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A lump formed in Lyssa’s throat, but she ignored it. Scarlett’s words flickered through her head:
We sing for the muse, and the muse comes from within…

Lyssa looked back out into the crowd, scanning for Penn’s big brown curls. Instead, Lyssa saw something else

Scattered across the yard were all of the people Lyssa had met along her journey. First she saw the cowgirls from the diner huddled next to a pear tree, twirling their lassos and cheering. Daisy smiled wide and the sun glinted off her gold front tooth. Lyssa felt a rush of joy and gratitude
at the sight of her friend. Daisy must’ve remembered when Lyssa told her about the protest just days ago. How amazing she traveled here all the way from Oregon!

And there, parked on the street just behind the cowgirls, was Helios’s ice cream truck. A long line of people snaked away from the service window, watching as Helios tossed an ice cream scoop high in the air. It spun up toward the clouds, then fell back toward the truck; he caught it behind his back and made the girl he was serving scream with glee. Lyssa watched them, amazed. The last time she’d seen Helios, he’d been chasing her through a corn maze for stealing some ice cream and candy. How had he ended up at the protest, giving his famous ice cream away for free?

She scanned the line of people waiting for ice cream, hoping to find Penn. To her surprise, Calypso was third in line—her ornately curled hair and bright red fingernails were instantly recognizable. Fear crawled into Lyssa’s chest, and she started to climb down from the banister. Calypso
couldn’t
find her now. Lyssa was so close—everything would be ruined.

Then the woman started to turn, and Lyssa realized that something about her was off. She was shorter than Calypso had been, and when she turned, her hair slid down over her forehead, covering up one of her eyes. In fact, it wasn’t until “Calypso” had turned all the way around to
face Lyssa that Lyssa realized it wasn’t the cruel woman from the cornfield staring back at her

It was Circe

Lyssa froze. Circe was wearing Calypso’s curly wig, and she had glued acrylic nails to the tips of her fingernails; she still wore the same tie-dyed muumuu, though, only now there were too-big high heels poking out from under the hem instead of stilts. Circe started across the yard toward Lyssa, her heels poking holes in the grass.

Lyssa wasn’t sure she wanted to talk to Circe now, or ever again. But she couldn’t move. All too soon, she and Circe were separated by only a few feet of space. Lyssa clambered clumsily down from the banister

“Nice disguise,” Circe said

“You too,” Lyssa said. Her voice was thin and hollow, like an echo. Circe just shrugged

“I stole the wig off Calypso,” she said casually

Lyssa just stared at her, her face wooden. “What are you doing here?” she asked

Circe shifted, uncomfortably, on her too-big heels. “Well, you made it sound like it a lot of fun…”

“I mean
how could you
come here? After what you did to me?” Lyssa felt tears sting the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them away. “You were my friend.”

Circe frowned and crossed her arms. “Listen, kid. I
don’t have any friends, okay? I have to look out for myself. I
needed
that money.”

“But I trusted you,” Lyssa said in a whisper

For a second, Lyssa thought she saw an expression of regret pass over Circe’s face. But it was quickly replaced by her usual look of hard defiance. “Everyone leaves you in the end, Lyssa,” she said. “You should just accept that now.”

Lyssa couldn’t immediately respond. She gaped at Circe

“You don’t really think that, do you?”

Circe shrugged. She’d always been so confident, so carefree, but now she seemed uncomfortable. “It’s the way things are,” she said

Lyssa frowned. She’d always admired Circe for having all the answers, but now she saw that Circe was mistaken about the most important thing of all. The people you loved—the people who loved you back—
never
truly left you.

“You’re wrong,” Lyssa said to Circe. “Friends are more important than pigs or peaches or broken-down trucks. Real friends—real family—stay with you no matter what.”

She took a deep breath and added, more softly, “I feel sorry for you, Circe. Take care of yourself, okay?”

Circe opened and closed her mouth a few times, and then
turned and stormed off into the crowd. Lyssa felt another throb of pity for her. Circe had never had the joy that Lyssa knew here, in this moment, surrounded by all the people she knew. Lyssa hoped that Circe could find it someday. The gray cat came and sat next to Lyssa. Lyssa stroked its head absently.

