Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes, page 31
Mom’s footsteps echoed through our tiny apartment, and then soft knocking sounded on my door. “Tristan, baby, did you hear me?”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m coming.”
The door opened and Mom peeked in. She was still wearing the TEAM STRONG T-shirt from last night. I don’t think any of us had gotten much sleep after we came back from my first bout. I stayed up nursing my pride, the only thing I really injured. My little fan club—Dad, Mom, and my grandparents on Dad’s side—had tried to cheer me up, but I could see the disappointment written on everyone’s faces, so I pretended to go to bed while they held whispered discussions into the wee hours of the morning. And now it was dawn, time to get this show on the road.
Mom’s eyes took in the organized chaos of my room and crinkled when they landed on me. She crossed the floor in two steps—avoiding yesterday’s untouched dinner in the process—and sat down on the mattress. “It’s only for a month,” she said, not even playacting that she didn’t know what was wrong.
“I know.”
“It’ll be good for you to get away.”
“I know.”
She rubbed my head, then pulled me into a hug. “The grief counselor said it would be good to get a change of scenery. Some fresh air, work around the farm. Who knows, maybe you’ll find out you were meant to work the land.”
I shrugged. The only thing I was sure of was that I wasn’t meant to be a boxer, despite what Dad and Granddad thought.
I pulled free of Mom’s hug, stood, grabbed my duffel bag, and headed out to start my month of exile.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Mom asked.
I turned and she held Eddie’s journal out to me. Her hand and wrist were bathed in the emerald-green glow that was coming from the cover. But, like everyone else I’d shown the journal to, she didn’t notice any strange light.
Mom mistook my confused frown for apprehension as she slipped the book into my bag. “He wanted you to have it, Tristan. I know it’s tough, but…try to read it when you can, okay?”
I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I nodded and headed to the front door.
The decision to ship me to Granddad and Nana Strong’s farm down in Alabama had been made without my input. Typical. My parents had talked about it a few times before, but after Eddie’s death, and my third school fight in the final two weeks before summer break, well, I guess the time was right.
At least I’d held my own in those school fights. Unlike in the ring last night.
It was just my luck that my grandfather had been there to witness my humiliation.
“You outweighed that other kid by seven pounds!” Granddad had said after the match, in his growling rasp of a voice. “Set the family name back by a decade.”
That’s me—Tristan Disappointment.
Son of Alvin “Wreckin’ Ball” Strong, the best middleweight boxer to come out of Chicago in nearly twenty years. I had Dad’s height and Granddad’s chin, and boxing was supposed to run in my veins. I’d worn Granddad’s old trunks, and Dad had worked my corner. The Strong legacy was expected to take another leap forward during my first match.
Instead, it got knocked flat on its butt. Twice.
“You’ll get him next time” was all Dad said, but I could tell he was let down.
And that hurt almost as much as getting punched.
An early summer heat wave greeted me with a blast of humidity as I left the apartment building with my backpack over my shoulder and my duffel bag in hand. Thick gray clouds huddled in the distance, and I added that to the list of totally not ominous things. Glowing journal? Yep. Storm on the horizon? You betcha.
Dad and Granddad stood at the curb while Nana (no one ever called her Grandma, not if you wanted to eat) knitted in the car. Dad towered over his father, but you could see the family resemblance. Deep brown skin like mine, a wide jaw, and a proud stance. I got my hair from Mom’s side of the family, thankfully, because both Strong men had identical bald spots peeking through their short afros.
“Get him in the fields, put him to work,” Granddad was saying. “That’ll put some fire in his belly.”
Dad shrugged and said nothing. To be fair, no one did much talking when Granddad was around. That old man could yak a mile a minute.
Nana saw me coming down the stairs, dropped her knitting, and rushed out of the car. “There he is! How you doin’ today, baby? Are you sore from last night?”
She gave me a hug that muffled any answer, then shooed Granddad to the side. “Get the boy’s bag, Walter. Alvin,” she said, addressing my father, “we’ve got to hit the road before that thunderstorm hits.”
