Pet Read online

  MAKE ME A WORLD is an imprint dedicated to exploring the vast possibilities of contemporary childhood. We strive to imagine a universe in which no young person is invisible, in which no kid’s story is erased, in which no glass ceiling presses down on the dreams of a child. Then we publish books for that world, where kids ask hard questions and we struggle with them together, where dreams stretch from eons ago into the future and we do our best to provide road maps to where these young folks want to be. We make books where the children of today can see themselves and each other. When presented with fences, with borders, with limits, with all the kinds of chains that hobble imaginations and hearts, we proudly say—no.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Akwaeke Emezi

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Shyama Golden

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Make Me a World, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Make Me a World and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! GetUnderlined.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Emezi, Akwaeke, author.

  Title: Pet / Akwaeke Emezi.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Make Me a World, 2019. | Summary: In a near-future society that claims to have gotten rid of all monstrous people, a creature emerges from a painting seventeen-year-old Jam’s mother created, a hunter from another world seeking a real-life monster.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018054934 (print) | LCCN 2018058685 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-525-64709-6 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-525-64707-2 (trade: alk. paper) | ISBN 978-0-525-64708-9 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Monsters—Fiction. | Angels—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | Artists—Fiction. | Selective mutism—Fiction. | Transgender people—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.E474 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.E474 Pet 2019 (print) |

  DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780525647096

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v5.4

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To the magician,

  the spells our stories make,

  the ways we shape the world.

  Dear Reader,

  They don’t make evil like they used to.

  Politicians make policies putting children in cages and allow big companies to pour poison into our air and water. But they will say they are just doing it to support business, and that we’ll all reap the benefit of the poison eventually. There are people who scream their hatred to the skies, burn torches and mock those who are different from themselves. Even they have their excuses, usually something about protecting a “way of life.” There are no villains anymore.

  On television, in movies, villains are easily recognizable. The bad guys wear long dark robes and have no noses, or wear tight-fitting suits and have red eyes. There is something comforting in this idea, that when you see evil, you will know it. That it cannot be hiding in the everyday faces of people you ride the bus with, or go to school with, or share a sandwich with at lunch.

  Hannah Arendt, the political philosopher, coined the phrase “the banality of evil”—that evil is very often “terrifyingly normal.” She knew, as many who have suffered do, that the worst things can happen in the blandest of places—between the lines in a textbook omitting large swaths of history or in the hushing of a child who has something important to say. All these things are done in the name of keeping our worlds safe, consistent, banal.

  And when our villains have new costumes and haircuts in the latest styles, where will we say that evil lives? Will it be in the voices that dare to disturb that peaceful illusion? Pet asks precisely these questions. In a voice that is as clear and poetic as in any of their work for adults, Akwaeke examines the journey that evil has made, from monstrosity to mainstream. This adventure, set in anyplace America, thinks about language and communication, for versatility in listening and speaking is essential to understanding where we are in the world, to see past the lie that there are no longer any villains. Akwaeke asks us readers to reconsider our monsters, to look past the comforting illusions and, along with Jam and Redemption, hunt for the true villains in our midst.

  Christopher Myers

  CHAPTER 1

  There shouldn’t be any monsters left in Lucille.

  The city used to have them, of course—what city didn’t? They used to be everywhere, thick in the air and offices, in the streets and in people’s own homes. They used to be the police and teachers and judges and even the mayor; yeah, the mayor used to be a monster. Lucille has a different mayor now. This mayor is an angel; the last couple of mayors have all been angels. Not like a from-heaven, not-quite-real type of angel but a from-behind-and-inside-and-in-front-of-the-revolution, therefore-very-real type of angel.

  It was the angels who took apart the prisons and the police; who held councils prosecuting the former officers who’d shot children and murdered people, sentencing them to restitution and rehabilitation. Many people thought it wasn’t enough; but the angels were only human, and it’s hard to build a new world without making people angry. You try your best, you move with compassion, you think about the big structures. No revolution is perfect. In the meantime, the angels banned firearms, not just because of the school shootings but also because of the kids who shot themselves and their families at home; the civilians who thought they could shoot people who didn’t look like them, just because they got mad or scared or whatever, and nothing would happen to them because the old law liked them better than the dead. The angels took the laws and changed them, tore down those horrible statues of rich men who’d owned people and fought to keep owning people. The angels believed and the people agreed that there was a good amount of proper and deserved shame in history and some things were just never going to be things to be proud of.

