Montana Welcome
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Melinda Curtis
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PROLOGUE
SEVEN WAS A magical age for Lily Harrison.
Six had been pretty good, too. But seven...
It was the first year she hadn’t been in the same classroom as her triplet sisters, Amanda and Georgie. The first year Mom had called her a big girl and it felt like she meant it. Before that, her older sister, Peyton, had been the big girl.
Being seven was cool. It was nothing like being five, like Fiona, the baby in the family, who could barely tie her shoes.
Lily was seven when Danny Belmonte moved in next door. He was seven, too. And in her class.
From her perch on top of the backyard swing set, she watched his family carry boxes and furniture into the house. From there she could see Danny’s driveway and his back porch. The Belmontes were navy, same as the Harrisons. But they had three boys, all of whom had dark, curly hair and rich, loud laughs. Lily had wondered what they’d think of their new neighbors—five girls who, according to Dad, shrieked and shouted and generally “carried on” nonstop.
While Lily was enjoying her bird’s-eye view of the Belmontes moving in, Danny stepped out onto the rear deck with a plastic baseball bat and a Wiffle ball. He took a swing and whacked the ball over the fence into Lily’s yard.
“Gahhh!” Danny stomped off the deck and onto the grass, out of sight.
Lily didn’t think twice. She swung to the ground, picked up the ball and threw it back over.
“Hey. Who did that?” Danny ran to the fence and pressed one eye to an open knothole. “A girl?” He made a sound like she did when presented with beets on her dinner plate.
“Yeah.” Lily scrambled to the first branch of the apple tree and looked down on him the way Peyton looked down on her sometimes. “So?”
Danny scrunched his face. “Girls don’t get ta play baseball.”
“Who says?”
“Everybody.”
“Well, that’s stupid.” Lily pointed her thumb at her chest. “I play everything.” That was true. She wasn’t much of a reader, like Georgie and Peyton, and didn’t like to sew and stuff, like Amanda and Fiona. “My dad says I’m the sporty girl.”
Danny pounded his bat in the dirt. “Prove it.”
“How?”
A grin spread across his face, a grin she recognized since it was much like her own. “You wanna do something super fun?”
“Yeah!” Because shrieking and shouting and carrying on weren’t really super fun.
And so started an instant friendship based on Danny’s wild ideas and Lily’s determination not to say no.
Lily was close to her sisters, but Danny was truly like her brother from another mother. During their first year of friendship, they shrugged off skinned knees and stubbed toes. They laughed at clothes they’d torn from climbing trees. Together they egged each other on and got away with a lot.
And then the day before Lily, Amanda and Georgie were going to turn eight, Danny came up with the best plan—they were going to launch themselves in a homemade rocket. Lily couldn’t wait.
In reality, the supersonic rocket was the box the Harrisons’ new dishwasher had come in. Their launching pad was the top of the slide attached to one end of the swing set. Danny had made holes in the box for their heads and feet to stick out. Lily had drawn red stripes on each side of the box with a marker because she refused to let him do all the work.
They pushed their boxy rocket to the upper platform and looked down.
“Don’t rockets shoot up?” Lily asked.
“We’re going to take off like a plane.” Danny sliced his hand down through the air and then up toward the sky. “Whoosh!”
Over at the picnic table, Amanda clasped her hands and Georgie hugged her first-aid kit. Fiona sat in the sandbox. She’d arranged a row of dolls in front of her to watch. Peyton had left a book on the picnic table and gone inside, probably to get Mom or Dad.
“It’s not high enough.” Danny frowned. He pointed to the shed Dad had built last weekend, the one that was within touching distance from the slide. “We’ll start up there and fly over here. It’ll be cool.”
Of course, Lily agreed. When had Danny ever led her wrong?
While they wrestled the box up to the roof of the shed, Amanda came forward and wrung her hands. “Don’t. It’s too high.”
“It’s not,” Danny scoffed. While Lily held the box, he scrambled inside, using his feet to hold the rocket at the roof’s peak.
“You’ll break something!” Georgie still hugged her first-aid kit.
“Will not!” Danny snapped.
Fiona started to sob in the sandbox.
Deep inside Lily, something didn’t feel so good. Just last week Dad had told her she had to slow down and think. Danny said slow was boring. Nothing was boring when Danny was around. But that didn’t make the sick feeling in her tummy go away. Lily wished Peyton would hurry back with Mom.
“Ready?” Danny grinned.
Lily crawled into the unsteady box and poked her head out the top.
“Here we go!” Danny drew his feet in.
The box slid down the roof and off the edge. For one exhilarating moment they were flying just like Danny had promised.
But that moment was short-lived. The rocket never made it to the slide.
They dropped.
On the way down, Lily’s head whacked something hard and then they landed in a heap.
The next thing Lily remembered was Dad telling Danny he had to cut out the shenanigans and watch out for Lily.
All the time.
