That didn’t matter now. The future was here, up in the misty mountains.

“So Janelle is interested in what again?” her mother asked.

“Engineering,” Stevie said. “She makes things. Machines, devices.”

A skeptical silence followed.

“And that Nate boy is a writer?” her mother said.

“The Nate boy is a writer,” Stevie confirmed.

These were the two other first years known to live in Stevie’s new dorm. They didn’t tell you about the second years. Again, this was information that had circulated around the Bell kitchen table for weeks—Janelle Franklin was from Chicago. She was a National Student Spokesperson for GROWING STEMS, a program that encouraged young girls of color to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Stevie had gotten a lot of background: how Janelle had been caught (successfully) repairing the toaster oven when she was six years old. Stevie knew all of Janelle’s likes: making machines and gadgets, soldering and welding, curating her Pinterest boards of organizational techniques, girls with glasses, YA novels, coffee, cats, and pretty much any television show.

Stevie and Janelle were already in regular text communication. So that was good. Friend one.

The other first year in Minerva was Nate Fisher. Nate said less and never replied to texts, but there was more to know about him. Nate published a book called The Moonbright Cycles when he was fourteen—seven hundred pages of epic fantasy written over the course of a few months, first published online and then in book form. Moonbright book two was supposedly in the works.

They were the kind of people Ellingham Academy accepted.

“They sound like very impressive people,” her dad said. “And you are too. We’re proud. You know that.”

Stevie read the code in this sentence. Much as we love you, we have no idea why you have been accepted into this school, strange child of ours.

The entire summer had been like this, this weird mix of voiced pride and unvoiced doubt, underpinned by confusion about how this series of events had happened at all. When she had first done it, Stevie’s parents didn’t know she had applied to Ellingham at all. Ellingham Academy wasn’t the kind of place people like the Bells went to. For almost a century, the school had been home to creative geniuses, radical thinkers, and innovators. Ellingham had no application, no list of requirements, no instructions other than, “If you would like to be considered for Ellingham Academy, please get in touch.”

That was it.

One simple sentence that drove every high-flying student frantic. What did they want? What were they looking for? This was like a riddle from a fantasy story or fairy tale—something the wizard makes you do before you are allowed into the Cave of Secrets. Applications were supposed to be rigid lists of requirements and test scores and essays and recommendations and maybe a blood sample and a few bars from a popular musical. Not Ellingham. Just knock on the door. Just knock on the door in the special, correct way they would not describe. You just had to get in touch with something. They looked for a spark. If they saw such a spark in you, you could be one of the fifty students they took each year. The program was only two years long, just the junior and senior years of high school. There were no tuition fees. If you got in, it was free. You just had to get in.

The coach veered into the exit lane and pulled into another rest stop, where one other family stood in wait. A girl and her parents studied their phones. The girl was extremely petite, with dark, long hair.

“She has nice hair,” Stevie’s mom said.

Though she was talking about someone else, this was a reference to Stevie’s hair, which Stevie had cut off herself in the bathroom in the early spring in a burst of self-renewal. Her mother had cried when she saw Stevie’s blond hair in the sink and had taken her to a hairdresser to get it trimmed and shaped. The hair had been a major point of contention, so much so that at one point her parents said she would not be allowed to go to Ellingham as a punishment—but they backed down in the end. The threat had been made in high emotion. Her mother had been very attached to Stevie’s hair, which on some level was why it had to go. Mostly, though, Stevie just thought that it would look better short.

It did. The pixie cut suited her, and it was easy to care for. There were problems when she dyed it pink, and blue, and pink and blue. But now it was back to normal, dusty blond and short.

The girl’s bags were loaded into the bottom of the coach, and she and her family got in. The three of them were all dark haired and studious-looking, with large eyes framed by glasses. They looked like a family of owls. Polite, mumbled hellos were exchanged, and the girl and her family took their seats behind the Bells. Stevie recognized the girl from the first-year guide, but didn’t remember her name.

Her mom gave her a nudge, which Stevie tried to ignore. The girl was again looking at her phone.

“Stevie.”

Stevie took a long breath through her nose. This was going to require leaning over her mom and calling out to the girl, who was a row behind on the opposite side. Awkward. But she was going to have to do it.

“Hey,” Stevie said.

The girl looked up.

“Hey?” she said.

“I’m Stevie Bell.”

The girl blinked slowly, logging this information.

“Germaine Batt,” she said.

Nothing else was offered. Stevie started to lean back, feeling like this had been a good effort all around, but her mom nudged her again.

“Make friends,” she whispered.

Few words are more chilling when put together than make friends. The command to pair bond sent ice water through Stevie’s veins. She wanted falling rocks. But she knew what would happen if she didn’t do the talking—her parents would. And if her parents started, anything could happen.

“Did you come far?” Stevie asked.

“No,” Germaine said, looking up from her phone.

“We came from Pittsburgh.”

“Oh,” Germaine said.

Stevie leaned back, looked at her mom, and shrugged. She couldn’t make Germaine talk. Her mom gave her a well, you tried look. Points for effort.

The coach juddered as it turned off the highway, onto a rockier, smaller road dotted with stores and farms and signs for skiing, glassblowing, and maple syrup candy. Then there were fewer buildings and more stretches of farmland with nothing but old red trucks and the occasional horse.

Up and up into the woods.

Out of nowhere, the coach made a sharp turn into an opening in the trees, jerking Stevie to the side and almost tipping her out of her seat. Close to the ground, there was a small maroon sign with gold letters: the Ellingham Academy entrance. It was so inconspicuous that it seemed like the school was deliberately hiding.

The road they were now on was barely a road. It would be charitable to call it a path. What it was, in reality, was an artificial tear in the landscape—a meandering scar in the forest. At first, it went down, very fast, pitching toward one of the streams that bounded the property. At the base, there was a construction that you could laughingly refer to as a bridge that appeared to be made of wood, rope, and dreams. The sides were about a foot high and it looked like it would collapse if anything heavier than a steak dinner crossed it.

The coach barreled over it. The bridge shook violently, rumbling Stevie’s seat.