  Instead, they put up other monuments. Some were statues of the dead, mostly the children whose hashtags had been turned into battle cries during the revolution. Others were giant sculptures with thousands of names carved into them, because too many people had died and if you made statues of everyone, Lucille would be filled with stone figures and there’d be no room for the alive ones. The names were of people who died when the hurricanes hit and the monsters wouldn’t evacuate the prisons or send aid, people who died when the monsters sent drones and bombs to their countries (because, as the angels pointed out, you shouldn’t use a nation as a basis to choose which deaths you mourn; nations aren’t even real), people who died because the monsters took away their health care—names and names of people and people, countless letters recording that they
had been.

  The citizens of Lucille put dozens of white candles at the base of each monument, hung layers of marigold necklaces around the necks of the statues, and, when they walked past, would often fall silent for a moment and press a palm against the stone, soaking up the heat the sun had left in it, remembering the souls the stone was holding. They’d remember the marches and vigils, the shaky footage that was splashed everywhere of their deaths (a thing that wasn’t allowed anymore, that gruesome dissemination of someone’s child gasping in their final moments, bubbling air or blood or grief—the angels respected the dead and their loved ones). The people of Lucille would remember the temples that were bombed, the mosques, the acid attacks, the synagogues. Remembering was important.

  Jam was born after the monsters, born and raised in Lucille, but like everyone else, she remembered. It was taught in school: how the monsters had maintained power for such a long time; how the angels had removed them, making Lucille what it is today. It wasn’t like the angels wanted to be painted as heroes, but the teachers wanted the kids to want to be angels, you see? Angels could change the world, and Lucille was proof. Jam was fascinated by them, by the stories the teachers told in history class. They briefly mentioned other angels, those who weren’t human, but only to say that Lucille’s angels had been named after these other ones. When Jam asked for more information, her teachers’ eyes slid away. They mentioned religious books, but with reluctance, not wanting to influence the children. Religion had caused so many problems before the revolution, people were hesitant to talk about it now. “If you really want to know,” one of the teachers added, taking pity on Jam’s frustrated curiosity, “there’s always the library.”

  Why can’t they just tell me? Jam complained to her best friend, Redemption, as they left the school. Her hands were a blur as she signed, and Redemption smiled at her annoyance. It was the last day of classes before summer break, and while he was excited to do nothing for the next several weeks except train, Jam was—as always—on some hunt for information.

  “You’re giving yourself homework,” he pointed out.

  Aren’t you curious? she replied. Who the old angels were, if they weren’t human?

  “If they were even real, you mean.” Redemption adjusted the strap of his backpack. “You know that’s what a lot of religion was, right? Just made-up things used to scare people so they could control us better.”

  Jam frowned. Maybe, she said, but I still wanna know.

  Redemption threw an arm around her. “And you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t,” he laughed. “I gotta go pick up the lil bro from his class and walk him home, but let me know what you find out, okay?”

  Okay. She hugged him goodbye. Give Moss a kiss for me.

  He scoffed. “I’ll try, but that boy thinks he grown now.”

  Too grown for kisses??

  “That’s what I said.” Redemption threw up his hands as he headed off. “Talk soon, love you!”

  Love you! Jam waved goodbye and watched him break into a jog, his body moving with an easy grace, then she went to the library to look up pictures of angels.

  The librarian was a tall, dark-skinned man who whizzed around the marble floors in his wheelchair. His name was Ube, and Jam had known him since she was a toddler pawing through picture books. She loved being in the library, the almost sacred silence you could find there, the way it felt like another home. Ube smiled at her when she walked in, and Jam took an index card from his counter, writing her question about angels down on it. She slid it over to Ube, and he grunted as he read it, nodding his head, then he wrote some reference numbers underneath her question and slid the card back to her. They didn’t need to talk, which was perfect.

  It took her fifteen minutes to find the old pictures, printed on thin, flaky paper and nestled between heavy book covers. Even though Ube hadn’t said she should, Jam considered pulling on the white gloves nestled in the reading desk drawers to use in looking through the books, they seemed that old. But they weren’t in the protected section, so she figured it was fine to run her bare fingers over the smooth and fragile paper. The room she was in was quiet, with large windows vaulting up the walls and domed skylights pouring in late-afternoon sun. Jam sat for a few minutes with her fingers on the images, staring down, turning a page, and staring at the next one. They were strong and confusing pictures. Eventually she closed and stacked the books, then lugged them to the checkout counter.

  Ube raised a thick black eyebrow at her. “All of these?” he asked. His voice sounded unreal, deep and velvet, something that should live only in a radio because it didn’t make sense outside in normal air.

