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ABRAMS BOOKS - Chari Sheela

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165 pages

English

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Along the train lines north of New York City, twelve-year-old neighbors Myla and Peter search for the link between Myla's necklace and the disappearance of Peter's brother, Randall. Thrown into a world of parkour, graffiti, and diamond-smuggling, Myla and Peter encounter a band of thugs who are after the same thing as Randall. Can Myla and Peter find Randall before it's too late, and their shared family secrets threaten to destroy them all? Drawing on urban art forms and local history, Finding Mighty is a mystery that explores the nature of art and the unbreakable bonds of family.

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	30 mai 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781683350613
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0374€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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PUBLISHER S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Chari, Sheela.
Title: Finding Mighty / Sheela Chari.
Description: New York : Amulet Books, 2017. | Summary: Along the train lines north of New York City, twelve-year-old neighbors Myla and Peter search for the link between Myla s necklace and the disappearance of Peter s brother, Randall. Thrown into a world of parkour, graffiti, and diamond-smuggling, Myla and Peter encounter a band of thugs who are after the same thing as Randall. Can Myla and Peter find Randall before it s too late, and their shared family secrets threaten to destroy them all? -Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016042022 (print) | LCCN 2016052878 (ebook) | ISBN 9781419722967 (hardback) | eISBN 9781683350613 (ebook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Mystery and detective stories. | Family life-New York (State)-Fiction. | Graffiti-Fiction. | Parkour-Fiction. | East Indian Americans-Fiction. | Racially mixed people-Fiction. | Dobbs Ferry (N.Y.)-Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Family / General (see also headings under Social Issues). | JUVENILE FICTION / Lifestyles / City Town Life. | JUVENILE FICTION / Art Architecture.
Classification: LCC PZ7.C37368 Fin 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.C37368 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016042022
Text copyright 2017 Sheela Chari
Illustrations 2017 Reid Kikuo Johnson
Book design by Pamela Notarantonio
Published in 2017 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.
ABRAMS The Art of Books 115 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011 abramsbooks.com
for Keerthana and Meera
for siblings everywhere
Back when I was five, I met Peter for the first time. We were at Margaret s house for dinner, long before she moved to Vermont. There were other kids there, like Peter s brother and mine, but Peter was the only one who didn t talk. He kept close to his mom, who had the longest black hair I ever saw, with butterfly clips in it, and I wondered if she was Indian like us.
Peter sat next to me at the table. He was thin, and his hair was curly and dark as black licorice. Sometimes his mom gave him stuff on his plate like potatoes or a bread roll, but mostly Peter sat without eating.
After they left, everyone shook their heads like they were sorry.
Sorry for what? I wondered. There wasn t much I was sorry about, not at the age of five.
Then I heard the story of what happened to Peter s dad. I don t think I was meant to hear, but the adults got to talking and didn t pay attention to what the kids were listening to. Years later when I saw Peter again, I d forgotten Margaret s party. I d forgotten thinking his hair was like black licorice. But I didn t forget what happened to his dad. There are some things you never forget.
Maybe it was a coincidence, Peter moving to Dobbs Ferry. Maybe Margaret was the common thread. Or maybe, as Peter says, it was all a kind of magic. For him, it started with the duffel bag. For me, it was the necklace. Actually, it started further back with Rose, and what she did to hide her secret. But I d have to imagine that part. Instead it s better to tell what we do know, the part that happened to us.
At the end of August before sixth grade started, Cheetah broke my bed. My best friend, Ana, and I were in the kitchen eating ice cream when we heard a loud crash. We ran upstairs, our cones dripping chocolate mint, and found my nine-year-old brother sprawled on the caved-in mattress, a big, stupid grin on his face. Sorry, he said, but he wasn t.
Mom said, It was just waiting to happen.
If you saw my bed, you d understand why. When I was young, I was afraid to sleep on a real one. So I slept on a mattress on the floor. I liked that fine, until two years ago when I woke up eye to eye with a long, black spider on my pillow. Then I was done with sleeping on the floor. I took a sheet of plywood from the garage, plus some leftover cinder blocks, and I built myself a low bed. I even made a headboard and painted it white with the spray paint we used on our fence.
