Nomad
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Gabe, Kaen, and the Envoy traveled north. The moonlit landscape shifted from desert to farmland and forest beneath them.
“Almost home,” the Envoy said.
“Almost home,” Gabe agreed.
He had an idea, a secret hope, and it burned spark-bright inside him. He was afraid to say any part of it aloud, just in case his own voice would snuff it out. But he couldn’t keep it to himself, either.
“Envoy?” he asked, finally. “You found an arrest record for little Tavo Fuentes, before.”
“I’m so very sorry that he was the wrong Octavio,” the Envoy said, mortified. “I should have scrutinized that information more closely. My negligence put you both in danger.”
“I put us in danger,” Gabe insisted. “It wasn’t your fault, not at all. And now little Tavo gets to travel with the Kaen. But can you dig deeper? Can you find networked information that isn’t necessarily public, like Dad’s original arrest and immigration records?”
“Certainly,” the Envoy said. “Those who collect this information and restrict its use would call our access code breaking, and would be very upset by it. But this is simply translation. The Kaen are astonishingly good at translation.” It pushed buttons on the wall and spoke to the ship. Glowing text scrolled through the air.
Gabe read his father’s file. He double-checked the birth date and details of the arrest report. “That’s him. Can we change any of this information from here?”
“Yes . . . ,” the Envoy said, uncertain.
“Good,” Gabe said. “Pull up Mom’s record next, and Lupe’s. Or make one for Lupe if it isn’t there already. We need to add Frankie’s house as the temporary home address for all of them.”
“Are you sure?” the Envoy asked, a concerned shade of purple. “Is it wise to reveal this information? Your family is in hiding.”
“I’m sure,” Gabe said. “We won’t need to hide after this.”
“What are you trying to do?” Kaen asked.
Gabe stood tall and switched over to his formal, talking-to-Protocol voice.
“As the representative of this planet—all of it—I, Ambassador Gabriel Sandro Fuentes, invoke diplomatic immunity. I hereby grant citizenship within the United States of America to Lupe, Isabelle, and Octavio Fuentes. Please send them certificates immediately.”
* * * *
The shuttle soared low over south Minneapolis. It circled a public park, landed beside the baseball diamond, and crouched in the grass. Its mouth yawned open. Gabe came out yawning. He hadn’t gotten very much sleep. Everything looked pale and gray in the early dawn light.
The Envoy crawled sleepily inside his backpack. Gabe hoisted it over one shoulder and took up the sword cane.
Kaen stood beside him. “Nice place.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Come visit sometime.”
“I might. Our old migration cycle takes thousands of homeworld years to revisit the same sun . . . but the Outlast broke our old cycle. I don’t know where we’ll go now.”
Gabe didn’t know what to say, so he fell back on ordinary things that everyone says. “Safe travels.”
“No such thing,” Kaen reminded him. “There’s only trust.”
She pressed her forehead against his.
“I’ll see you soon,” Gabe promised. “See you in the Embassy.”
“I will see you in the heart of the sky.”
She went back inside. The shuttlecraft closed its jaws and launched.
Gabe set out through the park.
He passed the duck pond that Noemi kept trying to fling herself into. He passed the basketball court and small playground, all empty and silent in the early morning. The cane’s metal tip made a clacking sound against the sidewalk.
Frankie’s backyard was still a mess, the grass scorched from a failed model rocket launch and the blast of an orbital ice-mining drill.
The back door was open.
He smelled his father’s cooking through the screen.
He heard his father singing at the stove.
“Todengeeeeeee dam magaaaaaaar tera saath na chhodengeeeeeeeeee.”
Lupe and Mom sat close beside each other at the kitchen table. Garuda the iguana lounged across Lupe’s shoulders. Zora the bird stood on top of Mom’s head.
The twins sat on the floor and wrestled with Sir Toby the fox. Frankie sat there with him, playing with the twins, helping with the twins, even though Frankie was usually useless at this hour of the morning and definitely useless at watching the twins. His parents must have put him on a plane and sent him right back from California. To be helpful. And he was actually helping.
Dad served up something fried and spicy with a wooden spoon and saucepan.
The Envoy made a gurgling noise from inside the backpack.
“Shhhh,” Gabe whispered. He remained just outside the kitchen door. “We’re almost home.”
Acknowledgments
Most of the following acknowledgments are also written into the back of Ambassador. This book shares the same debts.
Thanks to Guillermo Alexander, Kay Alexander, Bethany Aronoff, Kel Darling, Leonora Dodge, Sara Logan, Sasha Sakurets, Kathryn Sharpe, Joy Nelson, and Tim Hart for their knowledge of immigration law, social services, secret railroads, Russian translations, Mexico, Guadalajara, quantum physics, and cane swords.
Thanks to Melon Wedick, Jon Stockdale, Ivan Bialostosky, Nathan Clough, Haddayr Copley-Woods, Barth Anderson, David Schwartz, Stacy Thieszen, and Karen Meisner for their insights, critiques, and support. Thanks to the Blue Ox for the coffee. They make a mean cortado.
Thanks to everyone at McElderry Books and BG Literary, most especially Karen Wojtyla, Annie Nybo, Michael McCartney, Ksenia Winnicki, Joe Monti, Tricia Ready, and Barry Goldblatt. My name is the one sprawled across the front cover, but publishing is a collaborative art.
Thanks to everyone at Simon & Schuster Audio for the audiobook production. I do love to read aloud.
Thanks to Carlos Fuentes, Sandra Cisneros, Gene Roddenberry, and Ursula K. Le Guin for their stories of the borderlands.
Thanks to Junot Díaz for saying this: “If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.”
Thanks to Alice for uncountable things.
WILLIAM ALEXANDER won the National Book Award for his debut novel, Goblin Secrets, and won the Earphones Award for his narration of the audiobook. His other novels include Ghoulish Song and Ambassador. William studied theater and folklore at Oberlin College, English at the University of Vermont, and creative writing at the Clarion workshop. He teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Visit him online at WillAlex.net and on Twitter via @williealex.
Margaret K. McElderry Books
Simon & Schuster • New York
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ALSO BY WILLIAM ALEXANDER
GOBLIN SECRETS • GHOULISH SONG • AMBASSADOR
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MARGARET K. McELDERRY BOOKS * An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division * 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020 * www.SimonandSchuster.com * This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. * Text copyright © 2015 by William Alexander * Jacket illustration copyrig
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