They started out early the next morning, piling into the truck just as the sun was casting dusty strips of light across the grass. Lyssa cast one last look at the field before climbing into the truck after Circe, thinking about all the questions she’d written into her journal the night before. She’d hoped that, by the light of morning, the questions would be easier to answer. But like the words written in the sky the night before, the answers to Lyssa’s questions seemed very far away. She slid into her seat and pulled the truck door closed.
Circe navigated the truck over the highway and into the sprawling farmlands of Idaho. She shoved her wig and stilts under her seat, explaining that it was so empty out on the back roads that she didn’t really need to worry about staying in disguise
The land outside Lyssa’s window looked like a patchwork quilt. Bright orange and red hills surrounded them on all sides. They drove past towns called Wendell, Jerome, and Rupert. Lyssa couldn’t help laughing out loud. She pulled out her journal and made a list of all the town names for Penn.
“See that tree?” Circe said, pointing. “That tree split in two during our last big thunderstorm. And that bale of hay was the one that got lit on fire…”
On a distant hill a red farmhouse appeared, sunshine bouncing off the shingles of its roof. Lyssa shifted in her seat, starting to feel nervous. Circe had said that Lyssa would be able to catch a bus once they got to Idaho, but as far as Lyssa could tell, there were no bus stations close by and she still hadn’t figured out how to get the money for a ticket. Once Circe got home, Lyssa would be alone in the world—no friends, no money, no way to get to Austin. She stuck her braid in her mouth, deciding it didn’t matter if Circe saw her chewing her own hair. Soon, Circe would be gone
Circe slowed her truck as they got closer to the farmhouse. Dread clogged up Lyssa’s throat. She opened her mouth to tell Circe she didn’t have enough money for a bus ticket, but before she could get a word out, Circe let out a low sigh
“Holy hogs,” Circe muttered. “Him again.”
Lyssa sat back up, following Circe’s gaze to a figure standing in front of the farmhouse door. He wore thick Coke-bottle glasses and a brown tweed suit. His button-down shirt was pulled tight over his round belly and sunlight glinted off his leather briefcase
“Who is he?” Lyssa asked
“IRS goon.”
“IRS?” Lyssa repeated, confused
“A guy who collects taxes—I’ll explain later,” Circe said as she slammed on her brakes and put the truck in reverse. The dirt road was narrow and lined on either side by a rickety wooden fence, but Circe backed her truck right into it. The wood splintered and the pigs in the back squealed. Circe’s tires screeched as she hit the gas pedal and shot forward, making Lyssa’s entire body rattle around on her seat. Next to her, Circe had both hands on the steering wheel and one foot propped against the dashboard
“Hey!” someone shouted. Lyssa looked out her window and saw the IRS goon racing toward them, waving the leather briefcase above his head like a flag
“I think he needs to talk to you,” Lyssa said. The man climbed into his own car, forgetting his briefcase on the hood as he peeled away. Circe snorted, sounding exactly like one of her pigs. She shook her head and her pigtails came loose, forming a halo of red curls around her head
“He’ll have to catch me first,” Circe said. Lyssa watched the man from her window. His car was smaller than Circe’s truck, and its back wasn’t filled with pigs and peaches. He navigated the dirt road easily, weaving around potholes and broken bits of fence. He’d catch up to them in no time
Circe must have realized that, too. She glanced behind her, eyes wild. “Find a way to distract him,” she shouted
Distract him? Lyssa’s heart was drumming against her chest. She searched the truck for something to use, and her eyes fell on the tomatoes from yesterday. There were dozens and dozens of them, some as large as basketballs. Perfect. Lyssa grabbed the hem of her muumuu and filled the skirt with tomatoes. Then she leaned out the truck window and took aim…
Splat! The first tomato splattered against the IRS goon’s windshield like a water balloon filled with red paint. The man unrolled a window and stuck his head out so that he could see the road in front of him. Lyssa grabbed another tomato and threw—it splattered across the man’s face
Tomato juice and seeds ran down his cheeks and nose and chunks of tomato got caught in his hair. The car swerved sideways and halted, nearly slamming into a wooden fence by the side of the road
“We got him!” Circe cheered. She’d been watching from the rearview mirror and when the man ran his car off the road, she pumped her fist in the air triumphantly. Lyssa didn’t feel quite so happy. She hadn’t meant to cause an accident. She watched out the window until the man stepped out of his car, just to make sure that he was okay, and felt slightly better.
