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  A secret sister!

  How fun—and also, how strange. But lots of things in Jory’s life were strange. Like the locked barn, and the neighbor ladies who stared from across the canyon, and the unseen pests that kept dragging Mom’s tomato plants underground. The whole plants! Even after Caleb sprinkled bonemeal to frighten them away.

  It took Kit some time to adjust to family life, but Mom persisted. She braided Kit’s hair and tucked wildflowers under the elastic. Painted her fingernails. Told hilarious girls-only stories invented just for her, while Jory giggled into his fist, pretending not to listen. Mom never minded how dirty Kit and Jory got, playing in the fields, leaping and tumbling, dancing together until they got so dizzy, they watched the sky spin from their backs.

  Kit was the center of the family’s universe.

  Then Ansel was born.

  Mom delivered Ansel at home, with a midwife’s help. She was a crabby, hunchbacked old woman—or so Mom said, since Jory never saw the midwife himself. Caleb made the kids wait in the patio, silent as field mice.

  “Your mother needs to concentrate on creation,” he said, then hurried away.

  Keeping quiet was no problem for Kit, but that didn’t mean she was unbothered. By then, Jory was a master at reading Kit’s silent emotions. Her nails, gnawed to the quick. Her saucer-eyed stare. Her cheeks blooming pink. Usually, she was a galloping, bouncy bundle of energy, but not today.

  “Mom’ll be all right,” Jory consoled her, after an hour of nibbling stale cinnamon grahams and pretending to color.

  Kit bit her thumbnail.

  “She—”

  Jory’s words were interrupted by a wail. He knelt on the floor beside Kit.

  “That’s just how it sounds,” he explained, reassuring himself as much as her. “Having a baby. It hurts, but it’s perfectly natural. The most natural thing of all. If you think about it, every person on planet Earth came from a mother.”

  Kit broke a graham cracker in half, then set both halves on the plate.

  “And anyway, she’s done it before, hasn’t she? There’s nothing to worry about…”

  The sudden stillness was just as piercing as his mother’s cry. Then came another wail—a new kind, high and shrill, like a field mouse stuck in a trap.

  The door flew open so hard it bounced off the wall.

  “A boy!” Caleb said triumphantly, his broad shoulders heaving with emotion. “Wash up and meet your brother.” He hurried out.

  “Now you’ve got two brothers,” Jory told Kit. “That’s something special.”

  All out of fingernails, Kit bit her lip.

  Ansel really was something special. If special was the right word.

  He was undersized from day one. Frail, with rice-paper skin, wispy hair, and pink-rimmed eyes, even when he wasn’t crying. Mom spent most of her time tending to him. Time she’d once spent with Jory and Kit.

  She still took care of Kit’s lessons. But not Jory’s, for long.

  A few months after Ansel was born, Caleb informed Jory he’d be starting fifth grade in town. Mom found managing two kids’ studies and nursing a fussy infant more trouble than she’d anticipated, especially with Caleb working long hours at the factory.

  “But that’s not the only reason,” Caleb said. “It’s safer this way.”

  “Safer?” Jory asked.

  “I’ll explain,” Caleb said, to Jory’s relief. “There are many reasons parents choose to homeschool kids. Overcrowded, underfunded schools. Quality of the curriculum. Religious beliefs. Some reasons are acceptable. Others aren’t as acceptable. According to the Officials, anyway.”

  “The Officials?” Jory repeated. It wasn’t the first time Caleb had mentioned them.

  “They’re everywhere,” Caleb said. “In everybody’s business. They want to regulate everything, including what parents teach their kids. To ensure all kids are being taught the correct way—inside the classroom, but also outside it.”

  “Their correct way,” Mom added.

  Caleb nodded. “The way the Officials think is correct. And because it’s easier to regulate lessons inside the classroom, Officials pay closer attention to homeschooled families, especially as the children grow older. We don’t need that extra attention on our family.”

  “In regular school, you can blend in,” Mom said, rocking Ansel in her arms. “You’ll look just like other kids.”

  “Exactly,” Caleb said. “It’s a way of hiding in plain sight.”