  Jam nodded.

  “You gotta be careful with them, you know? They’re mad old.”

  She nodded again, and Ube looked at her for a moment, then smiled, shaking his head.

  “You right, you a careful girl. Always seen it.” He scanned the books as he spoke. “You treat the books gentle, like they flowers or something.”

  She blushed.

  “Don’t be shy about it, now. Books are important.” He stamped them for her. “You need a bag, baby?”

  Jam shook her head no.

  “All right, now. Two weeks, remember?”

  She hefted the books onto her hip, nodded, and left. They were a weight straining against her arm until she got home, and she took them straight upstairs to her mother’s studio. Jam’s mother had been born when there were monsters, and Jam’s grandmother had come from the islands, a woman entirely too gentle for that time. It had hurt her too much to be alive then, hurt even more to give birth to Jam’s mother, whose existence was the result of a monster’s monstering. This grandmother had died soon after the birth, but not before naming Jam’s mother Bitter. No one had argued with the dying woman.

  Bitter knew her name was heavy, but she hadn’t minded, because it was honest. That was something she’d taught Jam—that a lot of things were manageable as long as they were honest. You could see things clearly if they were honest; you could decide what to do next, because you knew exactly what you were dealing with. She never lied to Jam, always told her the truth, even if sometimes she couldn’t make it as gentle as she would’ve wanted, for her daughter’s sake. But Jam trusted her mother for those brutal truths, and that’s why home was the first place she brought the books with the angels in them.

  Her mother was painting when Jam came in, so the studio was full of loud music, old-school grime this time, the energy thumping against the light and Stormzy’s voice whipping around Bitter’s flying braids. Jam put the books down on a table that wasn’t too crowded and leaned her elbows on them, watching her mother’s shoulder blades jerk and convulse as she moved on her hands and knees, a massive canvas stretched beneath her. Bitter was clutching a brush between her fingers, her joints locked in angles that looked painful, her eyes partially closed and her mouth slightly open. She always painted like this, half dancing in something of a trance, and she was always exhausted afterward. Jam didn’t want to interrupt her.

  Jam’s father, Aloe, was the one who was good at getting through to his wife when she was working. It was something about his vibe, Jam thought, something about how attuned they were to each other. All Aloe had to do was be close enough to Bitter. He’d crouch a few feet away from the edge of her canvas and just wait, breathing as he always did, steady and calm. Jam had watched it many times—the way her mother’s hands would slow down, the brushstrokes growing softer, shorter, and eventually how Bitter would stop moving altogether, her shoulders settling like a bird landing and folding in its wings. Her long neck would curve back, raising her face, and she’d look straight at Aloe, and her smile would be like a whole new day starting.

  Jam crawled under the table and curled up on a blanket that had been left there. It was getting harder to fit into these small spaces she liked to hide in; her arms and legs were getting longer from
her growth spurts, and she was almost as tall as Bitter now. Her ankles flopped against the hardwood, and she bent her arms into a pillow under her head and slept, the bass from the music drumming into her bones through the floor. It felt like only a few minutes before her mother’s hand drifted against her cheek.

  “Jam-jam? Wake up, sweetness.”

  She blinked and Bitter’s face came into focus, a piece at a time, the hard cheekbones, the bare eyebrows, the broad mouth pressed with a matte red. Her mother’s teeth spread into view as she smiled at Jam, sharp and white. The music had stopped. “Welcome back, child,” Bitter said. “Stand up?”

  Jam took her mother’s hand and pulled herself out, avoiding the edge of the table. She’d knocked her head against it too many times before.

  “How long you been under there for?”

  Jam shrugged and her mother brushed imaginary dirt off her hair. Bitter’s face was smudged with a couple of different white paints: a bright white that seemed holy; a duller, slightly yellowed ivory, as if a magical tusk had touched her forehead; a cream trailing dry and broken down her neck.

  “Painting?” Jam asked. Bitter was one of the few people she voiced with.

  “Come see.” They walked over and Jam leaned forward to look at the painting. It was manywhite and thick and textured, paint climbing on itself as if it wanted to get away from the canvas, away from the floor underneath the canvas, even. There were raked gouges in it, next to delicate veined imprints, next to pieces of Bitter’s palm. Something large and loud in the center of the painting had the hind legs of a goat, fur like grated bone, solid thighs, their surface thrusting toward the ceiling of the studio. Jam pointed at it and looked at her mother. Bitter held her chin, thoughtful.