Granddad looked me up and down. “Is that all you kids ever wear?”
I glanced down. Black Chuck Taylors with gray untied laces. Loose khaki cargo shorts, and an even looser gray hoodie. That hoodie went with me everywhere—it had a picture of a flexed bicep on the back in faded black ink. Call me sentimental, but it’s what I always wore when Eddie and I were hanging out. He called it the Tristan Strong uniform of choice, perfect for all occasions.
So yeah, I wear it a lot.
Nana shushed him and pulled me into another hug. “Don’t listen to him, Tristan. I can’t wait to have you back with us on the farm. You were so little last time, but them chickens you used to chase still haven’t forgotten you! I packed a lunch and even rustled up a new story or two for the ride….”
And so, just like that, with a clap on the shoulder from Dad and a hug from Mom, I was someone else’s problem for a month. Good-bye, Chicago, and all your glorious cable TV, internet, and cell phone service. I hardly knew ye.
One thing became very clear during the twelve-hour car ride to Alabama—I was never going to do this again.
Never ever.
Sitting in an enclosed space with Granddad was like wiping your tears with sandpaper. Painful—excruciating, even—and you wondered why you ever thought it was a good idea.
Oh, think I’m playing?
Ten minutes into the trip: “When I was your age, I had a full-time job and I’d already fought in two title fights.”
Three hours in: “Oh, you’re hungry again? Did you bring some stopping-for-snacks money?”
Six hours in: “Man, I shouldn’t have ate those leftover beans for breakfast.”
Eight hours in: “Can’t believe I drove all this way to see a Strong boy fight so soft. That’s your grandmother’s side of the family. Ain’t no Strong ever look like that in the ring. Why, I remember…”
Anyway, you get it.
By the time we crossed the Alabama state line, I was ready to claw my way into the trunk. I don’t know how Nana could just sit there and hum and knit for most of a day, but that’s what she did. The Cadillac rumbled down a two-lane highway, kicking up trails of dust and exhaust, a dented rocket ship blasting through time in reverse from the future to a land that Wi-Fi forgot.
I’d put my earbuds in somewhere back in Kentucky, but the battery on my phone had long since run out. I just kept them in so no one would bother me. Nana kept knitting in the passenger seat, and Granddad tapped a finger on the steering wheel, humming along to a song only he could hear. Things seemed more or less calm, except for one thing:
Eddie’s journal sat on the seat next to me.
Now, I could’ve sworn I’d stuffed the book under the clothes in my duffel bag. Which Grandad had put in the trunk. And yet here it was, waiting on me to do something I’d put off since the funeral. The late afternoon sun, occasionally peeking out from behind the storm clouds, made the journal look normal, ordinary. But every so often I’d shade the cover with my hands and peek at it while holding my breath. Yep, still glowing.
Why not open it, you might ask, and see what’s inside?
Well, believe me, it wasn’t that simple. Before Eddie’s death, the cover of his brown leather journal had always been blank. Now a weird symbol appeared to be stitched into it, like a sun with rays that stretched out to infinity, or a flower with long petals. The same symbol was embossed on a carved wooden charm that dangled from a cord attached to the journal’s spine. I’d seen the tassel before—Eddie had used it to mark his spot, or to flick me in the back of the head—but the charm was new.
And, even more weirdly, the trinket pulsed with green light, too. I’d been staring at that book every day for minutes on end, but the glow always stopped me from opening it.
I mean, I knew what was in there anyway. The stories Eddie had jotted down in his goofy, blocky handwriting, from his own silly creations to the fables Nana used to tell us when we were younger, when she’d come up to visit. John Henry, Anansi the Spider, Brer Rabbit’s adventures—I’d read them all. Our end-of-semester English project was supposed to be a giant collection of stories from our childhood. Eddie was doing the writing, and I was going to give the oral presentation. Then the accident happened. The counselor Mom took me to every Wednesday had said I should try to finish the writing part, even though school was now over for the year, as a part of healing and other stuff.
