Ivy’s alarm clock beeped at daylight. She groped for the shut-off button and hoisted herself onto an elbow. Prairie was in the next bed, flat on her back and snoring. Tate was in the bed beyond that, on her side, breathing slow and even. Ivy swung her feet to the floor—pine boards, cool and rough—and pulled her sweater and jeans on and tiptoed to the stairs.

Beryl sat in the kitchen, a half-empty cup of coffee on the table in front of her, her leg propped up on the bench. She had a book open, the pages held flat with the tool for lifting the burners off the cookstove. “You want some eggs?” she whispered.

“I don’t think I have time.”

“Better make time. I’ll fry them, I’ve got the fire going.”

Ivy could feel it. “Well—”

“You need to eat. Going to be a big day.”

“Okay.”

Beryl slid her leg to the floor. “You want tea?”

“I can make—”

“I’m not crippled.”

Ivy rolled her eyes. “Actually, you are. But you’re not unable.”

Beryl snorted. “C’mon. Help me figure out where Geena keeps the skillet in this place.”

• • •

Ten minutes later, Ivy stepped onto the porch of Ms. Mackenzie’s cabin with her hands wrapped around a mug of tea. The tea bags were stored in a Folgers can—so the mice wouldn’t get at them, Ms. Mackenzie said when she found Ivy and Beryl searching the cupboards—and the can sat on a plank above the stove along with a kerosene lamp, a box of matches, and two dusty candles. The tea was almost boiling. The water’d been heated in a blue speckled pot, the kind you imagined cowboys using over a campfire. It tasted amazing.

Ivy strode off the porch and across the yard and down four mossy, slippery steps made of logs, to the beach. Her breath puffed out into the cool August morning. Mist rose over the water and a jay called from the tiny island that lay a hundred yards offshore. Chicken Island, Ms. Mackenzie said it was called. Ivy’s arms, legs, fingers—everything tingled. She was at a cabin; she was making a movie. They were doing the filming in just three days, one of them here, and they had a script, a shot list, and a schedule. There were only six days left until the deadline.

Ivy wiggled her fingers to warm them up and narrowed her eyes at the light.

“It’s good,” a voice said from behind her. Jacob came out from behind a clump of cedars. “I grabbed the camera when I woke up. Early. That couch was hard. And Kelly snores.”

Ivy grinned. “Prairie does too.”

“Anyway, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get some backup shots.”

“You should get one of the kayak.” Ms. Mackenzie’s kayak lay tipped upside down a few feet away. Something about it was like Aunt Connie’s umbrella. “I like the red of it against the sand.”

Jacob went off with the camera; Ivy took a breath of the cold, tree-smelling air. She felt good. Bigger than herself.

Jacob finished shooting the kayak and moved down the beach. Ivy stayed by the boat. She wanted a minute alone before the day started.

• • •

By eleven they were filming scene twelve, Approach to Kayak. It wasn’t going well. Tate, who was playing Heather, kept looking confident and strong as she limped up to the kayak on her crutch—an old one of Beryl’s—when she needed to look scared.

“Cut!” Ivy called, loud for her. “I need uncertainty, Tate. Fear. You’re terrified of the water. You don’t know if you can get in that boat and paddle across this lake, even if it’s to meet your long-lost sister—”

They were going to film the scene where Heather’s sister, who was being played by Prairie, scanned the sky for the seaplane that was coming to take her to Greenland to do research on polar bears. “Think about it. You’ve found out your sister is about to go off to do a big research project in the Arctic. If you don’t catch her, you’ll have no hope of tracking her down again for years because this project is going to take her so far into the wilderness. You have to do this. But you’re scared. You’re stuck. Show it. Can you?”

“Yes!” Tate snapped. Ivy smiled at her and Tate twisted her hair up around one hand. “I get it,” she said, sighing. “I do.”

“Okay. One more time and then we have to get out front. We’ve only got the bus for half an hour.” Making a movie was more complicated than Ivy would ever have imagined. Ms. Mackenzie knew a man who organized a shuttle for senior citizens; he was bringing it by the cabin between runs, so they only had a few minutes to show the bus driver, being played by Kelly, encouraging Heather to continue her search for her sister.

You’ll find her, Kelly-as-bus-driver had to say. The address you’ve got there says Piney Lane—that’s right on the lake. I can’t get this bus up that road, but it’s not far. You’re almost there, don’t give up. But Heather’s sister wouldn’t be at the cabin on Piney Lane when Heather limped up. The script called for her to be out on Chicken Island.

