WERP!

The noise was so loud, Lidia Sato almost fell out of her bed.

She sat up and stared sleepily at the Sailor Moon alarm clock on her nightstand.

It was only 6:52 a.m.! And that noise sounded like it was coming from inside the house!

EEEE—WERP!

There it was again! What was that noise? Didn’t her family realize she was still sleeping? Her alarm wasn’t due to go off for another eight minutes!

Lidia coveted sleep the way her mother loved chocolate, her brother collected Pokémon cards, and her grandmother had a daily date with The Price Is Right.

SCREECH!

Lidia covered her ears with her pillow. The sound reminded her of nails on a chalkboard, but she wasn’t at school. She was home in bed. She pinched herself to make sure. Yep, still in bed. Where had she heard this noise before?

EEEE!

Aha! Suddenly, the sleep fog lifted and the answer was clear. That was the sound of a mic being plugged into an amp that someone had forgot was turned on. But Lidia had to be wrong. No one in her house would be stupid enough to plug in an amp this early.

“Good morning, Naples, Florida!” Lidia heard her ten-year-old brother, Douglas, yell into a microphone.

Lidia groaned. Sleep was now a lost cause. Anyway, it was almost time to get ready for her job as a first mate/unofficial cruise director/member of the fun squad on Salty Sam’s pirate tourist cruise. She stretched her sore limbs, pulled back her plaid lavender comforter, and jumped out of bed. Pushing her long black hair out of her eyes, she slipped her feet into her fuzzy rainbow-colored slippers. Wait till she got her hands on Douglas!

“We are coming to you live from the Sato household where Evie Fukui will now be singing her number-one Japanese pop hit, ‘Bubble Gum Love.’ Take it away, Evie!”

Evie? Her grandmother was in on this pre-alarm travesty too?

“No, you take it away, Douglas Sato!” Lidia heard her grandmother say. “I’m making lunches. I can’t solo right now.”

“Come on, Grandma! It’s just one song!” Douglas begged. There was something about his caramel-coated voice that let him get away with murder. “Please? I need to practice my guitar solo before lessons this afternoon, and ‘Bubble Gum Love’ is my favorite song to play.”

Dougie was such a kiss-up.

“Aww, all right. Let me just put this turkey sandwich in your lunch box and I’ll warm up my voice.” Lidia rolled her eyes—Grandma Evie never passed up the chance to hold a mic. Her grandmother began a series of warm-ups at full volume.

It was official. Her family was insane.

Sure, her family kept a karaoke machine in the dining room the way other families had a china cabinet, and it wasn’t unheard of for someone to break out the microphone while washing dishes, but pre-alarm a.m. jam sessions needed to be banned. Lidia would mention this at dinner that night, but she knew she wouldn’t win the argument. Music was her family’s life and there was no escaping it.

Everyone at Bradley Academy, where she went to school (and where her mom was headmistress), loved studying at Lidia’s because there was always a chance someone would burst into song, like they were secretly being taped for a Japanese American version of The Partridge Family (Grandma Evie’s second favorite show after The Price Is Right). It also didn’t hurt that the Satos lived on campus in one of the faculty houses. Instead of holing up in the tomb-like library, students could walk to Lidia’s in five minutes flat and be serenaded.

RIP! The growl of Douglas’s guitar solo kicked in as Lidia walked slowly to her closet to get dressed. She winced when he strummed the wrong chord.

“Wait for me! I just have to brush my teeth!” Lidia heard her mom shout. “I’ll be down in time for the chorus.”

“I’ll grab my acoustic!” her dad added. She could hear him running down the hall. He banged on Lidia’s door. “Lidie, up and at ’em! Family jam session over Cheerios starts now!”

Lidia banged her head against her closet door over and over again.

How could her family love to sing this much?

