Name a cause, any cause, and I have mixed, baked, and frosted for it. Forty-nine consecutive bake sales since fifth grade, all of them successful by any measure: money raised, baked goods sold, satisfaction of beneficiaries. All of them themed: bite-size gingerbread houses that perched on mugs of hot chocolate for a group benefiting refugees. 3-D cookie trees for Treehouse, which supports foster kids. Giant gingerbread people iced in gowns and tuxes for the Exchange, which provides free formal wear to anyone who needs it at school. All of them accompanied with a well-researched article complete with interviews with subject-matter experts. I’ve never once bailed on a bake sale, not even when I had back-to-back-to-back finals during junior spring. Not even when Auntie Ruth’s husband, Uncle Amos, died of pancreatic cancer five years ago. Not until this morning, that is. But a few minutes of losing consciousness and a fading rash are not derailing my track record, not when my future as an NYU-educated and Middle East–embedded foreign correspondent might depend on it.

The moment I spot Aminta’s denim-blue Prius in our driveway, back from Bumbershoot, I feel the first sense of calm in this whole, long, tiring day. I will make things right. So even before Mom comes to a full and complete stop, I shove the passenger door open. Or at least, I try to. The door feels like a herd of mama elephants are pushing against it. (Elephant Rescue mission, pecan-cinnamon elephant ear cookies, Bake Sale, 2013.)

“Viola, be careful!” Mom warns me as my boots hit the pavement.

How can I slow down? Adrenaline, sweet adrenaline, surges, so I pound up the three steps to the front door. My house key slides into the lock at the same time the door opens. It’s not Roz greeting me—all, how’s my big sister?—but Aminta Sarabhai, my big-hearted, big-haired best friend from second grade, who is still in her Firefly costume like she couldn’t be bothered to change until she sees me.

“I’m sorry about the bake sale!” I tell her.

“Shut up about the bake sale already,” Aminta says. While she has many (many) superpowers, what tops that list is her ability to give grandma hugs: warm, encompassing, and reassuring. Only today, my body tenses, my skin supersensitive when she embraces me.

“Careful, Aminta!” Mom cries.

Immediately, Aminta releases me. “I’m sorry! Did I break you?” Then, looking down at me, her eyes grow round. “Oh, my gosh, you’re red!”

“Yeah, and I will be for an entire day,” I tell her.

“Oh, good. First day of school’s on Monday.”

“I know. Lucky me.”

“You better get inside,” Mom says, waving us both into the house. She bolts the front door behind us hastily as if she’s blockading an enemy.

Once inside, I peer into the living room and ask Aminta, “Hey, where’s Roz?”

“Bedroom.”

Which is code for: pouting.

Which is precursor for: getting whatever Roz wants.

Aminta and I learned the early warning signals the hard way. A few big tears rolling down Roz’s pudgy cheeks, and my little sister got the first choice, the best portion, the biggest serving. Once when we were six, Aminta openly questioned Roz’s right to have the last scoop of chocolate chip ice cream—our fave of the moment—and she split it between our two bowls. Roz’s face went horror-movie enraged. I had to get Aminta out of the kitchen fast before Roz cried and my parents intervened. Even though I heard Roz waddling behind us—“wait for me!”—I ran even faster with our contraband bowls. Then Roz stepped on a nail left out from our remodel, it pierced her foot, and she fell. The blood, I’d never seen so much blood. The wails. The wails!

We all thought she was dying, and it was my fault.

A few stitches, one tetanus shot, and a giant cast later, Roz returned home, victorious with not one, but three tubs of ice cream, all Sharpie-markered with her name.

“Sorry,” Aminta whispers, shaking her head. “I just couldn’t tolerate one more K-pop band at Bumbershoot. I know the tickets were expensive, but I wanted to be back here when you got home. So we left early.”

I can only imagine the conniption fit Roz threw. “I’m sorry.”

“You should go rest now,” Mom tells me.

Irritated, I sigh. “I’m not an invalid, you know.” Fighting is futile, though, especially with Mom casting worried glances at the expansive kitchen windows. Anyway, I want to talk to Aminta about our bake sale and Josh. So I grab her hand and we tiptoe past Roz’s bedroom, blasting chirpy notes of K-pop. Just to be extra safe from eavesdropping, I whisper to Aminta as I close my door, “We’re going to have a makeup bake sale.”

“What?” Aminta splutters, then whisper-yells at me, “again, who cares about the stupid bake sale?”

“I do.” I plunk myself down onto my bed and scoot back to rest against the wall. My whole body relaxes. “You know our plan. Donate so much to CARE that we might actually be invited on one of their field visits to Nepal or India and get the real scoop.”

The grand plan was for me to write about our on-the-ground experience, and Aminta to turn those facts into infographics, complete with her hand-drawn comics and number-crunching skills. We are the Geeks for Good, after all. Geeks who were censored in our school paper our freshman year because the administration refused to allow us to publish our investigative report: Aminta’s data crunching that proved—proved!—that teachers unconsciously favored boys in STEM classes. The school did not appreciate her accompanying political cartoon any more than they did my article with interviews with the leaders of the local chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, who had choice words and even choicer examples of institutional sexism. So we decided to go rogue: report on causes that mattered and distribute our articles through innocent bake sales both on campus and off. Can a handheld apple pie have an ulterior motive? You bet, when it includes information about our vets, who risk their lives for the sake of our freedom and return home with untreated PTSD.

