Brighter Than the Sun

by Daniel Aleman

Genres: YA Contemporary; YA LGBT & Pride

Synopsis

This timely and thought-provoking story about a teen girl shouldering impossibly large responsibilities and ultimately learning that she doesn’t have to do it alone is the perfect follow-up to Daniel Aleman's award-winning debut novel, Indivisible. 

Every morning, sixteen-year-old Sol wakes up at the break of dawn in her hometown of Tijuana, Mexico and makes the trip across the border to go to school in the United States. Though the commute is exhausting, this is the best way to achieve her dream: becoming the first person in her family to go to college.
 
When her family’s restaurant starts struggling, Sol must find a part-time job in San Diego to help her dad put food on the table and pay the bills. But her complicated school and work schedules on the US side of the border mean moving in with her best friend and leaving her family behind. 

With her life divided by an international border, Sol must come to terms with the loneliness she hides, the pressure she feels to succeed for her family, and the fact that the future she once dreamt of is starting to seem unattainable. Mostly, she’ll have to grapple with a secret she’s kept even from herself: that maybe she’s relieved to have escaped her difficult home life, and a part of her may never want to return.
 

 

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Release date: March 21, 2023

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 353

Sample

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN MY PARENTS PICKED OUT MY NAME, I DON’T think it even crossed their minds that they would be cursing me for life. Soledad—solitude. Or, to give them some credit, María de la Soledad, because I was unlucky enough to be born on December 18, the feast of Our Lady of Solitude.

No matter how hard I’ve tried, I have never been able to let go of the burden that comes with my name. My loneliness has a way of following me everywhere I go. I used to try to run away from it—I even tried to convince people to call me Marisol, but the nickname didn’t stick, so I had to try with Sol instead. It was then, once people stopped calling me solitude and started calling me sun, that I almost fooled myself into believing I would become a different person.

Now, even though almost everyone calls me Sol, most of the time I feel like a Soledad. That is especially true today, while I sit at the breakfast table next to Papi, breaking off bits from a piece of pan dulce.

Sitting here in silence has become part of our daily routine, much like getting up at the crack of dawn, or rushing out the door before the clock strikes five thirty. This is one of the few moments of peace I get to have each day, so I usually try to make the most of it. I like to breathe in the stillness of the silence, taste the sweetness of the bread, feel the warmth of my hot chocolate as it makes its way down my throat.

Today, however, there’s something about the silence that’s making me deeply uneasy. The bread tastes like nothing, and my hot chocolate may as well be cold, for the lack of comfort it’s bringing me. Since I opened my eyes this morning, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about all the ways everything’s about to change. I haven’t been able to shake off the realization that today will be our last day of normality, and come Monday, life will be a lot different.

From the corner of my eye, I catch Papi staring at me. He does this sometimes. It’s as if he’s trying to read me, as if he’s trying to figure out what’s going through my mind, even though it’s been a long time since either of us has spoken during breakfast.

“You don’t have to do it,” he says suddenly. His voice is loud, as though it came out stronger than he’d intended it to—as though he had been holding back what he wanted to say for a while, until it finally burst out of him in a near-shout.

“You could stay,” Papi adds, and this time, his voice comes out weak. In the muted glow of the kitchen lights, it’s impossible to ignore that there’s a lot more gray in his black hair and mustache than there used to be, or that the lines on his face are now deeper, as if they’ve been carved into his skin.

I turn to the window, and my eyes fall on the lime tree that Mami planted years ago, when she and Papi first moved into our house. On sunnier mornings, its leaves look bright green, but the days have been getting shorter lately, and today the sunlight is nothing but a soft gleam far off in the horizon. The tree is just a dark shape silhouetted against the sky, but still, I stare at it, trying to make sense of this loneliness that’s swirling around inside of me—loneliness because I wish more than anything that I could take him up on his offer, loneliness because I’m terrified of leaving home and starting a new life somewhere else, loneliness because even though Papi is sitting right next to me, there is distance between us that I don’t know how to bridge.

“We don’t have to talk about this, Papi,” I say finally. “Not now.”

I swallow hard, and a dull pain hits the back of my throat—the kind of pain that comes with holding back tears, with not being able to say the things that I actually wanted to say. Right when the tears start burning my eyes, I push my plate aside, looking up at the clock on the wall. It’s almost five thirty.