Lidia liked to sing. If she didn’t, she and her best friend, Sydney, wouldn’t have lobbied to become co-captains of Bradley Academy’s all-female a cappella group, the Nightingales, this coming sophomore year. They’d dreamed of a cappella gold and glory since they’d started at the upper campus in seventh grade. Lidia’s mom—who had been in Bradley’s original Nightingales back in the day—still talked about how the group made her high school experience and how much fun a cappella competitions were. But by the time Lidia and Sydney joined freshman year, the Nightingales’ reign was over. Still the girls weren’t worried. They had a plan to turn the group around and bring home the team’s first trophy in years at the a cappella kickoff competition, Turn It Up, in November.

“If we win at Turn It Up, then we’ll move on to the next a cappella competition and then the next, and before you know it, we will be taking home the golden fruit at the Orange Grove Championship next May,” Sydney had declared. She was so sure of this, she had made Lidia a papier-mâché Orange Grove trophy. It sat on Lidia’s dresser along with Sydney’s other gifts, like “best friend forever” cards, Sailor Moon tees (since she knew Lidia was obsessed with the character), and even her old iPod, loading it up with new songs they could use for the Nightingales.

If they got enough girls to join the group.

Lidia shook her head clear of the negative thoughts Sydney hated. (“Don’t jinx us!” she’d say. She was way more positive than Lidia was about these things.) But it was hard not to be skeptical that the Nightingales would make it another year. Last year, they’d barely had enough members to remain a group. Most of the team had graduated in June, leaving them with a handful of returning sophomores and juniors they’d have to convince to sign up again.

They were in tenth grade now and Syd’s dream had never wavered. But if Lidia was being honest with herself, her faith in the Nightingales had. She was secretly convinced the group would fold, so she’d started taking dance classes at school and at Integral Dance Arts. She’d wanted to have something that would look good on college applications in case her a cappella career was over, but then the strangest thing happened: She fell in love with dance. This past summer, she’d even bumped up her classes to four a week. After her shift at Salty Sam’s, she’d run to hip-hop on Mondays, ballet on Tuesdays, a contemporary dance class on Wednesdays, and an acrobatics class on Thursdays—she couldn’t decide which class she liked more. It didn’t matter. She’d have to cut back to one the following week when school and Nightingales practice started up again. As co-captains, she and Syd would be working on songs and arrangements after school four days a week.

It killed her to think about giving up her dance classes, but every time she tried to tell Syd how she felt, she choked. Her best friend lived and breathed the Nightingales. How could she tell her that she wanted to have time for things other than singing? Syd had them sharing earbuds to listen to music, picking songs that wouldn’t make the judges scream “No more Gaga!” and watching a cappella YouTube videos from winning groups as near as Port St. Lucie and as far away as Portugal.

Lidia smiled to herself. Only Syd could be that obsessive and still be her charming self. Her best friend was going to make a great actress/singer someday.

It was Lidia who didn’t know what she wanted to be yet, and sometimes that worried her.

“Your smile makes my gum go pop, pop, pop!” Grandma Evie sang at the top of her lungs as Douglas chimed in on his guitar. As promised, Mom came in on the chorus as did Dad and his guitar. “Lidia, get down here!” her grandmother sang.

No one was allowed to sit out the music in the Sato house. Maybe her friends were right. The Satos were missing out on their chance to be the musical Kardashians.

Lidia started dancing around her closet to the beat. She had to admit it—her grandmother’s song was catchy. She turned on the light in her closet and contemplated clothing options for the Gulf Coast in mid-August. Next week, she’d be back to wearing her pale-blue-and-yellow-plaid uniform, but today she was happy to slip on a gray tank top and slouchy silk shorts. They showed off the dancer’s legs she’d earned by doing a hundred scissor kicks in a row and two hundred pliés nightly for the last two months. After years of hating her tall, lanky frame, she was now embracing what her dance school owner called “the perfect dancer’s body.”

By the time she got downstairs, the jam session had ended and everyone was sitting around the kitchen table.

“Lidia!” Douglas complained when he saw her. He was still in pajamas. “What took you so long? You even missed the encore!”

