Traveler

by L. E. DeLano

  * Special thanks to Chef Dominic Orsini at Silver Oak Cellars for his collaboration on this recipe.

  GLITTER MOUSSE

  Makes 6 Servings

  1 cup heavy whipping cream

  8 ounces cream cheese, softened

  2/3 cup powdered sugar

  ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

  6 tablespoons lemon juice

  2 tablespoons grapefruit juice

  ¼ teaspoon blue food coloring

  3 tablespoons sugar

  white decorative sugar

  blue decorative sugar

  1.  In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, whip heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Set aside.

  2.  In a separate bowl with an electric mixer, whip cream cheese until soft and fluffy, about three minutes.

  3.  Mix in powdered sugar, vanilla, lemon and grapefruit juices, and blue food coloring.

  4.  Slowly fold in half the whipped cream mixture, until combined, then fold in the other half.

  5.  Cover bowl with plastic and refrigerate for two hours.

  6.  While the mousse is chilling, prepare the parfait glasses. Mix the sugar and one tablespoon of water in a small saucepan and place over medium heat. Stir and heat the mixture until all the sugar granules have dissolved.

  7.  Next, prepare six parfait glasses by brushing the insides with sugar syrup and sprinkling each glass with blue and white decorative sugar.

  8.  Finally, gently add chilled mousse to prepared glasses, top with more blue and white decorative sugar, and enjoy!

  A Coffee Date

  between author L. E. DeLano and her editor, Holly West

  Getting to Know You

  Holly West (HW): What was the first romance novel you ever read?

  L. E. Delano (LD): That would be Shield’s Lady by Jayne Ann Krentz (aka Amanda Quick), if memory serves. If not, probably something by Johanna Lindsey.

  HW: I loved Johanna Lindsey. Great classic romance novels. Who is your OTP, your favorite fictional couple?

  LD: For books, I’m going to be unorthodox here and choose Katniss and Gale. I loved Peeta, but he didn’t have enough fire in him for Katniss, I think. I love a tempestuous pairing, and they definitely were.

  HW: I totally agree! Team Gale, all the way! Do you have any hobbies?

  LD: I love to bake, I love to travel, and I am such a Netflix binger. You have no idea.

  HW: And my favorite question: If you were a superhero, what would your superpower be?

  LD: I’d want to be able to freeze time, even if it’s only for a few moments. Sometimes you just need to live a moment a little longer or delay the inevitable long enough to get your stuff together.

  The Swoon Reads Experience

  HW: What made you decide to post your manuscript on the Swoon Reads website?

  LD: I figured I had nothing to lose. I’d polished it, workshopped it, had beta readers hash it through. I knew it was a good story—I just needed someone to notice it!

  HW: What was your experience like on the site before you were chosen?

  LD: I thought it was tremendously helpful. Anytime you can get someone from your target demographic to read your book and give you feedback, it’s a very good thing.

  HW: Once you were chosen, who was the first person you told and how did you celebrate?

  LD: I hung up my phone and my kids heard me yelling. In fact, I think the whole neighborhood heard me yelling. Then my kids went away for the weekend, so I was actually all alone and seriously broke at the time—and so unbelievably happy. I danced in my living room and life was good.

  The Writing Life

  HW: When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?

  LD: I’ve never not been writing, but I had planned on being an actress. I did that for a while, but never stopped writing while I was. I just didn’t put an effort into really getting a book finished until 2014 or so.

  HW: Do you have any writing rituals?

  LD: Absolutely none. Really! I have a son with autism, so finding a quiet, undisturbed place to write is honestly just impossible. That’s made me such a better writer—I can write anywhere and pretty much under any circumstances.

  HW: Where did the idea for Traveler start?

  LD: When I was six, we were living in England and I saw a BBC production of Alice Through the Looking Glass. After the show was over, I passed by an ornate mirror we had in our hallway, stopped to stare, and I swear to you, I saw my other self blink. I still get an uneasy feeling if I look at a mirror too long.

