Mama’s talk of having a baby always unsettled her. Raven didn’t crave it, and that felt like betrayal when Mama wanted it so badly. To ask for a baby with Mama would be as difficult as school. Her heart and soul were in neither.

For the remainder of the school year, she mostly kept to herself. She found quiet places to eat away from everyone. Reece sometimes hunted her down and made her go back to the lunch table. She went without a fight, mostly because she liked to see Jackie. He was gradually recovering. And as he did, he was attentive to Raven when they were together. He didn’t seem to care anymore that it made Sadie angry. Raven wondered if her Asking had bonded him too much to her. It made her feel a little guilty.

In June, Huck and Reece graduated. Huck would study environmental engineering at the University of Washington in autumn. Reece was working to earn money for college and helping his mother. As always, Raven’s life with the boys was changing too fast. She couldn’t imagine school without Reece the next year. But she was glad her freshman year was over. For the first time, she wanted to go to Montana for the summer.

Summers in the tiny cabin had been the same for seven years. The eighth year, their life there changed in a bad way, like everything else recently. Mama had trouble climbing the mountain trails she’d been trekking since she was a girl. She breathed hard and had to slow down. But when Raven asked, she insisted she was fine.

By the end of summer, Mama admitted she felt different. But she refused to see a doctor or talk to Aunt Sondra about it. She said the earth spirits would heal her. Raven performed many Askings, begging the spirits to heal whatever was wrong with Mama’s heart. She knew it was the heart because Mama sometimes put her hand on her chest. In her Askings, Raven used anything she could find that was shaped like a human heart—a stone, a leaf, a bit of mollusk shell. And she asked with all her heart and soul.

But Mama was still sick when they returned to Washington. She was getting caught in the spirit world more often, the bad spells where Raven had to feed her and dress her like she was a baby. As Mama withdrew more and more into the spirit world, Raven felt as if her spirit were retreating with her.

She wished she didn’t have to go to school. She wanted to keep watch on Mama. She wanted to go to the woods and fields to ask her kin for help. But every day she got on the bus because Mama said she had to.

She sat at the lunch table with Jackie and his friends. Since Chris Williams and his poison had left, they treated her well again. What had happened at the funeral seemed forgotten. But Raven didn’t pay much attention to them. Usually she read a book to distract her from thinking about Mama.

What would she do if Mama went to the spirit world? How would she live? Maybe the bad people of Mama’s warnings would find her when she no longer had the protection of Mama’s powerful spirit.

Raven forced herself to focus on her book. The roar of her frantic thoughts and the chaotic lunchroom receded as she read the words.

“What are you reading?”

She looked up at Jackie. His multicolored eyes were beautiful. Sometimes she could hardly look into them. In a way, Jackie was a disease of the heart, an actual pain that made her want to press her hand on her chest the way Mama did.

She showed him the cover of the book.

“One Hundred Years of Solitude,” he said. “Sounds like your life.”

It was the kind of joke Reece would have made. But Jackie couldn’t sustain the humor. He immediately looked regretful.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” he said.

“Why not? It was funny.”

He glanced at the others at the table to make sure they weren’t listening. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said.

He whispered, “No one cares about that stuff Chris said last spring. It’s over.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you always so quiet now?”

She wished she could tell him. She wanted to feel the way she had the night she’d sneaked into his house. The warmth of his body beneath his blanket. His arm around her.

“Raven?”

“It’s nothing.”

His look said he didn’t believe her.

After school, he found her before she got on the bus. “Let me drive you home,” he said.

It was almost a command. His father’s death had changed him. He wouldn’t have been so bold last year. Maybe it was simply maturity. And the absence of a girlfriend. Over the summer, he’d broken up with Sadie.

“It should be okay, right?” he said. “Your mom let you drive home with Chris last year.”

“You’ve probably heard what happened the last time he drove me home.”

“Yeah, the gun.”

“Are you sure you’re up for that?”

He looked worried. “Do you think she’ll—”

“I’m joking. Let’s go.”

He’d taken over the old car Huck used to drive. Raven was aware of the students in the parking lot watching her get in his car, but she didn’t waste her thoughts on them. She now knew the consequences of caring about “hive mind,” as Reece called it. She wouldn’t get stung again.

“So how’ve you been?” he asked. “I never get a chance to talk to you alone these days.”

“We haven’t really talked alone since I was seven and you were eight.”