“It looks like I won’t be going back to the farm for a while,” Circe said, sighing. “How’s Texas this time of year?”
Lyssa’s heart leapt in her chest. Was Circe saying what she thought she was saying? She leaned back against her truck seat. “Really? You want to come to Texas with me?”
Circe shrugged. “If there’s a market where I can sell my peaches, then I don’t see why not.”
Lyssa had to bite down on her lower lip to keep from cheering out loud. Just a few minutes ago she thought she’d be stranded in Idaho with no chance of making it home in time for the Texas Talent Show. Now she had a ride all the way to Austin—and Circe was here to keep her company. Lyssa leaned over and plucked a tomato off the floor, taking a big bite. She felt much better, and lighter, than she had last night. The winds of change were guiding her. They had brought her Circe, after all
They drove for hours, until they reached a run-down little town just off the highway. Lyssa had dozed off but woke up, startled, to a loud and sudden popping. The next second a cloud of smoke appeared from under the hood of the truck, and the engine sputtered off.
Lyssa caught sight of a sign just before they skidded to a stop in the middle of the road: Bliss, ID. Population: 250. Lyssa stared out the window. Bliss didn’t look very blissful. There were only a few buildings, and the windows were all boarded up or dark. It didn’t seem like the kind of place where anyone would want to stay for long.
Circe turned the ignition off and then on again. The truck didn’t make a peep
“I was worried this might happen,” Circe said, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel. “My alternator belt is actually a garden hose.”
“Can you fix it?” Lyssa asked. She waved a hand over her nose, coughing. The air smelled like burnt toast
“Not this time. I’m going to need to find a mechanic. You stay here with the truck—it’ll be faster if I go on my own.”
Lyssa nodded. Circe pulled her wispy gray wig over her pigtails, tucking a few strands of red hair up behind her ears. She grabbed a fake nose out of her costume supply bag
“How do I look?” she asked, adjusting her nose in the rearview mirror
“Fine,” Lyssa said, even though she thought Circe looked like a fairy-tale witch. Her chest was already clenched with fear, and not just because Bliss seemed practically abandoned. She glanced at the clock on the truck’s dashboard—it was nearly one in the afternoon. She was off schedule already—she didn’t even know if it was possible to make it all the way to Austin in two days. “How long do you think this’ll take? The Talent Show…”
“Don’t worry about the Talent Show,” Circe said, throwing the truck door open. “You’ll be fine. We still have like five days, right?”
“Two,” Lyssa called, but Circe didn’t seem to be listening. Teetering slightly on her stilts, she started down the street, muttering that Lyssa needed to learn how to relax
Lyssa sighed and leaned back against her seat, weaving the ends of her hair between her fingers. How could she relax? There was no way Circe would find a mechanic around here. All the buildings were empty. Their windows were covered in cardboard, and jagged pieces of glass carpeted the sidewalks. Lyssa closed her eyes, trying to recall the sound of her mom’s voice whispering to her: It’s an adventure…
But the only sounds Lyssa heard were the pigs snorting in the back
She opened her eyes again and looked out the window. There was a poster taped to one of the storefronts and, for a second, Lyssa just stared at it. She was sure she was imagining things. She blinked, thinking the poster might disappear
It didn’t
The words MISSING PERSON were written in thick, red letters over a photograph of Lyssa’s freckled face. Under the photograph was a row of dollar signs and the word REWARD!
