"Cinnamon Girl" (Excerpt)

"Goldstein's is a crime scene."

"My people keep that place running," I say through a mouthful, crumbs falling down the front of my T-shirt. "Show some respect."

"I am," she says, perched cross-legged on my bed, sunlight hitting the gold threads in her hair so it looks like someone poured honey into dark chocolate. "I'm respecting the part where we go to New York and you finally learn what a real bagel is."

"Oh, so day one you're marching me into some mythical bagel temple to be converted."

"Baptized," she corrects. "You're getting baptized in cream cheese."

"You're five feet tall. You can't baptize anyone. You can't even reach the sink."

She flicks a curly strand out of her face with a glare so dramatic it should come with a drumroll. "I'm five feet of authority."

"Terrifying," I say, and toss the rest of my bread donut into the air, catch it, miss, and watch it bounce off my keyboard. "Oops."

Alana groans like she's eighty. "You're disgusting."

"Bold of you to say that in the presence of my cologne collection," I say, gesturing at the three half-empty body sprays on my desk like they're awards. The room smells like pine and cheap sugar because I sprayed one five minutes ago thinking it would make me look more put together. Turns out it just makes the smell of boys stronger—like a cover track that somehow made the original worse.

"Your cologne collection smells like high school locker sadness," she says. "Move that." She flicks her chin toward the bagel on my keyboard. "I have to send you the playlist."

"You mean the holy playlist which will score our triumphant departure to New York?" I say, wiping crumbs onto my jeans. I open my laptop. It whirs like a jet engine about to fail. "Because I have notes."

"Of course you have notes." She flops backward, hair fanning across my pillow. It's ridiculous hair—long and thick and curly like it was engineered in a lab to ruin me. Her eyes are big and round and light brown, like someone dropped oak leaves in sunlight. Her lips are soft and full and totally wasted on mocking me. "Give me one of your stupid notes."

"Track one should not be something that makes me cry in front of the Turnpike toll guy," I say. "You're trying to get us arrested."

"I thought we agreed we're reclaiming our emotions."

"We agreed you're not playing anything that makes you sing with your whole diaphragm," I say. "I still have PTSD from your Celine Dion phase."

She sits up and throws a pillow at my head. "You loved my Celine Dion phase."

"You weaponized it." I catch the pillow, hug it because it smells like her shampoo, then toss it back to the foot of the bed like it burned me. "Anyway, track one should be something cocky. Like we stride into Manhattan and the pavement says 'whoa.'"

"You think the pavement is going to talk."

"I think it's going to tell me to stop double-parking. But yes."

She grins, and there's that little dimple that appears only when she's sincerely happy about something—not the smile she uses at teachers or at the aunties who pinch her cheek, but the one she doesn't even know she has. "Fine. We'll open with cocky. Then something nostalgic."

"For Pittsburgh," I say, looking toward my window. My room is on the second floor, and the view is every version of home all at once: our maple tree, a crooked basketball hoop, the little crack in the driveway Dad swears he's getting fixed this summer and will absolutely not fix. The street is quiet because it's Saturday and everyone's doing laundry or yard work or recovering from whatever they drank last night.

"For us," she says quietly. Then, in the next breath, she leans over and taps the spacebar on my laptop with her pinky. "Open your messages. Maddox texted me three times last night. He says you're ignoring him."

"I'm not ignoring him," I say, opening Messages. "I'm curating a sense of mystique."

Alana snorts. "Maddox says, and I quote: 'Tell my idiot brother to email the housing deposit before he misses his spot and ends up living in a coat closet with a rat named Chauncey.'"

I squint. "He named the hypothetical rat?"

"He's an architecture major. He names things." She leans in, shoulder brushing mine, and points at the screen. "Also, your mom sent me an Instagram reel of a cat in a sweater, which I assume is code for 'has Maverick eaten real food today.'"

"She could just walk upstairs and ask me."

