Calling Home

by Michael Cadnum

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  Praise for Michael Cadnum

  “Not since the debut of Robert Cormier has such a major talent emerged in adolescent literature.” —The Horn Book

  “A writer who just gets better with every book.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Cadnum is a master.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Blood Gold

  “A gripping adventure set during the 1849 California gold rush. Complementing the historical insight is an expertly crafted, fast-paced, engrossing adventure story full of fascinating characters. This is historical fiction that boys in particular will find irresistible.” —Booklist, starred review

  “This novel is fast paced.… The well-realized settings, which range from remote wildernesses to sprawling cities, create colorful backdrops for Willie’s adventure. An enticing read.” —School Library Journal

  “The prose is lively.… A spirited introduction to the gold rush for older readers.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Breaking the Fall

  Edgar Award Nominee

  “Tension hums beneath the surface.… Riveting.” —Booklist

  “Eerie, suspense-laden prose powerfully depicts the frustrating, overwhelming and often painful process of traveling from youth toward adulthood.” —Publishers Weekly

  Calling Home

  An Edgar Award Nominee

  “An exquisitely crafted work … of devastating impact.” —The Horn Book

  “Probably the truest portrait of a teenaged alcoholic we’ve had in young adult fiction.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

  “Readers … will never forget the experience.” —Wilson Library Bulletin

  “[Readers] will relate to the teen problems that lead to Peter’s substance abuse and the death of his best friend.” —Children’s Book Review Service

  “Through the prism of descriptive poetic images, Peter reveals the dark details of his sleepwalking life.… An intriguing novel.” —School Library Journal

  Daughter of the Wind

  “Readers will enjoy the sensation of being swept to another time and place in this thrill-a-minute historical drama.” —Publishers Weekly

  Edge

  “Mesmerizing … This haunting, life-affirming novel further burnishes Cadnum’s reputation as an outstanding novelist.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “A thought-provoking story full of rich, well-developed characters.” —School Library Journal

  “Devastating.” —Booklist

  “A psychologically intense tale of inner struggle in the face of tragedy.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

  Forbidden Forest

  “Cadnum succeeds admirably in capturing the squalor and casual brutality of the times.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Heat

  “In this gripping look at family relationships Cadnum finds painful shades of gray for Bonnie to face for the first time; in her will to grasp the manner and timing of her healing is evidence that she is one of Cadnum’s most complex and enigmatic characters.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Compelling. Adopting the laconic style that gives so much of his writing its tough edge and adult flavor, Cadnum challenges readers with hard questions about the nature of fear and of betrayal.” —Publishers Weekly

  In a Dark Wood

  Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist

  “A beautiful evocation of a dangerous age … Readers who lose themselves in medieval Sherwood Forest with Cadnum will have found a treasure.” —San Francisco Chronicle

  “In a Dark Wood is a stunning tour de force, beautifully written, in which Michael Cadnum turns the legend of Robin Hood inside out. Cadnum’s shimmering prose is poetry with muscle, capturing both the beauty and brutality of life in Nottinghamshire. In a Dark Wood may well become that rare thing—an enduring piece of literature.” —Robert Cormier, author of The Chocolate War

  “[T]his imaginative reexamination of the Robin Hood legend from the point of view of the Sheriff of Nottingham is not only beautifully written but is also thematically rich and peopled with memorable multidimensional characters.” —Booklist

  “Cadnum’s blend of dry humor, human conflict and historical details proves a winning combination in this refreshing twist on the Robin Hood tale.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “A complex, many-layered novel that does not shirk in its description of [the period], and offers an unusually subtle character study and a plot full of surprises.” —The Horn Book

  The King’s Arrow

  “The King’s Arrow is an adventure story full of color and romance, as resonant as a fable, told in clear, clean, swift prose. A wonderful read.” —Dean Koontz

  Nightsong: The Legend of Orpheus and Eurydice

  “Cadnum (Starfall: Phaeton and the Chariot of the Sun) once again breathes life into classic mythological figures.… Skillfully creating a complex, multidimensional portrait of Orpheus (as well as of other members of the supporting cast, including Persephone and Sisyphus), Cadnum brings new meaning to an ancient romance.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Another excellent retelling of one of Ovid’s mythical tales. This well-written version is a much fuller retelling than that found either in Mary Pope Osborne’s Favorite Greek Myths or Jacqueline Morley’s Greek Myths. The story is a powerful one, delivered in comprehensible yet elevated language, and is sure to resonate with adolescents and give them fodder for discussion.” —School Library Journal

  Raven of the Waves

  “[A] swashbuckling … adventure set in the eighth century, Cadnum (In a Dark Wood) shows how a clash of cultures profoundly affects two distant enemies: a young Viking warrior and a monk’s apprentice.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Convey[s] a sense of what life might have been like in a world where danger and mystery lurked in the nearest woods; where cruelty was as casual as it was pervasive; where mercy was real but rare; and where the ability to sing, or joke—or even just express a coherent thought—was regarded as a rare and valuable quality … Valuable historical insight, but it’s definitely not for the squeamish.” —Booklist