“We should get goin

g.”

The morning air is crisp as we walk out of the house and toward our old Volkswagen. I get in the passenger seat, and Papi hops in a second later, slamming his door shut with a loud bang.

Tijuana looks bleak at this time of day. Even though those of us who cross the border every morning are already awake, the rest of the city doesn’t come to life until much later. It’s when the sun is shining high in the sky that you can see the bright facades of the houses along the street and hear the sounds of the city—the cars beeping, the music blasting from speakers at storefronts, the street vendors yelling to attract customers. Right now, all I can really see are the red lights of cars braking ahead of us.

Papi has always insisted on driving me to the border—ever since I started going to school across the bridge, back in the ninth grade. That’s the reason he wakes up at the crack of dawn and sits beside me at the kitchen table every morning. He says he wants to make sure I get to school on time, but I know he just doesn’t like the idea of leaving me to have breakfast on my own while the rest of the family sleeps, or of me walking through the city alone while it’s still dark out.

The streets become more alive as we approach El Chaparral. Finding a spot to pull over is near impossible some days, with all the traffic, and taxis dropping off people, and pedestrians moving between the cars. There are times when Papi has to slow down just long enough for me to jump out, but today we get lucky. A car pulls out ahead of us, and Papi takes its spot.

“Are you okay?” he asks as I unbuckle my seat belt.

I freeze, trying not to look directly at him. I don’t want to make him feel any more guilty than he already does, so I choose to lie.

“Yeah,” I answer. “I’m fine.”

Papi presses his lips together, nodding slowly. I know none of this has been easy for him, either. I know how badly he wishes things were different, how hard he’s tried to figure out alternatives, how long it took him to accept that this was the only way—that me taking a job on the US side of the border was the only remaining option we had to keep the family afloat.

I reach for my bag. With one hand wrapped around the strap and the other on the door handle, I try my best to give him a small smile. “I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

Without waiting for his answer, I step out of the car and start walking across the esplanade, toward the big sign that says PUERTO FRONTERIZO EL CHAPARRAL. This is as far as people who won’t be crossing the border can go—where parents wish their children a good day at school, and where people say goodbye to loved ones who are leaving for a while. I walk past the small crowd to get onto the ramp—a long, zigzagging structure that leads up to a bridge—and hold on to the straps of my backpack as I tighten my pace.

There are countless people rushing up the ramp all around me, many of them students wearing backpacks. There’s a good amount of workers, too, some of them in plain clothes, others in uniforms, and even a few dressed in suits and high heels. Nearly everyone here knows exactly what they’re doing. They know that you have to walk as quickly as you can, because for every person you pass, you’ll end up

saving a few minutes.

The pedestrian bridge begins where the ramp ends. In the two years I’ve been doing this commute, I’ve heard some people say it makes them feel claustrophobic, and it’s not hard to understand why: It’s an iron and glass enclosure that seems to go on for miles. I walk quickly, twisting and turning with the bridge, until I see people slowing down ahead, where the line begins. It isn’t too bad today. Judging by where I’m standing, I’d say it’ll be about an hour, an hour and fifteen minutes at most.

While I move slowly with the line, watching the sun rising through the metal grating walls of the bridge, I can’t help but think about my brothers. A part of me suspects Luis is still asleep. Lately, his schedule seems to be the exact opposite of mine: He goes to bed late and sleeps in, but Diego might be getting up soon. He might open his eyes and begin his day without fully understanding that this will be the last normal Friday we’ll get to have in a long time.

“Sol!”

I turn around to find a familiar face staring at me. Bruno Rodríguez is one of the kids at Orangeville High who also commutes from Tijuana every day. He’s a year older than I am, so we never really hang out at school, but he always joins me whenever he spots me on the bridge.

“What’s up?” he asks as he comes to stand next to me. There are at least ten people who have lined up behind me since I got here, but no one protests. Joining friends in line is considered fair game.

“Not much,” I reply. “Just tired.”

