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paused and frowned. “And go where?”
    Then Lottie realized something. “Are you wearing my clothes?”
    The girl flung a scarf,
Lottie’s scarf,
over her shoulder with flourish. “What a silly question to ask at a time like this!”
    Lottie had had too long a day for this. She glared. “Are you going to leave on your own, or should I give you a nice shove out that window?”
    The girl clung fiercely onto the ledge. “Don’t even think about it! I’ve come here for you, Lottie Fiske, and I don’t mean to leave without you.”
    Lottie opened her mouth, then shut it, then opened it again. “How do you know my name?”
    â€œOh, I know a lot more than that,” the girl said. Her eyes twinkled in a way that made Lottie want to pop her in the nose.
    â€œLike what, exactly?” Lottie asked instead.
    The girl tugged off Lottie’s scarf and tossed it back toward the closet. “Such an ugly shade of green,” she remarked to herself. “Like a rotten avocado.”
    Then she held out a slip of paper. “Here.”
    Lottie snatched the paper out of the girl’s hand. In familiarly bad handwriting, it read:
    This is better.
    Lottie read the note three times. Then she looked up. “
You’re
the letter-writer?”
    â€œMe?” The girl snorted. “Of course not. It’s from my father.”
    Lottie held the paper up. “What does this even mean?
What’s
better?”
    â€œI don’t know,” the girl said thoughtfully. “Me, I guess. You’re supposed to come back with me.”
    â€œWhy,” said Lottie, “would I go anywhere with you?”
    â€œLook,” said the girl, taking a step closer to Lottie. “You believe in magic, don’t you?”
    Lottie did, but she did not want to say that aloud. She only admitted that to herself when she was under her green apple tree and her copper box was open. She nodded cautiously.
    â€œWell, what if I told you that my father, the greatest healer on the island, is making a medicine that will cure anything?”
    Lottie frowned. “That’s not magic. That’s science.”
    â€œI thought you said you believed in magic.”
    â€œI believe in magic within reason,” amended Lottie.
    â€œMagic within reason wouldn’t be magic,” said the girl. “Now, are you coming or not?”
    â€œOut the window?” asked Lottie.
    â€œYes,” the girl said seriously.
    It had to be a dream, Lottie thought. She must have already passed out on her bed hours before this, only to dream up a girl in her closet with all the answers to her problems.
Well!
she thought,
Isn’t it better? Isn’t anything better than waiting for two, maybe three weeks to go by?
    â€œAll right,” she said. “I’ll come.”
    The other girl was already out the window and balanced on one of the green apple tree’s branches.
    â€œI knew you’d agree,” she said. “Now, give me your hand.”
    â€œHang on,” said Lottie. “I’ve got to get my coat.”
    Lottie peeled her wet, periwinkle coat off the floor. Then, because the breeze blowing through the window felt particularly chilly, she scooped up the green scarf that the other girl had discarded and shoved it in her coat pocket. She braced herself against her window ledge.
    Then the girl grabbed Lottie’s arm, and Lottie suddenly found herself sliding most uncomfortably down a tree branch.
    â€œI’m Adelaide, by the way,” the girl said, winging her legs down to the next branch.
    Lottie heard the dull thuds of apples hitting the ground below as the girls’ descent knocked them loose. Lottie supposed that, had anyone across the square been watching, it must have looked like a ridiculous spectacle—two girls dropping from tree branch to tree branch, the girl named Adelaide in three graceful swings and Lottie in many more clumsy