Louis’s daughter, Francis, was well known for her literally hell-raising ways. In despair, her parents sent her away to join the first class of their friend Albert Ellingham’s new academy in the hills of Vermont. Unfortunately, her stay there was concurrent with the infamous Ellingham kidnapping, and she returned home. The Crane family, it seemed, attracted disaster.

“What do you mean, ‘literally’ hell-raising ways?” Stevie said aloud. “She literally raised hell? What, is she summoning demons?”

There were other annoying things, like the fact that the author said “hills of Vermont” and not “mountains.” So it made the claim that Francis and her family attracted disaster seem a little dubious. But still, this was an intriguing paragraph. It was also the only one that mentioned Francis.

Stevie found the author’s name, Ann Abbott, and read down the list of her other works (Jell-O! The Wobble that America Loves, Salad Days: How Salad Became Popular). Another few minutes of poking around produced an email address. Stevie wrote her an email and asked her if she had any information about what became of Francis. She had just sent it when there was a knock at her door, and Janelle poked her head in.

“What are you up to?” she asked.

Stevie glanced up at the corner of her screen and realized that she had been scouring the internet for Francis Crane for over three hours. It was almost six thirty.

“Work,” she said, shutting her computer. “Lots to catch up on.”

Janelle stepped into the room. The light smell of lemons trailed in with her.

“You’re wearing your lemons,” Stevie said. “For luck?”

“I’m just happy you’re back,” Janelle said, sitting on the edge of Stevie’s bed. “When I’m happy, for luck. I just love lemons. Here. I made you something.”

She handed Stevie a small plastic object, about the size of a deck of cards, with two wheels.

“It’s a self-balancing robot,” she said. “You can attach your phone to it. I was playing around with some spare parts, and working on inertial measurement units, and I just wanted to make you something, so . . .”

She shrugged happily as Stevie accepted her friendship robot.

“How’s your project going?” Stevie asked.

“I’m glad you asked. Do you want to see specs?”

Janelle bounced off the bed and returned a minute later with her laptop open. She showed Stevie several videos of machines rolling around and swinging things. She had the same intensity that Stevie had when she was talking about murders, except this was pipes and motors and things that spun and moved. All of this was interspersed with a detailed analysis of Janelle’s favorite K-drama, Love Lessons with Tofu. Janelle’s mind was a busy but perfectly organized place, running like one of her impossible machines. TV show plots ran alongside mathematical formulas, which blended seamlessly into smoky-eye tutorials, which catapulted her into romance before dropping her gently back into a bed of physics. And also, she answered every single one of her texts within a minute.

She did not, however, know about crime, and she would probably not be interested in what Stevie had just discovered (or not discovered, really) about someone who was related to someone else who made flour.

Janelle’s phone buzzed, and she glanced down at it.

“Everyone’s going over to the yurt,” she said. “Vi is on their way over.”

“You and Vi seem so happy.”

Janelle did a tiny squee. It was an actual squee, a real one. A pip of joy.

“I’m trying to learn a little Korean,” Janelle said, “but languages aren’t really my thing. Vi’s fluent in Korean and Japanese, and they thought I’d like to learn Korean the most. Do you want to go over? Let’s get Nate and go over.”

Before Ellingham, yurts had not been a part of Stevie’s life. She had never even heard of them. When she first saw the massive, circular tent structure, it reminded her of a circus, both inside and out. Outside, all big top. Inside, it was a mass of colorful rugs, beanbags, futons, and cushions. It was the place where people gathered to hang out, play games, read, do work. It was a strange structure—it had no windows, and the inside was a skeleton of sunburst beams that supported the ceiling and a lattice that held up the walls. There was a woodburning stove in the middle that kept it all toasty, and lights and colorful decorations hung from the ceiling.