Bruno nods once, as if to point out the obvious—that he’s tired, too. He has jet-black hair, which he rarely ever combs, and round features that make him look like an overgrown child—round eyes, round chin, round nose. Most importantly, though, he has a way of reading me that nobody else does. When I’m not in the mood to talk, he stands quietly beside me, keeping me company while we move slowly with the line. Other days, when I’m feeling more lively, he keeps us both entertained by telling stories—about his dog, a rescue bulldog who’s the laziest being on the planet; about his younger sister, who’s a year away from starting high school; and about his obsession with a Santa Monica–based rock band. He usually does most of the talking while I just listen, but I’ve also shared a few stories with him over the years—about my family’s restaurant, which has been around longer than any of us can remember; about my younger brother, whom I worry about every second of my life; and about what everything used to be like before Mami died.

Today, he seems to understand that I’m not in the mood to talk, so we wait in silence while my throat gets tighter and tighter. I’ve always resented the long hours of waiting at the border, but now that I know I won’t be doing this any longer, I’m almost nostalgic. I almost mis

s standing in line next to Bruno, even though we’re both still here, and even though I won’t be officially moving to Chula Vista until Monday.

The line moves slowly while the sun keeps rising, and it’s at least an hour before we reach the end of the bridge, which spirals down into a large room with shiny white floors, where the crowd breaks up into several smaller lines.

By now, I know most of the border officers by name—or by last name, at least, because that’s all that is printed on the front of their uniform. I get Johnson today. He is very different from officers like López or Harris, who sometimes joke around with the students. He takes a quick look at my passport, scans it, and hands it back to me, barely even looking into my eyes.

“Welcome to the United States,” he says.

I look over my shoulder to check if Bruno is coming up behind me, but he’s nowhere to be seen. He must still be stuck in line, so I keep walking toward the exit, knowing he wouldn’t expect me to wait for him anyway.

I swing my bag over my shoulder and follow the crowd toward the MTS station. When I get on the trolley, I look down at the time. It’ll take me about fifteen minutes to travel a couple of stops and another ten to walk to school, which means I’ll be early today. It’s just as well. I have found myself running breathlessly into school too many times, so I’ve learned that it’s much better to be early than late.

A bell rings softly overhead, and a woman’s voice comes from the speakers.

“This is a blue line trolley, bound for America Plaza in downtown San Diego. All passengers must have a valid fare. There is no smoking or eating permitted on the trolley and—”

Leaning my head back against the window, I allow my eyes to shut just for a little while. The commute is never exactly easy, but today has felt particularly difficult. Even with the short line at the border, I’m exhausted already, and my day hasn’t even started yet.

***

There are a few things about Orangeville High that surprised me when I first started coming here a couple of years ago. The first was how massive the school is—three times as big as the middle school I went to back in Mexico, where almost everyone knew each other. The second was the fact that the walls were freshly painted, the desks in classrooms undamaged, the equipment in the laboratory relatively new. The third was how lonely this place can be, even when I’m surrounded by people at all times.

“No inventes. She couldn’t have said that.”

“Eso fue lo que me dijo, I swear!”

“—don’t think I got the answer right, porque—”

“He asked me que si quería ir a ver una movie after school, pero of course I said no.”

“Well, why did he even—”

The voices that fill the hallways are always a mix of Spanish and English. At least half of the students at Orangeville are Latino, which means that if you don’t have even a basic understanding of Spanglish, you might be feeling a little left out. Not that that’s a problem for me—I speak both languages, but there just aren’t many people I talk to on a regular basis, regardless of the language. The only person I ever really hang out with is Ari, but we aren’t in any of the same classes this semester, so I mostly see her at lunch.

When I walk into the cafeteria, a feeling of dread invades my stomach. It may be easy to blend into the crowd when I’m walking down the hallways, but here, where there’s lots of open space, I can almost feel a dozen different pairs of eyes falling on me the second I walk in.

“No one’s looking at you, Sol. I promise,” Ari said to me last year, when I told her about the way I feel exposed sometimes. “You could walk into the cafeteria in your underwear, and no one would bat an eye.”

That didn’t help much. If anything, the image of me standing in my underwear in front of all these people haunted me for weeks.

Once I’ve gotten a slice of pizza and an apple, I hold on tight to the edges of my tray and turn around to face the rows of tables. I can see Ari from here, already sitting at our usual spot and laughing at something that one of her new friends must’ve said.

