Another Little Piece (28 page)

And then not standing, as my new legs buckled beneath me. Fully spreading out into his body, I became aware of the pain. The bones ached, the skin itched, and the heart was like a gasping fish flopping around my chest, searching for water and a way to breathe. This body was poison. His soul had left the walls stained inside. I could feel that residue burning through my new legs and up out of my fingertips. Every exhaled breath stank with the rot. I would have to fight the rest of his life to keep it from getting out.

No, not his life. Mine.

This was my new life, and it was agony. I could’ve let myself be burned to bits and it would’ve been quicker. I could’ve been selfish one more time.

The poison seemed to bubble up. I breathed through it, and would continue to breathe. My new fingers twitched, and I forced them to be still. This horrible place was where I was meant to be. This was what the
brujas
had meant. I had chosen to fall into the dark and dangerous waters. Now I just had to try not to drown.

I had made my choice, and as horrible as it was, I would do it again. A hundred times if I had to.

With this thought, some small glimmer of peace sparked inside me. I focused on it, as one would a dim light at the end of a long tunnel. It was enough to let my foreign eyes drift closed. Enough to sink down into a dark and troubled sleep. And maybe even enough to get through this night, and after that somehow face what remained of this miserable new life.

ANEW

The
brujas
gather around me, crooning softly a song with no words. Or perhaps they simply don’t translate.

They briskly rub their hands along my body, chafing the bad skin away until I am raw and oozing. Then they dig down deeper to the aching bones.
These bones are bad
, I hear one say. Every last one is snapped like a twig from a rotting branch.

Together as one they lean over me, their heads forming another constellation in the night sky. “
Look at us
,” they say. “
Look at us and the stars beyond. Don’t look down as we dig into your chest and pluck out this crushed and battered heart, bit by broken bit
.”

Then they pull out long needles. Silver and sharp, they are threaded with strands of hair. The same hair they’d cut from Annaliese’s head and thrown to the wind. Every last strand that was lost has been hunted and gathered. Plucked from birds’ nests, from swamps, from storm drains, and the last one they found wrapped round a lightning rod at the top of a skyscraper.

In and out. The thread weaves through skin, back and forth, on and on, rebuilding the body they’d broken down.

Snipping their last threads, they lean in close. Lips softly pursed, they blow. It is more than their cool breath that makes my skin tingle. With each puff, a cyclone of dust erupts from their mouths. As it settles over me and into me, I recognize it as the remnants not just of Annaliese, but of the girls I’ve watched get blown away. The girls whose names were on my razor.

Finished, the
brujas
are pleased.

“This is right. This is good
,” they say, as they observe their work.

“You made the choice.

“The Physician, he waited, ready to take you out of the man and into the new girl.

“He only gives second chances to those certain to fail.

“But you didn’t fail, and now you are ours, and we’ve made you anew.”

They smile, soft and sweet but with steel beneath.

“This is right. This is good
,” they say once more.

Then six fingertips press my eyelids closed.

“Rest now
,” they say.

“Be at peace.

“Now you begin anew.”

BIRTHDAY

POETS OF TOMORROW—FIRST-PLACE POEM
HIGH SCHOOL DIVISION

I am . . .

I am not the sum

of my imperfections.

Scars, pimples, and excess fat

do not define me.

I am not your opinion

of who I am.

Smart or smart-ass,

loquacious or shy—

only I know

all that I hold inside.

My failures of today are not

the measurement for the

success of my tomorrows.

Now I appear weak

but I am not always

what I seem to be.

This is not even close

to all there is

of me.

I dare you to

underestimate me.

—Annaliese Rose Gordon

East Lancaster High School

15 years old

FUTURE

She woke a few minutes before midnight. There was no clock to tell her this, but she liked to believe it was true.

Anyone who saw her walking along the side of the road in the middle of the night might’ve recognized her as Annaliese Rose Gordon. The girl who had been lost and found, and now was lost once more. On the news they said that this time she was a runaway. Or perhaps she’d been involved with that other boy. Logan Rice, the high school football star who’d nearly died this same dark night. His heart, they said. Some said the lost-and-found girl had broken it. A strange boy and a foolish missing girl. How many times could one girl expect to be searched for and discovered?

She wasn’t missing, though. And she wasn’t Annaliese either. She hadn’t been for some time. Nor was she Anna. Someone new lived inside her, a third person, made up of the girls she had chosen and whose names she had etched onto the razor handle. They had been holding her together all this time, filling in all the missing little pieces. But now they were one. And whole.

Although the night was dark, she did not worry about losing her way. Her pace was steady and she moved with purpose. She marched toward the future, almost experiencing tiny pieces of it with a crystalline kind of clarity, the same way she’d once relived bits of her past.

She saw the boy who had brought her into his awful game, the boy she would always think of as Franky. She saw that she would no longer have to fear him. She saw that he could no longer follow where she had gone. At the moment she’d made her choice, the strong athlete’s body he’d stolen had broken down around him. Palsied then paralyzed. He once again became the same sick boy he’d sought to escape.

When the
brujas
visited his hospital bed and offered to free him, he accepted without hesitation. They sucked him out through a tiny hole in the once strong but now sick and weakened heart. Without a body to hold him, what was left of Franky was small enough to fit in the bottom of a thimble. Having no use for a thimble that could now hurt them more than the needle it was meant to protect from, the
brujas
sent it along to their brother overnight express. The Physician would find some use for it, they were certain.

