Ivy and Prairie swung their legs over the edge of their tree house late that evening. Ivy stared at Fiddle the rooster’s red comb and listened to the silence vibrate. She’d barely been able to convince Prairie to come out here. “I have something to tell you,” she finally said.

“Well?” Prairie stared straight ahead; her fingers were tight on the tree house platform.

“I wanted to tell you why I told Mrs. Grizzby I’d help her if she’d pay—”

Prairie’s head snapped around; her expression made Ivy’s heart hurt. “I can’t believe you did that. Is it your mom or something? Did she change her mind about letting you go on our trip and you just didn’t know how to tell me?”

“It’s not my mom.”

The air in the branches of the maple seemed to hold its breath.

“Not your mom.”

Ivy mashed her thumb against a maple seed. “It is kind of my mom, but not the way you think. It’s really me. There’s something I have to do. The thing is, I want to make a movie.”

“Make a movie.”

Prairie’s voice was flat and the words gave Ivy a mean little shove, just like when her mom said them. Ivy slogged on. “Yes. It’s my dream, you know that, and I need a camera—”

“But you don’t have to suddenly take some job that starts the minute school gets out, do you? I mean, really? There’s no other time?”

“No. It has to be now.”

Prairie narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

Ivy flexed her toes inside her boots. She had been wearing these boots when Ms. Mackenzie told her to never give up. She had been wearing them when the police showed up, and when she walked away from them and her mom. She thought of the policemen’s shiny oxfords and the look in their eyes. It was all complicated, but she had to figure out a way to make Prairie see.

She tried to make her mouth form the words to explain, but she wanted to go to North Carolina so badly. She wanted to take the train from Poughkeepsie to Greensboro and then the bus to Asheville, and from there ride in Grammy’s friend Dorothy Peacock’s lemon-yellow Cadillac Eldorado convertible car all the rest of the way to Vine’s Cove, where Grammy’d grown up and where Great-Uncle Tecumseh still lived.

Prairie had told her approximately one million times in the past year how Great-Uncle Tecumseh lived in a little cabin made of pine logs and plank floors, and how when you woke up in the morning the first thing you heard was the sound of the breeze whispering through the trees and the burble of Vine’s Creek tumbling down the mountain, and the song of a cardinal, maybe. She said that at night owls hooted and coyotes howled, and that every day the two of them would tromp all over Vine’s Cove, up and down the mountainside, exploring. She was going to take Ivy to the ruins of a settler’s cabin and to a place deep in the woods where there were the remains of an old still. For making whiskey! She said they’d fish in the creek and help in the garden and every night they’d sit around the campfire Great-Uncle Tecumseh built, and that for two whole weeks it would be like they had traveled to some far-off country that most people never even dreamed existed.

Ivy wanted to see it all, hear it all, smell it all. She wanted it more than anything. Except this.

She sucked in another breath. “It’s kind of a long story.” Her voice wavered. “But the truth is, it hasn’t been all that great with my mom. It’s been really hard and I need—I don’t know. I need to do something for myself, and this job is my chance.”

• • •

Prairie tapped her thumb on her leg while Ivy talked.

When she finished, Prairie studied her with one eye squeezed shut, like Ivy was a fence post that wouldn’t stand straight. “I’m really sorry it hasn’t been great with your mom. I get that you want to make a movie too, but what’s so important about this exact contest and this one job? This is our trip. It’s our vacation. We’ve been looking forward to it forever. I thought you really wanted to go.”

“I do.”

Prairie kicked at the air. “It doesn’t seem like it. It sure does not.”

“I do want to. But this other thing, the movie—it can’t wait.” Ivy couldn’t even try to explain how it all hinged together—the police, tearing herself away from her mom’s command, walking and walking until she stopped at the pawnshop, seeing the camera, and then meeting Jacob on the campus and realizing that making the movie—and even maybe, hopefully, winning the contest—was the key to everything. It was symbolic. She squeezed her hands into fists and poured all her concentration into the hope that Prairie would understand this the way she did so many things. “The job is now, and I need the camera. And if I don’t do it, if I don’t do something, I’ll be—a nothing. Like my mom.”

“No you won’t! That’s dumb. That’s probably the dumbest thing you ever said.”

Ivy made herself smile because she knew Prairie meant this as a compliment. She wished Prairie would’ve added another sentence or two, though. Your mom is not a nothing. In spite of everything, she isn’t. Something like that. Even though Ivy was furious at her mom most of the time these days, she did wish that. She wished other people saw the good side of her mom the way she did. An image from a long time ago of her mom tickling Aunt Connie and both of them giggling flashed in her head. Then one of sitting beside her mom on the couch watching television, their hands bumping inside the popcorn bag.

Prairie hiked her knee up and wiped an invisible smudge off the toe of one boot. She almost always wore her boots, leather Red Wings like Dad Evers’s, no matter what the weather was or where she was going or what else she had on, even a dress, until summer came. Then she went barefoot every minute she could and never seemed to mind how dirty her feet got.

Ivy loved that. She loved how Prairie was a whole piece of fabric. Ivy was not. Instead there was a hole in the middle of her, a big, ragged tear she could feel ripping bigger all the time. Doing this movie—it was to mend that hole. It would be a matter of sewing herself together, darning herself up the best she could. She picked at a piece of lichen.

“How come you can’t come to North Carolina and make a movie? There’s lots of cool stuff to film there. Uncle Tecumseh could tell you stories—”

“I need a camera first.” Ivy put big spaces between the words so that Prairie would get the point. “I have to have three hundred dollars. Three hundred and fifty plus tax, actually. I can earn it working for Mrs. Grizzby.” When the lady with the broken leg introduced herself as Inez Grizzby, Ivy had felt even more sorry for her.

“Maybe Mom and Dad could lend it to you.”

“No.”

“Grammy, then—”

“No. That won’t work.” None of the Everses could afford to loan her money, and besides, she needed to do this by herself.

Prairie kicked at the air again. “So you’re really going to make a movie?”

“Yes.”

“You really think you can?”

“I do think so. I can. I will.”

The chickens ambled below them, pecking at bugs. Fiddle stretched his wings out bossily. He flapped at a hen to make her move—he’d found something he wanted her to eat—and the hen squawked in irritation but then went where Fiddle wanted. Ivy smiled sadly. She loved the chickens. Not as much as Prairie did, but she did love them. And this day, sitting here in the tree house saying a hard, sad thing and staring down at the flock below, was almost exactly like the day she’d told Prairie what had happened between her mom and dad.

She’d been so frightened then. Frightened that Prairie would draw back in horror. That she wouldn’t want to be friends any longer.

She was almost as frightened now. But Prairie wouldn’t disappoint her. Ivy turned to explain even better—she’d skimmed over the hardest parts pretty fast—but Prairie got up onto her knees and scrambled down the ladder.