On the other side of the yard, next to a pair of apple trees with a hammock strung up between them, Lyssa saw the one-eyed chef from the cowgirl diner. She swallowed hard and pushed her sunglasses farther up her nose, hoping he wouldn’t recognize her

But the chef didn’t look quite so scary anymore. A little boy sat on his shoulders, giggling. Lyssa smiled. The chef looked happy, even if he hadn’t gotten his big reward. Maybe he’d figured out a new secret ingredient for his special stew. Either way, Lyssa was glad he’d come

She was so glad everyone had come
This
was the miracle Lyssa had been hoping for. It was magic. Now if only Lyssa could find her mom…

There were hundreds more people crowded across the front lawn—too many people for Lyssa to count. They spilled onto the sidewalk and into the driveway where the Texas Talent Show’s bright yellow van used to park

But in the street just beyond the protestors was a less welcome sight: men in hard hats and bright yellow vests
standing next to construction equipment. Lyssa gulped. There was even a wrecking ball. It was silhouetted in the setting sun, and she could only see its outline

The demolition crew. Lyssa hadn’t considered that she might actually have to watch the crew knock her home down. Parked on the street behind the wrecking ball was a white news van. There were cameramen unloading equipment and reporters fixing their hair. The news van wouldn’t be here if the demolition crew was just going to knock the house down, right? The reporters were here because of the protest—because they knew the protesters were going to put up a fight. Lyssa looked back out at the people who’d come to stand up against the demolition crew. She tried to be strong. Next to the thousands of people here for the protest, the construction workers looked small and insignificant

“Everybody’s here, Grandma,” Lyssa whispered, reaching a hand out to scratch the cat behind the ears. “They all came through for me. For mom.”

The grandmother cat began to purr beneath her fingertips, and Lyssa closed her eyes, feeling so light, so happy that she could almost float away. As she ran her fingers through the cat’s soft fur, she thought about how she’d believed her mom might be waiting for her, just like the grandmother cat

But now that she was home, Lyssa just couldn’t picture her mom as a cat or a bird. Ana Lee was too
big
to be contained by something so small. That thought made Lyssa feel proud and sad at the same time, like the two emotions were puppies wrestling around in her stomach.

“See, I
told
you it was her,” said a girl’s voice near the front porch steps. Lyssa whirled around, nearly falling off the banister. Demo and the cannibal girl from the Oregon police station walked up the stairs. Demo’s hair was gelled up in his signature faux mohawk. He wore skinny black jeans and an oversized T-shirt covered in a huge picture of a dinosaur. He looked like a rock star, complete with lemon-yellow sunglasses shading his eyes.

“You guys—hi!” Lyssa hopped down from the banister. She gave the cannibal girl a quick hug, then she threw her arms around Demo. Demo grinned down at her—he seemed so much taller than he had back at the marina in Washington. It was like he’d grown two full feet in just a few days.

“What are you both doing here?” Lyssa asked. Then, furrowing her eyebrows, she said, “Wait—how do you even know each other?”

“I just met Chloe a few minutes ago,” Demo said, motioning to cannibal girl

The backs of Lyssa’s ears started to burn. She’d never even asked cannibal girl what her name was

“Anyway, Chloe asked me if the girl in the brown wig and silly glasses was you,” Demo continued. “What’s with the disguise?”

“The cops still after you?” Chloe asked, raising her eyebrows. Her formerly pink hair was now neon green, but she still wore her Cannibal shirt. There were even drumsticks peeking out of her back pocket. She had two brand-new stress balls clenched between her fingers—they looked like miniature soccer balls

“Hey—your fingers are better,” Lyssa said. The skin around Chloe’s fingernails was all pink and healthy—nothing like the ragged, bloody fingers Lyssa had seen when she first met her.

“Those Band-Aids helped a lot,” Chloe said, wiggling her fingers at Lyssa. “And look—check it out.”

She stuck the stress balls in her pockets and pulled out the Band-Aids Lyssa had given her at the police station—the ones designed to look like tattoos. She selected one Band-Aid from the box—a skull surrounded by a circle of flowers—and peeled it off, sticking it on Lyssa’s arm

“You can’t go to the big house without getting some ink,” she said, winking

“Thanks!” Lyssa said, laughing

“I listened to your CD, you know,” Demo said while Chloe was pressing the edges of the Band-Aid down with
her fingers. “It was fantastic! I even wrote some backup music for you.”