"She's editing a wedding," Alana says. "Do not interrupt her flow. She will attach you to a Pinterest board called 'reluctant grooms.'"

"True." My mom has this face she makes when she's behind the camera and it's like she's seeing five versions of time at once. She says light is a personality. She told me that when I was eight and I believed her because she made Tuesday afternoon look like a movie. "I'll text Maddox back before he designs me a coffin."

"Good," she says. "He says hi."

"He could say hi to me," I mutter, but I'm smiling. Maddox is three years older and exactly that much more infuriating. He left for California and came back taller, tanner, and with opinions about cantilevers. Every time he calls, there's wind noise and palm trees making that swishing sound that feels like narrator commentary: You still live where the winters try to kill you, don't you, little brother?

"He also says—" Alana scrolls with her finger like the phone belongs to her, which is fair because half my life does—"that you should bring actual warm clothes to New York. He says it's not California. He says, 'tell him he's an idiot again.'"

"My family really has a brand," I say. "Your turn. Tell me what your mom said."

"My mom said—" Alana puts on her best impression voice, which is surprisingly accurate. "'Mi amor, are you sure about the city? It's loud and so many people. What if you get lost?' And then she made me a sandwich while asking me if I packed my rosary."

"She could ask me. I'll pack it," I say. "We're going to be fine."

"I know." She fiddles with the chain around her neck, the small gold cross that falls against tan skin. "She's just being... Puerto Rican."

"And Italian," I say. "Don't forget the part where she texts you six recipes for 'if you have to feed him, feed him this.'"

"She did do that," Alana admits, smiling. "I love how she acts like you aren't a full human person."

"I appreciate the implied free food," I say. "And for the record, my father will call from the office in like ten minutes and give a pep talk about 'networking' and 'closing.' He thinks New York is one big sales floor."

"Isn't it?" she says. "Every square foot costs what, my soul?"

"Your soul and a kidney," I say. "We're about to be poor in a very glamorous way."

"That's okay." She nudges my knee with hers. "We've been poor together before. Remember the year we ate freezie pops for 'lunch' at the public pool all July?"

"We were eight. That was strategic."

"You had blue tongue for a month."

"Because the red ones were always gone by the time I got there. Because of you."

"They tasted better!" she protests, all hand motion and curls, curls everywhere. When she's in full debate mode, she looks like one of those Renaissance paintings where the girl's hair takes up half the canvas and the painter was like, yeah, that's the point. "And anyway, we've been doing this since we were three. We know how to survive."

There it is—the soft landing of the fact. Since we were three: daycare crayons, scraped knees, the first time I realized some people's houses smell like sofrito and fresh laundry all the time and that it means you're loved. Since we were three: school pictures side by side, Halloween costumes coordinated, my mom framing photos of us like we were both hers. Since we were three: I learned that if I messed up a word, she'd fix it without laughing; if she cried, I'd sit with her until it was over. It's not a romance. It's something older and more stubborn than that—roots tangled under a driveway. You could tear up the concrete and they'd still be there.

"Hey." She nudges me again because I zoned out staring at the window. "Did you just leave your body?"

"I was doing math," I say. "Calculating how much money we'll need for bagels and rent and the hefty fee to have our souls returned after that baptism you promised me."

She makes a face. "You're not funny."

"I am literally the funniest person you know."

"Bold claim," she says. "Now send Maddox the deposit."

"Slave driver." I click the link he sent, pull up my email, and immediately get derailed by a subject line from Tisch that still hits me like a sudden drop on a roller coaster: Welcome Incoming Students—Orientation Info. I click it without meaning to. The header loads with a gloss of red. There's a list of union hours and an invitation to a "Meet Your Cohort" thing on Zoom this Thursday.

She leans in with interest that she tries to hide. "Let me see."

"No," I say, hugging the laptop like it's my diary. "This is my mysterious artistic life."

