Page 1 of Dream On, Ramona Riley

Chapter

One

Ramona Riley wasn’tprone to astrological panic.

She wasn’t prone to any kind of panic, really. In her thirty-one years, she’d learned that everyone’s life—including her own—ran a lot smoother when she kept both feet planted on the earth. So the fact that April—her best friend since fourth grade—was currently reading Libra’s fate out loud for the second time in ten minutes with her eyebrows vaulted into her short crimson-streaked hair did very little to stir Ramona’s sense of urgency.

“Did you hear that?” April asked, tapping at her phone from her perch on a desk in the backstage area of the Clover Lake Middle School auditorium.

“I heard it,” Ramona said as she pinned a ribbon of teal lace onto a twelve-year-old’s shoulder. “Camila heard it too.”

“I did,” Camila said, fiddling with the lace and smiling at herself in the mirror. Her long dark hair was hoisted into a high ponytail, and her all-black-and-teal costume—torn jeans, ornate lace, glittery teal lipstick and eyeshadow—had turned her into a perfect steampunk Peter Pan, if Ramona did say so herself. “You’re going to have a life-changing week.”

“How exciting for me,” Ramona said, winking at Camila andmoving on to securing the black belt covered in soda bottle caps with a seat belt buckle around her waist. It hung low, and with the girl’s lanky frame and big stomping Doc Martens, she looked fucking badass.

Not that she’d ever say such words in front of one of her father’s preteen students, but she could think it.

“Okay,” April said, crisscrossing her own black-jean-clad legs on the desk and folding her heavily tattooed arms over her chest. “Clearly, neither one of you were actually listening. Madame Andromeda’s uncanny insight into Libra this week does not involve anything life-changing.”

“Life-affirming?” Ramona asked.

Camila giggled. “Life-giving.”

“God, that sounds like I’m going to get preg—” Ramona froze, meeting Camila’s precocious expression in the mirror. “You know what, let’s go with life-affirming.”

“It says,” April said, tapping violently at her phone again, “and I quote,This week, as Venus moves into Cancer, be prepared for challenges and opportunities that could shift your perspective and deepen your understanding of your life’s purpose.”

Camila shrugged. “Sounds life-changing to me.”

“Of course it does!” April said, throwing up her arms and letting them flop back down onto her thighs. “Of course it’s life-changing, but Madame Andromeda didn’tsaylife-changing. She saidcould. Andcouldis what you make of it, isn’t it?”

And with that declaration, April let out a huffy breath and went back to scrolling through her phone.

“Is she okay?” Camila whispered.

Honestly, Ramona wasn’t sure, but she didn’t want to get into the intricacies of how her BFF thought Ramona was wasting her life in Clover Lake, New Hampshire, with a middle schooler, now or ever. She’d had plenty of experience with the age group, from her ownsister Olive’s tumultuous time at Clover Lake Middle to her father’s position as an eighth-grade English teacher and drama club director, and Ramona had learned that this particular species of human didn’t exactly do nuance.

“She’s fine, love,” Ramona said, then took Camila’s hands and held them out. “And you, Peter Pan, look amazing.”

Camila beamed, then skipped off to stage right to join her Lost Boys, a gaggle of students that Ramona had outfitted to look like degenerates from a posh private school with distressed plaid skirts, torn stockings, boots of all colors, seventies band tees—pretty much anything she could find for five bucks or less at Thayer’s Sift-N-Thrift shop downtown.

“You’re up, Tink!” she called to a kid named Bellamy. They bounded over, already wearing a fitted brown leather vest over an ivy-pattered green skirt that Ramona had made herself, and their brown arms were streaked with a bit of strategic glitter. All they needed now were the gossamer wings, thick belt full of gadgets—dull garden shears and a magnifying glass—and a pair of vintage leather goggles atop their head.

April observed Ramona coolly while Ramona fussed over Bellamy’s final touches.

“What?” Ramona asked, smearing some glitter over Bellamy’s cheeks.

“How many is this?” April asked.

“How many is what?” Ramona asked, even though she knew. And from the way April lifted a single eyebrow, she knew that Ramona knew.

Ramona sighed, gave Bellamy a fist bump, and sent them along to join the rest of the cast awaiting their Saturday afternoon matinee curtain call. Since Steven Riley, Ramona’s dad, had taken over the drama club eight years ago, the group put on a spring play every May. The entirety of Clover Lake came out to at least one of the fourshows over the course of the weekend, even those without any kids enrolled at the school or acting in the play.

Steven’s productions were that good.

And Ramona’s costumes were half the draw.

At least…that’s what she’d heard.