Mom returned to the dining room, a fresh drink in each hand, her attention hooked on my dad. “Another game of cribbage?”

I leaned back to peek at the kitchen clock. It was ten thirty. Every kid I told thought it was cool I didn’t have a bedtime. I supposed they were right. Tomorrow was the first day of the last week of seventh grade for me, though. “I’m going to sleep. You guys can play three handed.”

Mom nodded.

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite!” Dad said.

I didn’t glance at Sephie as I walked away. I felt a quease about leaving her up with them when they’d been drinking, but I wrote it off as payback for her always falling asleep first the nights we were left alone, back when we’d sometimes sleep together. She’d let me climb in bed with her, which was nice, but then she’d crash out like a light, and there I’d lay agonizing over every sound, and in an old house like ours there was lots of unexplained thumping and creaking in the night. When I’d finally drift off, everything but my mouth and nose covered by the quilt, she’d have a sleep spaz and wake me right back up.

I couldn’t remember the last time we’d slept in the same bed, hard as I tried on the walk to the bathroom. I rinsed off my face, then reached for my toothbrush, planning out tomorrow’s clothes. If I woke up forty-five minutes early, I could use the hot rollers, but I hadn’t okayed it with Sephie, and I’d already excused myself from the table. I brushed my teeth and spit, rinsing with the same metallic well water that turned the ends of my hair orange.

I couldn’t reach my upstairs bedroom without walking through a corner of the dining room. I kept my eyes trained on the ground, my shoulders high around my ears, sinking deep in my thoughts. My homework was done, my folders organized inside my garage-sale Trapper Keeper that was as good as new except for the Scotch-taped rip near the seam.

First period tomorrow was supposed to be English, but instead we were to proceed directly to the gym for an all-school presentation. The posters slapped around declared it a Summer Safety Symposium, which some clever eighth graders had shorthanded to Snake Symposium. SSS. I’d heard the rumors this week that Lilydale kids were disappearing and then coming back changed. Everyone had. Aliens, the older kids on the bus claimed, were snatching kids and probing them.

I knew all about aliens. When I waited in the grocery checkout line, the big-eyed green creatures stared at me from the front cover of the National Enquirer right below the shot of Elizabeth Taylor’s vampire monkey baby.

Right. Aliens.

Probably the symposium was meant to put those rumors to rest, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to hold it tomorrow. The break in our routine—combined with it being the last week of school—would make everyone extra squirrelly.

I was halfway up the stairs when I heard a knock that shivered the baby hairs on my neck. It sounded like it came from right below me, from the basement. That was a new sound.

Mom, Dad, and Sephie must have heard it, too, because they’d stopped talking.

“Old house,” Dad finally said, a hot edge to his voice.

I shot up the rest of the stairs and across the landing, closed my door tightly, and slipped into my pajamas, tossing my T-shirt and terry cloth shorts into my dirty-clothes hamper before setting my alarm clock. I decided I would try the hot rollers. Sephie hadn’t called dibs on them, and who knew? I might end up sitting next to Gabriel during the symposium. I should look my best.

I was jelly-bone tired, but my copy of Nellie Bly’s Trust It or Don’t guilted me from the top of my treasure shelves. Aunt Jin had sent it to me as an early birthday present. The book was full of the most fantastical stories and drawings, like the account of Martin J. Spalding, who was a professor of mathematics at age fourteen, or Beautiful Antonia, “the Unhappy Woman to Whom Love Always Brought Death!”

I’d been savoring the stories, reading only one a night so they’d last. I’d confided to Jin that I was going to be a writer someday. Attaining such a goal required practice and discipline. Didn’t matter how tired I was. I needed to study the night’s Nellie.

I flipped the book open to a random page, drawn instantly to the sketch of a proud German shepherd.

I smiled, satisfied. I could write that. My plan was to begin drafting one Nellie a week as soon as school was out. I’d already written a contract, which I’d called Cassie’s Summer Writing Duties. It included a plan for getting my portfolio to Nellie Bly International Limited before Labor Day and a penalty (no television for a week) if I did not fulfill the terms of my contract. I’d had Sephie witness me signing it.

I set the huge yellow-covered book on my treasure shelf and stretched, checking my muscles. Did they want to sleep stretched out long underneath my bed or curled up short in my closet?

Long, they said.

All right, then. I grabbed a pillow and the top quilt off my bed and slid the pillow under the box springs first. I followed on my back, dragging the quilt behind. I had to squish to reach the farthest corner. The moon spilled enough light into my room that I could make out the black coils overhead.

They were the last thing I saw before drifting off to sleep.