This Is the Year

by Gloria Muñoz

Genres: Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy; YA Dystopian

Synopsis

This dazzling YA cli-fi written in prose and verse will speak to any reader struggling with the state of our world and how to understand their place in it.

"In outer space, no one will know me as the girl with the dead sister."

Seventeen-year-old self-proclaimed Goth and aspiring writer Julieta Villarreal is drowning. She’s grieving her twin sister who died in a hit-and-run, her Florida home is crumbling under the weight of climate disaster, and she isn’t sure how much longer she can stand to stay in a place that doesn’t seem to have room for her. 

Then, Juli is recruited by Cometa, a private space program enlisting high-aptitude New American teens for a high-stakes mission to establish humanity’s first extraterrestrial settlement. Cometa pitches this as an opportunity for Juli to give back to her adopted country; Juli sees it as her only chance to do something big with her life. 

Juli begins her training, convinced Cometa is her path to freedom. But her senior year is full of surprises, including new friendships, roller skating, and first love. And through her small but poignant acts of environmentalism, Juli begins to find hope in unexpected places. As her world collapses from the ramifications of the climate crisis, Juli must decide if she’ll carry her loss together with her community or leave it all behind.

Told in gripping prose interspersed with poems from Juli’s writing journal, this genre-bending novel explores themes of immigration, climate justice, grief, and the power of communities.

 

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Release date: January 7, 2025

Publisher: Holiday House

Print pages: 368

Sample

PA'LANTE

 

No one needs to know I walked here alone this morning. Back home, TV screens hum, sandalwood burns, and artificial thunderstorms rage over Ma, who can’t fall asleep without any of it anymore. She swatted me away like a mosca when I touched her shoulder, even though we both agreed to come visit you last night over dinner. We had burnt rice, beans, y un huevo frito with a runny yolk, just how you liked it. Mami topped each bowl with a handful of popcorn—remember how we used to only eat beans if we mixed in popcorn? Las Malcriadas para siempre!

Ma and I sat on the floor of your bedroom to celebrate our birthday, what would have been your seventeenth. I can’t believe I’m seventeen. Yes, the room is still plastered with Metal Ghost and Banda Bruja posters. Missed concert tix are framed on the wall above where your bed used to be. I can’t believe you’ve been gone for a year.

Outside, it’s dark and dramatic. Super cinematic, you’d say, connecting your index fingers and thumbs to frame the plum sky as it peels off its star-freckled mask, the night drones spinning back to their ports in every direction like dandelion seeds. Fog seeps into my palms as the solar lamps fade out. They need to be replaced, but like everything around this place, it will be a while. It’s quiet out. Espooooooky, like you used to say.

It’s a cool but grossly humid 94 degrees, so I walk by the water. I wish Ma had come with me this morning. It will make her too sad to know I came alone, so I’ll have to lie and tell her that I went to school an hour early, which has to be the most implausible lie in the history of all lies.

We might live in the shitty part of town, but I’m thankful for the sea. The sun finally blinks open, but the ghost moon hangs around to claim a little bit of morning. That moon, what a diva. That’s what you’d say—and pendeja. Then the haze lifts, and I see it: a roseate spoonbill in its pink, pink glory. That magenta bird means today won’t be terrible. It’s lucky to see a roseate in the morning; at least that’s what we always say—or used to. I’m not as superstitious without you.

But this is still our year. Yes, Ofe, on this gloomy first day of my last year of high school, I swear before your grave, Hermana, this is the year I am getting out of here.

On the outside, I’ll smile study work, do things people do to move forward. That’s what people keep saying: move forward. Whatever that means. I’m good at being unremarkable, so this year will be a breeze. I’ll catch the wind and glide under the radar. It’s happening, Ofe. I’m flying far away from this sinking swampland.

