The Hating Game meets I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter in this Pura Belpré Award–winning novel that’s an irresistible romance starring a Mexican American teen who discovers love and profound truths about the universe when she spends her summer on a road trip across the country.
When her twin sister reaches social media stardom, Moon Fuentez accepts her fate as the ugly, unwanted sister hidden in the background, destined to be nothing more than her sister’s camerawoman. But this summer, Moon also takes a job as the “merch girl” on a tour bus full of beautiful influencers and her fate begins to shift in the best way possible.
Most notable is her bunkmate and new nemesis, Santiago Phillips, who is grumpy, combative, and also the hottest guy Moon has ever seen.
Moon is certain she hates Santiago and that he hates her back. But as chance and destiny (and maybe, probably, close proximity) bring the two of them in each other’s perpetual paths, Moon starts to wonder if that’s really true. She even starts to question her destiny as the unnoticed, unloved wallflower she always thought she was.
Could this summer change Moon’s life as she knows it?
Raquel Vasquez Gilliland is a Mexican American poet, novelist, and painter. She received an MFA in poetry from the University of Alaska, Anchorage in 2017. She’s most inspired by fog and seeds and the lineages of all things. When not writing, Raquel tells stories to her plants and they tell her stories back. She lives in Tennessee with her beloved family and mountains. Raquel has published two books of poetry. She’s the author of Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything and How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1: The Wild, Cosmic Beginning of All Beginnings 1. The Wild, Cosmic Beginning of All Beginnings EVERYTHING HAS A beginning. And I’m not just talking about things like the shop I ordered my moonstone necklace from, or where it was made, or where the stone itself was quarried. Though that is lovely to think about, isn’t it? Perhaps it’s from some deep, wild cave pebbled with lakelike stones of moons.... But no, that’s not what I mean.
I’m not even talking about me, or my twin sister, or yuck, the birds and the bees. What I am talking about is everything. I mean, everything in this whole wide, wild universe has one beginning. One place where everything, all of matter, converged into a speck one trillionth the size of a period. Let me repeat that, because I can scarcely fathom it myself.
Everything that exists in all the billions of galaxies, including Earth, with our salty, whale-skimmed seas and herds of elephants strewn on the horizon like gray beads and piles of electronic junk gathering here and there since, what, the eighties? And blue-trimmed plates of arroz con pollo and the nearly fuchsia slices of smoked salmon over a bagel and all the smooth and metallic skyscrapers and the billions of microscopic organisms in a teaspoon of dirt, everything—every last atom and electron and scoop of strawberry cheesecake ice cream—was once a fraction of a fraction of a period. I don’t know how scientists have figured something like that out with any certainty, but they have. I mean, if I’d kept reading Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, I might know, but I couldn’t, not after that sentence. I had to put the book away, and then next thing you know, my library loan was up, and I can’t bring myself to touch it again. It’s so overwhelming.
I mean, a period! A period! Probably font size ten, too, or something. Can you imagine how heavy that thing was? How, if you’d picked it up, it would’ve cut a hole right through you? Your mom might have been like, “Oh, Moon, what have you done now?” You know, if she’d cared. And you’d say, “Oh, yeah, just tried to see if I could lift this speck of All-That-Is. I’ll be okay.” You know, as if she’d care.
Sometimes I think, what if I could go back to the beginning? What would I do? I could try to touch it, that molten-hot little speck, just to say I’d tried. Or maybe I’d look at it, at this beginning of all beginnings, and ask it, Why the heck do the women in our family still have La Raíz? You know, the whole reason why I’m the unwanted, ugly sister. I may allow myself another related question: Why, why, why didn’t I leave La Raíz in the carved milk jar, right where Mom banished it, on the windowsill in her bathroom?
I can still picture the moment. Despite Mom warning us, with one hand on her Bible and the other basically on the graves of all our ancestors, to never, ever, ever touch the milk jar, I got on my tiptoes, grabbed the white bottle, and pulled the top off. And released all the yuck back into our bloodline, apparently. Like a little Pandora-in-training. Of course, nothing happened at first. I spent years thinking Mom outright lied to us.
And then I had sex for the first time.
But that’s another beginning for another time.
You know what, though? This whole beginning is super important in the context of, like, my whole freaking life. So...
