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“My name is Lyssa,” she said, finally. “And I’m—I’m going on an adventure.”

If the teenagers were impressed, none of them showed it. The boy with the curly hair yawned

“What kinda adventure?” he asked

Lyssa frowned, unsure of how to answer his question. “Are there different kinds?”

A few of the teenagers snickered. The boy with the curly hair turned to Regina and rolled his eyes

“
Of course
there are different kinds of adventures,” he said, turning back to Lyssa. “Three, to be precise. There are air adventures, land adventures, and water adventures. Jeez, don’t you ever watch
Lotus Island
?”

“Lotus
what
?” Lyssa asked.

“You never heard of
Lotus Island
?” Regina asked, motioning to the program flickering on the television towers. She laughed and shook her head in amazement. “You must live in, like, a cave or something.”

Lyssa stopped herself from pointing out that if anyone lived in a cave, it was Regina. The teenagers’ lair had a dirt floor and rocky walls—it looked just like the caves outside of Austin Lyssa and her mom used to visit in the summers.

Demo jumped in. “
Lotus Island
is this reality show where they put people together on an island. They all compete to see who can do the craziest stuff.”

“In this episode, people dove off cliffs and zip-lined through the trees and went skydiving,” Regina said. “It’s intense. If you don’t do something dangerous enough, you get voted off the island and have to go home.”

“So what kind of adventure are you going on?” the
curly-haired boy asked again. Lyssa thought she heard a bit of challenge in his voice

“Um. A land adventure, I guess. Or maybe the air one?” she started. “Earlier today I—I jumped off a cliff with my scooter. But it could be the water one, too, because I rode through the storm to get here, and the rain was so bad, it was almost a monsoon. Oh, and I fought off a wildcat. That’s a land adventure, right?”

Okay, maybe the black cat wasn’t
exactly
a wildcat—but it was still pretty scary. Regina raised an eyebrow.

“Was the wildcat missing half its whiskers?”

Lyssa nodded, surprised. “That’s it.”

“You fought Old Marty?” Demo said, and Lyssa thought he looked impressed. “She lives around here. You know she lost those whiskers in a fight with a bulldog?”

“A fight she
won
,” Regina reminded him. “That was Mr. Haddy’s bulldog, remember? He
still
walks with a limp. That cat is vicious.”

“Go on.” The curly-haired boy nodded at Lyssa. He was no longer rolling his eyes or snickering. In fact, he was leaning forward in his chair, and he looked pretty interested in her story. “Start at the beginning.”

As Lyssa talked about finding the paper airplane, and deciding to run away from home, and the locked bus depot, the teens grew very quiet. A few of them scooted
closer to her, and they all laughed in just the right spots. When Lyssa finished—describing how she tumbled over the side of the dock—a few of them actually applauded

“You’re, like, better than TV,” the curly-haired boy said

Lyssa beamed. For the first time that night, she forgot, for a moment, about her plan to make it all the way down to Texas. She could picture herself curled up in one of the old armchairs, sipping a juice box delivered to her by one of the electronic cars, wrapped up and warm in a blanket, telling her stories over and over. She could be barefoot all day long and no one would say a word about school

“Tell it again!” Regina said, nearly bouncing up and down in her seat. “How, exactly, did you get past Old Marty?”

“Reg, come on, the girl’s tired,” Demo said, winking at Lyssa. “Let’s get her some blankets and towels and stuff.”

Regina gasped, shooting a worried look over at the television. “But…commercial break’s almost over.”

“Never mind,” Demo muttered. Putting a hand on Lyssa’s shoulder, he said, “Come with me.”

He led her over to the cots, where he grabbed some blankets and towels and handed them over. He even dug half a sandwich and an orange out of a blue cooler. Lyssa used one of the towels to wipe the rainwater from her face. She finished drying her hair and, just as she was looking around for somewhere to put her damp towel, a little
remote-controlled truck drove up next to her and nudged her leg. She let her towel drop onto the truck and watched as it zoomed off. This place was like some sort of new age hotel. Even at home, Lyssa’d had to put her towel in the hamper on her own. But these kids had rigged things so that they never had to work. All they did was hang out and have fun. No wonder they wanted to stay here forever.

