Prologue
Julie Barlow looked over her students’ heads to the wall clock behind them. The minute hand clicked forward.
It was the last day of school, the last five minutes to be precise, and Julie was the only one in her fourth-grade class at Hillsdale Progressive Elementary who was watching the clock.
Sixteen nine-year-olds, heads bowed, were finishing up the last of their work: a questionnaire about their summer goals.
Travel, enrichment classes, chess clubs, special workshops—even in summer, they were adding to their résumés. After all, they were in fourth grade and time was passing.
She jumped when the bell buzzed. Watched the children she’d tried to guide and nurture for the last year gather up their iPads, iPhones, and backpacks. They filed by her desk, leaving their questionnaires in her inbox.
The last to leave was Jimmy Marcuse, a quiet boy who had surprised them all by winning the county spelling bee. Spelling wasn’t really emphasized at Hillsdale Progressive. That’s what spell-check was for.
“Looks like you’ll be having a busy summer,” Julie said, glancing at his questionnaire.
“Yes, Ms. Barlow. I leave for space camp next week.”
“Space camp, that sounds exciting.”
“I have a lot of studying to do first. They don’t usually take fourth graders.”
“That is an achievement. Is your family planning a vacation?”
“My parents are taking my brother to look at colleges, so he can decide where to apply for early admission. I’m staying home and taking a digital media workshop while they’re gone.”
“Oh, you don’t want to go see the sights?”
“He already knows where he wants to go. I don’t see why they have to go look at them.”
“There are probably some other great things to see and do.”
He gave her a look so sympathetic that Julie flinched.
“Well, maybe I’ll see you at the pool this summer.”
“We have our own pool. Besides, in August I have soccer boot camp.”
“That sounds fun. What position do you play?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Defense, probably. It’s really hot in August. You get sweaty and there are bugs.”
“True.”
“But Dad says it’s important to have a well-rounded résumé if I want to get into a top school.”
Julie smiled. She wanted to say, But you’re in fourth grade. There’s time—you should be having fun over the summer, but she didn’t. Julie had been just like him at his age, always achieving, always with the future in mind. She was like him now.
She followed him down the hall to the exit, held the door open while he stepped into the sunshine.
“Jimmy.”
He looked back over his shoulder but didn’t slow down.
“Never mind, have a good summer.”
She stood at the door watching as he walked down the sidewalk and got into the front passenger seat of a silver BMW. Watched as the car drove away, Jimmy’s head already bent over his phone or his tablet, school and last year’s teacher forgotten as he planned for the next step toward a brilliant future.
Julie wanted to run after the car and say, There’s more to life. Hard work doesn’t guarantee a perfect future. Spend time with your family; they’re the most important thing in the world.
But who was she to give him that advice? She’d been raised by a single mother and a sometimes uncle.
Her mother had worked her whole life to give Julie a secure future, but Julie hadn’t had the advantages of most of her students, certainly not the same technology at her fingertips. At nine, most of them had more experience in the world than she had.
She’d always wanted to be a teacher, guiding young minds, introducing them to the world of possibilities, and giving them the tools to achieve their dreams.
But had she done anything this year beyond the syllabus? Opened them to any new ideas? Showed them something they couldn’t see without her? At least bring a balance to their lives? She was afraid she knew the answer.
That’s why she’d applied for an educational leave of absence for the following year. She knew if she just had new experiences, a fresh outlook; if she could just broaden her own horizons, learn new methodology, she could make a real difference in their lives. Their whole lives.
But her application had been denied.
And now Julie Barlow was about to do the most reckless thing she’d ever done. Because she had to do something to fulfill her own dream.
She returned to her classroom, opened her desk drawer, and with trembling fingers took out the letter of resignation she’d written the night before.
Her mother would be disappointed. But she would understand. In time.
Julie marched resolutely down the hall toward the principal’s office.
Halfway there, Sara Olins came out of her classroom. “Oh good, you’re just who I need. You have a minute, don’t you?”
She didn’t wait for an answer, but steered Julie inside.
“I can’t get this mural down by myself without tearing it, which would be such a shame.”
Julie looked at the wall. Ten feet of second-grade depictions of “People in Our Neighborhood.” She pulled over a stepladder. “I’ll release the tape, you hold the edges.”
By the time they’d rolled it up, wrapped it in plastic, and found a place for it in the closet, the principal had left for the day.
Julie stood outside his door, half defeated, half relieved. What had she been thinking? She’d worked her whole life for this.
She tore up the letter right there.
But the original was still in a file on her laptop. And she wouldn’t delete it. Not just yet.
Chapter 1
Two Weeks Later
Vacation. It couldn’t get here soon enough, thought Julie, but looking out the window wouldn’t make Kayla and Aggie arrive any earlier; her two best friends since forever were always late. Notoriously late.
Girl Scouts, soccer camp, junior prom, the vacations they’d been taking together since college—they’d never yet arrived anywhere on time. Even as teachers the two of them were always running into the classroom along with the bell.
Julie had been doing a lot of waiting lately, for school to end, for vacation to begin. For something to happen. She needed this vacation to figure out how to get her life back on track.
She turned from the window and made one last mental sweep of her living room. Lamps unplugged, laptop packed, cell in purse, extra chargers in her suitcase. Printer off. Desk . . . not cleared.
The stack of travel brochures she’d been collecting for the last two years and that she’d meant to recycle the night before still sat there, a painful reminder of all the places she wouldn’t be going during the next school year. She’d put them out in the bin now.
She wouldn’t need them anymore, now that she’d been denied a leave of absence, and it was time she stopped thinking about what might have been.
Recycle bin, she reminded herself.
A prolonged honk jarred Julie back to the here and now.
At last. Vacation had arrived and—she glanced at her watch—only seventeen minutes late, practically early.
She hurried across the room and opened the door just as an electric-blue SUV stopped at the curb and Kayla and Aggie jumped out of the car. They were both in vacation mode, in short shorts and tees. Kayla was beanpole thin with shoulder-length dark hair, today tied back in a ponytail that she’d pulled through the back of a hot-pink baseball cap.