“But I’d kind of felt like you were my little sister, my whole life,” Kayla says. “Because Mom had never told me the truth, of course, but . . .”
“But you paid attention,” I say. “You were watching. You could tell that . . . that I was important to her.”
“And you didn’t care about either of us,” Kayla finishes.
We’re both in the shadows now, but I feel like I can see everything. I’m pretty sure Kayla has the same look I see on my mother’s face all the time now: What you’re going to say next could hurt me. And I can’t protect myself. Please, please, please don’t hurt me. It’s hard for me even to remember how I viewed Kayla back at the beginning of the summer: Did I ever slip and call her a big, dumb ox out loud? All that is gone now. Kayla adapted better to Spain than I did. And she was the one who knew to start CPR on my dad right away. She got me to pray and do CPR myself. She was the one I clung to all those endless hours of waiting at the hospital—there’s nobody else I would rather have had there with me that day.
She’s strong and confident and capable and smart and determined, and it doesn’t seem like anything could hurt her.
But anyone can be hurt.
And . . . anyone can need help healing.
“I didn’t care before this summer,” I admit. “But, Kayla, really? You saved my father’s life. You’ve put up with me and my mom and my dad during the worst time of our lives. I’d beg my parents to adopt you, if it would do any good.”
I picture Kayla and me walking into status-obsessed, appearance-obsessed Deskins High School together, and . . . yep. I still feel the same way. Kayla would definitely help me navigate high school.
She just did, texting Lauren.
“I already have my own family, thanks,” Kayla says, and the stiffness is still in her voice.
“But I think we get to make a choice,” I say. “Because of how I was born, our parents made us . . . what would you call it? Womb-mates?”
“That’s a ridiculous term,” Kayla says.
“Right,” I agree. “I won’t say it ever again. And most people don’t get to decide if they’re going to have a sister or a brother. But we kind of do. We could never speak to each other again after tomorrow, or we could stay friends forever. Or we could decide that we have an even bigger link. Like, that we want to be sisters. And, Kayla, if you think—”
“Avery,” Kayla says quietly. “You were right from the very beginning. We aren’t sisters. We can’t ever be that.”
For a moment, it feels like I’ve taken a soccer ball to my gut. Is Kayla rejecting me? Was she just setting me up? Pretending she wanted to be my sister, so she could hurt me?
“I mean, that’s not the right word,” Kayla says, as if she sees how hard I have to try not to double over in pain. Or as if she’s just figured out something herself. “It’s not as bad as ‘womb-mates,’ but . . . I don’t think there is the right word for us in English. Or Spanish either. It’s like we’re not even speaking the right language.”
“Maybe Bulgarian, then?” I’m mostly joking, but I still pull out my phone and start a search for Bulgarian family terms. “Oh, look—Bulgarian has five different words for uncle. So maybe . . .”
There’s only one word listed for sister in Bulgarian: sestrá.
“Sechedka,” Kayla says decisively as she looks over my shoulder. “It’s like a cross between the Bulgarian word for sister and the Bulgarian word for cousin. It’s perfect.”
“Nobody else would ever understand that,” I grumble.
“So?” Kayla says. “Who needs to understand besides us?”
She has a point. Still, I lean back my head and yell up at the Spanish sky, “Kayla Butts is my sechedka! Isn’t that great?”
“Shh,” Kayla says, putting her hand over my mouth. “You’ll wake up the whole street.”
“This is Spain,” I say, pushing her hand away. “It’s not three a.m. yet, so nobody’s sleeping. And who can hear us for all the partying?”
Kayla surprises me by throwing her head back, cupping her hands around her own mouth and yelling, “¡Mi sechedka está embarazosa!”
She never would have done that at the beginning of the summer.
“There,” she says, looking back at me. She drops her hands. “Satisfied?”
“Yes,” I say. “Because you said está, not es. That means you don’t think I’ll always be embarrassing.”
“Right,” she says. “Because sometimes you’ll just be difficult. Annoying. Bothersome. Bossy. Demanding.”