  “Hard to read because of the gruesome scenes and hard to put down, this book provokes strong emotions and raises many fascinating questions.” —School Library Journal

  Rundown

  “Deep, dark, and moving, this is a model tale of adolescent uneasiness set amid the roiling emotions of modern life.” —Kirkus Review

  “Cadnum demonstrates his usual mastery of mood and characterization in this acutely observed portrait.” —Booklist

  Ship of Fire

  “Brimming with historical detail and ambience, this fact-paced maritime adventure will surely please devotees of the genre.” —School Library Journal

  Starfall: Phaeton and the Chariot of the Sun

  “Cadnum (In a Dark Wood) once again displays his expertise as a storyteller as he refashions sections of Ovid’s Metamorphoses into a trilogy of enchanting tales. Readers will feel Phaeton’s trepidation as he journeys to meet his father for the first time, and they will understand the hero’s mixture of excitement and dread as he loses control of the horses. [Cadnum] humanize[es] classical figures and transform[s] lofty language into accessible, lyrical prose; he may well prompt enthusiasts to seek the original source.” —Publishers Weekly

  Taking It

  “Cadnum keeps readers on the edge of their seats.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Cadnum stretches the literary boundaries of the YA problem novel. This one should not be missed.” —Booklist, starred review

  Zero at the Bone

  “Riveting … [an] intens
e psychological drama.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Much more frightening than a generic horror tale.” —Booklist, starred review

  “A painful subject, mercilessly explored.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Calling Home

  Michael Cadnum

  With special thanks to

  my agent, Kay Kidde,

  whose faith in this novel

  kept it alive.

  For

  Sherina

  The rescued turn back to the empty sea and cry: save him, too

  1

  Impersonating the dead is easy, but easy like swimming underwater for the first time, thinking, when it’s done, how easy it was, and how ridiculous it was to be afraid.

  There is something intoxicating about it, too. The very wrongness of it changes the body, warps it like too much water surrounding the body, and nearly crushes it.

  It’s easy to begin. All it takes is the hand. The simple, human hand, left over from the days when we were birds, and could fly. The hand lifts the receiver to the ear, and the hand drops the coins into the secret places in the telephone that make it live.

  The forefinger touches buttons that are always warm, like buttons on a thing that is alive. The body not only swims, but rises to the surface where everything is greasy with streetlight. And something important—essential—is different now.

  A miracle. A dead person walking. And breathing, too, the old stiff lungs swelling like two grocery bags.

  The phone rings once.

  There are little speckles on the line, noise specks, like rotting in the system somewhere. Nothing is exact. Things blur; there are no straight lines.

  It rings a second time, and the second ring is worse than the first, because it means that this is really happening, the whole thing really happening, and it is one more ring away from hanging up and running.

  Because parts of the body want to run. The lower lip shivers and the thumb has a tremor in it like there’s a vibrator stuck up inside it somehow. So the hand takes itself up to the thin steel cable that connects the receiver to the phone and runs itself up and down the length of it, loving the feel of the hard steel coils.

  Third ring. It eases. Perhaps no one will answer. Except that if no one answers there will have to be another first time. So one screen inside says, in big green letters, ANSWER!

  The fourth ring begins but it is snapped in two. A noise surrounds the silence in the air, a halo of the reverberating phone bell at the other end of the line.

  Her voice says, “Hello?”

  Sounding normal, like nothing’s wrong. Like it could be a television repairman calling to say the Magnavox is fixed, and that’s all the worry she has in the world, anyway. Just a broken television.

  And it is easy. The breath swells both lungs and comes out through a voice just like his. “Mother,” it says.

  “Mead!”

  “Mother, I’m all right.”

  2

  There were the four of us. First Mead and I, and then Angela and Lani, and we all enjoyed each other’s company, although most of all we enjoyed being with Mead.

  Mead was never unhappy. Even when I saw him once escaping a couple of muggers he was laughing, like it was a great joke, something these two grizzly bears in black leather had decided to do just for the fun of it.

  It probably was, but for their fun, not Mead’s. It was on Thirteenth Street, near Bella Vista, and Mead and I had just bought a six-pack of Coors from the One Stop where they never argued about I.D. I had the beer under my arm, and the two guys stepped from the total dark into the half dark of the streetlight.

  “Give us a dollar, my man,” said a voice, almost a friendly voice, if you didn’t know better.

  I ran. No hesitation. I was off, beer under my arm heavy as a car battery, feeling the fingernails of a big hand snag and slip off the back of my jacket.

  After half a block I turned, because Mead’s steps were not behind me. He was dancing with his adversaries, or at least it looked like it, lunging and skipping and eluding. And laughing while the two swore and swiped at empty air. And then they were laughing, too, and it was all a kind of no-equipment-required sport, a little urban tag to brighten the night.

  When he pranced up the street toward me, I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him along. “You could have gotten yourself hurt,” I said.

  “They were just fooling around,” he said.

  I didn’t bother to tell him that they were in no way just fooling around. It would have been a waste of time to tell anything to Mead. He was quick in everything he did, and sure-handed, as though he could never make a mistake.