“So that Talent Show thing,” Demo said. “What’s that all about? Do you perform?”

Lyssa was surprised—the talent show had been such a small part of her story. Everyone else had been more interested in the part where she jumped off cliffs and tried to break onto boats. She nodded, tugging at her sleeves. She didn’t want to admit her stage fright

“That’s cool,” Demo said. “Me too. I mean, I want to be.”

“Really?” Lyssa asked. “You want to be a singer?”

“Actually, I’ve got my own style.” His face lit up. “Wanna see?”

Lyssa nodded, sitting down at the edge of a cot. Demo looked a little sheepish as he stood up in front of her

“All right,” he said. “No laughing.”

He hunched over a little, raising his hands to his face. Then he started to spit and hum, making noises into his hands that sounded like nothing Lyssa had ever heard before. It was as though he were an instrument: the sounds
he made were crashing cymbals and drums and staticky speakers. As he hummed into his hands, he started to move, dancing in a way that was jerky and robotic at times and smooth and liquid feeling at others

Lyssa watched in awe. It was such a different type of music from what she was used to. When he was done, she started clapping

“Like it?” Demo asked

“I…” Lyssa paused, not sure how to express how
much
she’d liked it. She’d never heard someone make music that way before. “It was
amazing
. Your mouth sounded like a garbage disposal!”

Demo narrowed his eyes. “Is that good?”

“Yes. No, I mean, it was like a machine or something.” Lyssa felt her cheeks redden. No one wanted to be told they sounded like a garbage disposal. “It was like you had a drum set in your mouth, I mean.”

“Thanks,” Demo said, a grin spreading across his face. “I practice a lot. Sometimes I hit the street corners in Seattle and put out a hat, ask for donations. I make okay money.”

“Demo, will you shut it?” Regina called from the other side of the room. “The show’s back on.”

Demo stuck out his tongue at Regina. Then he led Lyssa back over to the rest of the group, introducing everyone in the “Lotus Crew,” as they called themselves. She waved hi
and found a comfy armchair to curl up in with her blanket and dinner. The television show—
Lotus Island
—wasn’t half bad. And during all of the commercials, everyone turned their chairs around to face her, making her tell stories of her adventures again. After she’d told them all about escaping from Michael’s house, she moved backward in time and described the Athena concert she’d been to with her mom—how amazing it was to be one of the last lucky people who’d seen Athena perform.

“You remind me of her,” Regina said after Lyssa finished. “A little bit.”

Lyssa opened and closed her mouth, so shocked that, for a moment, she couldn’t think of a thing to say. “I do?”

“Yeah. I watched this interview last week with this music historian, and he’s like an expert on Athena, right? He said he spotted her in Egypt, riding around on the back of a camel. She’s an adrenaline junkie! That’s why she disappeared. Music just didn’t get her heart pumping anymore, so she had to find her kicks somewhere else.”

“I thought she got abducted by aliens or something?” the curly-haired boy muttered

“Don’t be an idiot. She just left it all behind. Sick of the spotlight.” Demo shook his head, but there was a tinge of awe in his voice. “Can you imagine walking away from all that money?”

Lyssa thought about telling him about one of the theories she’d read on a website—that someone close to Athena had died and that grief had made it impossible for the singer to go on—but it made her think too much about her own mom, so she decided not to. Instead, she said, “I was there—at her last concert before she disappeared.”

Regina’s eyes grew wide. “Shut up.”

“My mom took me,” Lyssa added. “We did lots of cool stuff like that.”