(Before you say something slick you might regret, Mr. Richardson is pretty cool for a counselor, you get me? We play Madden while we talk, which means I can focus on running up the score on his raggedy Eagles squad and not on being embarrassed about answering questions. It helps…some. If it gets too tough, he knows when to back off, too. So you can keep your Sensitive and Man up comments to yourself. Chumps.)
To avoid thinking about the haunted journal, I watched the weather outside the car window. The clouds had never let up, even once we were in the Deep South. They just switched from hurling lightning bolts at us to hurling fat drops of rain that splattered across the windshield like bugs. Everything everywhere was miserable, and that pretty much summed up my life at the moment.
I took off the earbuds and sighed. Nana heard and turned around in her seat to look at me.
“You hungry, sweetie?” she asked.
“No, not really.”
“No, ma’am.” Granddad’s deep voice rolled back from the driver’s seat. “You answer ‘No, ma’am’ to your grandmother, understand?”
“Yeah.”
Granddad looked at me in the rearview mirror.
“I mean, yes, sir.”
He held my eyes a moment longer, then went back to looking at the road.
“Well,” Nana continued, turning around and picking up her knitting, “despite what your granddad said earlier”—she gave him a glare—“let me know when you are. Your mama told me you ain’t been eating much, and we’re gonna fix that. And don’t you have some writing to do? That’s what your counselor wants you to focus on.”
“Boy don’t need no counselor,” Granddad rumbled. “He needs to work. Ain’t no time for moping when horses need feeding and fences need mending.”
“Walter!” Nana scolded. “He needs to—”
“I know what he needs—”
I shook my head and stopped paying attention. After spending a day in the car with them, I’d realized that this was what they did. They argued, they laughed, they sang, they argued again, and they knitted. Well, Nana knitted. But they were two sides of the same old coin.
With Granddad, everything was about work. Work, work, work.
Bored? Here’s some work.
Finished working? Here’s more work.
Need someone to talk to? Obviously, that meant you didn’t work hard enough, so you know what? Have a little bit more work.
Nana, on the other hand, sang and hummed when she wasn’t talking, which almost never happened, because she always had a new story to share. “Do you know why the owl can’t sleep?” she’d say, and off the story would go, and you’d sit there and listen, just being polite at first, but by the end, you’d be on the edge of your seat.
I smiled. Eddie had loved listening to my grandmother. When she’d come to visit earlier this year, he’d practically followed her around, his journal in hand.
Speaking of which…
My left hand rested on top of it in the seat next to me, and I traced the symbol stitched into the front cover.
“What’s that, sweetie?”
I looked up to see Nana peeking back over the seat.
“Hm? I mean, uh, yes…ma’am?”
Granddad nodded, and I let out a sigh of relief.
Nana smiled. “Is that for your writing?”
I hesitated. “Yes, ma’am.” I held up the book so she could see it, and her eyes widened at the symbol on the cover.
“Where’d you get that?” she asked. Granddad turned to see what she was looking at, but Nana flapped a hand at him. “Watch the road, Walter.”
“From Eddie…” I began, then paused. “I mean, his mom gave it to me. It is…was for us. For our school project. Why? What’s wrong?”
Could she see it? Could she tell that the book was glowing, even in the daylight?
Nana pursed her lips. “That symbol. I just haven’t seen it in a long time.”
“You know what it is?”
“Well…” She glanced at Granddad, who’d tuned us out as soon as we started talking about writing. “It’s the spider’s web, an old African symbol for creativity and wisdom. It shows how tangled and complicated life can be. But with a little imaginative thinking, we can solve most of our problems and those of others.”
“Do you notice anything else about the journal?” I asked her.
Nana laughed, a bright, joyous sound that infected anyone listening. “Is this a test?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I don’t see nothing but procrastination. Go ’head and give it a try.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I frowned. So Nana could see the symbol, this spiderweb, but not that it was glowing. Well, that didn’t make me feel any better.