Fear blanketed Lyssa’s body and an itchy, anxious feeling prickled along her arms and legs. What if someone walked past and spotted the poster? She would be trapped
Lyssa peered out the window again. She’d thought the street was abandoned, but now she noticed that there were two men standing at the corner of the sidewalk. The men were both tall and skinny. One had a long, bumpy nose that looked surprisingly like Circe’s rubber one, and the other had a bald head so shiny, it seemed like it had been polished. The men were staring at the truck
Was it Lyssa’s imagination, or did their eyes seem to flit back and forth between her face and the poster? She felt as though she’d just swallowed a mouthful of sand. Had the men recognized her?
Broken truck or not, Lyssa knew they couldn’t stay here. She needed to find Circe. But she couldn’t just stroll into the street. She needed a disguise
That was it! Circe had left the rest of her costume supplies in a bag on the truck floor. Lyssa rummaged through it and put on a short, brown wig and a pair of cat’s-eye sunglasses, checking her reflection in the mirror. Between the wig, the glasses, and the flowery purple-and-blue muumuu she was still wearing, she doubted anyone would recognize her. If she was stopped, she’d just tell people that she was part of a traveling fortune-telling group. Yeah, that would work. Her name was…Ivana. And she could see the future.
Lyssa pushed her truck door open and, grabbing Zip out from under her seat, she headed down the sidewalk, tripping over the hem of her muumuu as she unfolded her scooter and climbed on, rolling off in the direction Circe had disappeared. When she reached the end of the block, she chanced a glance over her shoulder to see if the men were following her
Her stomach plummeted all the way to her toes. They were following her. She turned around just in time to see that she was about to zoom straight into a trash can. At the last second, she managed to jerk Zip’s handlebars to the right, narrowly avoiding a collision.
“Hey, kid!” one of the men called out behind her. “Slow down for a minute!”
Lyssa swallowed and pushed off harder. More posters of her lined the broken windows. They all seemed to be tracking her with their eyes. Lyssa tried to ignore them as she flew past on Zip. She wasn’t sure what the men behind her wanted, but she didn’t want to let them catch up
“Hurry, Zip,” Lyssa whispered
Her scooter’s wheels squeaked, like it was protesting that it couldn’t go any faster. Lyssa reached the corner where she thought she’d seen Circe turn, but as soon as she made a left, she knew she had gone the wrong way. Crumpled-up newspapers blew down the sidewalks like tumbleweeds rolling through the desert
Lyssa bit her lip, her head spinning. She glanced back over her shoulder just in time to see the two strange men round the corner behind her
“Little scooter girl!” the bald man called after her. The man with the long, bumpy nose laughed loudly
“We aren’t going to hurt you,” he yelled at Lyssa. “We just want to take your scooter for a ride.”
“Looks heavy for a little girl,” the bald man added. “We don’t mind taking it off your hands.”
Any relief Lyssa would have felt that the men hadn’t recognized her was swallowed up in a wave of terror. She wrapped her fingers tighter around Zip’s handlebars. How had she ended up here? Had her mom stopped guiding her?
She kicked off again. There was panic sloshing around inside her chest and it was thick and muddy, making her stomach feel like a swamp. She needed to get away—she needed to hide. She didn’t slow down to think about which direction she was turning or whether she was heading farther away from Circe. As she tore around another corner, Lyssa almost sobbed with relief. There were lights in the building ahead of her, and lights meant people, and possibly a place to hide
The building was run-down and shaped, incredibly, like a giant elephant, with gray bricks and a long trunk with two tusks sticking out above the door. The elephant’s eyes were circular windows with blue-tinted glass. Lyssa barely registered the sign just below the trunk that read The Siren Choir: Bliss’s Best Burlesque.
