Excerpt from The Faraway Inn

There were a lot of trees.

Calisa stood by the mailbox with her backpack and her suitcase and told herself very firmly that this was exactly what she needed. Ahead of her was a forest, hemming in a one-lane road. Pine trees clustered together, the expanse of evergreens only broken by the occasional white-barked tree that stood out like a candle against the dark green. Overhead, the sky was a matte white, clouds blotting out the sun, which matched Calisa's mood -- cloudy with a chance of rain.

"This is going to be an amazing summer," she said, as if saying the words out loud would act as some kind of spell to make them come true.

She just hadn't pictured what it would feel like to actually be here, by herself, in the middle of a truly excessive number of trees, away from everyone she knew and everything familiar. She'd been too focused on not being there.

A few weeks ago, she'd never have considered coming to Vermont by herself for two entire months, but after her world fell apart, she'd pounced on the invitation. She'd wanted to spend her summer anywhere but Brooklyn -- anywhere but where Ethan, the boy who'd yanked her heart out of her chest and then stomped on it with the enthusiasm of a four-year-old in tap shoes, was going to be. It was essential self-care.

In retrospect, Calisa supposed she should have had the Uber driver take her all the way to her great-aunt's doorstep instead of just the mailbox, but after the hours on the train and then in the car, she'd wanted to walk.

Also, the driver wouldn't stop talking about fly-fishing. So, here she was.

Shouldering her backpack, Calisa hauled her suitcase down the road. On either side, the trees loomed over her. It smelled like pine and wet earth and not at all like the mix of hot gyro meat, bus fumes, coffee, and overripe trash that she associated with the street outside her family's apartment in Park Slope. Above, birds cawed to one another with sharp, biting cries that made her feel like an intruder. Listening, she thought she heard one softer trill, a cascading chirp that was more friendly. Squirrels leaped from branch to branch, causing the forest to rustle. She wondered if Vermont had wolves. Or bears. Probably not. Or maybe yes? This wasn't the city or even suburbia. Bears weren't impossible. On the plus side, being attacked by a bear would make a unique party story. Or an excellent college application essay. She hadn't started writing hers yet. On the minus side, it would not be great to be mauled.

Close beside her, the trees rustled again, and Calisa jumped. She spotted a squirrel racing up the trunk of a pine tree. Just a squirrel. Not a bear. Only my overactive imagination.

In Google Maps, it hadn't looked that far from the main road to the bed-and-breakfast. She pulled out her phone. No signal. She shoved it back into her pocket and kept walking. Ahead, the sky was darkening as gray clouds seeped into the white.

The road twisted, and in front of her, on the left side, was a wooden sign, half devoured by ivy, with letters gouged into it that read:

THE FARAWAY INN

She exhaled and smiled.

"See," she said to the trees. "Almost there." She'd thought it was a melodramatic name -- Vermont wasn't that far from Brooklyn -- but now that she was here in a random, possibly bear-infested forest, she decided it fit. She felt extremely far away from everything, which was exactly what she wanted.

Cheered, Calisa walked faster -- and it began to rain.

At first it was just a few drops, one on her cheek, one on her head, and a few spattering on the road around her, and then it increased to a drizzle. She shivered as she walked, wishing she had worn something warmer than her favorite Brooklyn Beans T-shirt (teal with a picture of a coffee cup and the words "Brew can do it!") and a pair of jean shorts. Mom-Kate had insisted she pack a jacket, even though it was summer, but it was shoved deep somewhere, probably with the umbrella. She didn't want to stop to dig either of them out and risk drenching everything else in her suitcase in the process. Better to just keep walking.

A few minutes and many raindrops later, the road rose up a hill and then, as it crested, widened to reveal a hollow between slopes thick with pine trees. Behind it was a panorama of the mountains, crowned in gray clouds.

And in the center of the hollow was her great-aunt's inn.

"Huh," she said out loud.

Calisa hadn't been here in years, not since she was five or six, and it did not match her memory. She thought she'd remembered a storybook inn, framed in roses and lilacs, with a burbling brook next to or behind it. Had she imagined all of that? She'd been young enough that it was one of those fuzzy kinds of memories that felt jumbled. But she'd still been expecting cute.