I’ll scheme and save to go someplace where adults won’t absently ask how I’m doing. I’ll write poems to make it make sense. By it I mean everything, but you know I really mean you, Hermana, my twin sis. I wish I had more to give you today. For now, I brought you this bag of spicy Cheetos con limón, and I’ll give you a splash of my malta. Mami would hate to see this sticky basura on your stone.

Happy birthday, Ofe. Te amo, Hermanita. And your ghost ass better come out at night and eat those Cheetos. Kidding! Okay, let’s shake on it. This is the year. This is our year. “Sí, sí, sí. No, no, no. Front. Back. Clap twice. Okay, okay, okay. Pa’lante!”

SUNSHORE'S PHLEGM-COLORED HALLWAYS

make my stomach turn. Sweat and eye makeup drip down to my chin. A group of friends reunites in the hall and shares overzealous stories about their summers. Mine was spent watching AI XO reruns and trying to avoid arguing with Ma about every little thing she does that proves how little she gets me.

You kept us from each other by eclipsing me. And I was fine living in your shadow, Ofe. But without you, I can’t hide from her gaze. Now she just has me to worry about, to assess like I’m one of the patients she takes care of—minding and mending and minding and mending. Except I’m not sure I can get better.

The Pelican Pixies skip by in a floral-scented puff, and I think of how there are days I feel like an alien on this planet. I hate this cesspool of hormones. I hate having to always try so hard to do basic human things like waking up or talking to people. I’m not like you—you made friends effortlessly and did well in school without trying. You knew how to breathe in this atmosphere. You knew what you wanted, Ofe. I just know what I don’t want: to be here without you.

I stop in the bathroom for paper towels to soak up the sweat. Patches of the compostable paper stick to my face. I hate these too! I pick off the paper and wash my face again. Then, I rub off the rest of my smeared makeup with my fingertips. This time, I dry my face with the back of my gray hoodie. I figure I might as well redo my wingtip, but then I realize my makeup isn’t in my backpack and I look like a racoon who got stuck in a thunderstorm. “Shit.”

“I hate you,” my reflection says. It wears a face I can barely recognize without the eyeliner and dark purple lip stain. Actually, it looks like your face, Ofe, but less…well, less everything. Less defined, less beautiful, less happy, less.

“I hate you,” my reflection says again. I dig around in my bag once more, hoping some liquid liner will magically appear. Still, nothing. And my grubby hoodie now looks like it was used to clean a floor covered in turpentine. I crumple it up and toss it in my bag.

I smooth out my hair into a half up half down situation, hoping I can hide behind a new hairdo. I wish I had gotten the long silky black hair you did, Ofe, rather than this ever-shifting tumbleweed that sticks out in every direction. I wish I’d gotten your toned biceps instead of my flabby ones. You, my long-limbed and beautiful sister, never had to worry about what your arms looked like when you raised your hand in class. You didn’t have to cringe when your thighs rubbed together so much under a skirt that not even spandex shorts could help the scabs. You didn’t have to fear someone judging you for your jean size. You didn’t wish to be invisible when you walked past thinner students. You never had to hide your body or yourself.

Thick is in! That’s what you said that day when you caught me crying in the hallway after two jock douchebags had mooed at me when I walked by them with my lunch tray. Your body doesn’t need to apologize for taking up space, you added, letting my makeup-streaked tears smudge the front of your Pelican Pixie uniform. Own it!

But my body size isn’t a trend, Ofe. This is how I am. It’s who I’ve always been. As kids, you were called flaca and I was called gorda, and those are the nicknames we accepted.

The bell rings. Crap. I’m either going sleeveless or wearing my dirty hoodie. I take a step back and look at my makeup-free face. I shift my arms to hide them and suck in my stomach until it hurts.

“Own it,” my reflection says. “You got this.”

I lean in close to the mirror. “Yeah, I do. I got this. You know why? Because this is the year, Ofe! I’m not letting humidity and a makeup mishap stop me.”

I let out a big sigh and I quit holding everything in. Whatever. This is who I am. I leave the hoodie in my bag and walk out of the bathroom. ...