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“I…I need a second,” Lyssa said. She started gathering
up the seeds and trying to pour them back into the ripped seed packet. Maybe if she could find some tape…

“Hey, what is that?” Circe asked. She reached for the seed packet, but Lyssa held on to it tightly

“Wait,” she started to say, but Circe grabbed the other side of the seed packet and pulled

Rip!

The seeds were picked up by a gust of wind and flew everywhere—landing between the truck seats and on the dirt road where the truck was parked. The pigs squealed as Circe toppled backward, then somersaulted into the field. Her tie-dyed muumuu fluttered out around her ankles and one orange flip-flop flew right off into the mud

Lyssa scrambled out of the truck after Circe, but she was too late. All the seeds were already lost in the soil

“Why’d you do that?” Lyssa could barely keep herself from shouting

“Relax.” Circe pushed herself back up to her feet. “Seeds are supposed to be scattered. You know that, right?”

Circe brushed as much of the mud and grass off her muumuu as she could. Then she collected her lost flip-flop, which had landed right in the middle of a little green pond that was mostly mud and rocks. She walked around to the back of the truck, unlatching the gate to let her pigs out

Lyssa looked down at her own feet, trying to quell feelings of anger. She and Penn had made the maracas for her mom’s birthday one year, as a surprise. They’d been her mom’s favorite instruments—and now one of them was ruined. But Circe hadn’t known; it wasn’t her fault

There were a few of her seeds lying in the dirt between the flowers and grass and Lyssa leaned over to pick them up, thinking she could tuck them into her pocket and keep a few of her mom’s seeds with her

But as she reached down to pick the seeds up, the strangest thing happened—they burrowed into the dirt like little worms, disappearing completely

Lyssa straightened up, startled. The ground below her started to rumble. She scanned the field anxiously

The next second, something green poked up out of the dirt, first timidly—like a rabbit checking to see if a snake was nearby—then faster and faster. Lyssa jumped back as the green shoot grew. Leaves the size of umbrellas unfolded as the shoot soared higher. Something brushed against Lyssa’s back and she screamed, whirling around.

“What’s happening?” Circe shouted. She was helping her pigs out of the back of the truck, but the ground was trembling so fiercely she nearly dropped the one she was holding. Lyssa shook her head
She
definitely didn’t know. There was an identical green shoot behind her, and another
two feet away, and another right in the middle of the dirt road. Lyssa bit back another scream as something began to grow on the shoot nearest her—something that looked like a tiny red button.

The red button expanded like a balloon filling with air until it was the size of a baseball, then a coconut. Hesitantly, Lyssa reached out a finger and touched it. It wiggled on its leaf-covered branch before it broke free, plopping onto the ground and bursting open— spraying red juice all over her face and clothes.

She reached her tongue out to her cheek to get a taste. She could hardly believe it. All of a sudden, she started laughing

“Tomatoes!” she yelled to Circe. “They’re giant tomatoes!”

Lyssa felt giddy. She thought of her mom’s garden back home, filled with sunflowers the size of umbrellas. Her mom could coax a plant into growing in any soil. Ana Lee had grown tomatoes in mailboxes and wound giant ivy around her window frames

And now, here, enormous tomato vines were growing straight up into the air. More and more tomatoes sprouted along the vines and Lyssa watched them in awe, and knew she was getting closer to reaching her mother

“I
told
you this soil was special,” Circe shouted over
the sound of oinking pigs. “Don’t just stand there. Grab a crate and start picking.”

Lyssa didn’t bother correcting Circe. Circe lifted the last pig out of her truck. Already, nearly every inch of her muumuu was splattered with mud. Lyssa gave Circe a thumbs-up and started picking the giant tomatoes from the vines.

When she’d gathered all the tomatoes she could reach, Lyssa climbed back in the truck and started to eat while Circe guided her now-muddy pigs back to the flatbed. Raw tomatoes were one of Lyssa’s very favorite things. Lyssa and Ana used to gather them just as they got ripe and eat them with crackers and cheese, right then and there—sitting in the grass under the shade of their dogwood tree

These tomatoes were big and juicy and tasted, very faintly, of bacon. They had to be the best tomatoes Lyssa had ever eaten, even better than the ones from her mom’s garden

She ate until her stomach was full and her lips were stained red from tomato juice. The leftover tomatoes were still in crates piled high on the floor of the truck and wedged between the two front seats

Circe climbed up into the truck and pulled the door shut. She looked just as muddy as her pigs—and just as happy. Lyssa wondered if Circe liked to roll around in the mud just as much as they did

“All right,” Circe said. “Off we go.”