She’s grinning. I can tell, even in the dark.
“Or sympathetic,” I counter. I loop my arm around her. “Understanding. Listening. Helpful. A shoulder to cry on, when that’s what you need . . .”
With each word I say, it feels like I’m making a promise. Or saying another prayer.
So many things broke this summer. There’s so much more for me to worry about and fear. I found out secrets I never wanted to know.
But it is possible to feel whole and happy again. It’s possible to giggle only moments after being on the verge of tears. And it’s possible for me to peer at Kayla on this dark night and feel like this is one of the sunniest moments of the entire summer.
Because we are connected. By more than our parents, by more than this summer. By our own choice. And we both know it now. We may never use the word sechedka again, or we may use it the rest of our lives. But we’ll always have the feel of it, the meaning we gave it on this night of shouting at the Spanish sky.
And there can be more.
“When you come back to Spain next year,” I say, “can I come too?”
Acknowledgments
Some books, like some kids, have more “parents” than others—or, at least, more godparents and midwives. I think this marks the first time I’ve needed to thank people from four different continents for their assistance with a book.
First and foremost, I want to thank my family, and particularly my daughter, Meredith. I started thinking about this book during a family trip to Spain with her, my son, and my husband, and the sense of discovery we all felt is embedded in this book. When Meredith went back three years later to spend part of her junior year of college in Madrid, she agreed to scout around for some of the information I needed to make the book happen. A year and a half later, she accompanied me to Spain once again to act as tour guide and translator for a more concentrated research trip. She managed not to cringe too much over my rusty, mispronounced high school Spanish, and she humored me going to see landmarks that I wasn’t even sure would end up in the book—even when it meant walking long distances in 90-degree heat. (However, given the trouble we had finding the 11-M memorial at the Atocha train station, I’m not sure she would have ever forgiven me if that hadn’t played an important role in the book.) Later, she proofread the book for me to watch for mistakes about Spain or Spanish translations. (This worked much better than relying on Google Translate!)
I also owe thanks to several people who either gave me specialized information or went above and beyond helping me find experts to interview:
Thanks to my friend and fellow writer Jo Schaffer, I was able to interview her niece, Jessika Stephens, just as Jessika was embarking on plans to become a gestational carrier. Jessika was very generous in explaining both the process and her reasoning about wanting to help another family. She also told me how she answered people who didn’t see her decision in the same light.
When I wanted more information about psychological issues related to gestational carriers, the children they carry, and the intended parents, my friend Dr. Colby Srsic, who is a psychologist, kindly put out a request for me on a listserv of Ohio psychologists, and so many people responded offering help that I couldn’t interview them all. Kathleen M. Payne, Ph.D., of Royalton Psychological Associates in Royalton, Ohio, gave me a lot of information about kids dealing with family situations that mirrored some aspects of Avery’s situation. Allison Fagan, Ph.D., who is a member of the American Societ
y for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and the mental health professional group within that, talked to me about a range of issues related to what Avery, Kayla, and their parents would have faced all along. She also suggested an important change for the ending of the book.
My friend Dr. Tim Richards answered many of my questions about heart patients, CPR, bypass surgery, and emergency room procedures in the United States. When I needed more specific information about hospitals and medical protocol in Spain, my friend, former college roommate, and fellow author Christy Esmahan—who lived in Spain for many years, and got her Ph.D. there—swung into action. Juan Asturias, PhD; Carmen Guerrero, Ph.D.; and a cardiologist, Dr. Francisco Martín Herrero, all gave me invaluable information thanks to Christy’s assistance (and in some cases, her translation assistance as well).
When I needed to doublecheck to make sure I correctly represented the information provided on a California birth certificate from 2004, my cousin Jamil Tahir kindly sent me a copy of his oldest son’s birth certificate—from 2004. (I joked that that is true family loyalty, that Jamil and his wife had their first child the exact right year, even though that happened thirteen years before I needed the information!)