  “Hiding in plain sight,” Jory repeated. It was an interesting concept.

  Caleb nodded. “If we lived in a more remote area—in the desert east of here, maybe—it would be different. But we live in town. And we think you’re old enough. Old enough to know when to listen, and when not to. Old enough to remember that school is school, and family is family. Can we trust you to keep our family’s secrets?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jory replied. “Of course.”

  Jory figured Caleb was talking about Kit, but he didn’t have to worry. Jory would never do anything to compromise the safety of his sister. Even if he had to pretend she didn’t exist.

  He worried for himself, though.

  He hadn’t gone to real school in years—not since before Mom married Caleb and they moved to the old farmhouse. Back when they lived in a tiny apartment on the industrial side of town, and Mom worked at that crummy coffee shop. Back when the pain of Dad leaving still throbbed like a skinned knee, an elbow whacked against a doorjamb, a blister he thought would never, ever heal.

  It faded, though. Like every pain. Until Jory could barely remember.

  School he remembered in bits and pieces. Dry-erase boards and desks in clusters. Classmates with blurry faces. Computer screens, bright enough to squint at. Toys in colorful plastic tubs, although fifth grade would probably have fewer toys than first.

  Jory was excited.

  But mostly terrified.

  He tried not to blame Ansel. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, being born.

  JORY LIKED SIXTH GRADE MUCH BETTER THAN FIFTH. Most of that was because of his teacher, Mr. Bradley.

  Mr. Bradley had inch-long dimples and a booming voice, and was tall enough to spread his palm flat on the classroom’s ceiling. He didn’t even have to jump.

  Today, he was discussing accidental mummies—the kind preserved in swamps and long-forgotten bogs. Like the Tollund Man in Denmark, and the Haraldskær Woman, who had probably been the victim of human sacrifice. Any reasonable person would be fascinated.

  Most of Jory’s classmates looked bored.

  Erik Dixon slumped with his chin in his hand. Paisley Matthews yawned over and over. Alice Brooks-Diaz doodled on a sketchpad hidden in her social studies book. When she glanced up, Jory looked away quickly. Alice made him nervous.

  Anyway, Jory didn’t get it. He liked school, though he tried not to let it show too much. In sixth grade, some things were best kept hidden—like underpants, unless you were the low-jeans type.

  He used to love school. Back when he believed his teachers.

  Not that he disbelieved them now. He just knew better than to accept his lessons at face value. It was a matter of critical thinking. A matter of looking deeper. Thinking outside the box.

  Caleb had taught him that last year, a few months after he’d started school. Jory had been telling Kit about the solar system when Caleb had touched his shoulder.

  “Let’s have a talk,” he’d said. “Man to man.”

  Kit had rolled her eyes, but luckily Caleb hadn’t seen it. Together, Jory and Caleb had strolled into the fields, tangled with pumpkin vines. Blue jays had gossiped in the canyon, even though the sky had looked wintry.

  “I know your studies are exciting,” Caleb had said. “You’re exposed to so many things. New ideas. New ways of thinking.”

  Well, sure—that’s what school was for, wasn’t it?

  “But you’re a smart kid,” he’d gone on, making Jory flush with pride. “Smarter than I was at your age. I just want to remind
you to take everything with a grain of salt.”

  “What do you mean?” Jory had asked, perplexed.

  “Don’t accept everything you’re told as true.”

  “But…why would my teachers lie to me?”

  “They’re not lying, necessarily.” Caleb had scratched his beard. “In most cases, they think they’re telling the truth. They’re teaching what they’ve been taught—what their own teachers were taught, and so on. Over the years, the lies get mixed in.”

  “But what about the facts? Some things are just…true.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like…” Jory had thought. “Benjamin Franklin signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. And pandas like eating bamboo.”

  “What if somebody forged Benjamin Franklin’s signature?” Caleb had asked. “I doubt there’s video footage. And what if pandas only eat bamboo because that’s all they have? What if they’d really prefer brussels sprouts?”

  Jory had opened his mouth, then closed it.

