A determined girl spends the summer before middle school learning to stand up for her low-income community in this funny, fast-paced read just right for fans of Kelly Yang’s Front Desk . Sunny Parker loves the Del Mar Garden Apartments, the affordable housing complex where she lives. And she especially loves her neighbors. From her best friend, Haley Michaels, to Mrs. Garcia and her two kids—developmentally disabled son AJ and bitter but big-hearted daughter Izzy—every resident has a story and a special place in Sunny’s heart. Sunny never thought living at the Del Mar Garden Apartments made her different—until the city proposes turning an old, abandoned school into a new affordable housing complex and the backlash of her affluent neighborhood teaches Sunny the hard way that not everyone appreciates the community she calls home. Her dad, the Del Mar’s manager-slash-handyman, wants Sunny to lay low. But as hurtful rhetoric spreads and the city’s public hearing approaches, Sunny realizes that sometimes there’s too much at stake to stay silent. With her friends behind her, Sunny Parker is determined to change the narrative—because she and her community are here to stay! “Though the story thoughtfully tackles serious topics such as domestic violence and structural racism, Sunny’s hopeful perspective and commitment to community care enhance the swiftly paced narrative . . . Sunny’s journey is a celebration of the power of empathy, intergenerational friendships, and collective action.” -- Horn Book Magazine "There are plenty of humorous situations. . . The book uses its diverse cast to sensitively address poverty, community, racism, and autism. Sunny is a spunky young girl who finds the courage to stand up for what she believes in." -- Booklist Margaret Finnegan is the author of the Junior Library Guild Selections Sunny Parker Is Here to Stay , New Kids and Underdogs , Susie B. Won’t Back Down , and We Could Be Heroes , which was a USA TODAY bestseller. Her other work has appeared in FamilyFun , the Los Angeles Times , Salon , and other publications. She lives in South Pasadena, California, where she enjoys spending time with her family, walking her dog, and baking really good chocolate cakes. Visit her online at MargaretFinnegan.com. Chapter 1 1. O n the day I got cursed, I was zooming around the Del Mar Garden Apartments, testing out the new brakes on my bike. The testing was totally unnecessary; Dad’s repairs are top-notch. But you can’t spend a month begging someone to fix something and then shrug it off when they finally do. You need to bring the sunshine. So I was sunshining all over the place. The Del Mar is shaped like a giant rubber band, with all the units facing a central courtyard. On one end of the courtyard, there’s a lawn lined with trees. On the other end, there’s a lawn with no trees. And in the middle of the courtyard, there’s a little building for doing laundry and picking up mail, and across from that is a little play area. That’s where I was: right between the laundry building and the play area. Suddenly, the laundry building door flung open, and out stepped Sourpuss Scanlon. She moved toward me like a tortoise on a mission. On her bent head shone the evil white roots of her evil white hair. I skidded to a stop (Oh, the brakes worked, all right!). Fast as could be, I jerked my bike around and sped to the parking lot. If Sourpuss Scanlon talks to you, you’re cursed. You can’t say a single word until someone says, “Paprika, paprika, paprika.” And since my best friend, Haley Michaels, stayed at her grandma’s during the day, I could not afford that. Who would “paprika-paprika-paprika” me? It was a weekday, so the parking lot was quiet. The working-people cars were at work. The old-lady cars were in their spaces. And the car-seated cars were taking a nap because—as Mrs. Garcia says—“When the baby sleeps, the smart mom rests.” But I could hear the traffic on the boulevard, with its three lanes in each direction and its hum of cars racing past the Del Mar’s brown aluminum siding and firm-but-fair NO SOLICITING sign. It’s against the rules to play in the parking lot because cars could splat your brains out (duh), and that was a rule I did not usually break. So it was with a shiver of excitement that I realized now how smooth the asphalt was. I could turn lazy figure eights with just two fingers on the handlebars. But as fun as that was, the worry cells in my brain started to blare, Warning! Warning! They knew that the longer I stayed out there, the more likely some mom would see me from her window and squeal to my dad. Then he wouldn’t think I was bringing the sunshine. He’d think I was asking for trouble. I headed back to the courtyard, crossing my fingers that Sourpuss was gone. But no. There she was, her keys held straight in front of her, shuffling toward me in her pink bedroom slippers. I braked again, hard, and swerved into a tree. With a fwump