The Scapegracers
Page 30
Not that I had it anymore.
“Hey.” Yates wrapped an arm around my stomach, but she was looking between Jing and Daisy, and I had a feeling she wasn’t quite addressing me. She sucked her lower lip between her teeth. “What if we had a private party for Halloween proper? Just the four of us and some goofy, spooky kids’ movies, you know? Some cute pumpkin-shaped cupcakes? I could make my dog a little costume. He could be a baby witch. The babyest Scapegracer.”
I blinked. My tongue felt dry and funny.
“Yeah,” Jing said after a moment’s silence. “That sounds fun, actually. Like, an old-school sleepover. We could do special-effects makeup on each other. Give candy to trick-or-treaters.”
Daisy shrugged affirmatively.
Yates looked at me. She gave me the softest squeeze. “Does that sound like fun, Sideways?”
“Yeah,” I breathed. I shook my head. “I just didn’t think you guys would want me to come to a party like that. One without magic, I mean.”
They looked at each other. Then they all looked at me.
“Duh, of course we’d want you to come,” said Daisy.
“Yeah,” said Jing. “Now eat your spaghetti before it’s nasty and cold.”
Far away, I sprinted. Madeline was running, and my soul rubbed raw against the lining of her esophagus. My lungs burned with the effort, my calves heaved, and the tendons in my limbs twitched, but I hadn’t moved a muscle. My red soul was churning in Judas’ throat, and I was here, unmoving, out of reach of myself.
But here I was with friends, real friends. We leaned against Jing’s bed together, watched a bit of the old cartoon. I leaned my head on Yates’ shoulder, and I shut my eyes and just listened to them breathing, and the kitschy spooky score.
The devil squirmed around inside my head and asked, rather politely, Hello, Sideways? A pumpkin-shaped cupcake. What is that?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Abby Schulman, my amazing agent. Thank you to Liz Gorinsky for being such an insightful editor, and thank you to the innumerable mentors who’ve influenced this book and me in some way or another, including but not limited to Jeremy, Sara, Anita, Patrick, Jody, cris, Steve, Margaret, Rhonda, Benjamin, and all my fellow Lambda Fellows. Thank you to the weird coffee shops that I used as makeshift office spaces, and thank you to all the people I’ve lived with who’ve tolerated my late-night writing antics, most notably the Circle and Dan. Thank you to my best friends, and to the communities I’ve found across schools. Thank you to Daniel Handler, Leslie Feinberg, Libba Bray, Samuel Delaney, Carmen Maria Machado, Tamora Pierce, Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, Holly Black, Anne Rice, Toni Morrison, Cassandra Clare, Maxine Hong Kingston, Shirley Jackson, Han Kang, Angela Carter, Alice Sheldon, Renée Vivien, V. E. Schwab, and Philip Pullman for writing stories that have made me who I am. Thank you to younger me for surviving high school in rural Ohio while being as gay as I am. Thank you to the universe for making me a Leo sun and a Capricorn ascendant, rendering me unstoppable. Thank you to Sarah, Rosie, and everyone else who reads the unreadable drafts. Thank you to my mother, who gave me fiction, and my family writ large, found and otherwise.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hannah Abigail Clarke is here and queer, etc. They have been published in PRISM international, Portland Review, and Eidolon. They were a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Young Adult Fiction and a Pushcart nominee. They currently research queerness, labor, and monstrosity in grad school. The Scapegracers is their first novel.
You can find them at hannahabigailclarke.com and @sapphomancer on Twitter.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE SCAPEGRACERS
Copyright © 2020 by Hannah Abigail Clarke
Edited by Liz Gorinsky
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-64566-005-7 (ebook)
Cover art by Anka Lavriv
Cover design by Dana Li
First US Edition: September 2020