The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE NOWHERE GIRLS

  BY AMY REED

  “Masterfully fierce, stirring, and deeply empowering story of hope and courage.”

  —AMBER SMITH, New York Times bestselling author of The Way I Used to Be

  “A call-to-action to everyone out there who wants to fight back.”

  —BUSTLE

  “Scandal, justice, romance, sex positivity, subversive anti-sexism—just try to put it down.”

  —KIRKUS REVIEWS, starred review

  “Gritty and timely . . . A must-read.”

  —SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, starred review

  New York Public Library Best Books for Teens, 2017 Chicago Public Library Best Teen Fiction, 2017 Amelia Bloomer List, 2017 Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award finalist, 2018

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  For my Grays Harbor Reeds and my Cebu/Delano Padillos. For my roots both known and hidden, my people found and lost, my family inherited and conjured.

  No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.

  —L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

  SURVIVAL

  : the act or fact of living or continuing longer than another person or thing

  : the continuation of life or existence

  : one that survives

  INSTINCT

  : a natural or inherent aptitude, impulse, or capacity

  : a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason

  : behavior that is mediated by reactions below the conscious level

  SURVIVAL INSTINCT

  : ability to know what to do to stay alive1

  * * *

  1. “Survival Instinct.” Merriam-Webster.com. Accessed April 17, 2018. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/survival%20instinct.

  PROLOGUE

  Excerpt from

  UNICORNS VS. DRAGONS: THE FOG APPROACHETH (BOOK ONE)

  By Christie Romney

  The blackberry vines are bare, and night comes early. Fog settles in a thick mantle over the land, and the unicorns know it is finally safe to come out of their summer hiding places. All across the flatlands, they stretch their sparkling white haunches as they breathe the cool, refreshing air of autumn.

  But still, every owl cry and fern rustle makes them tense. They are always on guard, always vigilant, always ready to run. It’s the only way to survive.

  Moonracer’s nose twitches as she sniffs the breeze. She can smell a trace of danger on the fog, a putrid scent that could only come from one place—the hot bellies of hibernating dragons.

  She tosses her snowy mane as she worries to herself, I hope the dragons don’t wake up early this winter. They will be ravenous. She has known this fear for as long as she can remember. It is in her blood.

  “Moonracer!” her mother calls. “Time for mushroom hunting.” Moonracer’s stomach rumbles. She hasn’t eaten since before the rhododendrons started getting their blossoms.

  Ugh, Moonracer thinks to herself. Another winter of foraging mushrooms, staying out of sight, and trying not to wake up the dragons. What if there’s more to life than this?

  Just then, thunder rumbles noisily from the top of the mountain, and the fog thickens with the rotting stench of dragon snores. The unicorn herd trembles in unison and hides without a sound.

  But not Moonracer. She stands tall, glistening in the mottled moonlight.

  “Get in here!” her mother warns, peeking out from inside the dark, dripping, moss-lined cave, still stuffy from the family’s months of summer sleep.

  “I’m not scared of a dragon’s nightmare,” Moonracer says defiantly.

  “You should be,” whines her little sister, still a foal, from deep inside the cave.

  “I want to know what’s out there,” says Moonracer.

  “But curiosity leads to danger,” her mother says. “This is who we are, Moonracer. This is our territory, and we must stay inside its boundaries. We’re safe from dragons here.”

  But if we’re safe, Moonracer thinks, why are we always so scared?

  She’s been hearing stories her whole life, about all the things to fear, all the things to hate, all the things out there. But when was the last time a unicorn even stepped outside these woods? Does anyone really know what would happen if they climbed through the fog to the top of Mount Olympus? What does the world look like above the tree line, beyond the suffocating dark of the forest, where there are no towering firs or spruces or cedars, no hoof-tangling brambles and ferns?

  What does the sky feel like outside the shadows?

  BILLY

  THIS ISN'T ANY OLD FIRST day of school. First of all, it’s my first day of senior year, which is supposed to be some kind of Big Deal, like a rite of passage or something, except I don’t really see myself or most of my classmates changing much anytime soon, and isn’t that what a rite of passage is supposed to make you do? As far as I can tell, most people in Fog Harbor stay the same until they die, except instead of being in high school, they’re working at BigMart or the prison. So senior year isn’t so much about growing up as it is about doing a bunch of illegal things before you can get a permanent police record. But I have no interest in drinking and doing drugs, and I don’t know any other, cleaner options that sound any good. I’m not cool enough to be straight-edge, and I’m not smart enough to be a nerd, so mostly I’m just sober out of fear, which is my motivation for most things when I think about it. Grandma’s been telling me since before I can remember that addiction is in my blood and I’m a junkie waiting to happen, and I figure going through withdrawal once as a baby is more than enough. Plus, I’ve heard enough horror stories watching the AA channel on TV that drinking and doing drugs don’t really seem worth the trouble.