"You owe your mysterious artistic life to me," she says, and she's not wrong because she's the one who filled out the application while I was pretending I didn't care, the one who wrote a fake-serious email in my voice about why film saved my life sophomore year when Coach Miller made me sit out half the season and I spent three months in the auditorium filming band practice like it was a war documentary. (Okay, she didn't write fake. It was all true. She just actually said it out loud.)

"You are distressingly confident," I say.

"I'm just correct," she says, then pokes my cheek. "And you love me for it."

"Unfortunately," I say, deadpan, and click out of the email before I hyperventilate. I pull up the housing portal, type with the frantic energy of someone who knows he will definitely forget to do this if he doesn't do it right now, and pay the thing. My bank account cries silent tears. "There. Happy?"

"Very." She throws her arms up like a referee. "You may proceed to adulthood."

"Oh good." I fold my arms behind my head and stare at the ceiling, which has a glow-in-the-dark constellation set I stuck up there in sixth grade and never took down because sometimes in December it's nice to turn off the lights and pretend your room is a planetarium. "Now you do something adult. Email your advisor."

"I did that yesterday," she says. "Also, I made three lists: one for apartment stuff, one for clothes we need, and one for 'things to do before we leave.'"

"Let me guess," I say. "List three includes kissing a stranger on the Clemente Bridge while 'Mr. Brightside' plays from a Bluetooth speaker."

She raises one perfect eyebrow. "Don't be weird. List three includes riding the incline, grabbing Mineo's, and going to the Andy Warhol museum because you still haven't been and it's embarrassing."

"That museum's just a bunch of soup cans."

"You're impossible," she tells me with affection, and then my door cracks open without knocking because my house has never respected doors.

"Ma," I say, sitting up as my mom peeks her head around the frame. She has her camera strap around her neck like a necklace and a pencil stuck into her bun. She's got that photographer glow about her where she seems lit from within. "Warning. Teenagers are present."

"Teenagers who didn't answer my text," she says, steps in, and then notices Alana and lights up like she always does. "Lanita. Oh good, you're here. I have a question."

"We're working," I say, gesturing to the mess of playlist tabs and housing portals.

"You're arguing about bagels," my mom says. "I could hear you from the kitchen. I need to borrow your window light for two minutes. Look at this." She holds up her phone to show us a photo she just took downstairs: a bouquet on the kitchen table, sunlight cutting across it like a ribbon. "Tell me what you think. Warm or cool edit?"

"Warm," Alana says instantly. They do this, the two of them—it's their thing. My mom lobs questions, Alana returns them. Sometimes I think my mom sees Alana as a second set of eyes she installed when I wasn't looking.

I glance at the screen. "It's a bouquet, Ma. It looks like flowers."

"You have no poetry," she tells me, and then kisses the top of my head while she's there. "Did you pay housing?"

"...Yes."

"Did you eat real food?"

"I had a bagel."

"Alana," my mom says, turning like a lawyer pivoting to the jury.

"He had... bread," Alana admits. "But I'll feed him later."

"Bless you." Mom beams. "I'm shooting the Kashyaps at 3. Your father called; he'll be late. He loves you. He told me to tell you to 'never take no for an answer' and I told him to stop reading sales quotes to his own children."

"That's his love language," I say.

My mom softens. For a second she looks like she's seeing us as we were—tiny and ridiculous and covered in popsicle. "You two," she says. Her mouth turns into a little line like she's holding something back. "New York."

"Before Thanksgiving," Alana says, bright. "We're gonna send you pictures. All the pictures."

"You better," Mom says, and then points at me with the camera strap. "And you—call your brother back. He sounded stressed."

"He always sounds stressed," I say. "He chose a major where you draw bridges."

"It's not just bridges," she says, but she's already backing out of the room like she remembers the Kashyaps exist and they have a toddler with a nap window and that nothing is more dangerous than a toddler who is five minutes past nap. "Love you. Lanita, come steal leftovers before you leave."

"On my way," Alana says.