“We could always do a second encore,” Grandma Evie suggested as Mom, Dad, and Douglas took turns pouring cereal. “In my day, Popmore Fun came back out onstage as often as our fans begged us to.” Her grandmother’s perfectly drawn-in black eyebrows went up.

Her grandmother didn’t look sixty-five. With short, cropped black hair, a face full of makeup even at breakfast, and cute, stylish sweaters that even Lidia wanted to borrow, her grandmother looked more like some of the moms at school pickup. “Music has kept me young,” her grandmother always said whenever anyone complimented her appearance. She’d been in a pop group growing up in Japan, but when she came to America she had settled on giving music lessons instead of playing herself so she could raise Lidia’s mom.

“Maybe later,” Lidia promised. Singing with her grandmother was a kick.

“Lidia has to rest her voice.” Her mom looked at her appraisingly with her dark eyes. “Nightingales practices are less than two weeks away!” She let out a cheer and banged her spoon against her orange juice, making it slosh around in the glass. Her mom’s own Nightingales trophies still sat proudly in her home office.

“Mom, practices only resume if we get enough kids at auditions and can put together a team,” Lidia reminded her.

“Yeah, and the Nightingales are the most unpopular group at school,” Douglas said as he shoveled cereal into his mouth. Milk dripped down his chin. “It’s even more unpopular than the badminton club.”

“That’s not true!” Lidia said in horror.

But deep down she knew it was true. Painfully true.

Still, the entire family glared at Dougie for the traitor he was. “It is true! The Nightingales probably won’t even have a team when I get to upper school.” He smiled, revealing the gap in his two front teeth. “It will just be me and my awesome Kingfishers.”

“You sound as sour as this grapefruit, Douglas,” their dad said. “The Nightingales are returning to glory this year. We can feel it.” Everyone but Douglas banged their spoons against their juice glasses. Lidia couldn’t help but join in. She banged her spoon the hardest, then felt her phone buzz. She looked at the screen and saw the photo of Syd looking very diva-ish in mid-song with a mic practically touching her lips. There was a text.

Wake up, sleepyhead! Meet me at Don’t Be Crabby’s for iced chai lattes before our shift. We’re celebrating! Dad said I could host a prospective Nightingales event at the shop! YAY!

“Breakfast?” Grandma Evie asked.

“No thanks. I’m going to meet Sydney at Don’t Be Crabby’s before the boat cruise.”

Everyone started talking at once.

Her mom fired questions rapidly: “Did you and Syd discuss audition songs yet? Did you take my suggestion? You can’t go wrong with ‘Catch My Breath’ by Kelly Clarkson.”

“So overdone!” Grandma Evie disagreed. “I think my Little Big Town’s song choices give girls all sorts of range.”

“Grandma Evie, you listen to Little Big Town?” Douglas asked.

Grandma Evie smiled proudly. “I listen to everything! Those Chainsmokers are a talented bunch too.”

“All of your suggestions are contenders, but we haven’t narrowed down our choices yet,” Lidia said diplomatically. Syd was always saying Lidia was the peacekeeper. Lidia had convinced Shannon Todd to sing a duet with Annette Bryant at last year’s spring concert even after Annette called Shannon’s voice “pitchy” in the school vlog. “Maybe we’ll decide at breakfast.”

“Good idea,” Grandma Evie said. “Better take our suggestions before the Kingfishers snatch up all the best songs.” The family muttered in agreement. “Speaking of Kingfishers, have you seen that Griffin boy lately?”

“Grandma!” Lidia’s cheeks started to burn. “We’re just friends.” Actually, we’re not even friends, but I do know all there is to know about him through Sydney, she thought.

“I was just curious,” Grandma Evie said innocently. “Should the rest of us do one more song before work? I charged my favorite gold mic.” Dougie and her dad jumped right up to jam.

