Chapter One
Fiona Crane’s earliest memory was of waiting for hours in the freezing cold, and it was all her sister’s fault.
In the memory, Fiona was seated in the gray metal bleachers of a huge metal building, bundled in a knot of blankets. A coloring book and a box of crayons lay on the bench beside her, but Fiona’s chilly little fingers in their knitted gloves were too clumsy to use them. Below her glowed a white oval of ice. And on that glowing ice, Fiona’s big sister, Arden, was skating.
It was easy to spot Arden among the figure skaters. When the beginners’ class glided forward, arms spread and back legs lifted, Arden’s arms were spread widest. Her leg was lifted highest. Meanwhile, Fiona’s backside was numb, her nose was running, and she was tired of sitting with her mom in this skating rink, waiting for her big sister to be done.
But as Fiona was already figuring out, even at three years old, that was life with Arden Crane. Watching. Waiting. Squeezing your life into whatever space was left for you.
Now eleven-year-old Fiona Crane was learning that life as Arden’s sister could mean something even worse. It could mean packing up your possessions, moving across the state of Massachusetts, and ending up in a little town named Lost Lake, miles and miles from anyone you know.
With a deep breath, Fiona hoisted another box out of the stuffy moving truck.
The house the Cranes had bought was called a colonial—not just because it had a long, flat front with shuttered windows, but because it had been built in colonial times. It had floorboards that groaned, and windows with tiny panes, and doors that had shrunk or swollen until they didn’t quite fit in their frames. “That’s just what happens with old wood and changing temperatures,” her parents said about the doors that creaked open on their own, or that refused to stay shut in the first place. Fiona’s parents always knew the rational, scientific explanation for strange things.
Fiona liked rational, scientific explanations. She also liked strange old things—the older and stranger the better. Someday, Fiona would become either a historian or an archeologist, whichever turned out to be more interesting.
It wasn’t the age of the house that bothered her. It was how different it felt from the house back in Pittsfield, the house that felt like home. Plus, there was something weirdly dense and heavy about the air in this place—not just in the house, but throughout the whole town. Like maybe Lost Lake was so full of its own memories that there wasn’t room for Fiona’s family in it at all.
Fiona hefted the box up the creaking stairs to her new bedroom.
The door had closed itself. Fiona kicked it open. Stepping inside, she plunked her box down on a stack of other boxes, then spun back toward the door. Which was closing itself.
Again.
Fiona was trudging back down the staircase when a blur of black and purple flew past.
“Mom?” Arden called, dodging around Fiona so lightly that the steps didn’t even squeak.
“In the kitchen!” their mom called back.
Arden flitted toward the voice. Fiona tagged after her, like a slower, shorter shadow.
Fiona and Arden looked very much alike, as long as you didn’t look too closely. They both had their dad’s brown eyes, long eyelashes, and dark hair, although Arden’s hair always stayed sleek and Fiona’s was prone to tangles and frizz. Arden had inherited their mom’s pointed chin, while Fiona had gotten her dad’s square jaw, which made her look even more stubborn than she was. Arden was also five inches taller and moved like a dancing hummingbird, while Fiona moved like something cautious and short legged. Something like a guinea pig.
“Mom,” said Arden, darting into the kitchen doorway. “What are you doing?”
Their mom looked up from a pile of boxes. A smudge of newsprint streaked her forehead. Her right hand held two coffee mugs, and her left clutched a wad of newspaper. “You’re kidding, right?”
Arden shook her head. The tip of her ponytail whipped Fiona’s cheek. “It’s three thirty!”
“What?” Their mom glanced at the oven clock, which wasn’t programmed yet. She set down the mugs and pushed her springy red hair back from her forehead, leaving another smudge. “Already?”
“Mom, please,” said Arden. “I can’t be late!”
“Okay.” Their mom sighed. “Get your bag. I’ll meet you in the car.”
Fiona watched her sister flit out of sight. “Arden has to go to practice, even on moving day?”
