

After Corey is shot, Holly begins to imagine that she is the Leopardess, a character in one of Savitri’s comic books, with the mission to avenge her brother’s death. Holly, Corey, and Savitri were all “freerunners” who used the city of Chicago as an aerobics course. When Holly’s twin brother Corey is murdered, Holly and Savitri, her best friend and Corey’s girlfriend, are shattered. This evocative novel explores the long reaches of grief and the longing to know if a loved one is still out there somewhere. Sarah includes Boris in her efforts to contact Sarah, giving him the first real friend of his life. Iris is inspired to contact Sarah’s ghost, who just may be living in the cabinet under the stairs in the old farmhouse that is Iris’s new home. Boris’s devout Catholic family considers his inexplicable recovery a miracle, and are attempting to get his survival certified as a genuine miracle by the Vatican. At school Iris meets fellow 6th grader Boris, a kind outsider who barely survived infancy. Nothing seems right since her best friend Sarah died, and Iris hates the wet climate of Oregon. Iris Abernathy has just moved to Corvallis, Oregon, with her family. When they finally reach their destination, Grandmother Sissy’s terminal illness seems even more unfair than the rest of the list. Odette is miserable and her list grows longer every day through the endless hours on the road. And the four family members all have to share one cell phone. Squashed into the RV are Odette’s new dog and her younger brother’s ferret. Odette’s father quit his job and her parents sold the family home in California to move to the state of Washington to take care of her sick Grandmother Sissy. Odette Zyskowski (12) starts her list of “Things that Aren’t Fair” with her parents’ decision to take the family on the road in an ugly RV they call Coach. Alternate chapters from the points of view of both Vic and Mad are interspersed with police interviews of the investigation of the murder of Mad’s abusive uncle. Vic takes his father’s ashes and leaves home, meeting Madeline “Mad” Falcon (17), part of a gang of semi-homeless street kids who help Vic decipher his father’s final instructions about where to spread his ashes.

He is still mourning his father’s death two years earlier when his mother’s new boyfriend proposes. Vic Benucci (16) has a rare condition that prevents him from using most of his facial muscles.
