Hunger flashed through Celia again. She shook her head. “That’s not where I belong.”
She started walking, and the normal kids trailed behind her. They passed a mirrored plate-glass window, and Celia stopped to stare at herself. Her skin was a pale white porcelain, and her irises were bloodred. Her hair had changed from brown to jet black, and she reached up to the top of her skull to feel two small red horns that jutted out of her head. They were smooth and needle sharp at their ends. Celia pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up and over her head to hide them.
A half block later, the burned paper ended and the world was covered in bright soft paper again. Some kids came out of their apartment building and started playing in it like snow. They threw handfuls of it all around. The former Littles moved away from them by habit, but then, one by one, they remembered they were kids again. They ran forward and started throwing paper everywhere. Daisy cast a grin toward Celia and then ran into the mess of kids playing and laughing.
Celia chewed on one of her thick claws and pretended not to notice how the kids smelled. She left them behind and kept trudging forward.
Streetlamps began to flicker on, one by one, and a soft hum filled the air. Maybe a normal girl wouldn’t have been able to hear the electricity flowing back into the city, but Celia heard the rushing hiss of it move across the wires and into buildings. She heard people cry out as they realized that things were getting back to normal.
This will be something everyone talks about, Celia thought. They’ll rebuild the city and their lives, and tell stories about earthquakes, snakes, and strange paper storms, until that’s all it becomes: a story.
For them.
Footsteps ran up behind her. Celia turned to see Ruby’s and Amber’s grinning faces. The smiles fell off them as they stared at her and saw what she still was. They took a step back from her, and another.
“We thought . . . we saw Bigs turn back into kids. And then Littles. But you’re . . .”
“The last Little.” Celia smelled the sweetness of their scent and turned away from them. “I broke the spell, and Demetri and I are the last ones left.” She started walking.
With her sharp hearing, Celia could tell they were keeping pace behind her as they all moved through the drifts of paper.
“You did it, Celia,” Ruby said. “You did the impossible and made it all go away. I can’t believe it.”
“Where are you headed?” Amber asked.
“Home. I just want to go home.”
“Um . . . have you looked in the mirror lately? You can’t live with your parents,” Ruby said. She hurried forward and walked beside Celia. So did Amber. “You don’t fit into their world anymore. They won’t even be able to see you.”
“We’ll help you find a place,” Amber added. “We’re still your friends. Even though you’re a Little. We can help you keep from touching any kid. But you can’t go home.”
Celia closed her eyes and wished her friends didn’t smell delicious. Her apartment building came into sight, half a block away. She stared at the window to her living room. “I think I’m done with being told what I can and can’t do.”
Ruby stopped and stared at her for a long moment. She nodded slowly. “If anyone can pull this off, you can. We’ll hang out soon. We’ll figure out how this is going to work, and we’ll be there for you, Celia. I promise.”
Amber nodded.
“You’ll watch me and keep me from doing anything bad?” Celia said. She had no bitterness behind those words. Not anymore. She had a feeling she was going to need all the help she could get.
“Always,” Amber said.
Celia left them standing in the paper-covered world and went home.
After the End
All the lights were on in Celia’s house when she opened the door. Her parents sat on the couch, holding each other and crying.
Celia ran toward them. “Mom! Dad! I’m back!” She threw herself into their laps and hugged them as hard as she could.
They didn’t hug her back.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” her mom said. “Celia should be home. Why isn’t she home?”
“She’ll come through the door any minute,” her dad replied. “She will, she will, she will.”
Celia pressed her face right up to both of theirs.
They looked straight through her.
“I’m right here!” she screamed, inches from their faces.
She jumped up and down on the orange couch and then shook her mom. Celia tried tickling her dad.
Her parents sat there and worried some more about her.
Celia threw blankets into the air and turned the TV off and on, but whatever magic hid her from them hid her actions too.
Her parents walked to the kitchen. Her mom picked up the phone and made a call. “Hello, I’d like to report a missing girl. Yes, I know there was an earthquake and a lot of people are missing. My daughter is thirteen. Yes, I’ll hold.”
