“Careful. Sometimes I used to do it backward, where Z was 1.”

Lena and I sat in the middle of the circle of the books, moving from book to book, while my father banged on the door outside. I ignored him, just like he had been ignoring me. I wasn’t going to answer to him, or give him an explanation. Let him see how it felt for a change.

“3, 12, 1, 9, 13…”

“Ethan! What are you doin’ in there? What was all that racket?”

“25, 15, 21, 18, 19, 5, 12, 6.”

I looked at Lena, and held out the paper. I was already a step ahead. “I think—it’s meant for you.”

It was as clear as if my mom was standing in the study, telling us in her own words, with her own voice.

CLAIMYOURSELF

It was a message for Lena.

My mom was there, in some form, in some sense, in some universe. My mom was still my mom, even if she only lived in books and door locks and the smell of fried tomatoes and old paper.

She lived.

When I finally opened the door, my dad was standing there in his bathrobe. He stared past me, into the study, where the pages of his imaginary novel were scattered all over the floor and the painting of Ethan Carter Wate was resting against the sofa, uncovered.

“Ethan, I—”

“What? Were going to tell me that you’ve been locked in your study for months doing this?” I held up one of the crumpled pages in my hand.

He looked down at the floor. My dad may have been crazy, but he was still sane enough to know that I had figured out the truth. Lena sat down on the sofa, looking uncomfortable.

“Why? That’s all I want to know. Was there ever a book or were you just trying to avoid me?”

My dad raised his head slowly, his eyes tired and bloodshot. He looked old, like life had worn him down one disappointment at a time. “I just wanted to be close to her. When I’m in there, with her books and her things, it feels like she isn’t really gone. I can still smell her. Fried tomatoes…” His voice trailed off, as if he was lost in his own mind again and the rare moment of clarity was gone.

He walked past me, back into the study, and bent down to pick up one of the pages covered with circles. His hand was shaking. “I was tryin’ to write.” He looked over at my mom’s chair. “I just don’t know what to write anymore.”

It wasn’t about me. It had never been about me. It was about my mom. A few hours ago I had felt the same way in the library, sitting among her things, trying to feel her there with me. But now I knew she wasn’t gone, and everything was different. My dad didn’t know. She wasn’t unlocking doors for him and leaving him messages. He didn’t even have that.

The next week, on Christmas Eve, the weathered and warped cardboard town didn’t seem so small. The lopsided steeple stayed on the church, and the farmhouse even stood up by itself, if you set it just right. The white glitter glue sparkled and the same old piece of cotton snow secured the town, constant as time.

I lay on my stomach on the floor, with my head tucked under the lowest branches of the fat white pine, just as I always had. The blue-green needles scratched my neck as I carefully pushed a string of tiny white lights, one by one, into the circular holes in the back of the broken village. I sat back to take a look, the soft white light turning colors through the painted paper windows of the town. We never found the people, and the tin cars and animals were still gone. The town was empty, but for the first time it didn’t seem deserted, and I didn’t feel alone.

As I sat there, listening to Amma’s pencil scratching, and my dad’s scratchy old holiday record, something caught my eye. It was small and dark, and snagged in a fold, between layers of the cotton snow. It was a star, about the size of a penny, painted silver and gold, and surrounded by a twisted halo made of what looked like a paper clip. It was from the town’s pipe-cleaner Christmas tree, which we hadn’t been able to find in years. My mom had made it in school, as a little girl in Savannah.

I put it in my pocket. I’d give it to Lena next time I saw her, for her charm necklace, for safekeeping. So it didn’t get lost again. So I didn’t get lost again.

My mom would have liked that. Would like that. Just like she would have liked Lena—or maybe even, did.

Claim yourself.

The answer had been in front of us, all along. It was just locked away with all the books in my father’s study, stuck between the pages of my mother’s cookbook.

Snagged a little in the dusty snow.

1.12

Promise

There was something in the air. Usually, when you heard that, there wasn’t really something in the air. But the closer it got to Lena’s birthday, the more I had to wonder. When we came back from winter break, the halls had been tagged with spray paint, covering the lockers and walls. Only it wasn’t the usual graffiti; the words didn’t even look like English. You wouldn’t have thought they were words at all, unless you had seen The Book of Moons.

A week later, every window in our English classroom was busted out. Again, it could have been the wind, except there wasn’t even a breeze. How could the wind target a single classroom, anyway?

Now that I wasn’t playing basketball, I had to take P.E. for the rest of the year, by far the worst class at Jackson. After an hour of timed sprints and rope burn from climbing a knotted rope to the gym ceiling, I got back to my locker to find the door open and my papers scattered all over the hall. My backpack was gone. Though Link found it a few hours later, dumped in a trashcan outside the gym, I had learned my lesson. Jackson High was no place for The Book of Moons.