by David Estes
“You’re kidding me?” I say. “It’s breathtaking. You’ve got real talent.”
Avery shrugs. “Who knew? I’ve been asked to do some other walls around the city.”
I take another bite of deliciousness and sigh. I’m not sure what I’m good at other than punching, kicking, and assassinating maniacal dictators, but I can’t wait to find out.
~~~
The sun is past its peak when I leave Avery and Lin’s place with a promise to see them more often. “And bring Tristan with you next time,” Lin says on my way out the door.
I stroll through the city, which is still shockingly clean and litter-free. Lecter didn’t do much right, but keeping the city free of trash was one thing I agreed with.
Left turn, right turn, another left: the new park comes into view. Children are running and playing and I spot Elsey, not because of the unbalanced way she runs now—which, amazingly, doesn’t seem to slow her down one iota—nor because she’s the only kid with one arm, but because she’s wearing the biggest smile of anyone. She tags a dark-skinned boy and then runs away laughing as he darts after her.
My mother’s sitting nearby, alone, away from the other parents, her broken arm in a sling. I’m not sure whether everything she’s experienced in her lifetime will ever allow her to fit in with everyone else, but that’s something I love about her.
She gives me a raised-eyebrow smirk when I plop down beside her. “Did you get to see Lin?” she asks.
I nod. “She asked about you like twenty-four thousand times,” I say. “I’m pretty sure she wants to be you.”
“She’s a strong girl,” she says without so much as blushing at the compliment. That’s another thing I love about my mother: she knows she’s strong and she’s not afraid of that fact. “You are too,” she adds, and I do blush, warmth creeping into my cheeks. I guess being like my mother is still too new for me to fully understand it.
“Elsey looks happy,” I say, watching her legs—which seem to grow longer each day—easily carry her away from the boy who’s “it,” until he gives up in search of slower prey.
“She’s never let the world scar her the way other people do,” she says. She’s right, which is what makes my sister so special, because even though she wears a terribly real physical scar from the atrocities of life, inside she’s pure and unmarked. Am I scarred? Is my mother? Will any of us ever be as pure as Elsey again? I hope so.
Elsey runs over, out of breath, giggling. She practically falls into my lap, even though she’s getting far too big to do that. “I was only ‘it’ once, and that was because I let someone tag me,” she says.
I laugh and push her off. “You’re sweaty, you little bragger.”
“Mother says sweat is a good thing. That it’s what makes the world a better place.”
I glance at my mother, who tries to hide her smile. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I want your sweat on me,” I say.
As I watch Elsey brush a moist strand of hair away from her face and charge off to rejoin the game, I feel an unexpected swell of emotion in my chest. Is this……real? Can life go on like none of the awfulness ever happened?
The answer comes to me as I watch Elsey let herself get tagged again. In a move that reminds me so much of myself, she immediately hones in on the tallest, fastest boy, chasing him across the lawn.
No, the world will not go on in denial about its past. And it shouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean we have to be afraid of the past, so long as we remember it and learn from it, united in our belief that humans are inherently good and that the evil is the exception, not the rule. Always hope and strive for a better future.
Elsey gains a step on the boy, then another. She’s so close, her fingers swiping and missing his back by the tiniest margin. She springs forward, diving to try to make the tag, but a brown blur rushes in from the side, catching her before her fingers can find their mark.
Roc does an exuberant and overzealous celebration lap around the park, slinging Elsey—who’s giggling and protesting—over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
Tawni shakes her head at Roc’s antics and makes her way over to us. Her white-blond hair practically sings under the reflected rays of the sun. I stand and hug her, holding her longer than normal. “I missed you too,” she says, understanding me the way she always has.
Behind her is Tristan, his arm around his mother, talking and laughing, his mouth closing only when he sees me and the way I’m looking at him:
With fire and ice and water and storms in my eyes. With the red sky and the yellow-white sand and the green grass. With gray rocks and dim lighting and painted walls. With life and love and memories.
Does he stop laughing because he sees all that in my gaze?
When he smiles I know that he does.
Because I see it in his eyes too.
A million memories and the future.
He hugs me and I’m home.
He kisses me and I’m never alone.
Whether our mothers had any idea what they were really doing when they stuck those chips in our necks, we may never know, but it doesn’t matter now. Because we were always meant to be together and I can’t imagine a life apart.
I’m his rock and he’s mine.
And thus ends (and begins) the greatest adventure of my lifetime.
~*~
Keep reading for:
1) Three awesome Dwellers short stories
2) A long-awaited interview with Perry the Prickler
3) A sneak peak of Brew, the first book in David Estes’ new YA paranormal dystopian series, The Witching Hour, coming January 16, 2014!
A personal note from David…
If you enjoyed this book, please, please, please (don’t make me get down on my knees and beg!) consider leaving a positive review on the major book review sites. Without reviews on the major sites, I wouldn’t be able to write for a living, which is what I love to do! Thanks for all your incredible support and I look forward to reading your reviews.