“Not great timing, I know.” Her mom rinsed her hands in the sink, groped at the refrigerator handle for a towel that wasn’t there, and wiped her palms on her jeans instead. “You’ll have to help your dad finish unloading, ladybug. If we don’t return the moving van by five, we get charged for another full day.” She planted a kiss on Fiona’s forehead as she passed. “Thanks for being a team player.”
Moments later, the sound of the car roared through the house and dwindled away.
“Well, Fifi!” called her dad from the front door. “Ready to play beat the clock?”
The day was hot for mid-June. Inside the moving van, the air was stifling. Fiona clunked up and down the unloading ramp, her face prickling with sweat, her muscles growing rubbery. The heat seemed to needle its way beneath her skin.
It wasn’t fair that she and her dad were working alone. Not when the entire reason they’d moved to this town was for Arden, so that she could be closer to her figure skating club in the Boston suburbs. Her mom and dad kept saying the move was for the whole family, that it saved one of them from having to make the four-hour round trip with Arden four days a week, that it gave them all more time.
But they wouldn’t have lost the time in the first place if it weren’t for Arden.
“Quarter to five!” cheered Fiona’s dad as they carried in the last load. “Exactly enough time to get to the rental place.” He lifted his hand for a high five. Fiona slapped it with her sweaty palm. “All aboard, Fifi!”
“Hey, Dad?” Fiona shouted before he could jog away. “If we’re dropping off the truck, how are we going to get back home?”
Twenty-five minutes later, they were pedaling their bikes out of the truck rental lot into the unfamiliar streets of Lost Lake.
Fiona followed her dad past an ancient brick post office, a town hall with stiff white columns, and two churches with steeples sharp as nails. Monstrous oaks and maples layered the streets with shade. Even though it was only five thirty, most of the downtown businesses were already darkened for the night, their signs flipped from OPEN to CLOSED. A thick hush dampened the air.
“Hey!” shouted her dad as they pedaled down Main Street. “An ice cream parlor! We’ll have to try it sometime!”
Ice cream? Fiona looked up, surprised. Three-fourths of the Crane family—the three-fourths that were an anatomy professor, a nurse practitioner, and a future Olympian—were intensely healthy eaters. If her dad was offering ice cream, he must be trying to cheer up the one-fourth of the family that was going to be an archeologist-historian and eat whatever it wanted.
Fiona followed her dad’s pointing arm. Like everyplace else in downtown Lost Lake, the ice cream shop was closed. The wire chairs and tables on its sidewalk looked stiff and unwelcoming, more like
barricades than furniture. The blue awning above the door flapped listlessly.
Something about that empty shop mixed with the emptiness inside of Fiona—the emptiness where her old house and friends and life belonged—making it darker and deeper than before.
“Hey, Dad?” she called. “Do you think we might ever move back to Pittsfield?”
Her dad glanced over his shoulder. “Move back?”
“Like in a few years, when Arden can drive herself to skating practice, do you think we’ll move again?”
Her dad checked a street sign before signaling a left turn. “I guess it’s possible. But it’s not very likely.”
An invisible rope began to wind around Fiona’s ribs. “Why not?”
“Well, your mom’s job is pretty mobile. Wherever there are kids, they need pediatric NPs. College teaching positions are rarer. If I’d been offered another position in the Boston area, we might have moved east years ago.”
The pressure on Fiona’s ribs pushed harder. Years?She could almost see her life erasing itself around her, the path that led backward disappearing, and any path that might lead forward devoured by the shade of Lost Lake’s giant trees.
By the time they’d pedaled back to the house on Lane’s End Road, Fiona felt not just empty, but sweaty and smelly. She dragged herself upstairs to the shower. It wasn’t until she’d climbed into the spray that she remembered her shampoo and conditioner were still buried in boxes somewhere. And it wasn’t until she’d
climbed out again that she realized the bath towels were still packed up too.
When she finally slumped, dressed and dried, back down to the kitchen, her dad and two boxes of delivery pizza had beaten her there. Ice cream and pizza? Her dad was pulling out all the cheer-up-Fiona stops.
“Daniel’s House of Pizza.” she read the box aloud. “Why didn’t you get Pizza Hut? Or Papa Gino’s?”
“They don’t have those here.” Her dad flipped the box open. “But I’m sure this is great.”
