Chapter One
The Door on the Roof
The policy had three rules, and Juno Reyes had written them on the inside of her wrist in gel pen the day the moving van left the city, and rewritten them every morning since, which should have told her something.
Do not unpack. Do not join. Do not care.
Towns like Fenwick were for people who were from them, and Juno was from nowhere now, which was at least portable. Her mother said give it a year in the voice that meant give me a year, and Juno gave the town three weeks of not caring so thorough it was practically an extracurricular, and the town, in the way of towns in this catalogue, waited her out, because it had something up its sleeve.
Specifically, up its roof.
New kids find the unwatched places. That is the skill the moving van teaches: within a week Juno knew the library's dead corner, the stairwell nobody used, the gap in the fence behind the gym. And at the top of the science wing's last stair, past a NO ACCESS sign faded to NO A, she found a door with a lock so old it was practically an invitation, and Juno had learned locks from her dad the summer before the shouting started, back when he still taught her things, and the lock took four minutes, and the door opened on the roof, and the roof had a dome on it.