Janelle and Vi sat propped up back-to-back on the floor. Nate was sitting with them, though his attention was on a game on his tablet. The school was abuzz with the story of the squirrels. It seemed common knowledge that it was David’s doing, and he had not yet returned from his trip to the Great House. Back in Pittsburgh, if someone had infiltrated the library with fifty squirrels, that person would have been hailed as a hero. But Ellingham was full of library lovers, and there was the feeling in the air that this was, perhaps, a bridge too far. You could be naked, you could scream and hang out on the roof, but you do not mess with the place with the books.

“Nothing else got him kicked out,” Nate mumbled as the topic floated up in their group.

“If they can prove it,” Vi said. “I guess they have footage. They have footage of everything, because now we live in a surveillance state.”

Janelle rolled her eyes just a tiny, tiny bit.

“Seriously,” Vi said. “People are saying those cameras we got? They’re from someone on the outside. The school didn’t want them.”

“Then who bought them?” Janelle said.

“I don’t know. It’s private, though. I know you think I’m a paranoid protestor, but it’s true.”

Stevie bit her lower lip. It appeared that no one knew about Edward King’s connection to the school. This meant that the helicopter had not been seen up close. Stevie felt like she was sitting on a secret—palpably. Like it was an egg. If she moved, it would crack open.

“I don’t know,” Janelle said. “I get the problem, but I don’t hate the cameras. There are . . . things around. Bears and moose . . .”

“No moose,” Stevie said. “The moose is a lie.”

“I’m just saying that considering everything that happened, cameras aren’t completely the worst idea.”

“All I’m saying,” Vi said, steering the topic back to even ground, “is they must have seen him do it.”

A new person came up to where they were sitting. He was tall. Actually, he was by far the tallest student at Ellingham, and maybe the tallest Stevie had ever seen. She practiced measuring people by height, as that was a useful observational skill. Witnesses routinely got heights wrong. The best way to note a height was to measure it against something that didn’t move. In this case, this person was up to a large knot in the wood of the latticework that held up the yurt wall. Based on her other observations, this probably put the guy at six foot four, maybe five. He had a full build, like a football player, or like how Stevie guessed football players were built. (They existed at her old school, but they were not present for Stevie. She didn’t care enough to make note of them. Stevie hated football, and she specifically hated the car commercials that were in football, with the meaningless slogans and aggressively masculine messages about how important it was for Americans to drive up rocks and treat every trip to the store or a soccer game like a single-person invasion. Maybe she was overthinking this.)

This person probably did not play football. He was fiercely pale—not like Nate, who had a gentle, bookish gray tone. This was a kind of paper-white, contrasted sharply by jet-black, obviously dyed hair. He had purple cat-eye contacts in, wore a Slipknot T-shirt, and had spiked black leather cuffs on both wrists.

“Hi,” he said softly to Stevie. “I’m Mudge. I don’t think we met before, but Pix asked me to get you up to speed on anatomy stuff. Do you want a Pringle?”

His voice was so soothing, he sounded like someone who might be on a recording or one of the meditation apps Stevie used when she had anxiety.

“I’m okay,” Stevie said.

Nate peered up from his tablet and he seemed to regard Mudge as some kind of fellow traveler.

“Yeah, I want a Pringle,” Nate said.

The can of Pringles was extended, and Mudge entered the group. To Stevie’s surprise, he and Nate immediately started talking about a board game. Stevie was adrift in her small group, alone. Then she felt them. The eyes of Germaine Batt. They were watching her from across the room.

“I’ll be right back,” she told the others.

Germaine Batt was petite, just touching five feet. She had long, straight hair that today she pulled back in a bun. Like Stevie, she dressed for the job she wanted to have—she wore a black blazer with a white T-shirt under it, as if she might be called to be a talking head on the news at any time. She was sitting by herself on a pouf—not in the corner, as yurts have no corners—but tucked off into a nook with some screens and a coffee table. She sat alone, bent over her laptop. She was typing away when Stevie approached, but there was no pretense. They both knew they had been staring each other down.

“Welcome back,” Germaine said. Her voice had a high register, and her words a hard, fast clip. She spoke like she typed.