A Sapphic Retelling of Iconic Movie Crossroads: Cover Reveal and Excerpt of GET REAL, CHLOE TORRES by Crystal Maldonado

Chapter One

I have had a lot of humiliating things happen to me in my almost eighteen years on this planet. 

When I was eight, my dad insisted on holding my hand as he walked me into class on my first day of third grade. For the entire year, everyone called me Baby Chloe. 

In middle school, I literally fainted when my teacher pulled out the frogs we were supposed to dissect in class. Legend has it I even hit my head on a stool on the way to the floor. Cool. 

And once ( . . . recently) I went into a Lush beauty store with my cousin-bestie, Diego, and thought the foam bubble bath sampler they had was edible, so I fully took a bite in front of the sales associate. 

But there has yet to be humiliation like the type I’m suffering from today. 

Because today, on this humid summer day, I am sweating buckets in a wig and poofy, plum-colored ball gown. 

I am dressed as a fairy-tale princess.

In front of my longtime crush.

And her entire family. As they celebrate her little cousin’s birthday. 

Wepa!

It’s the exact opposite of how I wanted to spend the weekend before my own birthday. 

To be fair, I’m getting paid to be here—I’ve been working for the last year at If the Shoe Fits, a company that sends princesses to birthday parties and corporate retreats—but that doesn’t tame the mortification I feel. Not even a little. 

When I arrived and realized whose house it was, I briefly considered running, heels and all. That would clearly be less awkward than reuniting with Sienna and the entire Aguilar family as the hired help, right? I could call my boss and tell her I came down with food poisoning and I had to bail, and then—

“Chloe?” 

Sienna’s voice instantly froze my racing thoughts. 

It was as light and kind as I remembered, even though we hadn’t spoken since the summer before freshman year. Her green eyes gazed at me from underneath ginger curtain bangs, and I was sent right back to the swoony girl I was in middle school. 

Back then, it was me and Sienna and Ramona, and we were inseparable. 

A perpetual late bloomer, I admittedly didn’t have many friends when I started at Elmwood Middle School. Thankfully, Ramona and I were seated next to each other in homeroom. I was instantly taken with how cool and mature she seemed, in her head-to-toe black clothes and dark purple lipstick. She had the kind of corkscrew curls that would make any girl jealous—especially me, who tended to have frizzy waves more than anything else. To outsiders, she might have looked intimidating, and she absolutely was. But when I spotted an Intonation sticker on her notebook, almost hidden among the sea of other band and political stickers, I knew I had an in. 

Even though cheesy pop bands didn’t seem like the kind of thing Ramona would love, she was drawn to any act of rebellion. Liking something mainstream as a girl who was anything but was the best kind of contradiction to her. We became fast friends, even though we weren’t that alike. Though we both enjoyed art and Intonation, if I was a bright, sunny day, she was a storm cloud. Yet we worked. I loved annoying her with my positivity, and she loved rolling her eyes at me. We bonded quickly over only having one parent, too—I had my dad, she had her mom.

It wasn’t long before we added Sienna into the mix. Middle-school Sienna was all long, lanky limbs and bright red hair, and she had what some might call an overt obsession with Intonation. As in, she couldn’t talk about much else except the band. She even showed up to school one day in an Intonation shirt. When someone made fun of her, Ramona swooped in and claimed Sienna as ours, and that was that. 

Intonation provided the much-needed gateway for the three of us to form real, legitimate bonds. In between our obsession with the band, we had sleepovers and manicures, makeovers and movie nights. We even daydreamed about having our own girl group—who would someday open for Intonation on tour, obviously—called Deadly Flora. My girl-group alter ego was called Oleander, Sienna was Hydrangea, and Ramona was Nightshade—and yes, we had choreographed dance moves and a couple of our own songs. It was silly and it was the best.