  HW: Do you ever get writer’s block? How do you get back on track?

  LD: Oh, I get writer’s block all the time. I mean all the time. There’s only one cure for that: You write. Even if it’s bad, even if it takes the plot in an odd direction, even if you have no idea where you’re going with it. You can always fix it later, but you can’t do that if there’s nothing to fix.

  HW: What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever heard?

  LD: From every writer ever: Just write. Just do it.

  TRAVELER

  Discussion Questions

  1.  Mario has a lot of influence and power as a Dreamer. Do you think he’s looking out for Jessa, or does he have his own agenda? Would you trust him?

  2.  Why do you think Finn tries so hard to keep an emotional distance from Jessa in the beginning?

  3.  Do you think Jessa’s life experiences make her a more resilient person? And if so, do you think she will be a better Traveler?

  4.  If you were to see your family in another reality, perhaps slightly or—as in the case of Danny—very altered, would it be frightening? Or intriguing?

  5.  Do you think Jessa should feel guilty for letting Pirate Finn kiss her a second time? Would you have kissed him?

  6.  Jessa doubts her own writing talent after finding out her dreams have been influenced. Do you think that finding out her dreams were real has any bearing on her talent as a writer?

  7.  With her newfound ability, Jessa can now live many lives. Do you think she’ll still want to live in her “home” reality, or will she become more independent, like Finn?

  8.  How do you think Jessa and Ben’s dynamic will change now that she has the other Jessa’s memories of her time with Ben?

  9.  Would you find it difficult to let a different version of you live your life for a while? Would it be hard to trust yourself?

  10.  If you could alter one decision you made in your life, then climb through the mirror and live in that altered reality, how do you think your life would have changed?

  Fighter. Faker. Student. Spy.

  Reagan was born to be a spy,

  but will she turn her back on the world’s top secret agency for love?

  ONE

  “Reagan, everyone is going on Saturday,” Harper says, in between bites of overcooked meat loaf and runny lunchroom mashed potatoes. “You’ll be, like, the only senior not there.”

  “I’d rather eat glass,” I say, taking a long swig of Vitaminwater. I ran six miles before school and my body is in dire need of electrolytes. I can feel it. I hate getting up early to train, but it’s a million times better than waiting until the afternoon. I’d much rather be hanging out or studying with Harper and Luke, but skipping is not an option. I made that stupid mistake only once and that was enough for me. My parents were the kind of pissed that bypasses the yelling and screaming phase and goes straight to the silent treatment and punishment. They gave me a training session the next day that made my legs shake for an hour. A twelve-mile run followed by five hundred push-ups, a thousand sit-ups, and two hours of Krav Maga. Pure hell. In most households, I’m pretty sure that’d be considered child abuse. But what was I supposed to do? Call Child Protective Services? Tell them my parents forced me to work out for six hours because they’re operatives for a part of the CIA the world, even most of the US government, doesn’t know about and I’m training to be an operative too? I don’t think so. S
o every morning, I pull my butt out of bed at five on the dot to train before school.

  “I don’t understand why on earth you would want to miss one of Mark’s parties,” Harper counters, tucking a loose strand of her long, wavy blond hair behind her ear.

  “You know my two party rules,” I reply, counting them down on my fingers. “Number one: Drinking Mad Dog 20/20 will make you sicker than eating at a strip club buffet. Number two: No good ever comes from attending a Mark Ricardi party.”

  Mark’s gatherings at his parents’ estate outside the New Albany Country Club community were sort of famous. I’ve only been to one of his parties and left before things got totally out of control, but the stories that come out of that house … my God. People always end up going skinny-dipping in the pond or losing articles of clothing (or just their dignity) during tequila-induced twerk-offs. Someone always gets into a huge fight or breaks something or cheats on their girlfriend. People always leave Mark Ricardi parties with the taste of expensive liquor and regret in their mouths.

  “We’ll take a vote when Mal gets here,” Harper says, and takes a swig of her pop.