Acknowledgments
No way! *blinking quickly while pinching my arms and slapping my cheeks* It can’t be over, can it? 7 books, more than 700,000 words, and 18 months later, and the combined Dwellers/Country Sagas are finished. I’m in shock. Complete shock. Speechless. Well, not completely, as us writers almost always have something to say. And what I have to say is mostly a whole lot of THANK YOUS.
First and foremost, to my wife, the real Adele, you have been more than just a support to me on this journey—you’ve been my partner in crime. You’ve suffered my endless babbling about plotlines and characters and promotions and rejection letters and on and on. You’ve been there for my greatest defeats and my greatest triumphs. You’ve sat with me and pored over copious amounts of beta feedback, helping me decide how to improve my early manuscripts. You’ve added your own critical feedback to my stories, never holding back, always being honest, determined to not let me be complacent in my earlier successes, to make each and every book the best that they could be. You are my best friend and the most important person in my life.
To my readers, you are the best, most wooloo people I’ve ever met and I’m so searin’ glad to know so many of you on a first name basis through the David Estes Fans and YA Book Lovers Unite group on Goodreads. You people make me laugh, cry, and throw my laptop across the room on a daily basis, and I’ll always love you for it. If you keep on reading, I’ll keep on writing. Thanks for sticking with me.
A huge HUGE HUGE thanks to my cover artist for this book and for the other three Dwellers books, Tony Wilson at Winki Pop Design. Your art and designs have been PERFECT for this series and I’m never surprised when readers tell me how much they love the covers.
To my beta readers, many of whom have been around for all seven books, you all are so AWESOME I can hardly even put it into words. This is the seventh book in the series, and yet you took your job so seriously, challenging me on the smallest of minutiae, forcing me to think about the decisions I was making and w
hy I was making them. The improvements I made to the story based on your feedback will undoubtedly be well appreciated by my readers. So thank you Laurie Love, Alexandria Theodosopoulos, Kerri Hughes, Terri Thomas, Lolita Verroen, Rachel Schade, Brooke DelVecchio and Anthony Briggs Jr.
And last but not least, to my remarkable Street Team, I love love LOVE reading your reviews of my ARCs, they keep me going sometimes when building a writing career feels like the hardest thing in the world. Thanks for all your reviews, support, and genuine kindness. You are the definition of good people. And a special thanks to Kelly in particular, who has been the ultimate street team member and has taught me so much about how to get the word out about my books. I appreciate everything that you do.
The saga continues in other books by David Estes available through the author’s official website:
http://davidestesbooks.blogspot.com
or through select online retailers including Smashwords.com.
Young Adult Novels by David Estes
The Dwellers Saga:
Book One—The Moon Dwellers
Book Two—The Star Dwellers
Book Three—The Sun Dwellers
Book Four—The Earth Dwellers
The Country Saga (A Dwellers Saga sister series):
Book One—Fire Country
Book Two—Ice Country
Book Three—Water & Storm Country
Book Four—The Earth Dwellers
The Witching Hour:
Book One—Brew (Coming January 16, 2014!)
The Evolution Trilogy:
Book One—Angel Evolution
Book Two—Demon Evolution
Book Three—Archangel Evolution
Children’s Books by David Estes
The Adventures of Nikki Powergloves:
Nikki Powergloves—A Hero Is Born
Nikki Powergloves and the Power Council
Nikki Powergloves and the Power Trappers
Nikki Powergloves and the Great Adventure
Nikki Powergloves vs. the Power Outlaws (Coming soon!)
Connect with David Estes Online
David Estes Fans and YA Book Lovers Unite
Facebook
Blog/website
About the Author
David Estes was born in El Paso, Texas but moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when he was very young. He grew up in Pittsburgh and then went to Penn State for college. Eventually he moved to Sydney, Australia where he met his wife and soul mate, Adele, who he’s now been happily married to for more than two years.
A reader all his life, David began writing novels for the children's and YA markets in 2010, and has completed 17 novels, 15 of which have been published. In June of 2012, David became a fulltime writer and is now travelling the world with Adele while he writes books, and she writes and takes photographs.
David gleans inspiration from all sorts of crazy places, like watching random people do entertaining things, dreams (which he jots copious notes about immediately after waking up), and even from thin air sometimes!
David’s a writer with OCD, a love of dancing and singing (but only when no one is looking or listening), a mad-skilled ping-pong player, an obsessive Goodreads group member, and prefers writing at the swimming pool to writing at a table. He loves responding to e-mails, Facebook messages, Tweets, blog comments, and Goodreads comments from his readers, all of whom he considers to be his friends.
Dwellers/Country EXTRAS!
1) Three awesome Dwellers short stories
2) A long-awaited interview with Perry the Prickler
3) A sneak peak of Brew, the first book in David Estes’ new YA paranormal dystopian series, The Witching Hour, coming January 16, 2014!
1) Three Dwellers Short Stories by David Estes
The Shattered Stones of Fate
Adele
Originally posted on Confessions of a Bibliophile on July 21, 2013.
