In most places, spring comes around March or April or even May. Arizona’s whole winter is pretty much like springtime with a few winter days scattered throughout. I can’t say I was sorry not to have to trudge through snow everywhere I went.

Things were really coming together for the festival. Dad found a website that had like a hundred country western bands for hire listed on it. We had our pick, and they weren’t even very expensive. Mom and I spent an entire day cleaning up the old stage in the closed down rodeo arena. That was also where the food trucks would park, since we weren’t having a rodeo.

Connor and I had gone to two more support group meetings, and I got the feeling he was actually starting to enjoy them, even though he often gave Dexter the stink eye.

I still hadn’t found a tarantula despite going out almost every night with Dad. One day I was visiting Spaghetti, and I asked Denise what she knew about tarantulas. “Do they bother the animals?”

“There aren’t any tarantulas around here,” she told me as she raked the dirt ground.

“There aren’t? But I thought they were all over the desert. I’ve read all about them, and every book I’ve read distinctly states that they live in the Sonoran Desert.”

“They should be here, but I guess with the city moving in on us like this, they’ve gone away.”

I rubbed at Spaghetti’s sides with my feet. “Yeah, but there’s still a good chunk of desert right behind us. I’m always looking for one when I walk out there, but I’ve never seen one.”

Denise stopped raking and wiped her brow. “I guess there used to be a bunch around here, but they disappeared a while back. Henry says it was around 2004.”

I stared at her. “They disappeared in 2004? But Henry can’t remember anything.”

“Nothing recent,” Denise agreed. “But sometimes he can remember things from the past.”

“In 2004,” I repeated to myself.

“Yeah,” he said ‘The last time anyone saw a live tarantula around here was in 2004.’” Denise went back to raking the ground. “Who knows? Probably just made it up.”

I decided to go visit Henry. He was sitting in front of the soda shop in one of the rocking chairs. I stood in front of him and asked, “When did the tarantulas disappear?”

“In 2004,” he said quickly and matter of factly.

“Why do you think that?”

“Because,” he said, and for the first time ever, his eyes looked clear and knowing to me. “They left with her.”

I shivered, and not from the cool breeze. “With who?”

He looked up at me, his eyes once more clouding with confusion. “Who what?”

“Who did the tarantulas leave with?”

He continued giving me his confused look. “You want an ice cream, sweetheart?”

I sighed. “No, thank you.”

I even visited Madame Myrtle to try to figure things out, but she was clueless about the tarantulas. She said maybe an exterminator came and took care of them in 2004. Ridiculous.

Connor, Zion, and I spent as much time in the storage building as we could, looking through old pictures and junk. So far, Dad had given us about fifteen unlabeled keys to try out on the desk, but none of them had worked.

“This one’s a dud,” Connor called, pulling a key out of the drawer and tossing it back into a paper bag.

I frowned as I kicked a box in one corner of the shed. It was so old and brittle from the heat that it burst wide open, sending a wave of papers onto the floor. It wasn’t necessarily the most orderly way of doing things, but it was a lot easier than Zion’s methods. I sheepishly glanced over at him as he carefully removed old tape from a box and pulled the top back like the Mona Lisa might be inside.

Zion shook his head at me. “Aven,” he scolded, “do you have to make this place look like a tornado ripped through here?”

“She’s from Kansas,” Connor said as he tried another key. “Tornadoes are in her blood.” Connor grunted and then barked. “Dud.” He pulled the key out.

I sifted through the papers on the ground with my toes, trying to make out the faded writing. There were a lot of numbers and words like deduction and revenue and net. I had no idea what any of it meant, but I decided it was all far too boring to be important.

“Whoa,” Zion said, causing Connor and me to stop what we were doing and look at him. He had a book in his hands and was pulling something out from between the pages. “Whoa,” he said again in a whisper.

Connor and I walked through the junk to see what Zion was whoaing about. He held up an old black-and-white photograph for us to see.

A photograph of me.

With arms.

Wearing the turquoise necklace.

Taken in 1973.