Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Gemma Open Door for Literacy
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Ava was born with wings. No one called them that until she was two years old. She hides her wings under a special device her father made for her. She never takes off her backpack at school. No one knows her secret, not even her best friend Theo, who was born with two different-colored eyes. The doctor told Ava that she can choose to have the wings removed when she turns sixteen. The big day arrives, and she can't decide what to do. Without her wings, Ava thinks she can be like everybody else. But is that what she really wants? When Ava makes a new friend at school, she begins to see things--and herself--in new ways. Lucy offers her friendship and exquisite drawings of wings. Lucy makes Ava think. The Other asks us to consider what it means to be different and what it means to accept the unique parts of ourselves.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 54
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
Laurie Foos
The Other
Laurie Foos is the author of Ex Utero, Portrait of the Walrus by a Young Artist, Twinship, Bingo Under the Crucifix, Before Elvis There Was Nothing, and The Blue Girl. She has published two earlier books for Gemma: The Giant Baby, and most recently, Toast, which she has expanded into a middle grade novel about siblings and autism. Laurie has been teaching at Lesley since 2005 and is also on the faculty in the low-residency BFA in Creative Writing program at Goddard College.
First published by Gemma in 2022.
www.gemmamedia.org
©2022 by Laurie Foos
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Printed in the United States of America978-1-956476-10-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Foos, Laurie, 1966- author.
Title: The other / Laurie Foos.
Description: Boston : Gemma, 2022. | Series: Gemma open door
Identifiers: LCCN 2022021864 (print) | LCCN 2022021865 (ebook) | ISBN
9781956476101 (paperback) | ISBN 9781956476118 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3556.O564 O84 2022 (print) | LCC PS3556.O564
(ebook) | DDC 813/.54--dc23/eng/20220506
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022021864
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022021865
Cover by Laura Shaw DesignCover art by Alev Danis
Gemma’s Open Doors provide fresh stories, new ideas, and essential resources for young people and adults as they embrace the power of reading and the written word.
Open Door
For Ellaand forZachariah
– 1 –
Every year on my birthday, my mother tells the story of the day I was born.
She tells it each year, in exactly the same way. Almost word for word.
“You were born in darkness,” she says. She makes her voice low, like she’s the narrator in some movie. She was a theater major in college and has what my dad calls “a flair for the dramatic.”
My mom went into labor before they could get to the hospital.
“You were born in this kitchen right over there,” she says, “right in that spot, next to the sink.” She stands up and points at the floor. “I was pushing and pushing. And then,” she pauses. “The lights went out.”
At this part she claps and makes her eyes wide.
“Darkness!” she says again. “Your father went scrambling for a flashlight.” She opens the cabinet under the sink and pretends to search. “But before he could find one, you flew out of me and right into your father’s hands.”
She says that my father put me on my mother’s chest. She reaches under the cabinet and pulls out a flashlight, switches it on. She aims it at us. My dad and I both blink. He rummaged under the kitchen cabinets and found a flashlight under the sink, she says. He shone the light over me, beaming it over my shoulders and behind my ribs.
“I cried,” she says. She makes her eyes all watery. “And then I stopped.”
She says that they held their breath then. She says that neither of them said anything for a very long time.
She says that someone screamed. Maybe her, maybe my dad. They don’t know for sure.
“That’s when we saw them,” she says. “Tiny triangles on your back. Dad reachedout and touched one with his fingertip.” She turns the flashlight off. “They moved when he touched them. Flapped.”
Even though I’ve heard this story so many times, I wait for this. It’s my favorite part.
“And then, whomp, thud!” my mom says. “Your father fell right on the floor. Passed out. Gone.”
My mom laughs, and I do, too. My dad shakes his head. It is pretty funny to think of my dad sprawled out on the floor. Still, the back of my ribs twitch when we laugh at this part of the story. My dad passed out at the sight of those little triangles. I have to adjust the Contraption that I wear to stop the twitching.
My dad doesn’t laugh at this part. He never does, no matter how many times my mother tells it.
In the middle of the table sits a huge chocolate cake that my mother made for me. Way too big for three people to eat. I could have had any color frosting I wanted, my mom said when she was baking, but I chose white. I wanted a plain cake. Not many things in my life are plain.
“Go on, Ava,” my dad says. “Make your wish.”
I am sixteen today. It’s a big birthday for most girls, I guess. I don’t really know for sure how most girls feel. For me it’s a huge birthday, the biggest one I’ve had yet. I’ve had lots of time to think about what to do once I turn sixteen.
Still, I don’t know what to wish for.
I close my eyes and try to picture myself with a smooth back, a body that’s plain and simple. Just like any other girl’s. I try to imagine what it would be like not to have to strap myself into the Contraption I wear every day, the one my father made for me. I try to imagine what it would be like not to have to wear baggy shirts. I try to imagine what it would be like not to hide part of myself every day.
I close my eyes and blow out all the candles without wishing. My parents clap. My mom reaches over to kiss me on the nose. I sneeze. A big clump of feathers comes rushing out of my collar and lands next to the cake.
“That must have been one heck of a wish,” my dad says.
“I guess,” I say.
I reach out to clear the feathers off the table. My mom touches my hand, shakes her head. I let the feathers sit there as she cuts the cake. Later, she’ll vacuum them up when I’m not around. She vacuums all the time because of the feathers that I shake loose when I’m home and don’t have to wear the Contraption.
“Happy birthday, my perfect girl,” my mother says.
It’s what she always calls me.
– 2 –
In the morning I put on the Contraption, like I do every school day. On weekends when I have nowhere to go, I don’t wear it. On weekends when I’m home, I am free.