  Caleb had placed a hand on Jory’s shoulder, smiling with his eyes. “It’s just a matter of critical thinking. Looking deeper. Remember: you can’t trust anyone but your family.”

  Ever since, Jory questioned everything his teachers said. A parade of what ifs marched endlessly through his head.

  Like right now.

  What if the Tollund Man was a hoax?

  What if he wasn’t even human? (He sure didn’t look it.)

  What if the Haraldskær Woman hadn’t been sacrificed—she’d been an evil witch?

  What if—

  The bell rang, interrupting Jory’s thoughts. “Start thinking about topics for your social studies projects,” Mr. Bradley called as the class jostled for the door. “And be sure to look out for the meteor shower this weekend. It should be pretty spectacular!”

  Jory took his time gathering his things. He hated lunchtime. In fifth grade, he’d sat with a couple of other loners, but this year they’d both joined the computer club, which met at lunch. Jory’s family had no computer. Now he sat alone, at the very end of an endless table.

  He used to sneak a book in his lap, until the day Erik Dixon had poked him in the shoulder.

  “Whatchu readin’?”

  Jory had lifted his book: A Wrinkle in Time, for class. “Just trying to get ahead,” he mumbled. Which wasn’t really true, since he’d read it twice already.

  “Is that for school?” Erik had raised his eyebrows. “Lunch isn’t for doing your homework, man. It’s for hanging with your friends.”

  Erik was one of the nicer guys in the class. Almost too nice. An awkward silence had followed, as Jory waited for Erik to remember he didn’t have any friends. He didn’t trust anyone enough for that.

  Especially not Alice Brooks-Diaz.

  “I was reading a book of scary stories last night,” Alice said. “It made me think of you, Jory Birch.”

  Jory wondered if he should be insulted. With Alice, it was hard to know.

  Alice Brooks-Diaz had dark eyes, dark skin, and curly hair, which she sported in twin buns. It made her look like a baby koala. She always wore a red plaid jacket. It was so big, she had to shove back the cuffs every ten seconds. When she put on the hood, it swallowed her head.

  She was one of those people everybody liked. The magnetic people, who attracted instead of repelled. She could sit anywhere she wanted—if she wanted. But every single day, halfway through lunch, Alice sat across from Jory.

  And talked at him.

  Not to him—that would involve more give and take. She talked at him. About the most random things. No matter how Jory reacted, she didn’t seem to notice. Some days he gave one-word answers. Some days he ignored her. Some days, like yesterday, he got up and left without saying good-bye.

  The next day, she’d sit across from him again.

  Alice loved a good mystery, and Jory figured he was one of them. A mystery, or a riddle—one that only poking, prodding, and hours of never-ending chatter might solve.

  “So this book of scary stories,” Alice continued, shoving back her cuffs and tearing off a wedge of orange. “I thought of you because you like to read, obviously. But also, you live in a farmhouse, right? Is it haunted? I’d give anything to live in a haunted house. Bloody Marys in the mirrors and heartbeats under the floorboards, wow!”

  “It isn’t haunted,” Jory said.

  Alice leaned forward, encouraged by his muttered reply. “Are you sure? Sometimes you have no idea until you wake to a chalk-white face floating over your bed. They’re always chalk-white in the stories—that’s how you know they’re ghosts.”

  “I told you, it isn’t haunted. I’ve been living there five years. I’d know if there were ghosts.”

  “What about wormy old bodies?”

  “I’m trying to eat,” Jory said, pointing to his sandwich.

  Alice stuffed an orange wedge in her mouth and kept on talking. “In the book I read, one of the stories had a secret passage. Like the Underground Railroad, except with monsters. Does your farmhouse have any of those, do you think?”

  “No.”

  “Rooms behind the walls?” Alice tried. “Trapdoors? Locked closets?”

  “None of our closets have locks.”

  “No locks anywhere?”

  Jory shook his head. “Only on the barn.”

  “Wait—you have a barn? With a lock on it?”

  He nodded.

  Alice’s eyes widened. “A locked barn? Wow! Your very own real-life mystery! I just knew you had one, Jory Birch. Is it filled with skeletons, do you think?”

