I’ve been waiting for Edie to get her revenge for yesterday, but she hasn’t so much as looked my way all day.

They head straight, toward the cafeteria, and I turn right to the library as Edie tells Fina to sit with them at lunch. I guess being from California makes you automatically cool. Meanwhile, it’s halfway through the second day of school, and I still haven’t made any friends.

The library is empty besides two kids sitting at the computers. I take a table in the back and pull out the journal, followed by my lunch. I try to nibble quietly at my carrot sticks (which, it turns out, is pretty much impossible) as my fingers trace the shape of the words, each spike and dip of the pen forming its own question.

Who wrote them? Who knows about the Spinney? Hadn’t Gram told me never to tell anyone else about it? And how could anyone know about the journal inside the sycamore hollow, and how Gram and I took turns writing our stories there?

For a wild minute yesterday, I thought Gram must have found some way to write to me from beyond the grave.

But then I flipped back and saw that the handwriting didn’t match hers at all. It looks kind of familiar, but it’s not Mom’s or Dad’s or Lily’s, either, unless one of them was trying to disguise their handwriting so I wouldn’t be able to recognize it.

I can’t really see any of them writing this chapter, though. Mom hates the woods. No offense to Dad, but he could never write this. He doesn’t even like to read. Gram told me that as a little boy, he was never interested in hearing fairy tales or reading books together like she and I did. Not even The World at the End of the Tunnel. And Lily . . . well, Lily just doesn’t care enough about me to do something like this.

But there is something about the chapter that feels so familiar. Probably because it’s exactly the kind of thing Gram would have written. And maybe that’s the reason that I’m not creeped out by it.

Because it feels like, for the first time since she died, I’ve gotten a tiny piece of her back.

It feels a little bit like magic.

“Hey,” says a voice.

My head snaps up as I slam the journal closed.

Fina is standing beside my table, fidgeting with her backpack straps.

“Oh, hi,” I say, voice lifting with surprise.

“Can I sit with you?” she asks.

I glance behind her. “I thought you went to sit with Edie.”

Fina takes this as an invitation to sit and slides into the chair beside me, dropping her backpack on the floor. “No,” she says. Then she leans in closer. “I don’t think I like her very much, actually.”