And when I found gaps in my own knowledge about the difficult economic situation American farmers faced in the 1980s, my father answered numerous questions. This also reminded me how proud I am that he succeeded in navigating the challenges of those years as a farmer.
Also, even though I just called her out of the blue and I had no friend or relative to introduce us, Michelle Steele, veterans service officer at the Ohio Veterans Home in Sandusky, Ohio, was very helpful in giving me information about what medical care someone like Kayla’s dad would receive through the Veterans Administration based on the details of his accident.
As with any of my books, any mistakes that might remain even after all that expert help are my responsibility, and nobody else’s fault.
Some of the other help I got with this book was a little more serendipitous. While I was in the middle of writing, I took several weeks off to visit China and speak at the Shanghai American School. Obviously China and Spain are very different countries, but the school staff, students, and parents gave me a lot of insight into living abroad, and what it’s like to be in a foreign country as an expatriate, rather than just a tourist. I’d particularly like to thank the librarian who originally invited me—Beth Rohrbeck—as well as the librarians I spent a lot of time with while I was there: Kathy Lynch, Marie Slaby, Barbara and Tim Boyer, and Kimbra Power. (And Kimbra is actually from Australia—so there’s my fourth continent!)
I also went on a two-week book tour for one of my other books, Children of Exile, while I was revising this book. I’d intended to take a total break from The Summer of Broken Things during that time period, but a conversation I happened to have with my media escort in Kansas City, Cathy Boyle Basse, ended up redirecting some of my thoughts about a particularly tricky issue I was trying to resolve. So, thank you, Cathy, for helping me even when we both thought we were just talking about life and families in general!
And as always, I’m grateful to my agent, Tracey Adams, who was very patient listening to my fretting about this book. Thank you also to my editor, David Gale, and his assistant, Amanda Ramirez, for the questions they asked that helped me hone my view of this book. I appreciate all the support I’ve gotten as well from others at Simon & Schuster. I am particularly grateful to Lucy Cummins, who designed the beautiful cover, which may be my very favorite cover I’ve ever had on any of my books.
And finally, I am grateful to my two local writers groups for their continued encouragement and support. One group we’ve never bothered to name, despite more than a decade of meetings: thank you, Jenny Patton, Nancy Roe Pimm, Amjed Qamar, and Linda Stanek. And thank you as well to the writers of OHYA: Jody Casella, Julia DeVillers, Linda Gerber, Lisa Klein, Erin McCahan, Edie Pattou, and Natalie D. Richards.
About the Author
margaret peterson haddix is the author of many critically and popularly acclaimed YA and middle-grade novels, including the Children of Exile series, the Missing series, the Under Their Skin series, and the Shadow Children series. A graduate of Miami University (of Ohio), she worked for several years as a reporter for the Indianapolis News. She also taught at the Danville (Illinois) Area Community College. She lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio. Visit her at haddixbooks.com.
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Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster, New York
ALSO BY MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX
CHILDREN OF EXILE
Children of Exile
Children of Refuge
UNDER THEIR SKIN
Under Their Skin
In Over Their Heads
THE MISSING
Found
Sent
Sabotaged
Torn
Caught
Risked
Revealed
Redeemed
Sought (an eBook original)
Rescued (an eBook original)
THE SHADOW CHILDREN
Among the Hidden
Among the Impostors
Among the Betrayed
Among the Barons
Among the Brave
Among the Enemy
Among the Free
THE PALACE CHRONICLES
Just Ella
Palace of Mirrors
Palace of Lies
The Girl with 500 Middle Names
Because of Anya
Say What?
Dexter the Tough
Running Out of Time
Full Ride
Game Changer
The Always War
Claim to Fame
Uprising
Double Identity
The House on the Gulf
Escape from Memory
Takeoffs and Landings
Turnabout
Leaving Fishers
Don’t You Dare Read This,
Mrs.Dunphrey
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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 © 2018 by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Jacket photograph copyright © 2018 by Greg Vore
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CIP data for this book is available from Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4814-1764-8
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