Read an Excerpt
chapter one
Imaginary Mother
It was a perfect New Hampshire afternoon.
The kind of afternoon when, after the dark frozen winter and slushy spring, you could finally believe that summer was approaching, the kind of afternoon when the May air smelled like warm grass and dirt, when the birds flitted between the trees and the telephone wires. Madelyn Delios—ten, almost eleven—lay on her back on a big mossy rock in the woods behind her backyard, her face in a perfect patch of sun.
Besides Dots, who purred with her wet pink nose tucked into the crook of Madelyn’s arm, she was alone.
Madelyn was always alone after school. Her father, Ezra, a biology teacher, stayed at the high school until right before dinnertime helping just about everyone with everything, trusting Madelyn to ride the school bus home and let herself in. There were some other girls in her grade who got off at the same stop, but they all lived on one side of the street in a gleaming new development with sticklike baby trees and bright siding while Madelyn lived on the other side, in a lopsided old farmhouse shaded by a thick, regal maple. After crossing the winding country road while the bus idled with its safety arm out, Madelyn wasn’t supposed to cross back over again. This rule made sense to her—when cars came around the bend, they came fast, with no visibility—so she followed it. Plus, though the girls across the street were never outright mean to Madelyn, they’d get quiet whenever she tried to join in on their jokes. They were bubbly girls who wore bright, sequined clothes, girls who had phones; easy, friend-making smiles; and mothers. Madelyn wasn’t anything like them. Though her father let her pick out her own clothes and belongings, she’d never developed the knack for wanting the right stuff, moving the right way, being the right way. If only she’d had a mom to show her how. If she wasn’t such a jagged edge, never fitting cozily into anything.
Madelyn closed her eyes and stretched her arms over her head, soaking in the warmth of the sun. She wasn’t supposed to leave the fenced-in backyard without her dad either, but this rule didn’t make sense to her, so she didn’t follow it. There was never anyone in the woods besides her, so what was the danger? Plus, she didn’t go into the deep part of the woods where she and Ezra hiked on weekends. She just went out the back gate to her mossy rock with her patch of sun where she could lie on her back, look up at the light undersides of the leaves, and daydream.
A yellow bird landed in a raspberry bush nearby. Dots stirred awake, shifted into a crouch, and stalked toward it. Dots was a calico, which meant that her fur was black and auburn marbled on a field of white and her spirit was fierce and intelligent. She was Madelyn’s best friend.
When Madelyn got especially lonely, she’d daydream herself up some company. In the back woods, she was often joined by her favorite book or movie characters or by mirages of other kids from school. She’d invent conversations and repeat the same lines over and over, imagining so hard that she could nearly hear them.
Let’s play down by that stream.
We’ve always wanted you to come to one of our sleepovers.
Can I borrow that book when you’re finished with it?
Her favorite daydream, one she was careful not to bring out too often because it made her heart swell and her head rush in a way that felt wonderful and excruciating at the same time, was of her mother. She’d never seen a picture of her mother—hers had been a closed adoption but she knew that if Ezra had known anything about her birth mother he would have told her every last bit; their number one rule was that they never kept anything from one another. But armed with the power of her imagination, Madelyn could conjure up her mother’s silhouette flitting in and out of the dappled sunlight as she moved toward her in the shadowy woods, obscured by the bristles of a pine. As her mother came closer, Madelyn would catch glimpses of her: She was small with dark hair and light skin just like Madelyn, but she looked stunning, not sickly, and she was wearing a light summer dress that fit just right. Closer and closer. A wrist, a trailing lock of hair, the snap of her sandal breaking a dry twig in half. Almost, almost. Though Madelyn could conjure her mother dashing between the trees, she’d never brought her out into a clearing. Instead, she moved her mother through the shadows. She was close, but never close enough.
Madelyn lay back, moss cushioning her head. What did it feel like to be loved by a mother? Who would she be if she’d had hers in her life, talking her through her dumb blunders as she trimmed her nails and combed her hair, helping her understand how to be?
The light shifted. A starling fluttered up from a branch above Madelyn’s head.