And all the while the machines attached to the stolen body of Logan Rice Sixteen screamed, and the doctors and nurses crowded in, trying to save him even though they were all secretly certain it was wholly hopeless. But the unseen
brujas
didn’t despair. Gentle yet relentless, they coaxed Logan back, using the words on the prayer card he still held curled into the palm of his hand. The doctors were ready to turn off the machines. They checked the time and cleared their throats, ready to declare his hour of death . . . when the flat line spiked and his heart beat once more.

Logan lived, although, like Annaliese, he would not be the same person he had once been. Perhaps, like Annaliese, he would come to prefer it this way.

And Annaliese, now with eyes wide open, began to see beyond. Beyond to the rain that had not yet started to fall and beyond to the sun that was only beginning to rise. Shortly, she would walk and then begin to run through both, seeing her mother, armed with a black umbrella but soaked anyway. Searching. For her daughter. For her.

They would meet in the middle of the deserted street, and sob and hug and think to themselves how they would never let the other go, not ever again.

Her father would be there too, dragging them out of the street to safety, holding them up when they might’ve collapsed. He’d insist on carrying her mother home, and her mother would only agree after she was solemnly promised that her daughter would keep hold of her hand the entire way.

As they got closer to the house, the neighbors who had been out searching, seeing them, would begin to call out, “She’s been found. They found her. She’s okay.”

Dex would be among them, and he wouldn’t—couldn’t—believe. Hours ago he had watched the monster from his vision die . . . and then somehow live again, the images flashing before his eyes. A movie with no stop button. He’d watched the monster consume Annaliese. He’d watched the monster die, and he’d thought that he might too.

So when he saw her flesh-and-blood in front of him, he couldn’t believe. Not until she kissed him. And he touched the place on her forehead where a starburst scar had once covered a missing chip of her skull. The skin was smooth and clear now. The bone beneath it solid.

Then he believed. Then he saw. He didn’t notice the change, the new her. The real girl. This was the same girl he’d always known. This was the girl he loved.

They joined hands, palm to palm, fingers intertwined. All the futures he held inside flowed through him and into her.

She didn’t see death, though.

She saw all the life to come before the end.

And it was full of possibility.

Acknowledgments

I am terrible at asking for help. And I am even worse at sharing my sometimes insane aspirations for fear I will be laughed at. For everyone who helped, and for everyone who didn’t laugh but instead said, “You’re writing a book? That’s cool. Can I read it?” Thank you. This includes: my sisters and their husbands; my amazing in-laws; and my friends Melissa, Jenny, and Matt. Thank you all.

I also want to thank:

My big boy, Jamie, thank you for taking two long naps a day starting at five months of age. Those nap times gave me the opportunity to not only start a novel, but to keep working on it until, ninety thousand words later, I typed
the end
.

Zoe, my beautiful daughter, thank you for being a monster and insisting you’re an angel. You make me laugh every day.

My husband, Andy, for being a modern man who takes the kids to the park to get them out of my hair, does the laundry, and helps in the kitchen. Thank you for being my brilliant, creative collaborator and partner. What would I do without you?

My parents, for always being supportive and understanding, even when you really wished I would just go to law school. And for driving me back and forth to the library so that I could constantly replenish my source of new reading material. And for letting me read whatever I wanted without interference. Especially that last one. That was huge.

My grandma Karyus for letting me raid your stacks of paperback novels. You introduced me to everything from Mary Higgins Clark and Sydney Sheldon to
The Thornbirds
. My reading life would not have been the same without you.

My crit partner Alyson Greene. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and for all of your thoughtful comments. Hopefully someday we’ll meet and I can thank you in person.

My amazing editor, Erica Sussman, and everyone at HarperCollins. Thank you so much for making me an author.

And finally, to my brilliant agent, Alexandra Machinist. I feel so incredibly lucky to have you in my corner. Thank you.

About the Author

KATE KARYUS QUINN
is an avid reader and menthol ChapStick addict. She has lived in California and Tennessee, but recently made the move back to her hometown of Buffalo, New York, with her husband and two children in tow. She promised them wonderful people, amazing food, and weather that would . . . build character.
Another Little Piece
is her first novel. You can visit Kate online at www.katekaryusquinn.blogspot.com.

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Credits

Front cover art © 2013 by Sabrina Cichy

Cover design by Michelle Taormina

Copyright

HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Another Little Piece

Copyright © 2013 by Kate Karyus Quinn

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Quinn, Kate Karyus.

    Another little piece / Kate Karyus Quinn. — 1st ed.

        p.    cm.

    Summary: A year after vanishing from a party, screaming and drenched in blood, seventeen-year-old Annaliese Rose Gordon appears hundreds of miles from home with no memory, but a haunting certainty that she is actually another girl trapped in Annaliese’s body.

    ISBN 978-0-06-213595-7 (hardcover bdg.)

    EPUB Edition APRIL 2013 ISBN 9780062135940

    [1. Identity—Fiction. 2. Amnesia—Fiction. 3. Family life—Fiction. 4. Supernatural—Fiction. 5. Immortality—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.Q41946Ano 2013

2012022161

[Fic]—dc23

13  14  15  16  17    CG/RRDH    10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

FIRST EDITION