This . . .

It was not cute.

Well, she supposed it could have been charming once, but if so, that had been many, many years ago. Blinking through the droplets on her eyelashes, Calisa looked at the run-down inn and wondered what had happened. Auntie Zee's B&B was gray, drab, and . . . the kindest description she could think of was "vintage distressed." It reminded her of a squashed wedding cake. Three stories tall, it had faded and peeling paint that could have been white with ivory trim at one time but was now gray with dirtier gray. The roof was tilted, lopsided, and the shutters hung crooked on either side of the windows. One window on the second floor was boarded up with plywood. And the wraparound porch was so overrun with vines that half of it was buried beneath greenery.

It was all tremendously overgrown. The flower gardens, which Mom-Kate and Mom-Elise had gushed about while Calisa was packing -- "Daffodils and lilacs and roses and lilies everywhere!" they'd said -- were a mess. Okay, that was putting it mildly. Brambles and ivy from the forest sprawled across the flower beds as if trying to devour them. She couldn't even see the supposed burbling brook, if there still was one.

It looked as if the forest was on the verge of swallowing the inn whole.

To be fair, her moms had said Auntie Zee was having trouble keeping up the place. It was, in fact, the reason that Mom-Kate had the idea to send Calisa here. She could help Auntie Zee and recover from her heartbreak at the same time. "Two birds with one stone," Mom-Kate had chirped cheerfully. But Calisa didn't think her mother had any idea how run-down it really was. If it wasn't for a few lights inside, she'd have thought it was abandoned.

Calisa stood, staring into the hollow at the shabby bed-and-breakfast while rain slithered down her shirt and seeped into her sneakers. Her socks were already soaked, and her hair dripped on her shoulders. It wasn't the arrival moment she'd pictured.

At least Auntie Zee will be happy I'm here. There was clearly a lot of work to do. Calisa wasn't afraid of hard work. Just afraid of being pathetic. Far better to be the unpaid, overworked help than the heartbroken girl everyone felt sorry for. She'd cheerfully be Cinderella so long as it meant she didn't have to dance with any kind of prince.

Her original plan for the summer hadn't involved any of this. Before Ethan upended everything, she'd had it all nicely mapped out: she'd secured a job at a vintage boutique called Buttons and Bell-Bottoms, which would have been fantastic. She'd work there for a few hours every afternoon, primarily playing on her phone and trying on the most random outfits she could assemble. After work, she'd meet up with her friends. She, Maddy, and Crystal had set themselves a challenge to visit every single coffee shop in Brooklyn before the end of August. Every evening, she was going to meet Ethan at the bodega where he'd be working, downstairs from her apartment. They'd have dinner (sometimes with his family, sometimes with hers, sometimes just the two of them), watch movies, and cuddle, or go out and drop in on one of Ethan's friends' parties. It would have been a very, very different summer than this.

Now . . . even if she spent the entire summer on nonstop yardwork and housework and whatever else until she had blisters and calluses on both hands, it was still a better option than having to see Ethan every day when she walked past the bodega and feeling as if she were being ripped to shreds from the inside out all over again.

At least here, her heart would be okay.

If a bit damp.

She'd be able to start her life anew in the fall, with her head held high for senior year.

Calisa took a deep breath and continued down the hill toward the Faraway Inn. She hurried along the path, ignoring the way her socks squished inside her shoes. Her suitcase bounced over the uneven walkway as she pulled it behind her.

A gray stone statue of a woman with hands clasped in front of her watched Calisa pass. Rain dripped down her stone face and pooled in her blank eyes.

Hauling her suitcase up the steps, Calisa climbed onto the porch. She exhaled and resisted the urge to shake like a wet dog. Instead she just dripped. But it was an improvement: she was under a roof, though the porch roof clearly had multiple holes in it -- rain collected in puddles every few feet.

She studied the front door, unsure if she was supposed to knock or just walk in. She was expected, and this was an inn, not a house. You didn't knock at a Marriott. But it had a knocker, made of brass and shaped like an owl. . . . Calisa told herself to quit delaying. She had nothing to be nervous about. She'd made the leap: backed out of her summer job, said goodbye to her friends and parents, and come here. The hard part was done. Knock, then enter, she decided.