Celia’s dad looked up the numbers to all the local hospitals and paced as he spoke tensely into the phone, describing what Celia used to look like.
Celia broke dishes at their feet. She yelled at them even louder, and sometimes, for half a second, they would look at her, but then their gaze would shift away. Celia slammed every door in the house. She grabbed a pile of paper and wrote in huge letters that she was right here. She put it on the kitchen table.
Her parents went to the couch again. They held each other and cried some more.
Celia ran into her bedroom and grabbed sunglasses and a big hat. She went to the bathroom and covered her face and hands with her mom’s concealer so that her skin was a beige color. She did everything she could to make herself look like she used to. Then she went and stood in front of her parents.
Her mom flinched. Her dad’s jaw dropped open. They stared at her.
“Celia?” her dad whispered.
“Honey, what . . . ?” her mom started, and then they all fell into each other, hugging so hard that it hurt, but in a good way.
“What happened? Where were you?” they asked.
Celia took a deep breath and pulled back from them. “Some bad things happened, but I’m still Celia. And I’m okay, but this is going to be a lot to get used to.”
Her dad frowned. Her mom started crying.
She sat holding their hands and told them the story of everything that had happened. Celia stopped now and then to make sure that they were still listening to her. Now that she had their attention, they seemed to be able to focus on her. She told the story again and again, until it made sense to them. She answered every single one of their whispered questions.
They talked and talked, until they understood.
Then Celia took off her hat and wiped off some of the makeup with her sleeve while they stared at her. She kept at it, until she looked like her new self and they could see what she had become. Everybody cried some more.
Every day, Celia had to remind them what she was. It took a full month before they stopped closing doors in Celia’s face, speaking over her when she talked, and taking plates of food away when she was still eating. Slowly, they became more and more able to see her red eyes, chalk-white skin, and horns. It felt like they would never stop crying.
Then another month passed, and Celia’s mom started calling her “my little monster” and rolling her eyes every time Celia forgot to do the dishes or left the lid off the pickle jar. Her dad started asking her questions about her day and acting like Celia was his daughter again.
Celia never left the house unless she was with one of them, and when she did, she tried to stay far away from all other kids. Amber, Ruby, and Daisy would come by to try to hang out, but that didn’t feel safe. Whatever happened, she couldn’t touch anyone and hurt them. She wouldn’t make more monsters and start the whole cycle all over again. No matter what it took, she just wouldn’t.
Winter turned slowly into spring, and one morning Celia’s mom came into her room with her arms full of books. �
�I ordered homeschooling stuff. You can study six hours a day.”
“Super fun,” Celia replied.
“You have a lot of catching up to do.”
“Because monsters need to know algebra?” Celia asked.
Her mom looked straight into her red eyes and didn’t flinch. “Because my whip-smart daughter is going to get an education, regardless of what she looks like.” She leaned forward and kissed Celia on her forehead, careful to avoid the sharp points of her horns.
“Yes sir.”
They grinned at each other.
Celia spread out the books on her bed’s quilt and opened up every window in her room. A warm breeze blew in. It smelled like a dozen different blossoms. There was a fat biology book with a picture of a duck-billed platypus on the cover, an American history book, a geology book, and even some novels that had questions at the back of them for reading comprehension. Celia stared at all of them and an idea surged through her.
It was time.
She went to her closet and pulled out a small cardboard box from underneath a pile of stuffed animals. Inside was a blackened and pulsing yo-yo. Celia tapped her claw against it a couple of times and then put the heart carefully back in the box and hid it again.
Outside, the sun was starting to set and everything glowed with a soft light. Celia sat on her bed and started reading one of the novels about a girl who gets stranded on an island. The scent of apple-cider vinegar and smoke hit the air a moment before a boy-sized dragon flew into her room. He landed on her carpet and stared at her with his coal eyes.
“Hey, Demetri,” Celia whispered. She tried not to stare at his scales and feathers.
“Do you need help? Are you in danger?”
Celia shrugged and chewed on her lower lip. “I kept waiting for you to show up, but you never did,” she said, and felt the strange connection between them. “So I decided to call you here instead.”
“I thought it would be better to keep my distance.” He looked toward her window, like he might jump out of it and fly away.
