To Lowen, the five-hour drive from Flintlock to Millville seemed like an eternity.

Clem drove most of the way, in a borrowed royal-blue Toyota Camry. Now that they were moving to the country, he was determined to get his driver’s license. And since the Grovers didn’t own a car (absolutely no need for one in the city, Dad always said), the trip gave him the opportunity to practice. Most of the ride sounded like this:

Dad: There’s a car coming up on your left.

Clem: I see it, Dad.

Dad: You’re slipping too far to the right. Careful!

Clem: Dad, relax!

Lowen was squashed in the backseat between Mum, who was all elbows as she tried to complete the paperwork for the house lottery, and Anneth, who kept sighing (that is, when she wasn’t texting Megan) and moving her butt from side to side to remind him that he had slipped off his allotted four inches of padding in the center. If he were to draw a thought bubble over her head, it would read, You have robbed me of my entire life!

“Slow down, Clem!” Dad said. “You just passed it!”

“Passed what?” Clem snapped. He’d reached peak frustration.

Dad turned to look out the rear window. “Millville,” he said.

“Just now?” Mum asked.

“Mill was on the left, shops and houses on the right,” said Dad. “Just like we read online.”

Anneth glanced back. “That was it?”

Following instructions, Clem turned the car around in a Dollar Mart parking lot and rolled slowly back down Highway 27. They passed a home with a large TV dish attached to its front porch roof, and another where a woman in a bright-blue bathrobe was watering the flowers hanging from her mailbox. She lifted her arm to wave, but then let it drop when she didn’t recognize them.

“Pull over here,” Dad said, and they parked on the same road they’d been traveling since they left the interstate, the same road that was, for less than a half mile, Millville’s Main Street. The family tumbled out of the sedan and onto the cracked sidewalk.

“Megan is not going to believe this,” Anneth said as she videoed their first view of the businesses across the street.

It was indeed the same village that they had seen online. But what the photos on the town website or on Google Maps didn’t show was the incredible . . . What was the word Lowen was looking for? Downtroddenness. Former stores and businesses were boarded up. And even those that were still in business — Roger’s Market, Donna Marie’s Antiques, and the Pub — were all in desperate need of paint. The spotty patches of grass in front of the stores needed mowing; the garbage needed picking up. The only things that weren’t battered were the American flags that waved from the telephone poles.

“Let’s walk,” said Dad, reaching his hand out to Mum, who squinted at the buildings in front of her — the same way Lowen sometimes squinted when he was drawing and needed a different focus.

Lowen didn’t budge. “What about the houses? The lottery starts in less than two hours and we haven’t seen any of them.”

“We’ve got some time,” said Dad, pulling Mom along the sidewalk. “And I think we’d better explore. I know we came to a consensus, but once we’ve really seen this town, we might want to rethink our crazy plan.”

Anneth brightened. “Really?”

No! Lowen thought. He caught up. “Where will your shop be, Mum?”

“Yeah,” said Clem. “Which building will have the sign that reads THE CORNISH EATERY?”

Lowen shot his brother a look of gratitude, a look that Clem acknowledged with a wink.

After much deliberation, Mum had decided to open a Cornish pasty shop like the one her parents had owned back in England. Cornish pasties were little hand pies — like turnovers, but savory instead of sweet. “I doubt the locals will have heard of pasties,” she admitted. “But they’re the very definition of comfort food, and that seems like a safe bet for a town where most people are down on their luck.” She arranged to rent space in the same building as a breakfast restaurant called the Busy Bee. It had faded red siding and looked like one of those square buildings with a flat roof in old Western towns — the kind of structure that would have swinging saloon doors. The Busy Bee was shut up for the afternoon, and the entire building was dark. The air smelled of burned grease.

Mum’s shoulders slumped.

“It just needs some love, Mum,” Lowen said with more enthusiasm than he felt.

Mum smiled at him. “Some?” she quipped, and then added, “Everything looks so bleak.”

The Grovers walked a few more blocks past a small post office, a cinder-block municipal building, and a little brick library before they reached Handy Hardware and the end of Main Street. This spot afforded them the best view of the mill, or what used to be a mill. Here again, what had looked proud and shiny on the website now looked decrepit. It was an enormous tangle of boxy structures, pipes, and vaporless smokestacks — a breathless giant. Behind the mill ran the Grand River, which had a kind of wet wool smell. A faded sign painted on a silo read ALWAYS BE CAREFUL. STOP ACCIDENTS BEFORE THEY STOP YOU. The snake deep in Lowen’s gut twitched its tail.

The entire town had been built to keep that mill running, and now it was gone. It was gone and, apparently, so were most of the people.