She took a step forward-- And the wood planks beneath her snapped. She plunged through the porch, and her breath whooshed out of her. Her backpack caught on the unbroken boards, hiking up above her shoulders. Her suitcase sat innocently beside the hole.

"Gah!" The sound came out of her like a chicken squawk.

She wasn't hurt, was she? She took stock -- knees, ankles, elbows. All fine.

She'd fallen up to her chest, and the hole was about as wide as she was, plus a portion of her backpack. Placing her hands up on the unbroken boards in front of her, Calisa tried to hoist herself out.

It didn't work.

At all.

Maybe if she hadn't been wearing her pack when she fell -- but she had been, and now her backpack was wedged behind her. With it, she was a cork in a bottle.

Calisa tried again, jumping up while pushing with her arms and, after she was a few inches off the ground, bicycling with her feet. After huffing and puffing for a solid minute, she sank down again into the hole.

Okay, this is not good.

She was not going to panic, she told herself. It wasn't as if she'd fallen into a hole in the middle of the Vermont woods with bears and wolves and strange men with axes. She was on (or, more accurately, in) the front porch of a respectable bed-and-breakfast. If she yelled for help, someone would hear her and come to her rescue. Except this was not how she wanted to start her summer job. How did she say to her aunt, whom she hadn't seen in years, "Hey, Auntie Zee, I'm here to help, so I broke your porch"?

No, she'd figure out a way to get out of this herself.

If she squirmed out of the backpack first and then--

"Hello?" a voice said. Male. Youngish. "Are you hurt?"

Calisa felt herself blush, torn between relief that someone was here to help and embarrassment to be stuck in a hole in the first place. "I'm fine."

She twisted as much of her upper body as she could to see the owner of the voice. Standing on the porch above her, he looked to be her age (as far as she could tell) and handsome (that she could definitely tell), with tousled wet-from-the-rain hair. In addition to looking absurdly fresh-off-a-movie-set pretty, he was strong, which was obvious not just from the bulk of his arm muscles but also because he was carrying a large stone gargoyle on one of his shoulders like it was a sack of potatoes.

"I'm Jack. Groundskeeper," he said. "Or, technically, groundskeeper's son, but I help out." He was frowning at her as if she didn't belong here, which she thought was a fair assessment. She did not belong mid-porch.

"Uh, hi, I'm Calisa, Auntie Zee's niece. Grandniece." It wasn't the most poetic of introductions, but at least she hadn't stumbled over her name, which she had done the very first time she had set eyes on Ethan. He'd told her it was charming. But she had not come here with the intention of having another awkward meet-cute like that. In fact, she hadn't even considered the fact that she might have to interact with anyone her age at all. She'd thought the summer would be just her and Auntie Zee, with a few aloof adult guests who came and went. She did not want or need any complications. Like falling through a porch.

He pointed to the gargoyle with his free hand. "This here is Zef. He's supposed to be in room eight. I'm just bringing him out of the rain before I get the cheese."

None of that made sense. "Cheese? For . . . Zef?"

Jack laughed, a nice, warm laugh that made her feel like she'd just successfully told a joke, even though she'd merely been confused. "The guest in room twelve likes cheese. And vegetables. But mostly cheese."

"I like cheese." She winced at herself. Why am I incapable of holding a normal conversation with a good-looking guy? Is it maybe because I'm trying to be friendly while stuck in a hole? "All except blue cheese."

"Never understood blue cheese," Jack agreed.

"The blue spots are supposed to be edible, but I can't get past the fact that they're mold." Why was she talking about mold? She did not want to be talking about mold. She wanted to be out of this hole. "I like cheddar. And goat cheese, the soft kind that you can spread. It's really good with fig jam."

"I especially like cheesecake."

"Everyone likes cheesecake."

"Except the lactose intolerant," Jack said.

"Mm-hmm, it's probably a cruel joke to them," Calisa said. "Cake but not."

Jack frowned. "You're right. In that case, we shouldn't serve it."

"Unless you use cream cheese with lactase."

"You can do that?"

