Chapter One
On the eve of every move, Padar—my dad—acts like the neighbors are seconds from descending on our house with torches and pitchforks. A planned eight a.m. wake-up becomes a frantic two a.m. load-up.
It’s a ten-hour drive to where we’re going, but the GPS won’t be necessary. It’s a straight shot north from Newport Beach to Mendocino.
We’ve called Newport “home” for thirteen whole months— a record. But I hated it here, even before the accident.
Padar’s jumpy for nothing. There are no signs of life on our sleepy street. Across the road and down the rocky slope to the ocean, waves collapse under a full moon. A lone four-legged figure noses at a tangle of seaweed.
Coyote, probably.
Kai-ote. That was how Hoosiers pronounced it in Indiana. The memory is so random I nearly laugh, but it’s hard to see the humor in things when your whole life is boxed up in the back of an SUV.
For the fourth time, Padar pats the pocket of his jeans for his wallet. His paranoia, his grief, his
whatever the hell is going on inside that brilliant coder head has only gotten worse since Uncle died. He’s worn himself to a shadow.
A few months ago, an intexticated driver ran a stop and twisted Uncle’s new Schwinn like a pipe cleaner. It was only a matter of time until Padar broke the news that we were moving again.
He sets his hand on the middle console and turns to look at us, his collar damp with sweat.
“Got everything?” he whispers.
“
Everything,” I confirm.
Twelve boxes this time. Just the essentials. Most of them are Mania’s. Seven years old, and already a sentimental pack rat.
“Your sister?” As if he can’t see her slumped in the booster seat next to me.
“Taken care of.” By me. Always me. The way it’s been since Uncle and I brought her home from the hospital. Padar stayed behind with the doctors and the buzzing machines. Mum never made it home. Sometimes I think Padar didn’t, either.
I brush Mania’s hair from her face. She groans, fingers groping for Orchy, her stuffed orca. I return the plush to her and she snoozes once more.
Mania was more pissy than me about the move, not wanting to leave her gigantic group of friends, of which she was queen bee. She’ll make more. Mania’s a friend magnet.
Padar reverses from the drive. I don’t look back. I can’t.
I
should be mad at him for uprooting me mid–junior year. Instead, I’m relieved. I’ve trashed my life here.
Still, my stomach flips the way it always does when Padar deploys Operation Phoenix: setting fire to our lives and birthing new ones from the ashes. I treated Newport Beach High like all the other schools, walking in an alternative reality where it didn’t matter what I did because I’d get a redo in a few months’ time.
Friends, teachers, boys, even my identity: disposable.
The problem is, each New Me is made up of the ashes of the Old Me. What’s the saying?
You take you wherever you go. I need fixing, and a new zip code won’t do it.
Ten schools in seventeen years—Padar calls it character building. I wish I could stop
building for once and just . . . be.
Especially now. Mania’s counting on me more than ever.
Padar drives like he’s being chased by demons. Whatever hunts him, hunts us, too. I always feel the secondhand adrenaline, the secondhand worry. My heart’s normative state is constricting pain. And for what? I used to ask why the rush, but I’m unskilled in decoding grunts.
“Zayn jan.” My eyes snap up at the sound of Padar’s husky voice. He wants me to move the box of stuffed animals blocking his view.
I shift it. He exhales with a hiss, like a kettle. Doesn’t say thanks.
I pull down my hood and shut my eyes.
All that’s left of me in Newport is tangled brown hair in the shower drain.
•
At nine a.m., it feels like we’ve been driving forever, but Mendocino is still three hours away. Mania’s legs rag-doll with each of Padar’s jerky lane changes.
School doesn’t start for a few days. All Padar has revealed about this particular move is that he has a new software engineering job in Fort Bragg and needs to live within thirty minutes of the office. Also that my cousin is there. It’ll be bittersweet to see Haider again—though I admit I still feel more bitter than sweet.
I think Padar just wanted
out. Away from the house where Uncle’s ghost walked, sat, slept, ate.
My bones will still be vibrating when I fall asleep tonight.
I crack the back window open. There’s salt in the air, already cleaner than Newport, where smog curdled on the horizon.
Seven miles from Mendocino, construction at the Albion River Bridge slows us into a trail of red taillights.
“So many people,” I mutter.
“Mendocino runs on tourism.” Padar’s voice is rough from hours of silence.
“Have you been to Mendocino before?”
“No.” He tugs his baseball cap low over his eyes. He’s always worn one, even before he started balding.
His favorite band, I Dream of Shahin, plays over the speakers. The sounds of tabla drums, rubab, and dutar fill the car as overcast skies give way to fog and cliffs. Raindrops plop onto the windshield. He fumbles for the wiper toggle. Flashes the brights instead.
Rain. Strange.
It rained twice in Newport, maybe. How long will it take for me to stop the comparisons—to see Mendocino as home?
“Raaaaaain!” announces Mania, waking as we cross Big River Bridge. Traffic is moving now.
“Welcome back, Nee-Nee,” I mumble, jealous of her long nap. When that girl’s out, she’s out. And when she’s up . . .
Mania bounces in her seat like it’s a hippity hop.
“Pah-ah-dar?” she says, still bouncing.
“Yes, my love?”
I cringe at how Padar treats Mania, with all the
my love stuff. As if he didn’t miss Mania’s kindergarten graduation, or choose work over us.
Uncle Dani never said
I love you, never hugged us because— so it goes—he was never hugged, but he showed up. That counted for everything.
“Whale season is November to April.” My little sister’s factoid for the day. She snuggles Orchy, her wavy brown hair a matted curtain over her eyes. “Can we see the whales in Mendocino, Peach?” She says it like
Men-don’t-see-no.
“Sure, we’ll go sometime.”
Mania runs a sparkly half-painted fingernail along the condensation on the window. “Gray whales weigh, um, ninety thousands of pounds.”
“Ninety thousand?” says Padar. “Wowww. Incredible, my love.”
I Google it. She’s right. I hope the elementary school here does her justice. If not, she’ll run circles around her teachers.
She whines, “ ‘Mrs. Carrot’! Please, Padar, please?”
He promises to play her song next. For now, though, his fingers drum the wheel to his favorite rubab solo.
The song finishes and Mania looks up, hopeful. When Padar doesn’t switch over to “Mrs. Carrot,” my little sister peers out the window and hums the melody.
•
The pristine, pothole-free roads of Newport are far behind as we bump past the green-and-white
Welcome to Mendocino sign.
Padar kills the music and turns on the GPS.
Rerouting, rerouting, rerouting. The fog and rain are probably confusing the signal. Still, somehow, he seems to know where to go.
The wipers swoosh as we doddle through rain-spattered streets. Sleepy inns, rusted truck beds, and diners appear on Mania’s side. On mine, the dramatic headlands.
A long curve around the coastline cliffs reveals a sweeping view of the inky blue ocean. A rocky island, terrace-like, peeks through the surf. Foam and sea spray skate across the surface. A lone structure sits at its edge—house or ruin, I can’t tell.
Copyright © 2026 by Lila Riesen. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
