The New Girl in Seat Fourteen
The house on Maple Court still smelled like cardboard.
Luna Reyes sat cross-legged on the floor of her new bedroom, surrounded by boxes labeled in her mother's looping handwriting — LUNA'S BOOKS, LUNA'S CLOTHES, MISC (LUNA), as if the walls needed reminding whose life had just been dumped into them. Outside, the sun was doing that orange, sleepy thing it did right before it gave up for the day, spilling long stripes of light across the carpet through blinds nobody had bothered to adjust yet. Somewhere downstairs, a hammer thudded against a wall, followed by her father's muffled voice saying something that was probably a curse word dressed up as a sigh.
She had been in this house four days. Tomorrow she would be in a new school.
The thought sat in her stomach like a stone she'd swallowed by accident.
"Sweet pea?" Her mother's voice floated up the stairs, bright and a little too cheerful, the kind of cheerful that came from a person trying very hard to sound like everything was fine. "You almost done up there? I want to see the outfit before bed!"
"Almost," Luna called back, though she hadn't actually started. She uncrossed her legs and got up, padding over to the box marked…