He passed Lyssa a CD Before Lyssa, stunned, could say thank you, more members of the Lotus Crew headed up the stairs and spilled onto the porch.

“It’s so good to see you,” Regina said, shaking her hand in a fast, awkward wave. The boy with the curly hair was just behind her. He cuffed Regina on the shoulder

“Tell Lyssa your news, Reg,” he said. Regina looked a little sheepish, but she grinned

“I have a tryout—to be a contestant on
Lotus Island
,” she said.

“That’s fantastic,” Lyssa said. Regina nodded happily

“You inspired me, you know,” she said. “You went on all those adventures all by yourself. If you can have adventures, well, then I want to have them, too.”

“Who’s that?” someone yelled, and the crowd suddenly erupted in hoots and catcalls. Lyssa and the Lotus Crew strained to see what was causing the commotion in the street. A long white limousine with darkened windows pulled up in front of the house. A sign strung across its back windows read
Make Art, Not Real Estate
. Everyone began to murmur and whisper excitedly.

The door of the limo flew open, and Tiresias stepped out

He wore a full-length, white ball gown and his bald head was covered in a curly, blond wig. He strode across the yard and the crowd of people parted to let him through, as though he were a celebrity

He paused when he approached the porch. It was as though he could sense Lyssa’s presence

“Still trying to speak to the dead, baby girl?”

“I never stopped,” Lyssa admitted. Behind him, more people spilled out of the limousine: the mermaids from the Siren burlesque! They were no longer in their mermaid costumes; instead, they wore matching silver glittery cocktail dresses that glinted in the late-afternoon sun. She watched for the mermaid with the beehive hairdo and the voice like thunder, but she wasn’t with the others. Lyssa felt vaguely disappointed

“How do you know the mermaids, anyway?” Lyssa asked

Tiresias laughed. “You don’t think I tell futures full time, do you? I’m a regular performer at the Siren club. One of the girls…well, let’s say she
heard
about this little protest and we just had to come check it out.”

Tiresias patted Lyssa’s shoulder and leaned down to whisper into her ear. “You know, I think I know why we couldn’t talk to your mom that day.”

“Why?” Lyssa asked, breathless

“I think she’s alive in you.” And with that Tiresias strutted back into the crowd

Lyssa once again felt her throat squeeze. She turned back toward the house. She noticed a man hobbling across the porch, peeking in through the windows. It was the old, crazy man from the bus station in Washington! When he was done looking into the windows, he came across the yard to Lyssa, doing his strange, shuffling dance

“Never touch the moonshine on the patio,” he said

Lyssa found herself laughing. “I’ll try to remember that.”

The man winked at her and danced away. Lyssa saw the hobo from the train—Oscar—duck into the crowd. His ragged clothes had been replaced with a nice flannel shirt and crisp blue jeans, and his hair had been combed away from his face, but Lyssa would recognize that harmonica anywhere, sending its velvety music up to the heavens

A tiny, stick-thin man in a white tuxedo hurried up the steps to the front porch just then. Lyssa recognized him immediately as William, the Texas Talent Show announcer. In one hand William held a wireless microphone and, in the other, several pieces of a beat-up, silvery drum kit. There was a thin line of sweat on his forehead

“I’m going to have to ask you all to leave the stage now,” he said, addressing Lyssa and all the other people
on the porch in his squeaky, anxious voice. Lyssa grinned despite herself. He didn’t recognize her at all! “The performance is about to begin.”

As soon as he said the word
performance
, Lyssa got tingly all over, like every single hair on her arms was being pulled at with tiny pairs of tweezers. She followed the Lotus gang and Chloe off the porch, but she crowded in as close as she could to the makeshift stage. The grandmother cat leapt down from the porch swing and curled into a ball next to Lyssa’s elbow, purring contentedly.

Penn eased through the crowd next to her, holding two dripping ice cream cones

“I was looking for you,” she said, handing Lyssa an ice cream cone

“I was looking for you, too,” Lyssa said through a mouthful of ice cream. She took another big bite—banana and peanut butter, her favorite flavors

William straightened the lapel on his tux and raised the microphone to his mouth and started to speak

“Hello and welcome,” he said in a voice that was confident and deep—no longer squeaky or anxious at all. “Please gather round. The Texas Talent Show is about to begin.”