  He wished he hadn’t said anything. “It’s a really big lock,” he said. “With a chain.”

  Alice leaned closer. “Maybe if we put our heads together, we can figure out a way to open it.”

  Jory didn’t want to put his head anywhere near hers. Not because Alice wasn’t pretty—everyone thought so, it wasn’t just Jory—but because he couldn’t trust her. He couldn’t trust anyone at school. Only his family.

  He stood up. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Okay. We’ll talk more tomorrow!” She lowered her voice. “About the barn.”

  Tomorrow was Saturday, but he didn’t feel like telling her.

  Jory could walk home two ways: the short way down Vale Street, or the long way through the eucalyptus grove.

  He always chose the long way.

  First, because Alice and Erik both lived on Vale Street. Unless Jory got a head start, they’d be hanging with friends in their yards, which made him feel like dashing in the opposite direction. Even if Jory did have friends of his own, he wouldn’t know what to talk about.

  Second, because the Mendoza twins lived on Vale Street, too, and there was no way they’d let Jory pass by without some comment.

  Hey, Farmer Jory, where’s your tractor?

  What’s with the boots, tough guy?

  The long way home took twice the time. But the houses were fewer, and nobody important lived in them. Also, Jory liked walking in the fragrant shade of the eucalyptus trees. They reminded him of koalas.

  Not of Alice Brooks-Diaz—just koalas.

  At last, he reached the edge of town. It wasn’t farmland, exactly, but everybody who lived on the outskirts owned a few acres, and some people grew things. He saw the neighbor ladies’ house, facing his family’s farmhouse on the other side of the canyon. Sometimes Jory caught them watching as he and Kit played in the fields. Once, they’d even waved. Jory knew Caleb wouldn’t approve, so he’d pretended not to see them.

  As Jory crossed the bridge, he almost tripped over a black-and-white dog, which seemed to appear out of nowhere. It had long, wavy ears and a spiral for a tail.

  “Get lost,” he yelled, waving it away.

  The dog barked at Jory, who felt offended. Even though he’d yelled at it first.

  More eucalyptus trees shaded the back of the family’s property, along with a couple of oaks. At the edge of the road, Jory opened the rusty mailbox. He always c
hecked the mail, since Mom didn’t venture down to the road if she could help it. Nothing this time.

  After the trees came the fields. Caleb grew crops like pumpkins, cucumbers, and tomatoes. They owned no animals, though Jory and Kit had dug up several square-shaped bells. There must have been goats once.

  Where the fields ended, the canyon began.

  It was a big canyon, all on its own. But it was just one finger in a massive network of canyons, branching into the desert and the city and beyond. A labyrinth of tangled brush. Caleb claimed you could follow the pleats all the way to the ocean—if you could avoid the infinite dead ends along the way.

  Even though the canyon was technically in Jory’s backyard, he wasn’t allowed to explore it. It was off-limits. Filled with Danger, capital D.

  Rattlesnakes.

  Poison oak, which turned red in the summer and torched your skin.

  Scorpions.

  Spiders. Hairy ones.

  Coyotes, who yip yip yipped every time a siren wailed by on the highway.

  The off-limits rule didn’t bother Jory much. Like Mom, he wasn’t the daring type. Standing at the canyon’s edge felt wild enough. Especially at night, when he couldn’t see the bottom, and the wind shuddered through the underbrush, and everything seemed to have eyes.

  And then there was the barn.

  The barn sat between the house and the canyon. It had been locked when the family moved in, with an angry-looking padlock and a rusty chain. The heavy, foreboding kind Jacob Marley lugged around in A Christmas Carol. The barn had never interested Jory. He’d always walked right by it, except when he paused to lean his old broken bike against the wall.

  Today, he stopped and stared.

  Then he kept walking, a little more quickly.

  WHEN JORY SHUFFLED INTO THE KITCHEN the next morning, the family was already up: Kit kneading dough for a loaf of bread, Mom scratching a graphite line on the doorjamb to document Ansel’s height. A purple, fruity substance simmered on the stove, some kind of jelly.

  “Is Caleb at work?” Jory asked.