Strays Like Us

by Cecilia Galante

  To Nancy Sanderson, always.

  And to my children, my angels, the loves of my life. None of this would mean anything without you.

  Cecilia Galante is the author of books for children, teens, and adults. Her first novel, The Patron Saint of Butterflies, won a NAIBA Book of the Year Award and was an Oprah’s Book Club Teen Reading Selection, a Book Sense Pick, and a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year. In addition to teaching eighth-grade English, Cecilia also teaches fiction writing at Wilkes University’s graduate creative writing program. She lives in Kingston, Pennsylvania.

  Also by Cecilia Galante

  The World from Up Here

  Stealing Our Way Home

  Copyright © 2018 by Cecilia Galante

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

  First edition, July 2018

  Cover art © 2018 by Mike Heath

  Cover design by Nina Goffi

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-04301-3

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.