The door clicks shut. There's a silence that's not really silence, just the house doing its house noises—pipes groaning, someone mowing somewhere, my neighbor's wind chimes doing the thing where they insist a mild breeze is a symphony.

"Your mom's so cute," Alana says.

"Don't say that. She'll start an Instagram for herself."

"She already did."

"Christ." I scrub a hand over my face. "Okay. Add 'teach my mother boundaries' to list three."

"Already there."

I flop onto my stomach and open the playlist she sent. It's titled NYC OR BUST (we're busting) because she has no shame. The first track is exactly what I requested: cool and cocky, a song that struts. The second is something old from our parents' era that we pretend we discovered. The third is a Spanish song that makes her eyes go soft at the edges and reminds me of kitchen dancing in the summer. "It's good," I admit.

"I'm a genius," she says.

"Debatable." I click add to library anyway. "So. Apartment stuff. We still splitting the futon cost?"

"Obviously." She pulls out her phone, thumbs flying. "I found one for a hundred that's not hideous. It says 'light assembly required.'"

"You're five feet of authority, not of upper-body strength."

"We'll make you do it," she says. "You're Jewish and It's in your contract to be good at Ikea."

"That's not in the Torah," I say, scrolling. "But yes. I will build furniture and complain about it loudly."

She laughs, and then her hand lands on my shoulder in that easy way it always has, that way that doesn't jump startle me because my skin knows her touch like my house knows my footsteps on the stairs. "We're really doing it," she says.

"Yeah." I exhale a breath that's half dread, half adrenaline. "We're really doing it."

My phone buzzes. Dad's face fills the screen in a photo where he's wearing a tie covered in tiny money bags. He thinks it's hilarious. I roll my eyes and answer. "What's up, capitalist."

"Hey, champ!" he says, immediately launching into his usual cadence. In the background, I hear keyboards and the low hum of the sales floor. "How's my favorite future New Yorker? Just calling to check in—your mother says you're doing good, you're with Alana—hi, Alana!"

"Hi, Mr. McCall!" she calls, loud enough for the phone.

"Listen," Dad says, lowering his voice like he's telling me a secret despite the fact that this is the same speech he's been practicing on me since I got into Tisch, "New York is all about hustle. You go in there with confidence, you shake hands, you look people in the eye, you sell yourself. Nobody knows what they want until you tell them. Close the deal. And if they say no—what do you do?"

"Ask again," I say, because we've done this enough that my mouth knows the lines on its own.

"Ask again," he echoes, proud, like it's revolutionary. "You know who gets the job? The kid who asks again."

"Or the one with the richest dad," I mutter.

"What?"

"Nothing. I'll... ask again."

"That's my boy." He sighs, softening. "Proud of you. Tell Alana her mother owes me a rematch at spades. I was robbed last time."

"She was not," Alana says into the phone, because eavesdropping is the house sport.

He hangs up with his usual half‑goodbye. Alana looks at me. "He's adorable."

"He's chaos," I say. "But thanks."

"Rematch at spades though," she says, smirking. "My mom's going to annihilate him."

"She will," I agree. I add another expensive‑looking lamp to the list of 'eventually, maybe,' then delete it because I can't afford a lamp that isn't also a coaster.

Outside, a car honks; someone yells; the neighborhood blinks in late‑morning sun. This room has been every version of me: pirate poster phase, baseball cards, the seventh grade where I wore a beanie in the summer because I thought it made me look like a director. There's a love letter to Pittsburgh in everything—black and gold scarf on the chair, little skyline sticker on my guitar case, the smell of my mom's coffee drifting up the stairs that makes even bad news feel survivable. And there's a pull in my chest like the beginning of a riff when you know the chorus is going to land hard.

"What are you thinking?" Alana asks.

"That I'm going to miss Mineo's," I say.

"You're going to cheat on Mineo's with dollar slice," she says. "It's okay. We're modern."