  The whole Big Deal of senior year pales in comparison to the Really Big Deal: that the high schools of Carthage and Rome will be combined this year. Things are tense, to say the least. Even before my uncle got famous, even before Carthage’s Unicorns vs. Dragons connection, Rome and Carthage have had a rivalry as long as anyone can remember. This is one of Grandma’s favorite topics of conversation, in addition to “environmental terrorists” and “fake news.” The rivalry started sometime in the early 1900s, with a sordid story involving opium-crazed mill workers and a serial killer named Hilliard Cod, who was also the first mayor of Rome and was supposedly into witchcraft and put a curse on both the towns right before he was executed. For years, the biggest night of the year for both towns has been the annual Carthage High versus Rome High football game, which has the highest official violent crime rate of any night all year. But since Carthage High is closed down due to dwindling enrollment numbers and being condemned for a rabid raccoon infestation and literally the whole thing being a giant, crumbling box of asbestos, that particular night won’t be a problem anymore. But now the whole school year might.

  Until just a few years ago, most people only knew about us for having the highest per capita heroin deaths in the state and the most foggy days per year of anywhere in America and one of the worst rates of unemployment aft
er all the logging jobs disappeared. We’re also known as West Coast Appalachia, which sounds kind of fancy to me but apparently is not a compliment because the one time I asked Grandma what it meant, she yelled and chased me around the house (but slowly, due to her bum knee and arthritis and diabetes and a few dozen extra pounds) and threatened to smack my chin, even though these days, smacking chins is mostly considered child abuse, which she claims it wasn’t back when her actual children—my mom (RIP) and uncle (estranged)—were kids. But look how they turned out (not good).

  But Rome is famous now for something way bigger than fog and heroin and unemployment, and that big thing is my uncle, Caleb Sloat. The WELCOME TO ROME sign when you drive into town got replaced last year with a new sign that says WELCOME TO ROME—YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN, which is the title of the song that catapulted Rainy Day Knife Fight (my uncle’s band) into fame three years ago. If you ask me, it was a kind of hasty decision for Rome to make a whole new sign to commemorate a hometown hero, especially one who’s only been famous for three years and isn’t even dead yet, but I guess they were desperate for a hometown hero. The funny/tragic/ironic thing is that “You Can’t Go Home Again” is basically a song about how much Caleb hated growing up in Rome, which is what most of his songs are about and pretty much all he ever talks about in interviews, and if you think about it, the sentiment that “you can’t go home again” is maybe not the most welcoming thought to have on a town’s welcome sign.

  So that’s what Rome, Washington, is famous for—my uncle Caleb, who I haven’t seen in five years, back when I was twelve and he was a twenty-two-year-old starving musician busing tables at Red Robin in Seattle and sharing a one-bedroom apartment with his bandmates. He came back to Rome for a couple of holidays but left both times screaming out the window of his junk car as he drove away, while Grandma stood at the front door screaming back, and I just sat in the house watching TV with the volume turned way up. Then Caleb got famous and stopped coming at all.

  I feel weird even thinking about Caleb as my uncle these days. Sometimes I wonder if my real memories have been replaced by things I’ve seen on TV and online, and most of the things I think I know about him are based on stories he’s told in interviews, which Grandma says are all lies. Then, of course, there’s all the celebrity gossip about how he’s a junkie and hasn’t written a new song in two years, which I don’t want to be true but I think probably is.

  I don’t know who to believe (Grandma and Caleb and celebrity gossip are all notoriously unreliable sources), so I try not to think about it too much. One thing I do know for sure is that old-timers like Grandma can’t stop being nostalgic about a version of Rome none of the young people ever got a chance to live in. Not me. Not Caleb. Not my mom (RIP). None of us saw what it was like when, according to Grandma, our neighborhood was actually nice, back when everyone had good logging jobs. But then all the trees got cut down, and so did the people, and now our street is just one of many full of dilapidated houses with overgrown lawns and faded FOR SALE signs, in a part of town everyone calls “Criminal Fields.”

  But it’s my home, so I have to love it. I love how everything is green all year and never dries out. I love how the air is fresh because it’s always getting cleaned out by the ocean. I love how most everyone who lives here has lived here forever, so you always know what people are up to. I love how I can walk everywhere I need to go. I don’t know much, but one thing I’m sure of is that happiness is all a matter of perspective.

  So, in my humble opinion, Rome and Carthage have plenty to be happy about. Rome has my uncle, and Carthage has Unicorns vs. Dragons, which, if you ask me, makes the towns about even, but I guess no one’s ever satisfied with what they have, even if what they have is the most famous rock star in the world and/or the most successful teen book and movie series in the world. One thing that really didn’t help the rivalry was when Rome High changed its mascot to the Unicorns right after the first Unicorns vs. Dragons book came out, even though everyone knows the books mostly take place in Carthage. The city of Carthage actually sued the city of Rome for that, but some judge threw it out. Carthage High had to settle for the Dragons being their mascot, which they never quite got over, but when you think about it, aren’t dragons way tougher than unicorns? And isn’t it cooler to breathe fire than ice? But I guess when you think someone stole something from you, it makes you want it even more.

  With the school merger, the mascot of the new Fog Harbor High is changing to the Lumberjacks, so now nobody’s happy.

