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I called for the ambulance and went back outside. I practically fell back on my bottom at the sight in front of me. Mrs. Dancy was sitting up, her leg no longer jutting out oddly. Her face was red and there were tears, but she was calm and almost smiling. Mom looked pale and frail. The ambulance came, but Mrs. Dancy was back home later that day. The doctor said she was just bruised. It was all so confusing, but what was really confusing was how Mom changed afterward. She was unusually quiet, and a few times I caught her crying but she wouldn’t tell me why. She looked out the window constantly. It made my stomach hurt with worry.

I usually loved sitting in front of the fire, but today it felt hot and suffocating. I pushed off the white ribbon and peeled back the brown paper to uncover a wooden box with my initials carved into the top. I looked up at Mom. She was wearing that plastered-on smile that she’d been using lately. It wasn’t her usual smile, the one that made everything around her sparkle. This one made my stomach hurt more.

“Open it, Rafi,” she said quietly.

I lifted the top, and a small gasp caught in my throat. Three wooden figurines stared back at me. They were so intricate and detailed they looked lifelike. Mom’s fingers trembled slightly as she lifted a figure from the box. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen her fingers shake in the last week. Seeing it made me want to sink deep into the brick hearth we sat on. The gift was beautiful, but I was having a hard time smiling about it. If my regular, wonderful, steady and smiling mom had been sitting across from me, I would have been dancing on the ceiling in excitement about the wonderful figurines. Instead, I sat across from her, smiling weakly and trying to shake the terrible, grim feeling that things weren’t right.

She held the small figure up so the dying flames made it glow. “This is Madigan, the protector.” Madigan wore buckskin breeches and a tunic top that hugged her tightly. A leather belt hung around her slim hips and a quiver of arrows was strapped to her back. She held a long, lethal-looking bow in one hand, and her wrists were bound in leather bracers. In a happier time, I would have gone absolutely bonkers over her short white hair. It clashed beautifully with her golden-tanned skin and brown eyes.

“Madigan can shoot an arrow through a speck of dust five hundred feet away. She moves quietly, fluidly like a cat, and she will protect you from danger.”

“Mom, I have you for that.”

Her reassuring smile was anything but reassuring. She reached for the stout male figure. His head was topped with a mountain of fiery red hair, and he was clad, top to bottom, in animal hides. He wore a fur-lined cloak with a deep hood. A compass and hunting knife hung from a rope belt tied around his ample waist. His short legs were wrapped in fur-trimmed boots.

“This is Austri, the tracker. You will never get lost if you learn to trust Austri. No one is better at finding a safe path. Stay with him, and he will never lead you astray.” She placed him on my palm.

I held the figure for a second. “I can’t believe how real he looks. His blue eyes are smiling at me.”

“Austri will make you laugh. I’m sure of it.” She spoke as if she knew them all personally, these wooden figures. I was fourteen and no longer young enough to believe her fantastical tales of talking animals or handsome princes, but I listened intently. I wanted to show her that I was there for her like she had always been for me.

Mom reached in and pulled out the third figure. A glimpse of her real smile appeared, and it briefly loosened the terrible knot in my stomach. She held the figurine up in the last light of the fire. “This is Lyric.” She smiled again. I’d only just met Lyric, but I was already considering her a best friend because she made my mom smile just by being there. Lyric was a slender young woman, petite like me, with big green eyes curtained by yellow-blonde bangs. The rest of her long, thick hair was plaited into dozens of thin braids, and those braids were piled up on her head over a bright pink headband. The braids cascaded down over the band and her shoulders. Like Madigan, she wore snug buckskin-type breeches and a matching vest. I was instantly envious of her black ankle boots—her entire look, for that matter. She wasn’t carrying a bow and arrow like Madigan, but she did have a pretty scary-looking knife strapped to her thigh.

“Lyric will be your best friend. You’ll never be lonely when you have her nearby. She’ll always laugh with you and never at you, and she’s a great listener.”

I took my mom’s spare hand. “But you’re my best friend, Mom.”

That glimmer of a smile faded, and the knot in my stomach grew hard again.

I shook myself from my thoughts. I hurried into the kitchen, slathered some peanut butter on one of the pieces of toast and grabbed my purse. I was going to have to walk fast to catch the bus.