“Wow,” Clem said, turning back toward the town. “No shawarma, no movie theater —”

“Shawarma?” Anneth interrupted. “There isn’t even a pizza place! And no clothing stores, either,” she added.

Clem nodded. “No concert venue. No skate shop.”

Was he siding with Anneth now?

A woman and her three daughters approached them from across the street. Two of the girls were clearly younger than Lowen, but the oldest one, who wore red high-tops and had her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, seemed about his age.

“Excuse me,” the woman asked. “Do you know where we might get some lunch?”

Dad laughed. “Look at that! We’re already passing for locals!” He explained that they weren’t yet familiar with the town. Turned out, both families had come for the lottery. The Doshis were moving from a very small apartment in a big city with poor schools. At least that’s what Lowen caught from standing outside the circle while trying not to look at the girl who was trying not to look at him. Thought bubble above both their heads: Awkward.

“Is there one house you’re hoping for?” Mrs. Doshi asked Mum.

The one with four bedrooms, Lowen thought. He knew he wasn’t supposed to make up his mind till they’d seen the houses in person, but he was tired of sharing a room with the always sloppy, frequently stinking Clem. He practically gagged after each of Clem’s games — especially a basketball game.

Mum shook her head. “We haven’t had a chance to see them yet.”

“You’re British!”

Mum smiled. “And here I thought I was sounding more like a Yank every day! Do you have a house in mind?”

“We do.” Mrs. Doshi smiled. “But I don’t want to influence you!”

Dad started to ask questions about the homes, but the youngest Doshi, whom the sisters had called Meera, reminded her mother that she was starving, and Lowen used that moment to send the message that he was impatient to see the houses, and the two families broke off with the promise to see each other at the lottery. The girl, the one who was about his age, gave him a little nod like they were already buds, and that made him feel kind of, well, woolly-headed.

As soon as the other family had popped into Roger’s Market, Clem said, “Too bad there isn’t a Cornish eatery in town. I bet that Meera would have liked her own little pie.”

Mum laughed. “Let’s go find our dream house.”

Lowen asked if he could hold the photocopy of the hand-sketched map the town had provided and direct them from dollar house to dollar house. It wasn’t hard; all of the houses were built on the hill behind Main Street. Whereas the streets back in industrial Flintlock meandered (paved cow paths, Dad called them), the streets in Millville were rolled out in a perfect grid. Those streets that climbed up from Main Street were named after trees: Cedar, Birch, Beech, Maple, Spruce, and Elm. The streets that crossed them were named after landmarks: Park, Church, Monument, School, and Forest.

“Practical people, these Millvillians,” Dad said.

They passed a dingy used-car garage as they headed up Maple.

Anneth dragged herself up the hill. “This place is worse than I thought,” she said much too loudly.

Lowen looked around to make sure that there was no one on the street within earshot, but there was no one on the streets, period.

Truth be told, he had to revise his picture of Millville, too — something he’d done several times already. When Mum (who had done the Internet research) told him it was a rural town, he pictured majestic trees, green moss, and waterfalls . . . just like the valley in Bone, one of his favorite graphic novel series — only without the monsters. Then later, when Dad (who had been doing some research of his own) declared that the houses were not spread out like farmhouses in the country but were actually clustered, he pictured the kinds of homes that were shown in TV commercials — homes with sparkling glass doors that led to big backyards with swimming pools. He’d held on to this fantasy for a week or two before he peered over Mum’s shoulder when she was doing some additional investigating and realized he still had it wrong. (“I think you’re picturing suburbs,” Mum had said, “but there’s no city near this town.”) In fact, the houses were more like city houses in that they were fairly close together, each with its own small patch of yard.

As the Grovers climbed toward the first house, two boys passed them on bicycles. One zigzagged from the left side of the street to the right on a bike that was too small for him.

Mum sighed. “No helmets?”

Two blocks up, they reached the park. It was a grassy space with a bandstand in the center, but no trees or duck ponds or running trails. The two boys had thrown down their bikes near the bandstand and were patting a dog that seemed to be wandering on its own.

Clem stopped and nodded to their right. “There’s one!” he said. “That’s a dollar house.”

“Easy to spot,” said Anneth, “despite the fact that every single house on these streets looks the same.” She started to take pictures, but Dad told her to put her phone away. People lived in those homes.

Anneth was right. The houses around the perimeter of the block-wide park were all the same type. If Lowen were to sketch one, he’d begin with the roofline. Each one had a triangular roof, just like the ones little kids make when drawing a house. Below the roofline were two windows. Below the two windows was a porch roof. Some of the houses had an open porch; others had a three-season room with windows. Most were a faded grayish white. And maybe because the windows had lost their shine, or maybe because the porches drooped, or perhaps because they all had funny additions to the backs or sides, Lowen thought of them as granny houses.