“Even if we’re the last two monsters in the whole world?” she asked.
He frowned. “Even so. There is a darkness that runs through me, Celia. I fear I might try to steal my heart back and own you.”
“You’re the Little who figured out how to not attack any kid ever for decades. I’m pretty sure you can handle not destroying one more.”
A smile flickered across Demetri’s lips. “Also, I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me.”
Celia wanted to reassure him that nothing that had happened was his fault, and of course she wanted to see her friend. But he wasn’t her friend anymore. Every memory of that was covered in gray. But maybe she could make friends with him all over again. “You know you’re the only kid it’s safe for me to hang out with, right?”
“Safe,” Demetri whispered. He looked around the room. “How is it that you are home with your parents?”
“It’s complicated, but we’re making it work.”
“Of course you are.”
“I did call you here for a reason,” Celia said. “I need help.”
“Anything.”
“I’ve always hated history, and that book isn’t going to read itself.” Celia gestured at her books and scooted over. She patted the empty space on the bed.
Demetri stood frozen for a moment. Then he moved and perched on the edge of her bed. Sparks fell out of his mouth and made burn marks on her patchwork quilt. He watched her for a long moment before grabbing her hand, careful to not let his talons cut her skin. “You’re really okay?”
She nodded.
“I’ve been so worried.”
“Me too. Is it the worst being Big?”
“Sometimes I’m filled with rage and must burn things. But also, the other night there was a storm and I flew up into it and danced with lightning. And I sleep on a roof full of crows who seem to like me.”
“Crows like me, too,” she said, “and rats and roaches and everything gross. And I love doing magic—I’ve been reading your book and practicing. Just small things. I turned an apple into a potato.”
“How useful.”
Celia rolled her eyes. “I don’t really know what we’re supposed to do, now that we’re the only ones left.”
Demetri didn’t say anything for a while. “Maybe there’s nothing we have to do anymore. Maybe we can just be . . .”
“Free?”
“I was going to say friends.” He grabbed the history book. He opened it to the first page and started reading. So did Celia. They stopped every once in a while to talk about everything interesting that they read.
They stayed sitting next to each other, reading and talking, until Celia’s mom called her for dinner.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my mom, who taught me the magic of books by reading pirate adventures at bedtime and always ending them on a cliffhanger. Thanks to my dad for teaching me about creativity in its many forms. Thanks to my whole family for always taking in stride my quixotic quests and oddball self.
Thanks to my writer friends who read this book in all of its messy manifestations: Rachel Swirsky, Philips Patton, Erin Cashier, Micaiah Huw Evans, Randy Henderson, Kris Millering, Neile Graham, and Lauren Dixon.
Thanks to the HarperCollins team, who gave this book such focused care, with special thanks to Stephanie Stein, Jocelyn Davies, Renée Cafiero, and Megan Gendell.
Thanks to the dreamiest dream of a literary agent, Linda Epstein, and the inimitable Emerald City Literary Agency.
Thanks to my little Sparrows for giving me no time to write but so many stories.
Thanks to Elijah for having the fiercest faith in my storytelling.
Thanks to libraries, which hold vast universes, and thanks to the librarians who are my favorite cosmonauts.
Thanks to teachers, who gave you, me, and everyone we know the gift of reading.
And thanks to every person who gets hurt by monsters and refuses to become one, even when that is hard. I love you.
About the Author
Photo by Andrea Peer of Andrea Peer Photography
KATHERINE SPARROW was raised in Seattle and has lived up and down the West Coast, usually in rainy and foggy milieus that are excellent at convincing her to stay home and write. She has worked as a baker, a social worker, a fund-raiser for obscure yet wonderful causes, and a writing workshop coordinator. She currently lives with her husband and two young kids, who teach her to be enthusiastic about all things little and big. Visit her online at https://katherinesparrow.net.
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Copyright
LITTLE APOCALYPSE. Copyright © 2019 by Katherine Sparrow. 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 hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Cover art © 2019 by Eric Deschamps
Cover design by Michelle Taormina
Digital Edition MARCH 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-284978-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-284976-2
1920212223PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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