Nightbooks
Page 20
Alex remembered something that Ms. Coral had once told them: Every sentence is a learning experience—no writing is ever wasted. He hoped he had a chance to tell her how right she was.
“The Gleaming City was a marvel of the modern world, all silver and chrome and glass, except for the ancient hole at its center.”
Alex started to walk backward. Aunt Gris followed him as though in a trance, releasing Yasmin without even realizing it. Alex glanced over his shoulder, making sure that he wasn’t going to trip over anything. Right now he was casting a spell of his own, and the slightest interruption might break its magic.
“As Mr. Levine wrote the math problem, a sentence scrawled itself into the blackboard just above his head. I was the only one who could see it.”
Alex could feel Old Smokey’s heat on his back. Almost there, he thought.
“Addie had always thought that clowns were the scariest part of the circus,” he read. “She was wrong.”
“Give me the book,” Aunt Gris said. She held out her candy-caned fingers, a hungry, desperate look in her eyes. “I need it.”
Keeping one eye on the witch, Alex cautiously opened the heavy iron door to Old Smokey. It was even larger than him.
Inside the boiler, flames roared.
“What are you doing?” Aunt Gris asked, crossing half the space between them in a heartbeat.
Alex read from his nightbook, freezing the witch in her tracks.
“When I woke up that morning, there was a package wrapped in brown paper waiting on my front porch. My address had been written in clear, crisp handwriting: Forty-Two Skybird Lane, Hennington, PA. That wasn’t the strange part. The strange part was the name written above the address, which wasn’t a name at all. It read: ‘To the Man Standing Right Behind You.’ I turned around.”
Aunt Gris grinned with childlike pleasure.
“What happens next?” she asked. “I have to know!”
“Good,” said Alex.
He threw the nightbook into the flames.
The witch screamed in horror and leaped across the floor, knocking Alex out of the way as she stuck her hands into the raging heat. “Nooooo!” she wailed, clawing desperately for the nightbook. “What have you done! The stories! The stories!”
Yasmin shoved her from behind.
Aunt Gris fell forward into the flames. Alex slammed the boiler door shut, and the two children held their backs against it as the witch struggled to escape. Finally, there was a sound like rice pouring into a bowl and the witch stopped struggling. The smell of burned candy apples filled the air. Alex peeked through the tiny slot in the door. There was nothing left of Aunt Gris but a large mound of sugar and four candy-cane fingers. They were still wrapped around the remains of his nightbook.
22
The Gift
It had been unusually hot all May, and that Saturday was no exception. By the time Yasmin finally arrived at the park, Alex’s favorite Cthulhu T-shirt was stuck to his back.
“Sorry I’m late,” Yasmin said, taking a seat next to him on the bench. She was holding a small paper bag in her hands. “I had to finish something up.”
After a few months of home-cooked meals, the color had finally returned to Yasmin’s skin. When she smiled her cheeks looked healthy and full.
“That’s okay,” Alex said. “I was just sitting here pondering.”
“New story?”
“No,” he said. “I mean—yes. I’m working on something, a novel actually. But mostly I was thinking how weird it was—my brother yelled at me this morning for something so stupid it’s not even worth getting into, and I’m ecstatic about it. For months my family has been walking around on eggshells, being so nice to me I felt like a stranger in my own home. Now I feel like things are finally returning to normal.”
“I know what you mean,” Yasmin said. “The other day my mom tore into me for texting Claire when I was supposed to be doing my homework, and I could have hugged her.”
Yasmin and Alex were at the center of a mystery that had captivated the entire world. Fifty-eight confused children—including Yasmin’s friends Claire, Eli, and Little Hwan—had been found wandering the halls of Bayside Apartments. They recalled their names and everything about their lives up until the moment they entered apartment 4E, but nothing past that. Even more extraordinary, some of the children had been missing for a decade or more and hadn’t seemed to age in the intervening years. There was talk of aliens and government conspiracies, but for the families who had finally been reunited after years of grief, there was only one explanation: miracle.
Yasmin and Alex could have shed a considerable amount of light on the subject. They might have told authorities how the missing children hadn’t aged because they had been frozen as figurines. They could have also explained how the death of the witch who owned the apartment broke the curse and brought the children back to life.
Unfortunately, Yasmin and Alex didn’t think anyone would believe them, especially since the apartment had reverted back to a completely nonmagical form. And so they had pretended to lose their memories along with everyone else. It was easier that way.
“I made you something,” Yasmin said, handing Alex the paper bag in her hands. “Hope you like it.”
“Thanks,” Alex said, touched. He felt bad that he didn’t have anything to give her in return, but he knew that would change soon; he had been saving up for tickets to a Mets game.
Inside the bag was a simple composition book. Yasmin had covered it with pictures of everything that Alex loved: monsters and aliens, creepy clowns and killer dolls, spooky old houses and abandoned amusement parks.
The only thing missing was witches. Alex was okay with that.
“It’s sad that you lost all your nightbooks,” Yasmin said. “I figured you could write some new stories in this one.”
“It’s perfect,” Alex said, his face growing warm. “It’s the nicest gift anyone ever gave me.”
“Don’t get all mushy,” Yasmin said, getting to her feet. “Besides, I didn’t come here just for you. Where is she?”
Alex nodded toward a large elm tree.
“Over there in the shade,” he said. “I guess after all those years indoors she still hasn’t gotten used to the sun.”
Lenore was lying in a comfortable spot at the base of the tree. Yasmin and Alex took turns taking care of her, though they suspected that she was happiest when the three of them were together. The orange cat glanced in their direction now: I’m glad to see you, but not quite glad enough to walk all the way over there.
Yasmin checked her watch and gasped in surprise.
“I gotta run,” she said. “My parents freak out if I’m like a minute late. Do you really like your present?”
“I love it!”
“Don’t just love it,” she said. “Use it.”
After Yasmin and Lenore left, Alex headed home, flipping through his new nightbook. The empty pages brimmed with possibility.
What if . . .
Alex broke into a run. He had an idea for a new story, and he couldn’t wait to get home and start writing.
Acknowledgments
The first draft of Nightbooks required my editor, Katherine Tegen, to be even more brilliant than usual. Without her guidance, you would be holding a much different—and inferior—book in your hands. Much gratitude as well to the rest of the amazing team at Katherine Tegen Books! I also want to thank my agent, Alexandra Machinist, whose work ethic and sound judgment never cease to amaze me. Props to Alli Minetti for reading the original manuscript and giving me the perspective of a (crazy smart) fifteen-year-old reader. Thanks to my friend and fellow teacher Lindsay Coral for sharing her knowledge of Syrian culture. Finally, I couldn’t have written a single spooky word without the love and support of my wife, Yeeshing, and our three sons: Jack, Logan, and Colin. You are my happily ever after.
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About the Author
Photo credit Yeeshing White
J. A. WHITE is
the author of the Thickety series. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, three sons, and the ghost of their hamster, Ophelia. When he’s not making up stories, he teaches a bunch of kids how to make up stories (along with math and science and other important stuff). He wishes dragons were real because it would be a much cooler way to get to work. You can visit him online at www.jawhitebooks.com.
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Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
NIGHTBOOKS. Copyright © 2018 by J. A. White. 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 by DAN BURGESS
Cover design by AMY RYAN
* * *
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017954128
Digital Edition JULY 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-256010-0
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-256008-7
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1819202122SCP10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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