“They’re mill houses,” Dad said. “Probably all built by one or two builders at the same time the mill was being constructed.”

“They’re all the same design, but if you look closely, each one is unique,” Mum said. “Look at those two houses. The one on the right has windows that are close together, like a picture window. The house on the left has windows that are far apart —”

Like eyes, said a familiar voice in Lowen’s head. Spooky eyes. Abe’s voice. Lowen shook his head to dismiss it.

“But the dollar house is clearly the most different,” said Anneth, who let the house do the rest of the talking for her.

It was a total wreck. What once was grass was now a tangle of weeds. The wooden front steps had gaping holes. The gray paint peeled, and in some places there was bare wood with visible rot. Shingles were curling off the roof. Toward the back was a garage; the door was partially open and crooked. No doubt it was stuck.

Lowen imagined the child who might have lived in the house years ago. He pictured him dropping his bike on the lawn and racing inside while the tires still spun. He saw him sitting on the open front porch, munching on a cold cherry Popsicle, watching people go by. For a moment he thought, I could be that kid.

But then he glanced at the tall grass and the sagging porch and he felt tired. Perhaps he couldn’t be that kid. Perhaps he was already too old.

“We knew the houses wouldn’t be pretty,” Dad said.

Mum used her fingers to pull her dark hair off her face. “Yes, but I didn’t think they would be so depressing. How are we going to meet the requirement with you still in Flintlock?”

Dad was the only family member who had not come prepared to stay in Millville that night. He and Mum agreed that it would be better if he didn’t give up his job at the hospital right away. For the first three months or so, he’d keep making money back in the city — money that could go toward home repairs. As Mum reminded them often, all applicants for dollar houses had to have at least three kids (to keep Millville Central School running) and agree to upgrade and maintain their house for both safety and appearance. Each house had been inspected and came with a long list of changes that had to be made within one year, or the final sale would not occur.

Of course they met the first requirement (though only because Mum and Dad refused to let Anneth stay back in the city with Dad), but the enormity of the second requirement was sinking in.

The front door opened. “Hello!” called a round, beaky woman who reminded Lowen of a hen. She introduced herself as Mrs. Corbeau, owner and chef of the Busy Bee. “Cutting it a bit close, aren’t you? We lock up in ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes?” Mum asked.

“Yes. It’s in the instructions. The houses are available for viewing until one o’clock.”

Mum and Dad exchanged a look. How had they missed that? “But the lottery doesn’t start until two.”

“True,” said the woman. “But we do need lunch before the lottery begins, you know. The other families arrived early this morning.” Mrs. Corbeau eyed Mum closely. “You’re the woman who’s opening the pastry shop, aren’t you?”

“It’s actually a pasty shop —”

Dad stepped forward. “Surely there’s a way you could let us view the homes. After all, it’s a big decision.”

“Sorry. The rules are the rules. Next time I suggest you read your instructions more closely.”

Mum shot them an apologetic look.

“You better come in,” said the woman. “Stop wasting your ten minutes. At least you can see this house. The others don’t look that different. Not really.”

“What about the one with four bedrooms?” Clem asked.

The woman waved her hand as if it were of little consequence. “Just picture this one with another bedroom tacked on somewhere.”

The Grover family stepped up onto the open porch and through the front door. To the left was a living room with a filthy green carpet and stained and torn flowery wallpaper. Thought bubble above Anneth’s head: Gross!

Lowen had to agree. A dark dining room with once fussy but now tattered curtains served as the connector to a crumbling kitchen with pink cabinets. He pictured the woman who might have cooked in this kitchen when it was first built — someone with rosy cheeks and strawberry-blond hair swirled upward like whipped cream. She wore a pink apron and baked raspberry cupcakes topped with pink icing. Where had she gone?

Today, the pink paint had worn off most of the doors. The room smelled distinctly of cat litter.

Mrs. Corbeau led the way upstairs and bustled them through three bedrooms and a bath.

When they returned to the lower floor, the woman placed her hand on Lowen’s shoulder (no doubt she would have put her hand on his head if he weren’t so tall for his age) and said to him, “Won’t it be lovely for your family to have your very own home? One away from the big city? And how fortunate that Millville is selling this to you for only one dollar!”

Had she read the application? Was this her way of telling him she knew his story? Whether she had or not, Lowen knew that what she was expecting at this moment was a thank-you . . . and that confused him. All he could do was nod.

Then she pushed them all out the front door and said, “The lottery starts promptly at two at Central School. Don’t miss that!”