“Perfect.”
Alex Sackett stared down at the pale-yellow wrap dress she’d laid out on her bed and nodded with satisfaction. Combined with her brand-new, first-ever pair of cowboy boots, it would be just the right first-day-of-school outfit. She even had a matching yellow headband to wear with it. Whew! Alex thought. Talk about a down-to-the-wire decision. School starts tomorrow!
She frowned at the heap of discarded clothes on the floor. She’d had to try on half her wardrobe before arriving at the perfect combo, so it was going to take a while to get her room back in shape. And she still had new vocabulary cards to memorize—she tried to memorize five each day.
Alex guessed that her twin sister, Ava, was not laying out her school outfit or memorizing vocab words. Ava wasn’t someone you’d describe as a slave to fashion. Just last week she’d appeared at breakfast wearing one of their brother Tommy’s T-shirts, inside out. Nor was Ava the plan-ahead type. Alex hoped that maybe this year she’d be able to convince Ava to try getting her stuff ready the night before, so their mornings would be less rushed. Alex loved her twin sister, but she could be pretty disorganized.
The smell of cookies wafted up the stairs, and Alex heard the oven door slam.
“Al! Tommy! Cookies!” yelled Ava from the kitchen.
With one backward glance at the outfit she’d chosen—maybe she should go with the green dress instead?—Alex headed downstairs.
“Second batch will be out in just a couple more minutes,” said their dad, Mike Sackett—or Coach, as Ava and Tommy called him. He had tied on one of Mrs. Sackett’s ruffled aprons, which made Alex giggle. It was a funny accessory on such a big, athletic-looking guy, complemented by the flowery oven mitts he wore to pull cookies out of the oven. Coach loved to bake, and it was a Sackett family tradition to have milk and cookies the night before the first day of school.
“Got that outfit all set, Al?” asked Ava with a mischievous grin as Alex poured herself a glass of milk. Ava was sitting at the kitchen table, with their school schedules side by side in front of her. They had gone to Ashland Middle School earlier that day to pick them up and take a tour.
“Ave, don’t tease your sister,” said Coach as he transferred cookies to a cooling rack. Moxy, the Sacketts’ energetic Australian shepherd, sat beneath him, waiting hopefully for a cookie to fall to the floor. “It’s natural to be a little nervous for your first day at a new school. New town. New state. It’s a big change.”
“I’m not nervous so much as apprehensive,” said Alex, who liked to work her vocab words into sentences as often as possible. She sat down next to her sister to look at their schedules.
“We don’t have a single class together,” said Ava with a frown. “Not even homeroom.”
“We have the same lunch period,” Alex noticed.
“You have Mr. Kenerson, the middle school football coach, for homeroom,” Ava said, pointing to the name at the top of Alex’s schedule.
“Oh, great,” she said, blowing back a stray curly tendril that had escaped her ponytail. “You’re the one who knows football, but I get the coach. He’ll probably expect me to know every play in Daddy’s playbook.”
“Maybe it’ll inspire you to learn a little about the game,” said Ava. Their dad set a platter of cookies in front of them, and she helped herself to one of the biggest ones, which was still gooey in the center. “I mean, we have just moved to a football-crazy part of Texas, and our dad is the head coach at the high school.”
“Studying up on the rules is definitely on my to-do list,” said Alex. “Look, you have Ms. Kerry for homeroom. She’s my math teacher.”
“Awesome, she’ll expect me to be as brilliant as my twin sister,” said Ava drily.
Just then their mother burst into the kitchen with the phone in her hand. Her eyes were shining. “Guess what? I just got my first big—and I mean big—order!”
“Aw, honey, that’s terrific!” said Coach. He tugged off his oven mitts and gave her a hug.
“What’s the order for, Mom?” asked Alex. Their mother was a potter, and Alex had recently helped her create a new website to sell her pieces.
“Remember Katie McCabe, Daddy’s colleague back at the old school in Massachusetts? She’s registering with me for her wedding!” said Mrs. Sackett. “I’ll be making plates, bowls, coffee cups, serving platters—the works!”
“I knew your business would take off fast,” said Alex. “You’re so talented, Mom.”
“Of course she’s talented,” said their older brother, Tommy, walking into the kitchen with his easy athletic gait. “Where do you think I get all my talents from?” He grinned and put an arm around his mother’s shoulders. Alex was still not used to seeing her sixteen-year-old brother looming over their mom. He’d probably grown six inches in the past six months. He was looking more and more like their dad every day—he wasn’t as bulky as Coach yet, but he was getting there.
“It’s going to be a busy next few weeks, Michael,” said Mrs. Sackett, helping herself to a cookie. “I was talking with April Cahill earlier today, and she casually mentioned that as the coach’s wife, I’m more or less expected to plan a barbecue for the team for Homecoming weekend. And evidently your predecessor’s wife gave each player a towel with his initials embroidered on it!” She shook her head and chuckled in disbelief.
Alex studied her dad’s face. He laughed along with her mom, but it was an uneasy laugh.