Kirsten’s world, micromanaged by her overly involved mother, is battered by her parents’ fighting and her best friend Rory’s newfound chumminess with queen bee Brianna. Told from the alternating viewpoints of Kirsten, the overweight daughter of a doctor, and Walk (short for Walker), son of a striving single mother, the issues raised are spot-on for this age group. The clouds are silent for a moment, and then I fly from the room of bright light.The latest from Newbery Honor author Choldenko is an earnest contemporary story about race, set in a California middle school. I try to go back to the morning, before I knew that clouds could talk, before I knew a stranger could retrieve the dripping stump of your own leg. So many things I know this afternoon that I didn't know this morning. I'm pinned flat like a lab specimen, and yet I'm moving, flying past the red and white clouds. A C+ in Beginning Women's Chorus-and that was totally a pity grade-but here I am, singing my heart out.ĭead would be so good right now. It's funny, really, because I cannot remotely carry a tune. "My dad is dead," I say, but it comes out in ear-splitting moans, a song I didn't know I could sing. "What's your mom's name, hon? Or your dad's?" They are grim but determined, these clouds. Something white smeared in red hovers above me like a cloud at sunset. The pain slams me down, and I realize I'm not dead after all, although I really wish I could be because maybe then I could breathe instead of scream.
I know I must be dead because in the movies there's always a tunnel of brilliant light before someone croaks. I open my eyes and the light is blinding. I should be thinking about love right now-not apples, and certainly not a new pair of Nikes-and then I stop thinking altogether because I am too busy screaming. Between a bike messenger's ropy calves I can just make out the 30% OFF TODAY ONLY sign at Lady Foot Locker. It reminds me of the bamboo wind chimes on our patio.Ī thicket of legs encircles me. It's not an unpleasant sound, more delicate than I would have imagined. I listen as my bones splinter and shatter. I register the brakes screeching and the horrified cries before I hit the pavement. If not love, at the very least you should be counting up your sins or wondering why you didn't cross at the light.īut you should not be thinking about an apple. When you die-and I realize this as I hurtle through the air like a wounded bird-you should be thinking about love. I'd noticed it because it was so weirdly out of place, a defiant crimson McIntosh in an army of dull green Granny Smiths. It was in a vendor's stall at the farmers' market off Powell. I am thinking of an apple when the streetcar hits and my leg severs and my ribs crumble and my arm is no longer an arm but something unrecognizable, wet and red.Īn apple.
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