I haven’t seen the woman in black in a long while. Not in a few months, in fact. It used to scare me, even thinking about the chance of seeing her—but now when I think about her, I can’t help but feel a peace surging beneath my skin. I still don’t really know who the woman in black is—if she’s my guardian angel, if she’s an ancestor from my past or my future—but I know that she’ll always be with me. That’s the most important part of all.
Days and weeks and months pass, and I’m now in a new era of my life. Nothing about it is perfect, but things have changed so much, and suddenly I’m thirteen years old and I’m in my last year of school in the church with Missus Wilhelmina and Jesus hanging on his cross, before I have to start high school in the countryside.
Anise Fowler moves to a different island, and the pack of hyenas slowly separates, and suddenly I find that I’m sitting at lunch tables where there are other people. I’m not sitting with them, but I’m sitting near them, and that’s different too.
One day I walk into the cafeteria and see Marie Antoinette sitting alone. She’s sat alone the last few times I’ve seen her. I can’t help but wonder why. I walk across the cafeteria, loafers sticking to the yellow tile, until I’m right in front of Marie Antoinette. She looks up at me and stares.
“Can I sit here?” I ask.
She nods.
I sit down, my tray clattering. I don’t eat. I just sit and watch while she sits and watches me. “Why don’t you ever have anything to say?” I ask.
She gives me a confused look.
“You never speak,” I say. “It’s like you’re mute. You refuse to say a single word.”
“That’s because no one’s ever listening,” she says. It’s the first time I’m hearing her voice, and it comes out loud and strong and powerful, like she’s a second away from beginning to yell. I almost fall off my seat in surprise. But she only smiles. “You don’t talk very much at all either, you know.”
This is surprising. “I talk all the time.”
“No, you don’t,” she says after a second of looking me up and down. “But maybe you think that you do. I think that’s interesting.”
“You didn’t seem to think it was so interesting when you and your friends treated me the way you did.”
“Anise Fowler wasn’t my friend,” she says. “She hated me the most of all. She’d sit with me just so she could torture me. I let it happen for a long time. But then I changed. I had a pretty eventful year, you know.”
I have to smile. “I can’t wait to hear all about it, then.”
It takes a village to create a book, and I’m lucky enough to have had the support of many:
Beth Phelan, rock star agent, who championed and helped shape the seed of Hurricane Child.
Legendary editor Andrea Pinkney, whose vision helped make Hurricane Child what it is today, along with the rest of the amazing Scholastic crew: David Levithan, Kait Feldmann, Natalia Remis, Deimosa Webber-Bay, Lizette Serrano, Lauren Donovan, Michelle Campbell, Emily Heddleson, Baily Crawford, Melissa Schirmer, Rachel Gluckstern, and Angelique Browne, along with artist Tonya Engel, who made the book come to life with a beautiful cover.
My friends, who gave invaluable feedback and support: Nikki Garcia, Hayley Chewins, Shannon Rogers, Jennifer Poe, and Katherine Webber.
And above all else, my family: especially my dad, Caswil Callender, and Auntie Jacqui, who have always believed in me, and who I think of when I’m not so sure of myself. And my mom, Barbara Callwood, who has read every piece of writing and heard every tearful monologue about my fears and uncertainties on whether I’ll ever see one of my books published, and has forever remained unflinching in her belief that I one day would.
Born and raised on St. Thomas of the US Virgin Islands, Kheryn Callender holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, where they studied fine arts, Japanese, and creative writing, as well as an MFA from The New School’s Writing for Children program. Hurricane Child marks their debut novel.
Copyright © 2018 by Kheryn Callender
Lyrics from BLACKBIRD
Copyright © 1963, 1964 (Renewed) WB MUSIC CORP.
Words and Music by NINA SIMONE and HERB SACKER
Used by Permission of ALFRED MUSIC
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 2017032545
ISBN 978-1-338-12930-4
First edition, April 2018
Jacket art © 2018 by Tonya Engel
Jacket design by Baily Crawford
e-ISBN 978-1-338-12932-8
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