"You're bored," Nali said, climbing up the ladder and poking her head through the hole in the floor.

"Is that so?" I said without looking up. "Please, tell me. How exactly would you know that?"

"You're searching through the attic. Probably looking for old pictures, or toys, or journals to read, or anything really to keep you entertained. Maybe another suitcase of stamps that belongs to some random great-uncle like you found last time you were bored or something equally interesting. C'mon, Sailor, you have been doing this more and more lately. Plus, you've gone through the attic at least a dozen times before. You won't find anything new. Why don't you go practice soccer like you always do?"

"Well, I've already spent a while playing soccer, and I don't have anything better to do," I said, delicately opening a book so old and worn it could have fallen apart in my hands at any moment. The ink was faded, but I made out four digits: 1899. I let out a low whistle.

"What?" Nali, my older sister, asked me. Despite the fact she was constantly scolding me about going through the contents of our attic, we shared the same genes and she was just as curious as I was. "Did you find something?"

"Look at this," I said, smiling as I leafed through the pages carefully. "A book published in 1899, so that would be about... one hundred and twenty-one years ago, I think. Right? From what I can tell, it was an economics book by someone named Voblen. No, Veblen," I corrected myself. "Look it up."

Nali sighed, but climbed into the attic and pulled out her phone. Her fingers flew across the screen and she said a few moments later, "There's a book called The Theory of the Leisure Class by a guy called Thorstein Veblen." I grinned.

"Yeah, that'll be it," I said, setting the book down gently and standing up to stretch. "Geez, it's really old. I wonder why we have it."

"Mom was batty for old, useless books," Nali said, and I could hear the wistfulness in her voice. "Dad was always on her case for collecting them, but she did it anyway."

I froze at the mention of our parents. Ever since they had died in a fire while exploring a forest for data in Australia about a year ago, we'd sort of avoided talking about them. We weren't ignoring the topic or anything (or maybe we were), but we just weren't ready.

So how were we still surviving and not in the hands of Social Services? Well, Nali was twenty-four years old, and the legal age of adoption was twenty-one in Delaware. So Nali had dropped out of college to take care of me a year before she completed her education. Plus, Nali was insanely tech-savvy and was a programmer for big and small productions. Still, her job paid her amazingly for someone so young, and she loved it. Nali found time to volunteer at the local shelter too. I helped by getting a job at Starbucks and paying for some of the smallest bills. Still, we weren't entirely independent. Our aunts and uncles also occasionally helped out, even though most of them were living on other continents.

"Yeah," I said softly. "Only Mom would buy a book by a guy called Thorstein." Nali laughed shakily before we both fell silent.

Nali finally broke the silence by clearing her throat. "I forgot why I came up here," she said. "I actually found something in a photo album."

"I've been through all the photo albums," I said, frowning at her. "You know that."

"You haven't been through Dad's photo album."

"What?" Before I knew it, I was on my feet. "Dad had a photo album?" My father wasn't the type to keep a personal photo album, much less hide it from his daughters. "How'd you find it?"

"I was going through some of his stuff, separating it into piles to donate and to keep after he - after he died," Nali said. "I found the album and kept it but forgot about it. I found it after cleaning my room and saw something. And lo and behold, it was the photo album. I found something from about six years ago."

"Really?" I said, unable to help myself. I probably should have been angry that she hid something like that from me, but I wanted to know.

"Look for yourself," Nali said, passing me a journal. At least, I thought it was a journal at first. It turned out to be the photo album Nali was talking about. She had marked one of the pages and when I flipped to it my mouth opened in surprise.

I was ten years old in the picture at a lemonade stand with another boy around my age. The lemonade stand was clumsily built and it was obvious from the nails that weren't completely hammered into the wood that I had taken part in building the stand. But it looked like we weren't only selling lemonade. A thick piece of paper with crooked handwriting on it leaning against the stand listed prices - fifty cents a cup, seventy-five cents a cookie, and a dollar a bracelet. A half-filled jar of quarters, dimes, nickels, and crumpled dollar bills sat on the top of the stand next to plastic cups and a pitcher of homemade lemonade. Ten-year-old me was rocking oversized sunglasses and a Marvel T-shirt and I was beaming, holding up a cup of the lemonade.

I actually remembered taking that picture. It was one of the hottest summers I'd ever felt so I had come up with the idea of a lemonade stand. The boy next to me was Damian Winters. It had been a long time since I'd thought about my childhood best friend. We had been practically inseparable - "joined at the hip," Dad had used to call us - but after he'd moved to Indiana four years ago when we were twelve, our friendship faded. I'd texted him countless times, but the messages never delivered. I'd assumed that he'd changed his phone number.

Damian was tall and gangly, with dark, curly hair and surprisingly bright green eyes sparkling with life. I missed those eyes; they cheered me up for some reason. His two front teeth were awkwardly large and he had dark blue braces that I teased him about when we were younger. His arm was around my shoulders and he was grinning.

"Wow," I breathed, bringing the photo closer to my face. "It's been a long, long time."

"Yeah," Nali said. "You're lemonade was too sweet, by the way."
I gasped, pretending to be offended. "How dare you! I liked the lemonade, and so did everyone else!"

"Mom and Dad only swallowed the lemonade to make you happy. All the people you sold lemonade to were little kids, who have an insane sweet tooth. I'm surprised you could even drink it without gagging."

"Speaking of a sweet tooth," I said suddenly, "do you know that your sweet tooth is actually a built-in instinct for survival thousands of thousands of years ago? Naturally sweet food has a lot of energy and your instinct is to eat as much as possible because you never know when you'll get more to eat. At least, that was how it was for cavemen. Now, even all these years later, your sweet tooth is still there, although the instinct is admittedly significantly less strong."

"That was so random."

"Shut up," I huffed. "You wish you were as smart as I was. Need I remind you that all four years I was in Academic Bowl in fifth grade and middle school, the team won every. Single. Time?" Nila rolled her eyes as I turned my attention back to the photo. The back had a date written in Mom's almost illegible handwriting that showed that the picture had been taken six years ago.

"Are there any other photos of Damian and I in here?" I asked, flipping through the album.

"I don't know," Nali said. "I didn't get very far until I found that one. Anyway, I'm off to the shelter. Wanna come?"

"Duh," I said, shutting the album and climbing down the ladder to the second floor after Nali.

"Cool," Nali said. "Ms. Kat got a couple of puppies last night, and I really want to see them. She doesn't know what breed they are and wants to see if you can figure it out." 

***

So... first chapter is published! Please, please, PLEASE vote and add to your reading list if you liked it because it really does make me happy to see that people are enjoying it. I know most of you guys reading this message right now are just readers on WattPad and have never posted an actual story but let me tell you that it makes my day. Thanks for reading!!