“We’ll finish this, we’ll do the bus thing, then break for lunch, then do the paddling scene—”

• • •

“But when do I come in?” Mrs. Grizzby asked anxiously, after they’d eaten the lunch that Dad Evers and Grammy had brought. They’d picked up Mrs. Grizzby too. Mom Evers and Daniel were at home because Mom Evers thought he was too young to stay through the whole day of filming.

Ivy hit Pause. She made herself smile calmly at Mrs. Grizzby, who was cast as the woman who’d kidnapped Heather and then followed her to Piney Lane. Only she and Ivy knew what she was going to say when she found Heather. Ivy had decided it was better to keep the cast in suspense about this. It’d make their reactions fresher. “Not yet. It’s after Heather’s already in the boat, on the water. The next scene. You yell at her to be careful, and then that other thing, remember?”

“But not now?”

“Not yet. I’ll tell you when.”

Mrs. Grizzby’s smile was shaky. “I’m nervous! Isn’t that silly?”

“You’ll do great.”

Mrs. Grizzby’s real smile, the blinding one, flashed out then. “You think so?”

“I do.” Ivy used her most positive voice, but the truth was, she didn’t know. She didn’t know about any of this. So far the movie seemed choppy, and the story a little bit silly. How likely was it that Heather would just happen to meet her sister’s old professor when he visited her tutor at the estate one day, and that Heather looked so much like her sister the professor would recognize her? Or that the kidnapper would have kept track of what Heather’s real family was doing all these years and know where the sister was at the exact time Heather set out to find her? Not very likely at all. Still, the movie was dear to Ivy. And no matter how it turned out, she knew she’d always love it for being her very first one. First but not last, she was determined.

Grammy patted Mrs. Grizzby’s arm. She was playing her banjo for the sound track, so she’d be listed as a musician, but she should have another title too. Cast Manager, maybe. Mrs. Grizzby Manager.

Mrs. Grizzby gnawed at her lip and Ivy puffed out her cheeks. The next scene, where Mrs. Grizzby yelled out to Tate to be careful, and—this was the surprise—wished her luck in her quest, and Tate waved her paddle in farewell but kept moving steadily forward, was the last one in the movie. It wasn’t the last one they’d shoot—shooting went according to light and locations and the props they could get—but Ivy would feel better when it was done. More certain. Like there was no turning back.

“Okay, everybody. Ready?”

Tate nodded. Prairie and Kelly, who were holding the kayak onshore, nodded. Jacob, who was holding the clapper boards that had the scene number chalked on before every take, on loan from the showcase in his grandparents’ theater’s lobby, nodded, and so did Beryl and Mrs. Grizzby and Ms. Mackenzie and Grammy and Dad Evers, even though all they were doing was watching. Ivy pointed at Jacob, Jacob snapped the clapper boards, and Ivy pressed Record.

• • •

An hour later, they were still at the beginning of the scene. They’d been at it so long that Beryl and Grammy and Dad Evers had headed off to the tiny general store in town to buy more coffee. Tate had finally managed to look uncertain for her approach to the kayak, but now that she needed to look graceful and sure, she didn’t. She kept turning the boat in circles, splashing the water with the paddle.

“Cut!” Ivy called for the fifth time. “Tate—”

“I never drove a kayak before, I’m sorry! It’s harder than it looks.”

“Okay, I know. But we have a lot to get done. You have to talk to the bus driver, you have to deal with your supposed mother—”

“Now?” Mrs. Grizzby stepped forward. “Do I do my lines now?”

“Pretty soon.” Ivy made herself smile calmly, though she didn’t feel calm. The light was changing. “So, Tate, just do what Ms. Mackenzie said—”

“Dip smooth with the paddle.” Ms. Mackenzie demonstrated with an invisible paddle. “Work with the water, not against it—”

“Right. Do that and kind of—gaze—forward. Think nervous but determined. Think, I can do this, even though everything I’ve ever been told tells me I can’t. Think, I have a sister, she’s just across that water—right? Got it?”

Tate nodded.

“Okay, kiddos,” Ms. Mackenzie said. “You’ve got this. I just realized I should’ve gone with the others to town—I need to get the propane bottles refilled. C’mon, Inez, you come with me and let’s leave them to it.”

Ivy waited until they were climbing the steps off the beach. Then she said, “Okay. Scene thirteen, Paddling.”

Tate sat up straight. She gave a solemn nod and Ivy hit Record again.

Just as she did, there was a screech of brakes. Ivy lowered the camera.