  Mead and I liked to drink together, sitting in the abandoned cellar of the empty house next door. But we liked to hike together, too, and get poison oak in the Oakland Hills. Once Mead made a slingshot in metal shop. It was a stout letter Y with a touch loop of elastic. Mead had a pocketful of ball bearings. We wandered up the creek bed in Dimond Park, Mead plinking at bottles and beer cans. He never missed. When a bottle burst, it was as though he willed it to explode. There was never any doubt, no hesitation. He aimed, pulled, and glass tinkled.

  Mead handed me the sling, and I aimed at a half-buckled Coke can. The ball bearing plinked off a rock. Another kicked up dust. I handed the sling to Mead.

  “You just need a little practice,” he said, going out of his way to be kind.

  “Right,” I agreed. “A little practice.”

  A jay squalled through the air, and Mead aimed and the strap snapped.

  Then he froze, and sank slowly to his knees, staring. “No,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to do that,” he said looking up at me. “I didn’t mean it.”

  The jay was warm and limp, open-eyed, two bright blue fans of wings still spread. Mead held it, as though he could toss it into the air and it would come to life again.

  That was the end of the slingshot; I never saw it again. The next time I saw Mead, he had a red book in his hand, even though we were walking up Shepherd Canyon where we had agreed to meet. I had brought a jug of Gallo, and we walked together in silence. I had been waiting for a while before Mead dropped through the brush beside me, and the Hearty Burgundy was already half gone.

  Mead stopped, and flipped through pages.

  “Is that your address book, or what?”

  “That bird we just saw. The one with the white flashes in its tail. It was a junco. Look.”

  His forefinger indicated a bird. There were squeaks in the bay trees around us, but I had not seen anything.

  “Of course,” he said, “just knowing the names doesn’t mean much. But I’m going to learn all the birds around here.”

  I didn’t say it, but it was plain that he felt he owed the birds something—attention, if nothing else. He told me whenever he saw a red-tailed hawk or a grebe, or whatever, not in a bookish or scientific way, but as if it was something that mattered, like seeing a meteor or a lightning strike.

  Lani liked to hit fungoes to him. Mead had a glove that was falling apart. He’d had it since sixth grade, and the leather was so worn the glove folded flat, like a book, probably from Mead putting it under his mattress for years. He would leap horizontal for a ball, and hang there for a moment before falling. Never crashing, but descending to the grass, as though he were made of balsa wood, or paper, not human, hurtable material. Whether he caught it or not, it was fun, and funny, to him.

  Angela would bring some of her father’s liquor, businessman-quality scotch or bourbon, and we would sit in the park, on the grass, while Mead folded paper airplanes, or threw eucalyptus seeds at a paper cup. We all talked, Angela about the kind of car she wanted when she was rich, Lani about her knuckleball, or her piano lessons, which she both hated and loved, but sometimes we just watched Mead fool around, making a kazoo out of a piece of grass, or owl cries with his two thumbs pressed to his lips.

  “How do you do that?” Lani would ask.

  Mead would shrug, laugh, and show us. Lani would m
anage a bleat, a cross between an owl and a goat. I would make nothing, only a long whoosh of air like an imitation wind cave. Angela wouldn’t even try. She didn’t want to muss her lipstick, and besides, she was smarter than the rest of us and knew almost no one could copy Mead.

  Lani wouldn’t drink, and looked at Mead and me like we were crazy when we took a chug on a liter of Jack Daniels. Angela would sample it, and dab at her lips with a Kleenex. I would grow numb, and stare at the sky, the world swinging like a trapdoor when I closed my eyes. Mead would just grow a little more bright-eyed, and go home for his basketball, so we could shoot baskets after the two girls had gone.

  Angela’s family was Italian. I used to joke about the Mafia, and she never laughed when I did that, and so I stopped. Lani was black, and her father was a lawyer. Angela was my girlfriend, although I preferred talking to Lani. Lani was no one’s girlfriend. She had no use for men in her life, or sex, or anything like that. She didn’t have any strong dislikes for males. She just didn’t want one, the way some people don’t want a computer. Mead was the same way about girls. He liked them, the way he liked dogs and cats and Uno bars. He didn’t take them seriously.

  Mead’s father had been hit by a drunk driver while he was crossing the street to go jogging around Lake Merritt. One leg had broken into eleven distinct fragments. He had always been a nervous man, smoking and cracking his knuckles, but now he was a nervous, frail man. He was quick-eyed, one of those people who make you nervous because they are so tense. Not unhappy, just tense. He looked like a slightly gray version of Mead, leaning on a cane with a great pink rubber stopper on the end of it to keep it from sliding.

  Mead was proud of his father. He never said so, but he would mention if his father was going to have an operation, and you could tell he respected the way his father took the pain and didn’t complain. His father sat on the porch smoking, inert like a very old man, watching the world go by, but you never heard him sound bitter. When he had a heart attack, he joked about it, the way Mead would have joked, but after the heart attack Mead became serious for days, quiet, the way he had become about the jay.