Excerpt from Rust & Stardust by T Greenwood, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

These were the girls who lived inside the pretty houses near the school, with picket fences and lacy curtains. She could practically smell their pot roasts, their buttery potatoes, hear Doris Day's sweet clear voice on the radio through the open windows. Sally imagined their aproned mothers and gentle, soft-spoken fathers inside. Sally, on the other hand, lived alone with her mother in a run-down row house on Linden Street, both her real daddy and her stepfather, Russell, long gone. She knew the stories people told about her stepfather, heard the whispered speculations. (They heard he did it with a rope, in the closet. With a shotgun, in the basement. Someone, somewhere said no, he just got drunk as always and wandered from Daly's Café onto the train tracks one night—this one the tender, awful truth.)

She knew they whispered behind her back, mocked her. But Sally still ached to belong, and studied those girls with the same wonder and love with which she studied the laws of the universe. She thought them the sun, and herself simply a small and quiet planet in orbit around them. And she forgave them their meanness. It was no different than forgiving the sun its heat, the moon its tidal pull. This was simply the nature of girls. She knew they couldn't help themselves, and oddly, it made her love them all the more.

School would be out for the summer in just a couple of days. Perhaps, if she was in their club, she wouldn't have to spend her whole summer alone, the long hot days ahead something to look forward to rather than dread.

"Okay," she said, nodding and then thrusting her chin up confidently, surprised by her sudden gumption. "I'll do it. And then I can be in the club?"

"Sure," Irene said, shrugging, but she wasn't looking at her. "Meet us after school."

* * *

Usually, the last bell of the school day was a reason for celebration. But now, as she descended the school's front steps to the sidewalk, Sally felt dread in her stomach like a peach pit swallowed whole.

Those girls who never noticed her teemed about her now. There were six or seven of them suddenly, their faces bright with anticipation, with something like friendliness. As they smiled and chattered like happy birds gathering around a wriggling worm, she felt the pit begin to soften.

On any other day, she would have walked to the library or all the way home, alone, satchel swinging at her side, shoes pinching her toes, thighs rubbing together uncomfortably beneath her skirt. But today, she was not alone, not lonely. Instead, she was swept up in the cheery and excited swell of these girls, which carried her down North 7th Street toward Federal. They were like bees, she thought, buzzing and fairly harmless alone, but thrumming and dangerous as a group. She was caught up in the magic of this swarm as they made their way to the Woolworth's.

At the corner of Broadway and Federal, the girls dispersed. Some went into the five-and-dime and sidled up to the counter to order cherry Cokes or root beer floats. Others lingered outside on the sidewalk, kicking at loose pieces of pavement before ducking around the corner to light cigarettes stolen from their mothers' packs. Sally wished she could stay with them, waiting for some other girl to be initiated.

"Go on," Irene, said, giving her shoulder a sharp little shove through the front door.

Inside, the fans chilled her. She swallowed hard and walked slowly beyond the lunch counter, empty save for Vivi and Bess and, at the end nearest the door, a hawklike man hunched over a bowl of split-pea soup. Irene joined them, and Vivi glanced up at Sally and winked. It made her skin burn hot again, but also gave her courage.

Past the lunch counter, she noticed the garden display and thought of her stepfather and the way he used to care for the postage stamp–sized garden in front of their row house. How he'd teased tulips from the soil, azaleas, and even once a single large zucchini. Her fingers skipped across the seed packets: radishes, sweet corn, sugar peas. One of those envelopes would be easy, wouldn't it? Though maybe too easy to count? She felt as if she'd been invited to play a game, but that nobody was telling her the rules. Metal watering cans, rubber boots, and garden gloves. She walked down row after row of toys (BB guns and Matchbox cars and a Madame Alexander doll dressed up like Jo from Little Women). Her hand reached out and touched the doll, wishing for a moment it were her own. But she quickly withdrew her fingers, ashamed. What was she thinking about dolls for? She was eleven years old now.

Excerpted from Rust & Stardust by T Greenwood. Copyright © 2018 by T Greenwood. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.