She knew it existed, but she'd never baked with it before. "I made a regular cheesecake last year. Trick is you have to cool it gradually, or it cracks. Probably same process." Oh God, why was she still having this conversation? If the universe expects me to swoon into his arms after he rescues me as some kind of cosmic apology for last month . . . Nope, not going to happen. She did not want to have to be grateful to him.

"I had a slice of white chocolate raspberry cheesecake once," he said dreamily. "Fresh raspberries are the best."

"Blueberries are better," Calisa said.

"You clearly have never eaten a raspberry straight off the bush."

She hadn't, but that wasn't exactly her greatest concern right now. Calisa squirmed, trying to angle her arms better to lever herself out of the hole. "I'm sure it's delicious." She failed again and heaved a sigh.

With the careful tone of someone who isn't sure whether he's being rude or not, Jack asked, "Are you an invited guest? I mean, you said you're Auntie Zee's grandniece, but . . . she didn't mention you. Are you supposed to be here? Did she know you were coming?"

"She should," Calisa said. "My moms talked to her."

"Ah . . ." He looked relieved. Tentatively, he asked, "Are you okay?"

No. "Yes. But I think I'm stuck." Wait, did he think she was dangling halfway through the porch on purpose? Did he not see she very obviously needed help?

"Hmm," he said, examining the break in the porch as if it were a feature of the architecture, not an unintentional disaster. "Let me just return Zef to room eight, and I'll be back to rescue you. And then you should talk to Auntie Zee. She's the boss of everything that happens here."

Before she could ask for help now, not after he finished his chores, Jack -- the polite and handsome but ultimately unhelpful groundskeeper's son -- had already disappeared inside. Calisa muttered to herself, "Okay, so definitely not a meet-cute." That was just awkward. What was with the are-you-supposed-to-be-here questions? It was an inn. Even if she wasn't invited, shouldn't they get people popping up unexpectedly all the time?

"Whatever." She had zero desire to be rescued anyway.

And even less desire to wait around to be rescued.

Climbing out wasn't going to work, though. She looked across the porch and out at the yard, but all she saw was the statue of the lady, with one hand outstretched, in between the weeds. "Thanks, but I don't think you can help," Calisa said.

She tried one more time to propel herself out. It failed again.

What about if she went down instead of up? Could she crawl out from beneath the porch? That wasn't a bad idea. Calisa ducked down easily, her backpack coming with her a second later and then thumping onto her back. It was dark beneath the porch, as well as damp, but she could see light to her left. Squatting, she waddled toward it.

Up ahead, she heard murmuring.

Shivers danced up her spine, and she stopped. "Hello?"

The murmuring ceased.

Could it be the voices of guests within the inn? Peering into the shadows beneath the porch, she didn't see any movement. She continued on with her awkward waddle, not wanting to crawl on the muddy ground.

Another cascade of whispers, this time behind her.

She turned fast. Again, no one was there. Her heart beat faster. It had to be the acoustics under the porch warping the sound from inside somehow, but there was an edge to the whispers that made every inch of her skin prickle.

Moving more quickly, Calisa hurried toward the light and emerged from beneath the porch. She stood up straight, facing the overgrown gardens and the mountains in the distance. The rain had lessened, and she could see streaks of blue breaking through the clouds by the peaks. The whispers were silent.

Returning to the front of the inn, she skirted the hole and approached the door carefully. She opened it without incident and stepped inside, bringing her suitcase and backpack with her.

She exhaled, feeling as if she'd achieved a minor miracle by simply entering the B&B.

Inside, the lobby was shadowed. Light filtered through the dusty windows to bathe the foyer in a soft haze. She waited for her eyes to adjust. On either side of her were open doorways, all hooded and silent. The lobby's peeling wallpaper was streaked with water stains. A mirror hung on one wall. It was so grimy that it looked as if it were reflecting smoke. Instead of her face, all she saw was a wispy smudge as she passed by. In front of her, between a set of stairs (which she assumed led to the second-floor guest rooms) and a hallway (which led who knew where), was the reception desk, with old-fashioned skeleton keys hanging from hooks on a board behind it. Only a handful of keys were absent from their hooks. She wondered if that meant the B&B was mostly empty.

