Cover

Dedication

For Darwin

Part One

A HOWL IN THE WOODS

Chapter 1

THINGS THAT DON’T SUCK, LIKE FRENCH TOAST AND WEEKENDS

I’m always the first one to wake up on Sundays because it is my favorite day, and I never want to lose any time on the weekend by spending it asleep. Weekends mean no school. No math. No waiting, friendless, at the bus stop morning after morning. Weekends mean I get to video chat with my best friend, Jude, who just moved to Utah, and I get to help my moms make a big Sunday-morning breakfast. Weekends mean I can pretend things are still easy, the way they were before I turned eleven a few months ago.

Today is no different.

I hop out of bed and stick my feet into my frog slippers—which ribbit if I step hard enough on the little buttons inside the stuffing-filled frog heads—and make my way downstairs to the kitchen. My slippers echo ribbitribbit, ribbitribbit with each step.

I start getting out all the pans and mixing bowls and ingredients we will need, lining them up on the kitchen counter: bread from the old wooden bread box; eggs, milk, and real butter—not the healthy fake butter that Mom hates but Mama always tries to get us to use instead—from the fridge; vanilla extract and cinnamon and powdered sugar from the cupboard where we keep the spices; and Mama’s vegetarian sausage patties from the freezer, because that is one food she won’t negotiate on.

Sunday-morning breakfast is a family tradition. The best part is dipping the bread into the egg batter and then slapping it onto the hot skillet and listening to it sizzle. French toast is my favorite food of all time. I would eat it for every meal of every day if my moms would let me. But they won’t. I’ve asked.

This is when Catniss Everdeen—my older brother Noah’s cat—comes wandering into the kitchen sniffing around to see if she can steal anything. He named her after his favorite book character. I thought we should name her Purrmione Granger, but Moms said it was Noah’s decision. Catniss is very good at creeping in and sneaking food when you’re not looking. Once she walked off with a whole package of “faken,” which is what Noah calls Mama’s veggie bacon, and no one even noticed.

My moms usually come downstairs and start making their morning coffee by the time Catniss makes her way to the kitchen. So I sit on one of the stools at the counter and wait.

And I wait.

Catniss loses interest when she sees that no cooking is happening, and she curls up into a tiny cat-ball inside of the square of sunlight that shines through the window onto the kitchen floor.

Still no Moms.