It wasn’t.
The pizza was cut into little squares instead of wedges, which was bad enough, as far as Fiona was concerned. On top of that, the sauce was bland, and the crust drooped like a piece of wet fabric.
“Hmm,” said her dad, after a minute of quiet chewing. “Well, new things always take some getting used to.”
The sky beyond the windows was just starting to smudge with darkness when Fiona gave up on her last square of pizza and headed upstairs to her room. She kicked open the door, flopped down on the bed, and pulled her hand-me-down laptop from her backpack.
And, like he knew she needed it, an email from Cy was waiting.
Hey! How’s Lost Lake?
One more week until my birthday party! My mom already got our tickets, so we can see the Wonders of Egypt exhibit before we visit the rest of the science center. You
should wear your cartouche shirt. Nick and Bina and I are going to wear ours too.
Have to get to soccer. Check the attachment!
Cy
The attachment was a photo of a hieroglyphic message. Last fall, Fiona and her friends had taught themselves the alphabet in Egyptian hieroglyphs. They printed T-shirts with their translated names and passed notes during class that no one else could read. Fiona scanned the row of symbols. Quail chick, reeds, owl . . .
We miss you.
Fiona’s heart rose and ached at the same time.
It had taken her ages to make real friends. She had spent half of elementary school feeling like a visitor from another world—until she’d found Cy and Bina and Nick, who seemed to have come from that other world too.
And now she’d lost them again.
She switched her laptop off. The room felt instantly emptier, as though someone who’d been sitting beside her had disappeared.
For a distraction, Fiona threw herself into unpacking her books. She started with her Macaulay collection—Pyramid and Castle and Cathedral—and then moved on to history and mythology. She was just organizing the mystery section when there came a long, low creeeeakfrom over her shoulder.
Fiona spun around.
No one was there.
Not in her room. Not in the hallway beyond.
But her door had swung a bit wider on its ancient hinges.
Air pressure, Fiona reminded herself. Old wood swelling and shrinking.
She stared at the door for several long seconds.
Finally, just to be sure, Fiona stepped through the door into the hallway. She padded along the groaning floorboards toward the front of the house.
She peeped into her parents’ new bedroom. A few things had already been unpacked: the jar of Cape Cod seashells, a rack of her mom’s colorful pendants, her dad’s collection of sneakers lined up in the open closet. The familiar things looked wrong in this new room, like they had been stolen from someplace else. Like even they knew they didn’t belong here.
Fiona tiptoed toward Arden’s bedroom door.
The door was shut but not latched, revealing a sliver of the room within. When they were little, Arden and Fiona had always kept their bedroom doors open, so the two of them and their shared books and toys could float easily from one room to the other. Now Arden and Fiona usually kept their doors closed.
With a toe, Fiona bumped the door wider.
She glanced around Arden’s new room. Dozens of figure skating medals already dangled from the closet doorknobs. Awards and dried bouquets filled the shelves. Pictures of Arden hung everywhere: Arden jumping. Arden mid-spin. Arden waving to the crowd. Arden, Arden, Arden.
Fiona crept toward the closet. She lifted the topmost medal in the dangling bunch. It was gold, and heavy, with frilled metal edges and a blue-striped ribbon. This stupi
little piece of metal was why Fiona was here right now, in this house, in this town. So that Arden could spend more time skating and win more stupid little pieces of metal.
Fiona stared down at the medal for another moment. Then she crossed the floor, crouched down, and slid it beneath Arden’s bed. The darkness under the bed was thick. The mattress was low. With the dust ruffle in place, no one would spot the hidden medal at all.
A flutter of something that could have been excitement whirred to life in Fiona’s chest.
She hadn’t planned to do this. But it felt right.
Arden would find the medal eventually. She would wonder how it had ended up beneath her bed, and who or what could have moved it. Maybe she would wonder if this house was haunted. She might begin to wonder if she should have dragged everyone to this weird little town after all.
And that too felt perfectly right.
Fiona tiptoed back down the hall into her own bedroom.
The door creaked behind her once more.
This time, Fiona ignored it. She reached into a box and lifted out another heavy stack of books.
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