As they pulled away from the magic Oregon field, Lyssa felt happier than she had in weeks. It was working. The closer she got to Texas, the more the impossible began to occur. It was like her mom was watching her, sharing just enough magic to let Lyssa know she was headed the right way

More tomatoes rained down on them, covering the truck’s windshield with a layer of red juice so thick that Circe had to turn on the wipers just so they could see the road

W
hile they drove, Lyssa and Circe changed out of their muddy, tomato-covered clothes and into the two spare muumuus Circe kept folded in her glove compartment. Lyssa’s muumuu was blue with giant purple flowers. It smelled strongly of bacon. After Lyssa changed, she held the steering wheel while Circe pulled her own clean muumuu on. Thank goodness there were no other cars on the road: Lyssa wasn’t too great at steering and the truck rocked and swerved across the road. Circe seemed to think it was hilarious.

“See if you can hit that fence post,” she shouted, pointing to the rickety white fence on the side of the road. Lyssa shook her head, trying to pull the truck back into the right
lane. Michael had let her steer his tiny Prius around an empty parking lot, once. He’d told her over and over again how careful you had to be with cars

“You’re no fun,” Circe pouted, taking the steering wheel back from Lyssa

Lyssa was noticing that Circe needed everything in her life to be fun. Over the next hour, she told Lyssa all about how she made chores fun by trying to do them while standing on her hands and how she made meals fun by sprinkling marshmallows and chocolate chips over everything she ate. She even tried to sleep hanging upside down from a bunk bed once—so her dreams wouldn’t get too boring. Of course, she explained, that stopped being fun when she fell off her bunk bed and woke up with a big bump on her forehead.

It sounded like Circe was always having adventures. But so far, Lyssa observed, she hadn’t mentioned any family or friends

“What happened to your parents?” Lyssa asked

“They kicked the bucket,” Circe said. She glanced up at the rearview mirror and rubbed a smudge of dirt off her forehead. For a second Lyssa was quiet. She was sure she’d heard Circe wrong.

“What did you say?”

“They died,” Circe explained. “You know, coffins, graveyard?”

Lyssa couldn’t react immediately. She opened and closed her mouth, wordlessly. “I’m sorry,” she said finally. Circe was acting like she was talking about an old pet or a grandparent she hadn’t known very well—not her own parents.

“Circle of life, right?” Circe said, shrugging. And then, abruptly: “Does that sign say Boise?”

Lyssa glanced at the green sign by the side of the road. “Um, yeah.”

“Good.” Circe pulled into the right lane. “I need to make some stops.”

Circe didn’t say another word about her parents as they pulled off the highway and on to a street leading through the city. Lyssa followed her lead and stared out the window in silence

The buildings in Boise were squat and unimpressive compared to the mountains towering over them. Wide, green parks were tucked between the buildings. It felt like being in the filling part of a taco. If Lyssa narrowed her eyes, the colors blurred together and the buildings became ground beef, the trees lettuce, and the mountains surrounding them on two sides were brown taco shells. It actually made her a little queasy after all those tomatoes

Circe pulled up next to a huge gray warehouse and yanked on the emergency brake. The truck made an angry
grinding sound and skidded to a stop. The smell of burning rubber rose from the tires. Circe tucked her red hair back under the wispy gray wig and shoved the giant glasses onto her nose

“Welcome to Costume City,” Circe said. “Hand me my stilts, okay? And remember to call me Aunt Mabel while we’re in public.”

Lyssa said, “Aunt Mabel, your wig’s falling off.”

“Uh-oh.” Circe checked herself in the mirror, tucking a curl back under the wig. “Thanks.”

It was only August, but walking into the costume shop felt like walking into the world’s largest Halloween party. The shop was four stories high and at least one city block long. Plastic skeletons and zombies hung from the ceiling, and brightly colored costumes, wigs, and rubber masks crowded every surface. There were smoke machines hidden beneath the stairs, which filled the entire store with billowing gray clouds of fog. Over the loudspeaker Lyssa heard the sound of creaking stairs, screaming women, and distant thunder

“Let’s start with the makeup and props,” Circe said, grabbing a shopping cart. “I need a stronger foundation to hide my freckles. And I was thinking about buying a cast—you know, so it looks like I broke my arm? Could come in handy.”