Granddad smacked the steering wheel. “Y’all need to stop filling his head with that mess about symbols. He needs to stay in the real world, think about what he did wrong last night. The boy need to focus! Boxing ain’t gonna just happen—you got to train your body and your mind.”
“Granddad, I don’t want—”
“I don’t want to hear it. You’re not a kid anymore. You’re a Strong, and—”
“Walter,” Nana interrupted, “don’t be so hard on the boy.”
“He needs some toughening up—y’all being too soft on him!”
“Now look—” Nana started whisper-lecturing Granddad, who shook his head and grumbled beneath his breath.
I slid down in my seat and tried to block out the argument. I let my thumb trace the cover of the journal, and before my brain could tell me not to, I yanked it into my lap and flipped to a random page. So what if it glowed? It was still a book, and reading it would be better than listening to any more of Granddad’s insults disguised as life lessons. Or reliving that bus accident.
I mean, really, what could go wrong?
Keep reading for a sneak peek at Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse!
My name is Nizhoni Begay, and I can see monsters.
In fact, I’m looking at one right now.
The monster is a pale man with thin blond hair, slightly bulging eyes, and unusually red lips. He’s tall and skinny, and he has on a black suit and tie. (Monsters wear human skin more often than fairy tales would lead you to think. Scales and horns and claws are strictly for beginners. Trust me, I’m an expert on these things.)
This monster is sitting in the second row of the packed bleachers of my seventh-grade coed basketball game, looking completely normal. Normal except for the fact that he’s wearing a suit when everyone else is wearing a T-shirt that says GO, ISOTOPES! or GO, BEAVERS! depending on which team they’re rooting for. Normal except there’s a circle of empty space around him despite the gym being filled to capacity, like nobody wants to get close to him. Maybe they feel there’s something creepy about him, too, but they aren’t sure what it is.
I watch as a lady in a bright purple tracksuit moves in front of him, waving a red-and-black pom-pom dangerously near his face. Pretty sure if she keeps that up, she’s a goner. Monsters don’t take kindly to people invading their personal space.
Okay, I made that up. I don’t actually know how monsters feel about personal space, or whether they eat ladies in purple tracksuits, and I’m not so much an expert as much as a reluctant amateur. I mean, I’ve only been able to sense monsters for a few months. It started as a strange feeling while watching a lady massaging the avocados at the farmers’ market, and there was the definite bad vibe from the old dude with the scaly feet and Jesus sandals at the Taco Bell. And just like in those instances, every instinct I have is shouting at me that this guy in the bleachers is not normal.
The tiny hairs on the back of my neck rise. A chill—like the time my little brother, Mac, dumped a snowball down my shirt—shudders down my spine. Out of habit, I touch the turquoise pendant I have taped to my chest underneath my shirt. I’m not supposed to wear it during basketball games, but knowing it’s there helps me feel brave.
“Nizhoni!”
The way this school year has been going, trying to be brave has become almost a full-time thing. When I left my big public school and transferred to ICCS (short for Intertribal Community Charter School and pronounced icks), I really thought things would change for me. And by change, I mean I’d have lots of friends and be popular. After all, every student at ICCS is Native American, just like me. But I’ve been at ICCS for two years now and nothing is different. I’m still not popular, and I’m definitely not cool. I’m just—
“Nizhoni Begay!”
Coach! I whip my head around, because of course I’m not listening (Hello! Monster!), and she is right there in my face. So close, in fact, that drops of spittle fly out of her mouth and hit my cheek every time she shouts my name. I surreptitiously wipe off the spit, trying not to look completely grossed out, even though it’s pretty gross.
Coach is no monster, but she has issues with personal space, too—she’s always in mine. She’s also a little short for basketball—but no one would ever tell her that, because she makes up for being height-challenged by being really loud. Coach is Hopi, so it’s not her fault she’s so short. Besides, she’s scary in other ways. I’m not worried she will eat my eyeballs for hors d’oeuvres or anything. (Eyeball hors d’oeuvres are very popular with monsters. I read that somewhere, FYI.)