She looked over her shoulder one last time. She could no longer see the two strange men, but the wind snatched up threads of their cackling laughter. They’d catch up to her in no time
Climbing off her scooter, Lyssa pushed open the front door of the elephant building and stepped inside. The air was smoky and it made her cough. There was only one big, circular room in the club, and it was crowded with velvet chairs and tiny tables all facing a stage. Beneath the smoke, the air smelled sweet—like oranges and cinnamon
There was a woman onstage, easily the largest person Lyssa had ever seen: at least seven feet tall, with shoulders as broad as tree trunks. Her hair was yellow blond and formed into a beehive. She wore a mermaid’s costume, and the green scales on her dress sparkled under the stage lights when she moved. The woman looked weirdly familiar to Lyssa, but she didn’t have time to stop and study her. The men were surely catching up
As Lyssa cast about wildly, looking for a place to hide, two more mermaids pushed open a door on the far side of the room, giggling as they looked out into the audience. There weren’t many people in the club right now, but the mermaids waved to a man sitting near the front of the stage, then ducked back through the door. It slammed shut behind them and Lyssa saw a sign attached to it that read Backstage.
Backstage! That was perfect. Lyssa grabbed Zip and moved toward that door, weaving around tables and chairs. She stumbled over a chair leg and bumped into a little table but managed to make it across the club just as the front door flew open. She slipped backstage
Before she pulled the door closed, she peered back out into the main room. The two men entered into the club, craning their necks around. Lyssa pulled the backstage door all the way closed and leaned against it, breathing a sigh of relief. She was safe—for now—but she had no way of knowing how long the men would wait for her outside. Her only choice was to sit it out until she could be sure the coast was clear
She folded Zip up so that she wouldn’t be so noticeable, though the area she stood in was heavily shadowed and so far no one had seen her. The backstage area was crowded with people. Stagehands were gathering props and moving scenery, and there were performers changing into and out of sparkly, feather-covered costumes. The wings were crammed with wardrobes and trunks containing beautiful, beaded costumes and sparkling, sequin-encrusted shoes. Wow, Lyssa thought, Circe would absolutely love all this.
Maybe she would bring something back for Circe to wear. Just something small—something that wouldn’t be missed. It would be a thank you for everything Circe had done for her
Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, Lyssa snatched the first thing she saw: a pink-and-green rhinestone-covered bra. She stuffed it quickly into her backpack. For a split second she felt guilty. Chewing on her lower lip, Lyssa pulled her backpack open and felt around inside it until she found her favorite dandelion barrettes. She set those down on the table, figuring it was an equal trade
As Lyssa debated moving farther backstage, a woman began to sing
The voice sounded like thunder—deep and rumbling and fearless—and it made Lyssa forget all about the men waiting for her outside and the fact that Circe was wandering around Bliss somewhere with no idea where Lyssa had gone. The voice worked its way into her chest, at once familiar and magical. Before she knew what she was doing, she had started moving through the wings toward the stage, toward the voice, desperate to hear it better. She picked out the lyrics: lost love and pain and how lonely the world was. Despite the sad words, the song made Lyssa feel warm all the way to her bones.
“Once upon a yesterday, I lived far away, oh, so very far away…”
Lyssa unconsciously sucked the end of her braid into her mouth. Her mother used to sing her a song like that…She sang it to Lyssa every night before falling asleep at the hospital. That had been one of Lyssa’s favorite lines: once upon a yesterday…
She crept closer, leaning past the stage curtain
“Being with you feels like home,” the mermaid sang. That sounded like a line from her mother’s song too.
It wasn’t until that moment, as Lyssa was standing behind the stage curtain, watching the giant mermaid sing, that something clicked. There was a reason she recognized that song, a reason she knew that voice. She’d heard it echoing from her computer speakers, she’d heard it belted across a stadium filled with hundreds of people on her last birthday This voice could only belong to one person: Athena.
Lyssa squinted hard at the mermaid. Was it possible…?
Athena hadn’t been seen in public in nearly a year—ever since the night of the concert that Lyssa attended with her mom. Then her hair had been a deep, chestnut brown instead of blond, and she’d been wearing her signature cowboy hat and boots, but there was no doubt in Lyssa’s mind that the mermaid singing on stage was her. She might be wearing platform shoes. She had probably dyed her hair; maybe she was afraid of being recognized.
