Callie never meant to let it go this far. Sure, she may have accidentally-on-purpose skipped a day at her fancy New York City prep school, but she never thought sheâd skip the day after that! And the one after that . . . and . . . uh . . . the one after that.
But when everything in your real life is going wrong (fighting parents! bullied little brother! girls at school who just. donât. get. it!) skipping school starts to look like a valid mental-health strategy. And when Callie runs into Cassius, a mysterious and prickly âunschooledâ kid doing research at museums all across the city, it seems only natural for her to join him. Because museums are educational, which means theyâre as good as going to class. Right?
Besides, school can wait. What canât wait is the mystery of why her grandmother seems to wish she could travel back in time to 1986, or what she wants so much to relive there. As Cassius helps Callie see the world in a whole new light, she realizes that the people she loves are far from perfectâand that some family secrets shouldnât be secret at all.
Lisa Papademetriou spends most of her time in the Dreamway, even when sheâs awake. She is the author of Apartment 1986 and A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic and lives in Massachusetts with her family.