressed is cheap. Mom says, “You make a great point, honey, but you’ve already had a control case. Yesterday afternoon. In your bedroom when you took off your hat and opened the blinds. You broke out in hives.”

“But—” Barely in time, I cut off my protest: But I haven’t been wearing my big hat at school and I’ve been fine. Instead, I cast around for another mutually palatable solution or, heck, one that wasn’t so personally humiliating. “How about heavy-duty sunscreen? SPF 200?”

“SPF only goes up to 100,” corrects Mom.

“And only protects against UVB rays, not the UVA ones that you seem to be sensitive to,” says Dad.

If my parents can help a world food organization revive itself after a corruption scandal, I should have known they would have complete command over the ins and outs of my (still undiagnosed) condition better than I do. Even so, it rankles. My skin literally heats up. Clearly, I’ve developed a severe case of parental sensitivity, overexposure causing irritation, loss of temper, and in some cases, blood-red rage.

“We have no idea what kind of light bulbs you have in school,” Dad says reasonably even as he aims an accusatory finger at the overhead lights. “They could be fluorescent.”

“We should email Dr. Luthra,” Mom says to Dad, who nods eagerly as if it’s perfectly acceptable to ask the head of Liberty Prep on Labor Day (a public holiday that entails no labor) to specify the type of light bulb installed at school.

“An email, perfect idea. Documentation is everything,” Dad agrees.

“Wait. Document what?” I ask.

“Document our first official ask of the school to prepare for your condition,” says Mom as if that’s logical.

From working summer afternoons at Lee & Li since I was twelve, coupled with osmosis from living with my parents my whole life, I know how crises start. Just one unthinking comment on anyone’s part—principal to teachers, teachers to my classmates—and boom! Rumor. As everyone learns in middle school, rumor is the speedskater of information, fast, efficient, and brutal. Then there is Roz, who doesn’t look like she is in much of a secret-keeping mood when she just ups and leaves—not my problem!—without putting her brownie plate in the sink.

“We don’t even know what my condition is yet,” I protest, automatically cleaning up after Roz. I sweep her crumbs onto the plate and rinse it in the sink.

“Which reminds me. Your phototest is on Friday afternoon,” Mom tells me.

“But that’s the bake sale.”

“You’re selling in the morning before school and at lunch, right?” Dad confirms. When I nod, he says, “Well, then, the club members can handle the afternoon.”

“Plus, it’s going to be sunny on Friday. The UV Index is supposed to be six. High risk, honey,” Mom says knowledgably like she’s become a meteorologist. “We don’t want to take any chances.”

There’s no hope of winning against Mom and Dad. So I place everyone’s breakfast plates in the dishwasher and bargain for whatever freedom I can get. “How about I just wear an even bigger hat at school? Table the umbrella for now.” Even if I cringe at that concession—was an even more gargantuan hat possible?—it’s way more preferable to looking like a sunny-day, umbrella-wielding Mary Poppins inside every class. “Maybe that’ll be enough.”

“Great plan,” says Dad as if this is my idea.

Mom’s eyes brighten, which should have prepared me for the hat the size of Starship Enterprise that she pulls out from under the breakfast nook table. “Ta-da!”

I have been crisis managed.