CHAPTER 1
It began, predictably, with a dream.
Josie was walking down the busy hall in her old high school, and everyone was shouting, “Hi, Josie! Hey, Josie!” just the way they used to. After all, she had been a big deal.
I’m such a cliché, she thought. Dreaming about high school. Just like people always do.
“Hi, Josie!”
Josie waved and wondered why, despite the glorious and sincere adoration of her classmates, she felt only dread.
Wait, was this going to be an anxiety dream? She looked down to see if she was naked, but nope: fully clothed. She entered a classroom, expecting to have to take a test she hadn’t studied for—but the teacher just greeted her with a smile.
The teacher did look like a purple, toothy octopus, but it was, after all, a dream. And judging by the fear knotting up in her gut, it was going to be a bad one.
“Something is about to happen,” she said to herself. “It’s going to be a big deal. And I won’t be prepared for it.”
She sat at a desk, facing the closed classroom door, and waited for whatever would come in.
“I’m already here,” said Justin, sitting to her left.
“Oh good,” said Josie. She reached out, and he took her hand.
“Me too,” said Nina, squeezing her other hand.
Josie smiled at Nina. What could possibly go wrong as long as she had her safety net, Justin and Nina?
“I’m here too!” said the octopus, wagging furry octopus eyebrows and waving gorgeous purple tentacles.
Josie gave the octopus a big thumbs-up. She didn’t want to offend and risk a bad grade. What class was this anyway? She meant to turn to ask Justin, but her focus kept pulling to the door. A bright light, as if from a single bulb, was shining behind the frosted glass window. The light got brighter, piercing through the edges of the door. And then, a shadow. A figure. Somebody.
Something. About to happen. Energy pulsed behind that thought, pushing forward, the way a speeding car gets louder as it zooms near—building, screeching, screaming …
And, predictably, Josie woke up.
A second or two creaked by before she remembered she was not home in Arizona. She also wasn’t on her old futon bed in Queens. She was, randomly, in Montana, sleeping in a foldout couch in the spare room. Josie groaned and rolled over, the springs grinding beneath her, and she bumped into something both hard and furry. A robotic voice said, “I want to be your pal.”
Josie sat upright, her heart sputtering. She tore back the covers.
The hard, furry thing was just Mia’s talking bear toy. Its mouth moved up and down with a labored creaking.
“Read me a story.”
Mia sometimes had nightmares. Since her mom was out of town, she’d probably crept into Josie’s room for a post-nightmare restorative snuggle and then left the bear behind.
Josie fumbled for her cell phone from the side table. It was 7:32 a.m. She hesitated to bother Justin when he was probably getting ready for school but then went ahead and texted a photo of the bear.
JOSIE
I don’t remember going to bed with this guy last night but I woke up to him this morning
She stared at the phone. Its blank screen just stared back at her all blankly, so she checked her email while she was waiting for Justin to respond.
FROM: York Bank Account Services
TO: Josie Sergakis
SUBJECT: account past due
No, no, no … Josie’s stomach folded in on itself in a way that made her glad she hadn’t eaten yet. If she missed a payment, the bank might notify her mother, who’d cosigned on her credit card. And then her mother would know—no, no, no …
The bulk of Josie’s nanny salary went directly to her credit-card balance. April’s payment should have gone out a couple of weeks ago. Maybe there was a bank error.
She tried to log in on the bank’s mobile site, but it insisted on a password her phone no longer remembered, so she dialed the bank’s number.
“All of our customer-service agents are taking other calls. You are TWENTY-FIRST in line.”
Josie set the phone to speaker and got dressed to the hold music—a synthesized cover of “Welcome to New York.” The T-shirt and sweats she’d slept in were practically clothing, so she brushed her teeth. Washed her face. Pulled her hair into a ponytail. Called it good.
The clock read 7:43 a.m. Mia was always up by now.
Josie carefully opened her bedroom door into the family room of the condo.
“Mia?” she whispered.
Except for the tinny music squeaking out of her phone, the condo was a monolith of silence. And brownness. Brown granite kitchen countertop. Brown sofa. Brown carpet. If a deer broke in and held really still, Josie wasn’t sure she’d notice.
She hesitated outside Mia’s door. Josie didn’t want to wake her, but she’d been Mia’s nanny for months and had never known the girl to sleep in. Josie carefully turned the knob to avoid a clicking sound and eased the door open.
The bed was empty. Her heart started to pound.
“Mia?” She ran into Mia’s mom’s bedroom. And there, curled up in the center of the king-sized bed, was the five-year-old, her curly black hair over her face.
The girl roused. “Mommy?” she said.
“No, it’s Josie. Your mom is still in Nairobi. She’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Okay,” said Mia. And that word sounded so brave, it broke Josie’s broken heart a little more.
“I’m here. I’m not leaving you, I promise,” said Josie.
“Okay,” said Mia, and both the tightness in her voice and her grip on Josie’s arm lifted.
“Did you have bad dreams?”
Mia nodded. “Are you listening to music?”
“Um … yeah.” Josie held up her phone. “Do you like it?”
“No,” said Mia.
“Yeah, me neither.”
They ate cold cereal at the kitchen counter. The four-chair square table was covered in a week’s worth of crayons and paper, clay creations, used-up watercolors, and dried-up snacks. Josie reminded herself that she’d better clean up before Victoria returned and keep up the facade that she was a responsible girl—woman?—who had her act together.
Josie had been Mia’s nanny in New York City, coming into the little girl’s life just in time to have a front-row seat to the dissolution of her parents’ marriage. She barely knew Mia’s dad, a my-work-is-sooo-important lawyer at some Manhattan firm. When the divorce was final, Mia’s mom, Victoria, suddenly decided to move with Mia to their summer condo in Missoula, Montana.
“Montana! A clean start!” Victoria had said. “I’ll raise Mia in the fresh air!” Victoria begged Josie to come with them. Mia was already attached to her, and Victoria would need a live-in nanny now. She was having to take back up her international business work, with all its travel.
Josie had figured, Sure, why not move to Montana, where I know nobody and have zero prospects or any future whatsoever? In this life, you either make it or you don’t. And Josie hadn’t made it. Montana seemed like as good a place as any to waste some time.
“Nope, nope, nope,” Mia said, spooning gobs of sugary cereal from one bowl to the other.
Mia had two cereal bowls—yellow for eating and red for overflow. Sometimes she had too much cereal. Too Much Cereal had to go to time-out in the red bowl until Mia was prepared to acknowledge it.
Josie was tidying to the beat of a synthesized “Smells Like Teen Spirit” when her phone buzzed. A text!
JUSTIN
ha!
Ha? That was it? Well, her text hadn’t been jaw-droppingly witty or anything, but maybe it deserved more than a ha? She was trying to come up with something clever to text back when a voice droned on the speaker: “All of our customer-service agents are taking other calls. You are TWENTIETH in line.”
Text copyright © 2020 by Shannon Hale
Interior art copyright © 2020 by Samantha Richardson
