But I didn’t need to wonder what they did at night.
The same thing Alpha and I did. They would lie on their beds and think about the rest of us.
It helped to know that when I felt alone, another Hazel did, too. She might be curled up in her desk chair in the next room or the next world, same as me. When I felt insecure, another Hazel was probably smiling nervously or pressing her palms against burning eyes, same as me.
I’d gained a sister and lost three best friends in the blink of an eye, but over time, I saw them in the mirror and wished them quiet good mornings. I felt them when I made a smart-ass comment, when I clapped a rhythm to distract whirling thoughts, when I laughed with friends or said something wrong and chewed my lower lip.
When I touched the doorknob to my therapist’s office.
When I hid a zit with strategically placed locks of hair and smiled at Four’s (at my own) reflection.
When I opened that email from Tara’s phone and set the attached group selfie as my background.
When I told myself the same kindnesses Red might tell me if she were here, and I tried to believe every word.
When I asked Director Facet for leniency for Torrance and the agents and knew Four would be intimidated by Facet and impressed by me for asking, and I felt a sliver of the same.
When I sat alone in my room and said the word “lesbian” aloud for the first time, shaky but certain.
When Alpha said she was keeping the name Hazel and I wrapped my arms around her neck and whispered, “Good.”
I sat side by side with her and Caro and planned the trip we would take—maybe that summer, maybe the summer after, maybe never because I would chicken out, and thought, Well, Rainbow probably doesn’t have any trips planned, either.
I made jokes I knew the others would’ve laughed at and smiled before even checking whether other people were smiling, too.
I didn’t know if I was making the right decisions.
I didn’t know if I was becoming the right Hazel.
But maybe there wasn’t a wrong Hazel to be.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Corinne Duyvis is the critically acclaimed author of young adult novels Otherbound, which Kirkus Reviews called “original and compelling; a stunning debut,” and On the Edge of Gone, which Publishers Weekly called “a riveting apocalyptic thriller with substantial depth” and which won the Neukom Institute Literary Arts award. She is also the author of the original Marvel prose novel Guardians of the Galaxy: Collect Them All.
Corinne hails from the Netherlands. She is a cofounder of the website Disability in Kidlit and the originator of the #ownvoices hashtag.
Loved the book?
Check out our entire catalog of great novels, graphic novels, and non-fiction for young adults and middle-grade readers at Amulet Books!
Hungry for more YA?
Take a
with sneak piques, behind-the-scenes, interviews and much more inspired by our latest YA books at piquebeyond.com!
The Art of Saving the World Page 34