Lyssa fought the urge to run across the stage. She had a million questions to ask. She wanted to know why Athena had left and when she was coming back. She wanted to ask whether it was true that Athena too had lost someone
But most of all, she wanted to get closer to that voice. She wanted to suck this new song into her pores, to absorb it, the way her mom had always said music wasn’t heard but breathed and felt
Lyssa looked around, quickly finding the narrow ladder leading to the catwalk above stage. She knew from working with the Texas Talent Show that the catwalk was where the stagehands went to switch out the lights. It was also the best seat in the house, directly above the performers. She tucked Zip behind a heavy velvet curtain for safekeeping, then started up the ladder
Hanging next to the ladder was a thick length of rope. Lyssa gave it a tug and the cardboard ocean scene behind the singing mermaids shifted ever so slightly. Lyssa looped the rope around her waist before she started to climb. It was a trick she’d learned from Penn, from her early days of circus camp. If she fell (when she fell, Penn would say), she didn’t want to get hurt. Tightening the rope, she scurried up the ladder.
The catwalk was narrower than Lyssa expected it to be—not even wide enough for her to stand on with both her feet together. She wrapped her fingers around the edges of the wood and rose shakily to her feet, holding her arms out straight on either side like she’d seen Penn do. Nerves clenched Lyssa’s stomach, making it feel like a wet T-shirt that someone was wringing out over the sink. She carefully edged forward and the wood creaked beneath her sneakers
Every inch Lyssa crept forward felt like a mile. She held her breath. The distance between her feet and the stage below terrified her, but she was too scared to tear her eyes away from her pink, sparkly tennis shoes. She’d only ever been up the Talent Show’s catwalk with her mom, and it had never seemed quite so high or wobbly. By the time she got to the center of the catwalk, Athena had been joined by two backup mermaids and their voices wove together, growing louder and louder, a wall of sound that made the catwalk tremble beneath Lyssa’s feet. Lyssa swallowed, trying to keep her balance by looking straight ahead and thinking balanced thoughts. Clenching her eyes shut, she imagined a bear standing on a ball at the circus or a little kid learning to ride a bike
It didn’t work. This time, when Athena’s voice rose into the air, Lyssa tried to drop back down to her hands and knees. On her way down, she stepped on one of her shoelaces and her foot slipped out from under her. All of a sudden she was falling…
The ground raced toward Lyssa and she braced herself for a face-first dive into the stage, but the rope around her waist grew taut and she swung forward right at the last second—causing the mermaids to scatter, screaming, across the stage. One mermaid leapt into the audience, landing on a man’s lap.
As Lyssa swung back and forth, she scanned the stage for Athena—trying to spot her—but the famous singer was nowhere. It was as though, once again, she’d just disappeared
The ocean scenery rocketed toward the ceiling, breaking into pieces when it hit the catwalk. Lyssa swung forward—right through a curtain of wooden beads the mermaids had been dancing in front of. Strings of beads tangled against Lyssa and then clattered to the ground, rolling across the stage
Lyssa swayed back and forth. Her ankle was twisted in the rope above her and she was upside down. The tips of her blond braids brushed against the stage. Uh-oh
“What in the world…?” A very short man covered in tattoos stomped onto the stage, his face red as a tomato. The name tag on his shirt read Manager. Behind him, audience members were yelling and running into one another, as though they were worried the whole theater was about to come down on their heads.
Lyssa looked around once more for Athena. Athena would understand; Lyssa knew she’d be able to explain if she could explain to her, but the statuesque mermaid was gone. Lyssa remembered, with a sinking feeling, that just yesterday she’d thought an old woman was Athena. Maybe the mermaid hadn’t been Athena after all. Maybe it’d been her imagination playing tricks on her. Again.
“Where are your parents?” the manager demanded, trying to untangle Lyssa’s ankle from the rope. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”
“She’s with me,” came a shrill voice from the back of the theater. Still swaying back and forth on the rope, Lyssa saw a tall, thin woman wearing what looked like a wig and a fake nose
Lyssa smiled, weakly, and waved
“Hi, Aunt Mabel,” she croaked