"Scandal." I drum my fingers on the desk. "What are you thinking?"

"That... there's this quiet before a storm," she says softly, surprising me. She's usually the one filling the quiet, not naming it. "Not a bad storm. Just... like when you're on the roller coaster and you can see the drop and it's huge but you're still going up and your stomach's like, 'hey, uh...'"

"Helpful stomach," I say, and then I look at her. Really look. She's small but she takes up the whole room because she knows how to be in a space. Her hair falls over her shoulder, a dark banner. Her eyes are bright and steady. Her lips tip up, stubborn, soft. She's half Puerto Rican, half Italian, all Pittsburgh, and every aunt on both sides adores her. She's my baseline, my first language. If the roller coaster drops and I fly out, she's the seatbelt. She always has been.

"Tell me something dumb," I say, because that's what we do when the air gets too earnest. "Something we're going to do in the city that will make my brother buy a plane ticket just to stop us."

She doesn't miss a beat. "We're gonna sneak onto a rooftop and eat pizza on a water tower like in the movies."

"That's how you get tetanus."

"You're so practical," she says. "Fine. We're going to Central Park at midnight and race remote‑control boats like we're in a montage."

"Arrested."

"We're going to a Broadway show and you're going to cry when the lead hits the high note and then deny it."

"Okay," I say, because that one is probably true.

"We're going to learn the subway," she says, voice going dreamy. "And you're going to pretend you're not terrified, and I'm going to ask a stranger for directions, and we're going to get lost in a good way, the kind of lost where you find a bodega with a cat and the best empanadas you've ever had."

I smile. "You mean you're going to ask in Spanish and I'm going to stand behind you like a tall, confused lamp."

"Exactly," she says, triumphant. "And we will be fine."

"We will be fine," I echo, and it feels like a promise folded between us.

My phone buzzes again. Maddox, this time: PAY THE DEPOSIT before the rat signs a lease. Also: proud of you, idiot. You're gonna kill it. Followed by a photo of a ridiculous building in San Diego with a caption: look at this cantilever you philistine.

I send him a screenshot of the confirmation page with a middle finger emoji. He sends back a heart and a rat gif named Chauncey because of course he does.

"Look," I say to Alana. "Even the rat is proud."

"Chauncey has taste," she says, then slides off the bed and stretches, all five feet of her somehow containing a person twice as vibrant. "Okay. Leftovers. Your mom promised."

We thunder down the stairs like we're still seven, like nothing changes. The kitchen is the same soft chaos as always—magnets on the fridge, a stack of mail by the fruit bowl, sunlight laying itself across the table like it belongs there. Mom left a note on a Post‑it: Lanita—rice & beans in the microwave, chicken in the oven. Feed my son or I will haunt you in New York. xo There are also two brownies under cling film labeled DON'T YOU DARE which is obviously an invitation to dare.

Alana points at the note, beams. "See? Adopted."

"You've been adopted," I say, opening the oven. Warm air rolls out, bringing the smell of garlic and cumin. "I'm just the raccoon that lives here."

"You're a very charming raccoon," she says, grabbing plates. She moves around my kitchen like it's hers—because it is. I reach for the brownies. She slaps my hand. "It says don't."

"It's a test," I say, already unwrapping. "She wants to see if I still have initiative."

We eat standing up at the counter, the way we have forever, forks scraping plates, conversation ping‑ponging between apartment furniture and which of our Pittsburgh friends will actually come visit us and whether I'm allowed to hang my terrible middle school paintings in our living room. She says no. I say I'll do it while she's asleep. She says she sleeps like a freight train and I will never defeat her.

By the time we're done, we're laughing about something that wasn't even that funny five minutes ago, and the kitchen looks like teenagers exploded in it; we fix it fast because my mom will do that thing where she kisses us

About the Author

Jessica Steuer is a 24-year-old inspiring author. She hails from the Windy City of Chicago and is currently studying abroad in England.