In this first installment of a new series, we are introduced to: Alena, Brandon, Christa, Daphne, Elizabeth (fondly referred to as Betts), and Fiona Rogers. Sextuplet siblings that have just graduated high school and are ready to find their own places in the big wide world.
The ‘tuplets, as the call themselves, are the family everyone wishes they had. Six best friends connected by the strongest of bonds. Alena muses that they are all parts of one soul. Fiona: the life force, Brandon: the beauty, Betts: the heart, Christa: the brain, and Daphne: the counselor. Alena thinks she’s the loner, but what she doesn’t realize is that she is the courageous one. She’s the one willing to stand alone and see if she’ll tumble and fall.
Sextuplets can't help but get noticed and talked about. The media made the obvious fuss when the Rogers' children were born, even dubbing them the Alphabet Babies in reference to their names. Not all the siblings react to this celebrity status in the same way.
Alena gets indigestion when complete strangers treat her as though they've been friends for years. All her life she's been defined by the circumstances of her birth. She’s famous for something she had no control over, and living in the shadows of her five best friends. That, coupled with the scary possessive turn her high school boyfriend has taken, makes Alena realize that she needs a change. She needs something that she doesn't have to share.
When she meets Max, Alena is pleasantly surprised when she realizes he doesn’t recognize her. For the first time in her memory she has something that belongs completely to herself. So if she needs to tell a few fibs, and make sure that no one in her family runs into Max on the small lake resort where they’re vacationing that is what she’ll do.
Unfortunately for her, Max only has one requirement when it comes to dating. Complete honesty is non-negotiable. Max unravels the details of Alena’s deceit in a rather big way when her possibly-ex-boyfriend shows up to try and patch things up with her. Max makes sure she’s safe from the other boy, but he’s done with Alena. If he can’t trust her then there’s no point in sticking around.
By the end of the summer, Alena has hatched a plan. She knows where Max goes to school, so she’ll just go there too. If that means that for the first time in her life she isn’t sharing a room with Fiona and a breakfast table with the other five pieces of her soul, well that is a sacrifice she needs to make.