There was a silver bell on the desk, and she wondered if she should ring it. Again, she wasn't a guest, and she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. Her parents' instructions hadn't gone beyond which subway to take to Penn Station, which train to take to Burlington (as a parting blow, the train line was named the Ethan Allen -- how far did she have to go to escape reminders of Ethan?), and what address to give the Uber driver. Plus she had clear instructions to text as soon as she arrived (or call if there was no Wi-Fi, though how could you have an inn without Wi-Fi?) so they'd know she was safe and sound and hadn't gotten lost in the mountains and been forced to eat squirrels and berries to survive. . . . Her moms were worriers, especially Mom-Elise, who raised parental fussing to an art form.

Calisa peeked through the first doorway on her left into what looked like a sitting room. It was gray with dust, matching the shade of the outside of the bed-and-breakfast. Formerly white but now dingy sheets covered half the furniture, as if the room had been partially put into storage. A tea set of tarnished silver sat in one corner on top of a tea tray with wheels. A cobweb stretched from the handle of the teapot to the edge of the tea tray. No one was in the sitting room, except for an elderly white cat who lay on a faded red velvet chair. The cat opened one eye to look at Calisa and then closed it again -- a very clear don't-bother-me look. Respecting that, Calisa retreated.

Opposite the sitting room, on the other side of the lobby, was a library. It too was empty of guests or Auntie Zee but had clearly once been nice. The shelves were dusty, and she spotted a few cobwebs on the top shelf, but it had a perfect window seat tucked in between bookshelves and beneath an arched window. The shelves themselves covered every wall, filled floor to ceiling with books, and a ladder on wheels leaned against it so guests could reach any book they wanted -- or just glide along the perimeter of the room. Calisa resisted the urge to try it out.

First find Auntie Zee, then play with the library ladder.

And pet the cat, if it lets me.

She peeked into the next open doorway, into the dining room, which looked as if it hadn't been used in years. A vase of dead flowers sat in the center of the table, and a chair with only three legs leaned against a wall. Beyond the dining room, tucked behind the stairwell, was another short hallway that looked as if it led to a handful of guest rooms.

On the other side of the reception desk, down the hallway she'd noticed before with peeling wallpaper, Calisa found the kitchen. It was old-fashioned, with a brick oven on one wall, rafters that had dried herbs hanging in batches, and a large butcher block island with a few rickety stools around it. Unlike the other rooms, it had been cleaned recently, but it still looked unused and unloved. Pots and pans were stacked on the stove, piled high as if the burners were never turned on, and the measuring spoons that hung on the wall looked more like permanent decorations than cooking tools. Overhead the dried herbs were desiccated nearly to the point of crumbling.

She crossed to the sink to look out the window at the backyard. Outside was an old and sprawling apple tree, with curved branches and a riot of leaves. She spotted a few unripe apples, small and green, between the leaves. Beyond the tree were the mountains. Sheathed in misty clouds, they looked ethereal, as if they might dissolve if she stared for too long.

Where is everyone?

If it weren't raining, she'd have suspected that some guests were out strolling through the forest or hiking up a nearby mountain. Just because she had zero interest in hiking didn't mean that the guests did. Or maybe they were out in whatever town was nearest, going antiquing or doing some other Vermont-ish activity? Or they were in their rooms, tucked away from the world, enjoying their escape from whatever disappointment or stress or heartbreak had sent them fleeing into the wilds of New England. . . . But where was Auntie Zee? She should at least--

"Little Cali," she heard behind her.

And Calisa turned to face the innkeeper, her great-aunt, Auntie Zee.

Auntie Zee was half a head shorter than Calisa and had startlingly white hair, skin so wrinkled that she very closely resembled a walnut, and sunken eyes with pupils rimmed with milky blue. She looked, Calisa thought, far older than her eighty-two years. "Hi, Auntie Zee," Calisa began. "It's great to--"

"You can stay the night," Auntie Zee cut her off. "But then you have to leave."

Calisa felt her mouth drop open.

"I neither need nor want you here."

Coming soon from Penguin Random House / Delacorte.

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ISBN: 979-8217024308