She started telling them the stories about adventures she used to have with her mom: how they’d sneak into department stores in the middle of the day and try on all the hats and ties in the men’s department, or set up a tent in the living room on rainy days and pretend they were camping in the wilderness

In exchange, the Lotus Crew told Lyssa about how they all found each other. Demo explained that he used to put up posters with secret codes written into them all over town so that any kid who was lost or scared or alone could find them if he or she really needed to. As long as a kid could figure out the code, he’d know where to go to find the crew. It didn’t matter if he was a runway or an orphan or if he just needed a place to hang out when things at home were bad. The crew was there for him

“Weren’t you ever worried that grown-ups would
figure out the code?” Lyssa asked. Demo just shook his head

“Grown-ups don’t pay enough attention,” he said with a smirk

“But all this stuff!” Lyssa continued. She had so many questions that she could hardly keep quiet. She felt like a pot bubbling over with water. “How did you get it?”

“You’d be amazed at what people will throw away,” Demo said. “We all go Dumpster diving after dark. And Regina is a whiz with anything electronic—she’s the one who rigged all these cars and set up the televisions and everything.”

Regina opened her mouth to say something, but then the show started up again and she turned toward it immediately and motioned for quiet. Demo leaned in next to Lyssa, lowering his voice so it would be barely heard over the TV.

“You can stay here, you know,” he said. “If you promise not to tell anyone where we are, you can stay for as long as you like. Just because you’d be the shortest, though, doesn’t mean you wouldn’t have to pull your weight.”

“I—I have to think about it.”

But excitement was already rising in Lyssa’s chest. Stay with the Lotus Crew? It’d be like having a whole new family again, like being home with her mom and Penn and
the Texas Talent Show. She wrapped her blanket tightly around her and looked past the edge of the dock. The clouds parted to reveal a beautiful, black sky covered in stars. Something shot across the sky—a shooting star.

Lyssa glanced around to see whether anyone else had noticed, but the Lotus Crew were all focused on their televisions

Lyssa’s throat caught. Her mom would have cared way more about shooting stars than about a television show

Even surrounded by new friends, Lyssa suddenly felt very alone. She wanted to call Penn, tell her all about the crazy runaways she’d ended up with. But it was getting late and Penn’s parents didn’t like for her to get calls after nine on weeknights

Lyssa finally dug through her backpack, pulling out her journal for school

Lyssa paused and looked back up. Another shooting star streaked across the sky, then another and another, until the whole sky was glowing with light. It looked like
the sky was on fire, like it was falling all around her. Lyssa watched the stars, feeling guilty

Of course she couldn’t stay with the Lotus gang. She had to get to Texas. She had to find her mom. She had to do whatever she could to save her home

Fear and excitement clutching her heart, Lyssa watched the shooting stars light up the sky. It hurt to think about leaving the Lotus Crew, but she knew it’d be worth it once she reached Texas and climbed that dogwood tree in her front yard. Her mother would be waiting to guide her and to fill her with her magic, and Lyssa would know what to do about the protest and her home and Michael and school and everything. All she had to do was get there

Clenching her eyes shut, she made the same wish over and over

Let me reach Austin in time to save my house. Let me go home.

Lyssa bunched her backpack up, being careful not to ruin her University of Washington patch, and shoved it beneath her head as a makeshift pillow. She tried to get comfortable, but something hard and sharp protruded from the bottom of the bag and kept sticking her. Frowning, Lyssa pulled the backpack open and started looking through the random collection of items that had accumulated there over the months

Surrounded by old candy wrappers and pencil nubs
were two demo CDs bound together with a rubber band. When Michael had first given her the voice-recording software, she was sure she’d never use it. But she ended up playing around with it one day when she was bored and, actually, it was a lot of fun to listen to her voice on the computer and use all the editing tools to make it sound professional. She had made the demo CDs before realizing she had no one to give them to. Ever since then they’d stayed at the bottom of her backpack, as useless, Lyssa thought, as her own voice

She picked at the rubber band that bound the CDs together, then shoved them to the very bottom of her backpack so they wouldn’t poke her. As she started to fall asleep, she drowsily thought she saw shooting stars dancing inside her eyelids. But then the stars got closer and closer and Lyssa realized they weren’t stars at all—they were headlights.

The Texas Talent Show van tore past her and…if she squinted…she thought she could see her mom staring out at her from its back window, sticking out her tongue