Hours before The Moon Dwellers…
Sometimes time ticks by at a pace so dismal you can almost see the stones of fate gathering moss before your very eyes. And other times…well, life seems to roar past with the speed of an inter-Realm through-train, whipping your hair around your face and forcing your eyes shut against the airborne debris.
Today starts with the former, but you can never guess which way it’ll end.
Class is heavy and tight on my skull, full of “important” dates and wars and a history that only half sounds real. Did humans really live on the earth’s surface once? It’s hard to believe, and yet everyone says it’s true. And if they did, why did they seem to be constantly in the midst of disagreement and strife?
My grandmother—may she rest in peace—used to say that being outside was like laughter and a warm blanket and the hug of a friend; but of course, those were the same things her mother had told her. No one really knows anymore—all we have are stories from the generations before us. Do I believe them?
Does it matter if I don’t?
I massage a knot in my forehead, the beginning of a sharp headache. Something pokes me from behind. I ignore it.
Poke poke.
“Gannon, you do that again and I’ll break your arm,” I hiss.
“Ms. Rose…something to share?” Mrs. Hill asks, stopping in mid-lecture, her hands on her hips.
“No,” I mumble, writing Gannon on my blank notebook page. When the teacher resumes her monologue about some kind of civil war, I slash through Gannon’s name with a single stroke of my pencil.
Poke poke.
You’ve got to be kidding me. I whirl around, my pencil snapping under the strain of my fingers, which are already curling into fists. My chair falls over with a slam. “Do that I again…” I say, pushing the unfinished threat out into the air.
Gannon’s face is even whiter than usual, his big blue eyes as wide as false moons. “I—I—”
“Yeah, everyone’s sorry,” I say, feeling bad seeing Gannon look so scared. After all, he’s one of the few people who are ever nice to me anymore. But my breathing is heavy, my blood running hot and angry through my veins. An overreaction. Something my father has always warned me against.
I try to swallow it down but all I get is a lump in my throat.
“Ms. Rose…”
Suddenly I’m aware of the many eyes on me, staring, some with open mouths of shock and others with smirks of amusement. I cringe and turn to face Mrs. Hill, who’s placed her lesson plan on the table in front of her. Never a good sign.
I know I should apologize but the lump gets in the way. So I just stare at her, feeling my face redden.
“I’ll not have students threatened in my classroom,” the teacher says. I’m already grabbing my pack and pushing for the door when she says, “Detention. Now.”
The grey-stone halls are empty and hollow, like the feeling I’ve had in my chest ever since the other kids started talking about my father a week ago. I asked Father about it, but he swears everything’s okay, that it’s no big deal, that the rumors and gossip are exaggerations. But his words don’t match his eyes like they usually do. He’s protecting me from the truth: a dangerous world has become infinitely more dangerous.
As I stride down the hall toward the detention room—my fourth such journey in the last week—the playground shouts hit me like bursts of gunfire:
“Your father’s a dead man!”
“Better start looking for a new dad!”
“Complainer!”
I touch a hand to my gut, half-expecting to feel moist holes in it, but all I get is the brittle texture of my school-tunic. Dead man! New dad! Complainer!
Are things really that bad? If they weren’t, would I have broken those three kids’ noses? Would I have two black eyes and fire roaring through my skin?
When I reach the detention room, I glance through the window and see the regulars: Drummer, the heavily pierced kid who can’t seem to stop tapping his fingers on his desk; Gina, the girl with the spiked purple hair and unexplained scars up and down her arms; Chuck,
the dude who smells funny and is addicted to pulling bad pranks. Freaks. Am I one of them?
I stride past the room and push through the school doors. Mother will be furious when she finds out I ditched school again, but she’ll just have to deal.
There are a couple of punks on the corner, smoking something that doesn’t smell like normal cigarettes. “Try it,” one of them says as I pass, holding out a joint.
An insane urge to kick him rolls through me, balanced only by a desire to take him up on his offer. I ignore him and run past, wishing my feet had wings—that I could fly: out of subchapter 14 of the Moon Realm. Out of the underground world of caves and rock and disappointment. Excitement shivers down my spine at the thought, making me feel nauseous because of the conflicting emotions, like I’m spinning and spinning.
Turning a corner, I take the next block in stride. It’s only when I reach my neighborhood that I slow to a jog, hoping Mother will be out.
She isn’t.
Worse, she’s standing in front of our house, looking right at me, like she has delinquent-radar or something. I stop, consider turning and running in the other direction, think better of it, and cautiously approach her.
“I know what you’re going to—” I start to say.
“Come inside, I’ll make you something to eat,” Mother says, cutting me off.
She turns and makes her way back to our small stone cube of a house, holding the door for me. I follow her inside, wondering whether this is one of those mom-pretends-to-be-your-friend-as-punishment teaching moments. I hope not—I’d prefer a harsh punishment dealt by a swift hand any day.