That was Lidia’s cue to exit. She kissed her mom on the cheek, rushed to the kitchen’s back door, and kicked off her slippers. Sliding into her flip-flops, she grabbed her cinch bag with her pirate uniform and eye patch. (She never changed into it till she was on the boat. Too many comments from people trying to be funny. And Lidia’s family was enough comedy for one day.)

School wasn’t in session, but thanks to the summer camp, the Bradley Academy shuttle buses still ran. Lidia caught the one that went to downtown Naples. Slipping into an unoccupied seat, she stared out the window as the bus wound its way through the Bradley Academy grounds, passing empty manicured lawns, the lake, and rows of palm trees that would soon give shade to the campers who thought it would be fun to eat lunch outside. It wasn’t.

Lidia stuck her earbuds in her ears and pulled up the new Nightingales playlist Syd had sent her the night before. This one was titled NIGHTINGALES VICTORY TUNES!, which was way more confident than the prior week’s list, which was called SAVE THE NIGHTINGALES! Lidia laughed to herself. Syd had been her best friend since they met in fifth grade chorus. Even though she could drive her crazier than anyone else on the planet—including her own Partridge Family—Lidia wouldn’t change Syd for the world.

Well, maybe there was one thing.

Syd was impossible to say no to. She’d been pushing Lidia to talk to Griffin Mancini since Lidia first started crushing on him in eighth grade. When Griffin sang “Billie Jean” at the school talent show, he picked Lidia out of the audience to sing to. It was just an act, she knew, but it was enough to create a love spark that had grown into a bonfire over the years. She liked him even if he was a prankster for the Kingfishers and liked to brag about his voice (kind of like Sydney). Lidia likened it to her obsession with Justin Bieber. She knew loving him was wrong, but she couldn’t quit the habit.

And yet, she still hadn’t worked up the nerve to have a conversation with Griffin that lasted longer than their time on the lunch line. “Are you going to take the last Jell-O?” was not a line that was going to get her noticed.

She knew Syd’s pushiness was just her way of trying to help. Griffin and Syd had gotten parts in the Naples Community Theater production of In the Heights over the summer, and Syd kept inviting Lidia to rehearsals so she could get to know Griffin better. But whenever Lidia tried to talk to Griffin, she clammed up.

But it was a new year and Lidia knew it was time to make some changes. She would talk to Griffin. No, not just talk: She’d flirt! Syd said he was funny. Well, she’d be funny too. Funny and flirty and he wouldn’t be able to resist her!

When the bus reached the pier, Lidia hopped off and walked the short distance to Don’t Be Crabby’s. Syd wasn’t supposed to meet her for another fifteen minutes, but Lidia would snag a table. When Syd got there, she’d be proud of Lidia for having all her notes about auditions spread out.

The air-conditioning hit Lidia in the face as soon as she opened the door. The shop was crowded, but she spotted an empty table in the back, which looked out over the pirate ship she and Syd worked on. Lidia quickly walked toward it and got trapped behind a mother with a double stroller. Don’t take the last table, she thought to herself, silently cheering when the stroller moved. She dashed for the empty seats. But she stopped short just a few feet later when she spotted Sydney already seated at a table nearby.

Griffin was with her.

Lidia’s heart did a one-handed cartwheel at the sight of him in a royal-blue tee and board shorts.

But before she could even open her mouth to say hi to either of them, she watched in seemingly slow motion as Griffin leaned across the table and kissed Sydney on the lips for all of the coffee shop to see.

Lidia’s heart felt like it had stopped in her chest. She stood there for a moment, completely confused and upset, then quickly snapped out of it and, in a daze, turned around, crashing into that stroller and sending someone’s glass flying off their table and shattering to the floor. They’re going to see me, she thought.

“Sorry,” she mumbled quickly and rushed out of the coffee house. She didn’t stop running till she reached the bus stop. She couldn’t show up at Salty Sam’s now.

All Lidia could think about was that kiss. A kiss that should have been meant for her.