  Honestly, I’m feeling pretty relaxed about everything, though Grandma suggested I bring a steak knife to school today “just in case.” One perk of being a loser is that I’m not all that attached to things staying the same. Where else were the Carthage kids supposed to go? Plus, Rome High has plenty of room because the town’s population is about one-third the size it was when the school was built, since everyone who can moves away. I figure this is an opportunity for things to change a little, maybe end the town rivalry once and for all. Grandma says that’s ridiculous, but she is against change in general as a principle, so I’m not putting a whole lot of stock in her opinions on the matter.

  Besides practicing gratitude, another useful thing I’ve learned from therapy talk shows is to keep my expectations low and my acceptance high. That way, I won’t get too disappointed. So I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much about this whole school merger thing, but I can’t help thinking that maybe this year I’ll find someone to eat lunch with besides Mrs. Ambrose, who spent all last semester telling me about her college year abroad in Prague a million years ago and harassing me to start a Gay-Straight Alliance club, and I couldn’t break it to her that I’m not gay because I was afraid she’d be disappointed, like maybe my fictional gayness was the only thing she actually liked about me, and if I broke the news to her that I’m straight, she wouldn’t want me eating lunch in her classroom anymore, and she’d throw me into the hall to fend for myself, which I am notoriously not good at, and that would definitely increase my getting-shoved-in-lockers numbers for this year.

  Who knows? Maybe this year will be an opportunity to meet some new people. Not that I necessarily need to meet new people. I’m grateful for the people I have: Mrs. Ambrose, even though she mostly talks about herself the whole time; Grandma, even though 97 percent of the time she talks to me, she’s saying something mean or ordering me around; that homeschooled girl across the street from my house whose family’s in a cult who I think is my age and I say hi to the rare times she’s allowed outside, and sometimes I even get a whole sentence out before she runs back into her house, and that’s kind of like a conversation. But maybe it would be nice to know someone I can say more than hi to. Maybe it’d be nice if someone said something back that was more than just telling me what to do, or getting mad at me for something that’s probably not my fault, or pressuring me to start a Gay-Straight Alliance club, or making fun of me, or asking if they can meet my rock star uncle. Maybe it’d be nice if I could find someone who actually wanted to listen. Maybe then I could figure out what I wanted to say.

  LYDIA

  I WASN’T EXPECTING A WHOLE lot from the people of Rome, but this is bad even for them. A handful of wrinkled old ladies are standing outside the high school with handmade signs that say GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM and CARTHAGEANS NOT WELCOME IN ROME and KEEP TRASH AWAY FROM OUR KIDS. Clever. Someone painstakingly illustrated what appears to be a group of dark-skinned dragons being smashed by a giant sparkling white unicorn hoof. Besides being incredibly racist, it is also incredibly bad art. Someone’s even holding up one of those PEOPLE BEFORE TREES! signs everyone has in their front yards to protest the fact that there are nearly a million acres of untouched old growth forest in Olympic National Park being wasted on nature when it could be creating jobs to cut them down. What that has to do with the school merger, I’m not quite sure.

  These people have never met me, and already they hate me. I’m pretty sure they’d hate me after they met
me too, but that’s beside the point. What sucks is the powerlessness of the whole thing, how I have absolutely no choice about where I go to school, not to mention the fact that I don’t even want to be here, but everyone still hates me, as if I am purposely trying to make their lives difficult, as if my very existence is an insult and threat to theirs. Plus, I’m brown, which has never been a particularly popular way to occupy space around here.

  At least I’m getting to school early, before the explosion of arrivals officially starts. I recognize some Carthage kids on my way to the lunchroom, but they don’t say hi. The unspoken rule about free breakfast is you do not talk about free breakfast, even though at least half of the kids in Fog Harbor are on some kind of reduced-price meal plan. There’s also the fact that these people are all assholes and not my friends, and therefore not people I talk to.

  A big banner says WELCOME, CARTHAGE STUDENTS! as I enter the lunchroom, but someone has already crossed out WELCOME and replaced it with FUCK YOU. I strap my skateboard to the back of my backpack and find my place at the end of the line to pick up today’s offering of plastic-wrapped cinnamon roll, sugar cereal, and carton of chocolate milk. With free breakfasts like this, I’m pretty sure the government is purposely trying to kill poor kids with diabetes. My dad, Larry, said the King wants to get rid of food assistance programs altogether, so pretty soon all the poor kids will starve to death, which will be far more efficient. We already got kicked off of food stamps permanently four years ago because Larry accidentally ate a poppy seed muffin and the mandatory drug test everyone has to take tested positive for opiates. One more thing poor people can’t do: eat poppy seed muffins.

  I sit alone. I always sit alone. After three years at Carthage High, three years at Carthage Middle, and six years at Carthage Elementary, it is just the most reasonable option. People in Carthage suck. By extension, I already know people in Rome suck. They are too close to be different. That’s the big joke about the town rivalry that people around here refuse to recognize—Carthage and Rome are exactly the same. They’re both washed-up old towns people either are desperately trying to escape or have resigned to stay trapped in, towns that no one cares about. The fame of Unicorns vs. Dragons and Rainy Day Knife Fight just adds insult to injury. Caleb Sloat got out. The author of those books has never even been here. Any interest people have in Carthage and Rome is for something imaginary.