“I need to pay half in a sock full of pennies, half in a check that looks like it’s been dug out of a trash can,” I say.

She lowers her paperback until big eyes outlined dramatically with Cleopatra-style makeup peer at me from beneath thick bangs that have been chemically straightened and smoothed with a flat iron.

“Cousin,” she says brightly, her grin broad and slow as she pulls me into a hug over the counter. We nearly knock over a display of mermaid-topped writing pens near the register. She grasps my shoulders and pulls back to look me over. “See? This is why you should post more selfies. I had no idea your hair is longer than mine now. You should let me snip-snip it into something strange and beautiful,” she says, eyes twinkling like a mad scientist.

Evie cuts her own hair. She’s strange in a very good way and a million times cooler than me. And though her parents moved back and forth between Beauty and a couple hours away in Boston, causing us to miss some time growing up together, we’ve developed a long-distance friendship over the last few years.

She shoves me softly. “Can’t believe you’re here. Thought you’d be arriving after dark?”

“We downloaded an app to avoid police radar,” Mom explains, sliding around the counter to wind long arms around Evie. “You’ve never lived until you’ve been in a U-Haul going eighty in a fifty-five zone.”

“It was terrifying,” I inform my cousin. “Seriously thought the Pink Panther was going to disconnect and fly off.”

“How you and my mama are sisters is a complete mystery, Aunt Winona,” Evie says as she leans around Mom’s shoulder to peer out the front window. “Um, you know you’ll get ticketed if you park there without a permit. Massive fine.”

Mom groans. “Ugh. Beauty. Nothing changes—even the Nook’s counter stool still squeaks. What the hell am I doing back here again?”

“Saving up for palm trees and white, sandy beaches,” I remind her.

“And saving me,” Evie says. “Grandma Diedre left too many instructions—the store window has to be changed out to her exact list of boring books every month, because God forbid anything changes around here. And even though I’ve counted everything a hundred times, the safe has somehow been $6.66 short for two days, because the vengeful spirit of the town is smiting us for selling fiction with dirty words in a town settled by puritans and yachting fanatics.”

“Ah ha! Knew it!” Mom says. “I was just reminding Josie that this place is built over an actual portal to hell, and everyone who lives here is a minion of the dark lord.”

A creaking floorboard near the old printing press makes us all turn our heads at once. A boy about my age stares back at us—at me.