We were in the car driving back from one of my weekly therapy sessions, and my mom started talking about Suzan, her best friend at the time. She took a deep breath and said she had to tell me something....

"Everything’s bigger in Texas,” Madi Janysek, senior, said. “I’ll keep telling you that until the day I die.” Janysek is no stranger to the Lone Star state, the place she still calls her home....

A sharp sound emits from the piano as Mary Cleary, junior, hits the wrong key. She smiles, fingers hovering as she awaits the corrections from her father. Growing up with her father’s musical influence,...