“Fine. Whatever,” Ms. Rhodes said. “You can go home.”

Axle didn’t need more encouragement. He grabbed his parka and left the school in a rush.

Leni got up from her seat and went to help Marthe and Agnes with their parkas. No one else had shown up for school today; the trip from Bear Cove must have proven too harsh.

She turned back, saw Matthew standing by his desk, shoulders slumped, dirty hair fallen across his eyes. She went to him, reached out, touched his flannel sleeve. “You want me to get you your coat?”

He tried to smile. “Yeah. Thanks.”

She got Matthew’s camo parka and handed it to him.

“Okay, everyone, let’s go,” Ms. Rhodes said. She led the students out of the classroom and into the bright, sunlit day. They marched through town and down to the harbor, where a Beaver float plane was docked.

The plane was dented up and in need of paint. It rolled and creaked and pulled at its lines with every slap of the incoming tide. At their approach, the plane’s door opened and a wiry man with a bushy white beard jumped down onto the dock. He wore a battered trucker’s cap and mismatched boots. The smile he gave them was so big it bunched up his cheeks and turned his eyes into slits.

“Kids, this is Dieter Manse, from Homer. He used to be a Pan Am pilot. Climb aboard,” Ms. Rhodes said. To Dieter, she said, “Thanks, man. I appreciate this.” She glanced worriedly back at Matthew. “We needed to clear our heads a bit.”

The old man nodded. “My pleasure, Tica.”

In her previous life, Leni wouldn’t have believed this man had been a captain at Pan Am. But up here, lots of people had been one thing on the Outside and became another in Alaska. Large Marge used to be a big-city prosecutor and now took showers at the Laundromat and sold gum, and Natalie had gone from teaching economics at a university to captaining her own fishing boat. Alaska was full of unexpected people—like the woman who lived in a broken-down school bus at Anchor Point and read palms. Rumor had it that she used to be a cop in New York City. Now she walked around with a parrot on her shoulder. Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you. No one cared if you had an old car on your deck, let alone a rusted fridge. Any life that could be imagined could be lived up here.