  “I’ll take a vote right now. All those in favor of not holding your best friend’s hair back while she throws up in the master bathtub, please raise your hand,” I say, throwing my hand straight up into the air. Harper narrows her hazel eyes at me, then smiles, exposing the tiny gap in her two front teeth that I love and Harper hates. She says she wishes she would have gotten braces back in middle school when everyone else’s teeth were jacked up. She’s thought about getting one of those clear plastic retainer things to fix it, but I continue to talk her out of it. I think the gap makes her look like a supermodel.

  “Hey, that was the easiest party-fail cleanup ever,” Harper says, reaching across the gray laminate table to slap down my hand.

  “It was disgusting,” I reply, my arm still high in the air. “I almost threw up next to you and I was stone-cold sober.”

  “You’re so the good little mom of the group,” Harper says, batting at my hand again. “I totally H your Gs right now.”

  “You totally what my what?” I ask.

  “H your Gs,” Harper replies and rolls her eyes. “Hate your guts.”

  “No way, you totally L my Gs,” I say and laugh. Love how we both do that: Abbreviate things to the point people don’t know what in the world we’re talking about. We have some regulars, like RTG, which means “ready to go.” PITA means “pain in the ass.” SMITH means “shoot me in the head.” Those are probably the favorites, but we both come up with ridiculous new ones every day that make our friends roll their eyes. But whatever, it’s our thing and we like it so WGAS? Translation: Who gives a shit?

  “Hey, MacMillan,” a voice calls at me from the lunch line. I turn around to see Malika carrying a blue lunch tray. “Share my nachos?”

  “Always,” I answer, and spin back around.

  MacMillan. Out of all my Black Angel cover-up last names, MacMillan may be my favorite. I’ve always been Reagan. But I’ve been lots of Reagans. Reagan Moore. Reagan Bailey. Reagan Klein. Reagan Schultz. No one has ever known my real name. Reagan Elizabeth Hillis. It’s been so long since I’ve said my real name out loud that sometimes I have to think about it. It sounds crazy that I’d actually have to use any brainpower to know my name, but while it’s only for a fleeting moment, sometimes I do. I’ve heard my mother say the older she gets, the more she really has to think about how old she is. When you’re seven or seventeen, you never have to think about your age. She says as you get older, there’s that split second where she has to ask herself, Wait, am I forty-eight or forty-nine? That’s how I feel about my real name. And the more new last names I get, the longer that beat is in remembering who I really am.

  It always happens the same way. As soon as I’m comfortable with a last name, I’m forced to forget it. My parents’ cover will be in jeopardy or we’re being watched and we’ll have to get out of town. And every time we load up the car in the middle of the night and drive down our street for the last time, I feel like a piece of me is stripped away. I’ve never told my parents that. I don’t want to make them feel bad. But it’s like a version of myself—Reagan Moore or Bailey or Schultz or whoever I was there—dies and becomes a splintered shadow for anyone who ever knew that Reagan. When I get my new name and new cover story, it’s like that Reagan—that fractured piece of myself—never really existed. I don’t talk about it. I don’t tell anyone the truth about where we were or what my life was like. I have to make up a whole new set of lies and repeat them over and over again until they become truth. I make the girl I was just a few months ago disappear.

  “Hey, girls,” Malika says, setting her tray down next to me. She lifts up her left leg to climb over the bench, forgetting about her very short red skirt.

  “Holy inappropriateness,” Harper says, covering her eyes with both hands.

  “What’d I do?” Malika asks, settling into her seat.

  “You kind of just gave the entire school a look at the goods,” I say and pat her bare knee.

  “Well, it’s not like I’m not wearing underwear,” Malika says, and throws her slick black hair over her shoulder.

  “Yes. I like the pink flamingos, Mal,” Harper answers, and gives her a wink.

  With a Japanese mother and Pakistani father, Malika is hard not to notice in WASP-y New Albany, Ohio. Plus, she’s what I like to call stupid pretty. So beautiful, she strikes you dumb and stumbling.

