Spare and Found Parts (26 page)

T
he first thing is it is dark. You imagine this is how it always feels before the curtain comes up—something like birth. You adjust the pleats in your dress, shuffle the small cards your speech is written on. You imagine yourself five hundred feet tall, strong as stone, with lights all along your limbs. You imagine yourself Nan, crystals in your pockets. Kodak rests around your shoulders, and you are glad of him, gladder still that it is not just the two of you up there.

Io stands behind you, the red scarf slung over his shoulder. He blinks and looks down to you, and you beam courage up at him.

“I'm sickened with me nerves,” whispers Sheena Blake.

“Would you ever stop?” Rua hushes her. “We're grand. Nell has us sorted.”

“I know, I know. There're just so many people out there . . .”

Nic shushes them both, and Tim chuckles softly. They are poised and ready to go, each operating a different component of the presentation: speakers, a screen, the projector, the lights. You could not do this without them. They are proof that this matters, that this is possible. You are not doing this alone. You'll never be alone again.

Moving the Lighthouse rig into your father's lab was hard—it was a mess, and it was sad—but the four digital archaeologists had been so excited, so enthralled by Io that through the grief, a home had begun to flourish around you.

The night Julian left, Nan poured lines of salt on the floor, and you prayed with her then, watched them turn to ash. She is somewhere now in the theater; you are sure she is praying for your reception, for awe rather than uproar, for delight rather than riot. You are almost certain that you are praying yourself.

The city is still reeling from your father's admission and departure, still astonished at Oliver's so swiftly taking up his reins. The air is simmering around you, and your chiming is filling you completely—exhilarated. You know the others can hear it, but nobody is asking for your silence now. You will not apologize.

You are about to contribute a skeleton key to the city's whole past: “Io, who can unlock sleeping data, who can read what we cannot. Io, who can show us where the world was headed before the Turn, so we can walk forward with knowledge of who we were before, so we don't make the same mistakes.” You repeat these lines to yourself; you know completely why you are here and what you have to give. What you have to contribute. The mayor is speaking in front of the curtain. You hear your name.

“Are you ready, Nell?” asks Io.

You stand taller. He takes your hand. You hold it for a moment, then let it go. The curtains open, and light floods all around you. The beat strikes up, interstellar and glimmering as you walk toward the microphone and the silent, waiting crowd.

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O
ne girl can't build a monster alone.

There are many people without whom I'd still just be tinkering at my desk. Thank you, Simon Trewin, for plucking me as a wild card and for fighting for this book and for being at the other end of the phone: thank you for believing in me. To Eric Simonoff and all at WME too, for having my back. Thank you, Vanessa O'Loughlin—without whom I might have given up, way back.

Thank you to everyone at Greenwillow Books and Harper for welcoming this strange book into your shelves. Martha, my editor, for handing me a flashlight while I built this weird thing, for interrogating the work, for bringing the book this far. It's been a great, inky road to walk with you.

Thank you, Nic Alea, for being a good witch across
continents, for use of your poetry as epigraph.

Thank you to my folks, Sean and Patricia—you gave me the toolkit I work with, the first books—the most important ones. The video games. The paper to write on. The David Lynch movies. Without the things you gave me—the love, most important—I wouldn't be writing at all. I wouldn't know how to. My sister, Katie—you keep me footed. Love to my Nana, to Polly and James and Tre. It is good to live on the same island as ye again.

Thank you to the Doomsburies. You have all listened through mad sleepless months and tangles of plot: you are my compass. To Deirdre Sullivan, for challenging me to write a sexy Frankenstein book and for magic totems. To Dave Rudden, for catching me at the end of the staircase and taking mad phone calls at all hours. You both read me more than you ever need to; I'm indebted to you both for this. To Graham Tugwell, though it's been a long time, for giving me the black armband in the first place.

To my friends, and I am fortunate enough to have such a community that I can't list all of ye here: there isn't enough paper to gush. Thank you, to Christina and The Duffs for true kinship and a very important week on Valencia Island. To Damon, for making me laugh. To everyone at The Booksmith in San Francisco,
for tolerating a lunatic greetings card buyer, for buying me gin on important days, for keeping the altar up. To the folks at JAM on Synge Lane, for giving me a piano to write at. To Helena Egri, for getting this from day one. To Roe McDermott, my God I miss you. To Erin Fornoff: all the common sense and laughter. You three good witches give me courage. To Tynan, for shouting it out in long halls. This is a strange job to find yourself in and all of ye make it less strange, or make the strangeness a home.

And most of all, to Ceri Bevan. My whole heart, how did you let me away with this? I couldn't have made you up.

SARAH MARIA GRIFFIN
lives in Dublin, Ireland, in a small red brick house by the sea, with her husband and cat. She writes about monsters, growing up, and everything those two things have in common. This is her first novel.

WWW.SARAHGRIFF.COM

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Front cover art © 2016 by Will Staehle

Cover design by Will Staehle and Paul Zakris

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

Permission to reprint excerpt from “Sharp Things” granted by the author.

SPARE AND FOUND PARTS
. Copyright © 2016 by Sarah Maria Griffin. 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, 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 hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

www.epicreads.com

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016947329

EPub Edition © September 2016 ISBN 9780062408907

ISBN 978-0-06-240888-4 (trade ed.)

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