Lyssa decided not to ask how a fake broken arm could come in handy. Instead, she followed as Circe teetered around the supply shop, darting around men dressed like superheroes and two kids engaged in a duel with huge plastic swords. Circe filled her shopping cart, all the while chattering about fake mustaches and the many uses of denture glue. Lyssa was only half listening. There were so many cool things in this shop. She picked up a bright blue wig and sparkly, fingerless gloves—just like the ones Athena wore on stage

Remembering the measly $13 in her backpack, Lyssa put both items away. She needed to save her money in case of an emergency

Circe, however, raced around the store, shoving things into her cart without looking to see what they were. The wheels on her cart creaked as she ran and, while coming around a corner, Lyssa’s foot caught the hem of Circe’s muumuu. Circe stumbled forward, crashing into a rack of plastic noses in all different shapes and sizes and knocking them to the ground with a clatter. Noses rolled everywhere.

A small crowd of people gathered around. They were the strangest-looking people: men with tails poking out from under their business suits and women waddling around in giant, blue flippers. There was even a person—Lyssa couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman—wearing a
furry mask that obscured their features. Then again, maybe it wasn’t a mask. The person could’ve just been really hairy.

They all eyed Lyssa and Circe suspiciously, as if
they
were the strange ones.

“My aunt Mabel has polio,” Lyssa blurted out, helping hoist Circe back onto her stilts. “She has trouble with her legs.”

Circe gave everyone a shaky smile and, one by one, the people scurried off

“You’re clumsier than a bull on a pair of pointe shoes,” Circe said. Then she smiled, so Lyssa knew she wasn’t mad. “But where’d you learn to fib like that? Awesome.”

Lyssa shrugged. She and her mom used to make up identities all the time. When a waitress in some diner asked what her name was, her mom would say it was Nadya and that they were lion tamers traveling with the Russian circus Or maybe they’d be Gretel and Gertrude, German sisters searching the states for their father, a cowboy from Dallas. It became a game—who could make up a crazier story and get someone to believe it.

Of course, Michael didn’t like it when Lyssa lied—he told her that instead of saying her lies out loud, she should write them down in a notebook as stories. Lyssa thought of the journal where she’d been writing to Penn. It had been kind of fun to write her stories down. Maybe Michael had a point.

Circe paid for her things and led Lyssa back out to the truck. Lyssa thought they were going to get back on the highway, but instead Circe circled the store and turned down a narrow alley that led to a large, empty parking lot.

“I have one last thing to pick up,” Circe explained

In the shadows at the edge of the parking lot there was a whitewashed wooden stand with the words FREE OM FIR WO KS written across the top in red block letters. Paint hung from the wood in curly strips, reminding Lyssa of overgrown fingernails. As they pulled up in front of the stand, Lyssa could have sworn she saw something moving in the shadows.

“What are you buying
here
?” Lyssa asked. She had to stifle a yawn. It was getting late, and the last thing she wanted to do was continue shopping.

“Mauve lipstick.” Circe pulled up on the emergency brake and the truck groaned to a stop. “Tiresias has the best.”

“Tiresias?”

“And maybe we can pick up some cherries, too. They sell the sweetest cherries in Idaho,” Circe said. Sure enough, a large wicker basket filled with cherries sat next to a display of Roman candles and sparklers. Compared to the run-down stand, the fruit looked unnaturally red and ripe. The basket held a piece of notebook paper that read
Back in Five
.

“Good, they’re gone,” Circe said, throwing open her truck door. “The owners can be a drag. Tiresias? You here?”

“That you, baby girl?”

The voice came from the other side of the stand and it was deep and rough, like gravel on sandpaper. Lyssa followed Circe around back

Sitting on a stool in front of a rickety little table was a large, thickly muscled man wearing a lacy purple dress. There were three silk scarves knotted around his neck, each a different, flowery pattern. He was completely bald, and there was another scarf knotted just behind his ears in a floppy bow. A white–and-blue china bowl filled with cherries sat on the table in front of him. Before Circe had even reached him, Tiresias pulled a tube of lipstick out of his pocket and set it down on the table. Circe put a thin pile of bills onto the table next to it