"I can’t let go of them – the good, right things—because if I do I’ll turn into a cloud and I’ll float away, and a storm will come and blow me to nothing." Eleven-year-old Aster attends a school for gifted kids, but she doesn’t think she’s special at all. If she was, her mother wouldn’t have left. Each day Aster must do a good, right thing—a challenge she sets herself, to make someone else’s life better. Nobody can know about her ‘things’, because then they won’t count. And if she doesn’t do them, she's sure everything will go wrong. Then she meets Xavier. He has his own kind of special missions to make life better. When they do these missions together, Aster feels free, but if she stops doing her good, right things will everything fall apart?

Sometimes Xavier wakes up feeling hopeless. Every new doctor … this will fix it. Removing him from school … this will fix it. The therapy group … this will fix it. And his dad moving out. Maybe, this will fix it. Despite his positive affirmations, the black dog never really leaves him. It watches from the corner of his room, never straying too far away—waiting for the perfect opportunity to sink its teeth in. But Xavier has a plan—one he hopes will help all the kids in his support group. Enlisting the help of best friend Aster, he tries to convince his dad to turn the family sheep farm into a therapy retreat for the group session kids. But he is up against decades of tradition, his parents who are on a “break,” and the spectre of the black dog. Can Xavier learn to cherish the moments in between the struggles—the moments in the meantime?

Indigo Michael isn’t like other kids. And her mum isn’t like other mums. Life for people like them isn’t meant to have meaning—it’s just something to be survived in whatever way you can. When her mum abandons her, Aster’s Aunt Noni becomes her foster parent. Suddenly Indigo has a new ‘family’—one she didn’t ask for and isn’t even sure she wants. Then she meets Liam. He graffitis revolutionary words across the world, words that make Indigo want to run towards something, build something, be something. For the first time in a long time, Indigo feels she has made a genuine friend, which makes it even harder when that friendship is betrayed … This poignant companion novel to the CBCA Award winning Aster’s Good, Right Things explores the different shapes of friendship and family, and how a lonely girl learns what it means to truly belong.