She and I have known each other since we were both in diapers. She’s tiny, probably well under five feet, but she has a loud voice, which she’s always been unafraid to use—especially when I can’t use my own. When we were in elementary school and a kid on the playground pulled my hair, she made sure one of the teachers found out. When a guy made a mean comment about my shoes in freshman year, she snapped back at him before I could even open my mouth. And when I’ve told her about all the things I can’t quite understand, like the fear that people are watching me, or the loneliness that follows me everywhere I go, she’s always been there to listen to me, to reassure me, to make me feel a bit more like Sol even when I’m feeling most like Soledad.

“Hey!” she says when she sees me approaching the table. In a quick movement, she takes her bag off the chair she saved for me and places it on the floor beside her.

“Hi,” I say. No one else looks at me as I put my tray down. The conversation keeps going, which isn’t all that unexpected. Even though we’ve been sitting at this table for almost two years, I still have a hard time thinking of any of these people as my friends. To me, they’ve always been Ari’s new friends, even though they’re not at all new anymore.

“Congratulations again,” Ari says to me, her smile widening. “Did you do anything last night to celebrate the job offer?”

“Uh… not really,” I say. “My dad and my abuela were a little shocked that it’s all happening so quickly, so…”

Ari presses her lips together in a way that tells me she doesn’t need any more explanation than that—she gets it.

She’s the one who helped me find a job. For weeks, I sat in front of our family computer, applying to every single opening I could find, but the furthest I ever got was with a movie theater chain in Imperial Beach, which sent me a generic email where they spelled my name as “Sole” and blandly explained I was not right for the position at that time.

When I told Ari that I needed to find an after-school job to help my family, though

, she jumped into action. She spoke to one of the managers at the department store she works at, got me an interview, and then helped me prepare for it, cheering for me every step of the way—up until yesterday, when I got a call saying that I’d gotten the job.

“No way,” Tony says suddenly from the other end of the table, his eyes widening. “No way.”

Ana María nods, her her mouth twisting into a smile. I’ve never understood what she sees in Tony. She’s the kind of pretty that makes people do double takes, whereas Tony is just… Tony. A bit snarky at times, a bit funny at others, entirely obnoxious always.

On my other side, Camila and Olivia are talking about this influencer that I’ve never heard of before.

“Oh, her eyebrow game is so strong.”

“I know, but it’s not like I have hundreds of dollars to spend on that shit.”

Before I can open my mouth to ask who they’re talking about, Ari whispers into my ear again.

“My mom told me to ask you whether you prefer a soft or a firm pillow.”

“I don’t—”

“She’s gonna freak out if I don’t come back to her with an answer.”

I can’t help but smile at Ari. I love it when we’re able to do this—when we’re able to have our own private conversations even though we’re sitting at a table full of people. If it wasn’t because of these whispered chats, I wouldn’t normally say much during lunch.

“I guess… soft, maybe?” That’s the way my pillow is at home, but it’s only because I’ve had the same one since I was little. For all I know, firm pillows could be so much better, but I don’t wanna cause Nancy any more trouble than I already am. Because Ari didn’t just talk to her manager at the store. She talked to her mom, too, and convinced her to let me move in with them so I’ll be able to make it to my early-morning and late-night shifts.

Ari nods once. “Soft it is.”

“Are you sure your mom is okay with everything?” I ask. “I don’t wanna be—”

“She is more than okay,” she interrupts me. “And, you know… I was thinking. Once you move in, we’ll be able to do fun stuff after school—when we’re not working, of course.”

“Yeah,” I say, nodding slowly to myself. “Totally.”

It feels like a lifetime ago that this used to be my main concern—finding time to hang out with Ari after school, not missing out on fun plans, trying to fit in with her new friends.

The truth is, I used to try a lot harder, but I stopped at some point. I just can’t remember when that was. It might’ve been when my mom first got sick, and I had to take on bigger responsibilities at hom. It might’ve been last year, when Mami died and everything came crumbling down around us. Or perhaps it was much sooner than that, when I started realizing that making it back to Tijuana before sundown was more important than whatever after-school plans Ari invited me to—when I started to feel like I couldn’t fully be a part of her new friend group, no matter how badly I wanted to. ...