A summer thing

Twelve-year-old Julie thought summer would mean lazy afternoons at the creek and dodging her little brother’s water balloons—until she meets Mira, the bold, artistic new girl with a laugh like sunshine and a habit of saying exactly what she thinks. What starts as shared popsicles and secret handshake ideas quickly becomes something bigger, something real—the kind of thing that makes Julies’ chest ache and Mira’s sketchbook fill with portraits of a certain freckled face. But not everyone thinks their summer thing is sweet. Between Julies’ dad’s icy silence, Mira’s mom’s razor-sharp “concerns,” and a pack of schoolyard bullies determined to smear their happiness into something ugly, the girls will need more than pinky promises to survive the fallout. Good thing first love doesn’t play by anyone’s rules but its own.