Dad said proudly, Myla, my engineer. That s because he s a math teacher, and math people are into building things.
Mom was different. What if it breaks? But it didn t. It held up for two years, until my dorky brother jumped on it and snapped the plywood in two. So now Mom was adamant. It s time you had a real bed, Myla. I didn t go back to work so my children could sleep on cinder blocks.
I don t know what the big deal was. But nothing could change her mind, so on Sunday we headed to a furniture store in Yonkers where we bought our dining table last year. I invited Ana because we were going to Spice afterward, and the tandoori pizza there was so good, it was worth buying a bed I didn t want.
In the car, Ana leafed through a magazine she d brought. Look at this cool bed. It has curtains hanging over it from the ceiling.
It s ugly, Cheetah said. Plus it s too tall for Myla. She d be scared.
No, I wouldn t. I gave him a shove. Cheetah was always saying the wrong thing.
And it isn t ugly, Ana said. It s beautiful. She tucked her pale hair behind her ears. Ana is Norwegian on both sides-her grandparents are from Norway-but her parents grew up in Seattle. Which makes her American like me.
I still don t get why you were jumping on my bed, I said. My brother was always destroying my stuff, like opening my Harry Potter books too wide until the spines broke, or using up all the ink in my Sharpies. I poked him but he still didn t answer. For a minute, I thought he was hiding something. But what? Everything he did was an open book. Not like me.
I pulled out my journal from my backpack. It was small, and I used it to record things. Sometimes I write down what s going on, like, Cheetah s jump breaks my bed. Or I jot down what I see, like a billboard or a piece of graffiti. Once I drew High Bridge, because even though I m scared of bridges, I liked the way the arches came down to meet the highway, like the legs of gigantic Transformer robots.
Ana records things, too-but she doesn t keep a journal-she uses her phone to take pictures. She doesn t care about signs or bridges or words. She takes pictures of horses. She s crazy about them. She goes riding on Saturdays at a stable on the other side of the Hudson River, and that s where she takes lots of pictures. She says she wants to be a trainer someday, or a professional horse photographer. I don t know yet what I want to be. I know it has to do with words, and building things with my hands.
Mighty , my brother read from a highway wall, as we took the exit to St. Vincent Ave. So I wrote it down in round letters, even if I already have Mighty in my journal, because it s my favorite.
St. Vincent Ave is the ugliest and most beautiful street in the world. Dad says it starts in the Bronx and ends in the town of Yonkers. We go there to eat at Spice or to shop for furniture. The stores are close together, with rolling metal gates that pull down when it s time to close. Between windows, the walls are marked with graffiti. Not the quick words you see on the highway, but large, oversize letters, or characters drawn like cartoons. Only they re not funny. They re serious, telling the story of something I don t know.
My mom disagrees. She s an urban designer, which means she helps to decide where buildings go and how people use them. So something like graffiti drives her crazy. She s glad we don t have much of it in Dobbs Ferry. But I wish we did. When we come to St. Vincent Ave, I end up with so many new words in my notebook.
Today we squeezed our Subaru into the last parking space. We were lucky, because the rest of St. Vincent Ave was closed off. All along the sidewalks, there were booths lined with people selling things. I could smell the smoky scent of barbecued corn and refried beans cooking nearby.
It s a street fair! Ana said, excited.
Can we look around? Cheetah begged. Can-we-can-we?
My parents agreed as long as we made our way to the furniture store. So we walked along St. Vincent Ave, Ana and me on one side, my parents and Cheetah on the other. At a table with hats and scarves, Ana took a picture of me in a tie-dyed cap with an orange flower on it, which looked ridiculous over my big, frizzy hair. I could see my shadow next to hers on the ground, hers lean and tall, mine short and round with hair sticking out from under the hat.
While Ana tried on the same cap, I drifted to the next table, where there was a man and an elderly woman selling jewelry. I wouldn t have noticed them except they were arguing, their voices low and tight, like they were yelling with the volume turned down.
How can you wear that? asked the man, his face craggy like the side of a cliff. Remember the train station. It s not safe.
Wear what? Then I noticed a brightly colored necklace around the woman s neck.
I had to wear something , she said. And a person selling jewelry can t be wearing an apron. Besides, you ve been obsessing over it like a fool for years. I have a mind to sell it away today.
The man almost leaped out of his chair. Don t you