“So we’ll have a do-over on Friday.” I nod my head firmly. Never mind that I have no idea what I’ll bake to substitute for the bao failure or that my body feels so achy tired that the thought of making soup in the morning drains what’s left of my energy. Tomorrow, I’ll be back to baking shape, and this health blip will be history. “Everyone’s going to be ready for a sugar high after the first week of school.”

“True, the teachers always lay it on thick the first couple of weeks to scare us. Don’t they understand it’s senior fall? Don’t they know how many college essays we need to write? Don’t they know—”

“We’ll sell out then, especially if we sell before the back-to-school dance. We should make an extra-big batch.” I interrupt this monologue because the same one’s been playing in my own head this whole summer with one major variation: My parents have no clue that my Early Decision college choice is NYU Abu Dhabi. Not only that, but if I get in, my first step is to snag an internship with a field producer for any of the major news outlets.

“Okay, good idea, but only if I help bake this week,” Aminta says. “I know Caresse will, too.”

“Nah, I got it. She spent so much time making our costumes for today.” My leather vest that I didn’t even get to wear.

“You never let us help!”

“I do, too! You guys donate the ingredients. I donate the baking time.”

There’s a light rap on the door before Mom enters with a tray loaded with popcorn, carrots and hummus, water, and Josh’s comic.

“You know,” Mom muses as she sets the tray between Aminta and me on the bed, “it’s a little weird that the main character is photosensitive, too.”

“Persephone? She is?” I ask as Aminta gasps with a loud, “No way! I totally forgot that part of the plot.” She leans forward for a better look when I flip through the pages. “We were in the same comic class.”

“Remind him about Souper Bowl Sunday,” Mom says.

“Mom.”

“Well, good thing I did, then.”

“Mom! You didn’t!” Even Aminta groans, covering her face with her hands. Crisis managers, my foot. My mom isn’t smoothing over an incident; she’s creating one. “Mom!”

“We didn’t give him our address. Just living up to our word, honey. Eat up,” Mom says. “You need your strength, sweetie.”

That “eat up” is a beacon calling all little sisters to stalk into my bedroom and frown, outraged at the injustice of our tray of food. “Hey! What about me?”

“Rosalind-honey, let’s get you something, too.” Not a moment too soon, Mom leaves with Roz, thankfully closing the door behind them.

“This is terrible,” I say, rubbing my eyes. There is nothing I can do to fix this situation. So I do the next best thing, which is to barrage Aminta with questions. “What do you know about him? And why, why, why would you tell him he could co-opt our bake sale with this?” I jab my finger at the twin peaks on the cover. “This?”

Aminta digs a carrot stick into the hummus and takes a thoughtful bite. “I’m kind of shocked Josh finished it, actually.”

The gavel slams in my head: case closed. “So he’s a slacker! I thought so.”

“Well …” Aminta shoves a couple of pieces of popcorn in her mouth like she needs serious reinforcement before answering. “It’s just so tragically sad. He and his twin were working on this, and then suddenly, they both stopped coming to camp. And then we heard that Caleb—”

“His twin?”

Aminta nods. “Well, we heard he died.”

“That’s awful.”

“Horrible.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.” Aminta studies the cover of the comic. “We didn’t keep in touch, not like some of the other kids and I did, but then Josh texted a couple of us late last night and said that he had published Persephone. Not just finished it, but actually published it with a short-run press.” She shrugs. “I just wanted to support him, and we were having the bake sale, and it was the Firefly crowd, and it seemed like the right thing to do.”

“Yeah, of course, it was. I’m glad you did.” On the wall across from us I’ve pinned all fifty of our rebel articles. “It’s hard to get published.”

“As we know.”

I pick out my favorite pieces of popcorn, the ones that are shy of burnt, the ones that slipped through the Siobhan Lee carcinogen filtration system. “He waited for me at the hospital.”

“Josh?”

I nod. “Isn’t that nice?”

Aminta shakes a carrot stick at me. “Oh, no, you don’t.”

“What?”

“That’s code for, ‘Isn’t he nice?’ ”

I blush. Because. Pretty much, yes.

“Well, all I know is,” Aminta says, crunching down hard on the carrot, before waving the remaining stub at me, “he was always ‘nice’ to a different girl in class, before class, and after class.”

“Darren 2.0.”

Just what I didn’t need in my life ever again: a guy who’d toy with me when it was convenient for him, texting to get his ego fix, angling to get his physical fix. I set Persephone facedown on my bed. “Don’t worry. Not doing that again.” Then I groan. “Wait. Souper Bowl Sunday. My mom texted him!”

“He won’t show.”

“You’re right. He won’t.” Of course not. Showing up meant following through, which players do not do. Following through is the Lee & Li way, no matter how grueling the assignment. Following through is why I’m insisting on Friday’s bake sale. Only now, my body betrays me when I should be charting all the details, researching cookies to make, outlining the signs to create, composing social media announcements to blast. I curl up on my side, a little ball of tiredness.

“Should I go?” Aminta says, concerned. “Get your mom?”

“No.” My eyes close, but the sunlight is bright behind my lids. I turn my face to the wall. “I’m just going to nap for a few minutes.”

Aminta slips to the ground with the comic. “I’ll read. You sleep. Go on. Stretch out.”

Instead, I stay where I am, according to my plan.