  “Malika, what do you think this is, a strip club?” a voice says from behind me. I know who it is before I even turn around. Everyone knows the low, raspy voice of Madison Scarborough. “But then again, it’s nothing half the guys in this room haven’t seen before.”

  “Hey, I’m only a make-out slut,” Malika says, pointing a finger to her chest. “I don’t take off my clothes.”

  “Whatever. A slut is a slut,” Madison says, rolling her startling blue eyes. I open my mouth to zing her but she’s already turned on her heel to head to the field hockey girls’ table.

  “Don’t worry,” I say, linking my arm with Malika’s. “I’ll get her back later.”

  I learned how to hack into computers during one of my summer training camps in China. In about ninety seconds, I can hack into the school’s computer system and change grades, attendance records, anything. It’s child’s play compared to the other systems I’ve mastered. By tonight, Madison will have a D in physics and the field hockey captain will be promptly benched for Saturday’s rivalry game against Upper Arlington. I’ll change it back Monday. Madison totally deserves the D for all the mean-girl crap she pulls on a daily basis. But I only use my spy skills for short spurts of vengeance evil.

  The rumor-spreading, shit-stirring Madison Scarborough is what bonded us last year. I noticed Harper and Malika on my first day of school. Malika because she’s gorgeous and Harper because she has the type of effortless coolness money can’t buy. But they didn’t hang with the field hockey and lacrosse crowd, the self-anointed “popular” girls. They were what Madison and her friends liked to call “fringers.” Invited to the big parties but never the exclusive sleepovers or birthday dinners. They were known around school but never the center of attention. They quickly became my target group of friends. I needed to get into a small, uncomplicated group and blend as quickly as possible, so when I caught wind of terrible rumors Madison was spreading about them, I knew it was my chance.

  Madison has had the same boyfriend for over a year: A preppy lacrosse senior who wears salmon shorts and mirrored sunglasses at parties and uses the word summer as a verb. Even with a d-bag boyfriend, girls think twice about getting involved with anyone Madison’s ever dated. When Madison’s ex-boyfriend asked Harper to homecoming, she spread a rumor that she was a lesbian and that none of the field hockey girls felt comfortable sharing a locker room with her. Then when Madison heard that Malika kissed a guy who dumped her two years ago, she started a rumor that sweet Malika made a sex tape even
though Mal had never even had sex. Still hasn’t.

  During study hall, I hacked into Madison’s Twitter account (@PrincessMaddie. Cue the eye roll) and had Mal and Harper help me compose a stream of hilarious apology tweets to every person she’d ever terrorized. They were deleted twenty minutes later but that act cemented my place in our little group.

  I almost hate to admit that my motive to befriend the fringers was part of my training because I sort of love everything about them. I love that Harper eats all the orange and purple Skittles because she knows how much I hate them and how her shoelaces are always coming untied because she refuses to double-knot. I love how Malika is deathly afraid of spiders but has seen every slasher film ever made and how she’s still a virgin but has a hilarious goal of making out with a guy from every continent. They’ve become real friends now and not just part of my never-stand-out strategy.

  “Got to love a guy in uniform,” Harper calls over my shoulder, and whistles a loud catcall. I turn around in time to see Luke Weixel’s creamy cheeks turn a dusty rose. He shakes his head at Harper, his lips crinkling into a crooked smile, before turning his pale blue eyes to me.

  It’s uniform day for the Junior ROTC and Luke looks extra sharp in his dark pants and tan button-down shirt, decorated with colorful medals, arc pins, and accolades. Six foot three with hair the color of summer hay and defined cheekbones, Luke always has girls swiveling in their seats or craning their necks to stare, but he looks especially stunning in uniform. It’s not just the way the uniform makes him look but how it makes him feel. He stands a little taller, walks a beat faster, and smiles a little wider in that uniform.

  I raise my right hand to my forehead and give Luke a tiny salute. His crooked smile cracks wide, unmasking a pair of dimples so charming, even if you were mad at him, one smile would make you forget why. We hold each other’s stare for a moment before he steps out of the lunch line and heads for our table.