“Hello?” said a small, light voice.
Madelyn sat up straight.
And, though she did not know it yet, Madelyn’s life swerved sharply away from its current track.
chapter two
A Snake Biting Its Tail
Dots bolted back toward the house. Madelyn blinked. Dark spots clouded her vision; she was blinded after lying with her face in the sun for so long.
“Hello?” whispered the voice again. “Excuse me?”
Madelyn rubbed her eyes. The world came back into focus. Towering trees, blue sky, low bushes lush with gleaming berries, and a stranger about her size, staring down at her. At first, all Madelyn could see was a mess of tangled blond curls. Then, the stranger shook the curls away from their face, revealing fat, happy cheeks, an upturned nose, and eyes so blue that they seemed flecked with violet. No, their eyes were violet. Madelyn stifled a gasp.
“I’m Calle,” said the stranger, either not noticing or choosing to ignore Madelyn’s stare. “They/them. So sorry to interrupt, but do you happen to know where we are?”
Calle held a roughly cut piece of parchment. Madelyn craned her neck to sneak a glance at the paper and saw that three quarters of it was marked with hand-drawn trees, hills, creeks, and paths. The other quarter was blank. Calle seemed to be in the middle of making a map.
But who were they? Derry, New Hampshire, was small, with only one elementary school; Madelyn would have recognized Calle from school if they lived in town. And her dad would have definitely told her if the Gordons, the elderly couple who owned the apple orchard on one side of Madelyn’s house, or Mr. Madnick, the bachelor whose yard was filled with rusted-out tractors on the other side, had out-of-town visitors with a kid. Maybe Calle was lost? Separated from their parents on a camping trip? These woods stretched uninterrupted all the way up to Canada.
“We’re in Derry, New Hampshire.” Madelyn watched Calle’s face for a flash of recognition. Nothing. “United States? Planet Earth?”
“Earth.” Calle bent down and sifted the piney soil between their fingers. “That’s a relief.” Calle laughed.
Madelyn sat in shocked silence. It had been a long time since someone other than her dad had laughed at one of her jokes. Then, before she could help it, she began to laugh along with Calle. Giggles grew into belly laughs. Each flash of eye contact got them going all over again.
“I’m Madelyn, by the way,” Madelyn said once she caught her breath. Her sides ached and her cheeks felt stiff and tender. It was wonderful.
“Nice to meet you, Madelyn from planet Earth.” Calle grinned. Something deep inside Madelyn smiled back.
“Nice to meet you, too, Calle from—”
“Asterwood.”
“Asterwood?” Madelyn grinned back. “Is that also on planet Earth?”
“I hope so!”
The pair disintegrated into giggles again.
Madelyn wasn’t stupid. She knew that, in a story, if a stranger with violet eyes approached you in the woods, something strange was going on. But this wasn’t a story. This was Madelyn’s real life and she’d been lucky enough to make a new friend.
Madelyn and Calle spent the afternoon together, in the woods. They fed a worm to the nest of baby blue jays Madelyn had been observing all spring, gorged themselves on early raspberries, and reinforced Madelyn’s lean-to with fallen sticks and brush. Whenever Calle was absorbed in a particular task, bug, or mushroom, Madelyn studied them a little closer. Calle’s clothes were crude and lopsided, maybe handmade, and yes, their eyes were definitely violet. Madelyn had never seen irises that shade before. Was it an inherited trait? Too many grapes? Madelyn leaned in closer, hand floating up to her own eyes.
“What?” asked Calle.
“Oh, uhm . . .” Madelyn realized she’d been gawking. “Nothing. You look . . . familiar?” This was a lie. With their rough-hewn outfit and sparkling purple eyes, Calle looked like no one Madelyn had ever encountered.
“I do?” Calle shrugged and turned back to a tangle of thick spring vegetation. “Ha! This is exactly what I was looking for!”
Madelyn followed Calle’s gaze to a dead, leafless birch. Calle rushed to the tree, knelt down, and nicked the trunk with their pocketknife. Beneath the seemingly dead surface, the tree was green, living.
