Cover

Dedication

For Nick

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Epigraph

I like this place,

And willingly could waste my time in it.

Celia, As You Like It, William Shakespeare

What was that?

The Baker’s Wife, Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim

We’re leaving here on the warm updraft. This is our moment for setting forth. We are aeronauts and we are going out into the world to make webs for ourselves.

Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White

WELCOME TO THE LILY PAD,
or A Brief Introduction to Power Jam

Touchstone warned us a thousand times that the cabin was not very nice. It was old, for one thing, and not terribly spacious, for another. Persistently damp, with sluggish plumbing and a total lack of insulation, though hopefully that would be less of a problem in the summer. There was also the matter of his uncle’s unusual taste, plus the temperamental oven—cakes came out soupy in the middle, roasted vegetables blackened. Sometimes, for seemingly no reason at all, the house would lose power for a few days, and everything would have to be done by candlelight.

“Sounds like hell on earth,” said Ros on the drive up there. “I’m so glad I agreed to come.”

“It’s romantic,” I insisted. What did I care about an oven? I was about to spend the summer with my two best friends, just us, and while I enjoyed an occasional bake, I was fairly confident I could survive eleven weeks without making a pie.

“One year, my mom pulled a sock out of the dryer, and it turned out to be a bat,” Touchstone said, leaning between the two of us like a back-seat gargoyle.

We were nearly there by that point—I was driving down a bumpy, pitted, dead-end road that I wouldn’t have trusted as an actual thoroughfare had Touchstone not promised me it was. We were only two and a half hours from home, though the drive had felt longer, the roads through the forested hills twisty and slow going. And the drive seemed even longer now that Touchstone had launched into great detail about the length and girth of the needle required for a rabies shot.

“This is up your alley, Celia! Disaster preparedness!”

“I know, but please don’t say girth,” I said.

“Or anything else vaguely phallic,” Ros said.

“Or anything else to make us regret coming,” I said.

“Look, I’m just trying to manage expectations,” said Touchstone. “I don’t want anyone thinking we’re going somewhere fancy and magical. I don’t want anyone thinking this is some kind of charming picnic or enchanted wonderland. I don’t want anyone thinking—oh, look, we’re here.”

My jaw full-on dropped. Ros snatched me by the forearm before I’d put the car in park.

“Holy shit,” they said.

“It’s a fairy tale,” I agreed.