I never understood why the bus jostled from side to side like a drunken camel, even on the newly surfaced roads. The little boy behind me had gripped the back of my seat as he sat on his mom’s lap. Three times he managed to grab a piece of my hair and pull it painfully from the bun. But his mom said nothing. Summer on the bus was even more miserable than the other seasons, and that was saying a lot. The odors inside a hot bus were something to be catalogued and given to science for dissection. I was sure I smelled bacon somewhere in the bus, but I didn’t see anyone eating a breakfast sandwich. Maybe a lost pig had crawled aboard at a stop and had shuffled off to the rear of the bus to die and broil in the heat.

I stared down at my phone. It was the best way to avoid eye contact. The little guy behind me had hopped onto the seat next to his mom. Now he was kicking the back of my seat with all the ferocity of an angry mule.

I glanced up. We’d just rolled past the Easy Mart, which meant my stop was two miles away. Hopefully, I’d leave the bus with both kidneys intact.

I looked up and sucked in a deep breath. “Fudge and Twinkies … that doesn’t sound good.”

Seconds later, the bus made a clanking noise that sounded as if it was leaving all of its guts, motor and all, on the road behind us. The driver frantically pulled over to the first empty curb spot. The motor died. He stared at all of us in his big rearview mirror for a second, apparently working up the courage to let us know the bus had broken down. It didn’t take a mechanic or my five-second warning to know it. I glanced at my phone and slipped it into my purse. I was going to be late.

The mom behind me started complaining loudly that their stop was a mile away, and I enjoyed a few seconds of secret joy as I envisioned her walking with her unruly kid for a mile in the summer heat.

The morning sun was already working overtime, and the sidewalks were a blistering white. Paxton might hate my mortuary shoes, but they were sure easier to run in than a pair of heels. I took off at a full sprint and was breathing hard by the time I reached the office building. Sweat dripped down my back. Paxton had a window that looked out on the reception area. He was with a client but waved discreetly as he saw me race to the elevator. I was ten minutes late, but I could work circles around my coworkers, Linda and Kylie, no matter what time I arrived.

I caught my breath and wiped my forehead with the back of my hand as I rode up to the third floor.

“You’re late.” The words were out of Linda’s sneering grin before the door shut behind me.

I ignored her but not before shrinking down first. Something about the woman and her puffed up lips, surgically enhanced cheekbones and absurdly tight dresses forced me back into my shell. Everything about her was cringeworthy, but my boss, Mark, didn’t seem to think so. Mark had short dark hair and blue eyes, and a while back, I realized I had a slight crush on him. And I hated that I felt that way because he really wasn’t worthy of admiration. He wasn’t nearly as shallow and mean as Linda and her co-evil, Kylie, but he had nothing much to recommend him other than those blue eyes and that he looked good in a suit and tie. Lately, those shiny attributes weren’t enough. I was slowly giving up on the crush, reminding myself a good book and a slice of chocolate cake were far more worthy of my attention and adoration than my vapid boss.

“Nice skirt,” Kylie said with a giggle. She said it every day for no other reason except to be cruel. I wondered what had gone so wrong in their lives that they grew into spiteful adults. Neither of them had lost their moms. In fact, Linda spent an entire workday trying to order a special pair of sunglasses for her mom’s birthday. Mark had little to say about her using office time to shop, but I was sure he’d mention my tardiness today.

I reached my desk and sighed with relief that I’d made it through the mean girl gauntlet with all my limbs still attached. My fingers grazed Lyric as I reached into my purse for my phone. I smiled down at the three figures. Poor Austri had somehow ended up on my used, crumpled tissue. I pulled the tissue out and threw it away. “Sorry ‘bout that,” I whispered into the purse.

A stack of file folders smacked my desk loudly and sent a ruffle of papers flying through the air. Linda glared down at me. Were her lips even bigger? Soon they’d take up half her face like a circus clown. “I’m not going to have time to finish inputting this data on the Carnegie accounts.” She smiled and it made the lips spread out more, like the horror film blob that took over a town. “Mark asked me to sit in on an important client meeting.” She added a haughty chin lift, which was not necessary given that everything she did was haughty.

I leaned down and picked up the papers that had fallen. I placed them on the stack of data that I needed to input. “I’m not sure I can get to your files. I have my own.” Paxton had told me to rebut her with more vigor and even the occasional cuss word, but I wasn’t great at vigor.