A car backing out of a driveway honked, startling her. Then she wondered about herself—something she was doing a lot lately. She wondered about her own place in the world. What would it be? Who would she become? Would she stay in Madison, Wisconsin, all her life? Or would she travel widely and move far away?

She wondered why she, Amelia Epiphany Albright, often felt so unlike everyone else. She wondered when her real life—the one she’d been waiting for—would finally begin.

It was 1999. Where would she be in a year? In ten? In less than nine months it would be 2000. All the numbers in the year would be changing. That seemed important to Amelia. Maybe, soon, something important will happen to me, she thought.

She wondered if knowing her mother would have provided answers to all that was unsolved within her. And then she wondered if her mother had had knobby knees, too.

All of it—life, the world, her knees—was so strange if you thought about it long enough. And whenever she felt like she understood even a tiny piece of the world, the understanding disappeared right away like a light shutting off.

A sudden gust of steely wind brought her attention back to the present. She considered what animal she might make today. And, once again, she concentrated on her walk, picking up her pace, doing a combination trot-shuffle the rest of the way.

4 • The Nephew

Amelia sensed that something was different the minute she opened the door. She walked through the front of the clay studio—the part that was a gallery—and straight back to the workroom. She was right—something was different. Louise Kirkwood, the owner, was nowhere in sight, and sitting in Amelia’s favorite place at the table in the far corner was a boy.

The boy was wearing headphones. He was hunched over a sketchbook, but he wasn’t drawing. He was drumming out a rhythm with a pencil, eyes closed, one pinkie hooked in the corner of his mouth, his head jerking about to the beat of whatever he was listening to. His hair was a thick dark tumble. His curls bounced as he moved.

Seeing someone in her spot caused a dropping sensation in Amelia’s chest. From across the room she cleared her throat.

No response.

She came closer, tugging the collar of her jacket.

Nothing.

She tucked a strand of her long gingery hair behind her ear and bit her lower lip. She snapped the rubber band around her wrist.

When the boy finally saw her, he froze, giving her a long look. Then he yanked off the headphones and stood, scraping his chair on the floor. “You must be Amelia,” he said, blushing. He blinked as if he were waking from a nap or emerging from water. “My aunt, Louise, said you might be coming.”

Besides his impressive hair, Amelia took note of his pale, perfect skin and his blue, blue eyes. The other thing that caught her attention was his shirt: a gray T-shirt with a big white wedding cake on it. There was something written on the cake, but she couldn’t make out the letters, and she didn’t want to stare.