Today we’re spotlighting Where Lost Girls Go by Kody Keplinger!
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About the Author: Kody Keplinger
IRIS
“So what do you guys do here?”
I glance over my shoulder at Rose. She’s sitting on the floor of the attic, on one of the twin mattresses, with her arms pulled all the way inside her hoodie, wrapped around herself. She must still be cold.
Sol asked me to help her settle in while he has one of his private Growth Sessions with Lily in his bedroom. He says Rose will share the attic with Zinnia, Poppy, and me, news that delighted Zinnia in particular but has left me nervous about the change.
The drafty attic, with its creaky wooden floorboards, is my favorite room in the cabin, despite how cramped it has become. When I first arrived, this had been Lily’s room. She slept on the double bed while I slept on an old mattress on the floor. When Poppy and Zinnia arrived a few months later, the sleeping arrangements changed. I opted to keep my little mattress, while
Poppy took the bed and Sol bought another twin mattress for Zinnia. Lily moved into Violet’s room— the bedroom downstairs, next to Sol’s.
It took some adjusting at first, but Zinnia, Poppy, and I have made the small room work for us. We keep our spaces clean, and we are patient and forgiving with one another when it comes to privacy. I feel safe in the attic. Before Lily brought me into the hollow, safe hadn’t been something I’d felt in a while.
But now things are changing again.
I can hear Sol’s voice in my head already, warning me against the pitfalls of selfishness, reminding me of how much he and the other girls here have shared with me. So I don’t complain about this change.
“Iris?” Rose says, tilting her head so that tangled black hair falls into her face. “Did you hear me?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” I clear my throat. I’d just been standing there, staring down at her and the small room we’d all be sharing. “What did you ask?”
“What do you do here? This place is a long walk from town. You must keep yourselves busy somehow.”
“We do,” I say. “Really, there’s always something to do.
Cleaning the house, preparing food, laundry, working in the garden, and Sol has taught a few girls how to hunt. Only the older girls go into town much.”
She wrinkles her nose a little. “Sounds like a lot of chores.”
“It is, but it’s kind of nice, honestly. Keeping busy helps avoid dwelling too much on the negative. Sol says hard work fosters a focused mind. And doing things with the other girls can be a lot of fun.”
“I guess that makes sense. It might be nice to not have the time to think so much about . . . everything.”
Neither of us needs to elaborate. No one with a perfect life ends up in the hollow. We all have something dark in our pasts, some source of pain that left us lost and alone before Sol saved us. We all know this, without having to say a word. We can recognize it in each other. Like knows like.
“So where’d you come from?”
“What do you mean?” I ask as I climb onto Poppy and Zinnia’s bed in order to reach the shelves where the extra blankets and pillows are kept.
“You don’t sound like you’re from around here,” she explains.
“You’ve got a different accent from the other girls.”
“Huh. I guess I do. Haven’t really thought much about it.”
“I’m not from here either,” she offers. “I’m from up near Cincinnati. So I was curious.”
I pull down a mostly flat pillow and drop it onto the bed before reaching up for another. “We, um . . . we don’t really talk about that here. Where we came from before, I mean.”
Copyright © 2026 by Kody Keplinger
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.
