Tahereh Mafi’s highly anticipated next novel is almost here, and EW has all the details.
See the book’s cover and an excerpt from the first chapter below.
I loved it, loved the blistering heat, loved the way it seared my lips.
Credit: Ransom Riggs
It felt good to be touched.
A dog barked; I pitied it.
Airplanes droned overhead, and I envied them.
Art by Rik Lee, design by Rodrigo Corral Design.Art by Rik Lee, design by Rodrigo Corral Design
It tasted like memory, of movement.
Of a promise to go somewhere, I released the breath, anywhere.
I, I was going nowhere.
I laid backward on dusty asphalt, so hot it stuck to my skin.
I pictured my father again.
His gleaming head, two tufts of dark hair perched atop his ears like poorly placed headphones.
His reassuring smile that everything would be fine.
The dizzying glare of fluorescent lights.
I swallowed back a sudden, unwelcome knot of emotion in my throat.
I felt the telltale burn of tears and squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to get up.
When I opened my eyes again a ten thousand foot tall police officer was looming over me.
Babble on his walkie-talkie.
Heavy boots, a metallic swish of something as he adjusted his weight.
“This yours?”
he said, holding up a dingy, pale blue backpack.
“Yes,” I said, reaching for it.
He dropped the bag as I touched it, and the weight of it nearly toppled me forward.
I’d ditched the bloated carcass for a reason.
Today, no such luck.
I’d abandoned the bag and the grass for the empty parking lot.
Static on the walkie-talkie.
More voices, garbled.
The officer wore a hat.
I could not see his hair.
“Got a call,” he said, still peering at me.
“You go to school here?”
A crow swooped low and cawed, minding my business.
“Yeah,” I said.
My heart had begun to race.
He tilted his head at me.
“What were you doing on the ground?”
“Were you praying or something?”
My racing heart began to slow.
I knew anger, but fear and I were better acquainted.
“No,” I said quietly.
“I was just lying in the sun.”
The officer didn’t seem to buy this.
His eyes traveled over my face again, at the scarf I wore around my head.
“Aren’t you hot in that thing?”
“Right now, yes.”
Instead he turned away, scanned the empty parking lot.
“Where are your parents?”
“I don’t know.”
A single eyebrow went up.
“They forget about me,” I said.
“They forget about you?”
“I always hope someone will show up,” I explained.
“If not, I walk home.”
The officer looked at me for a long time.
Finally, he sighed.
“All right.”
He backhanded the sky.
“All right, get going.
But don’t do this again,” he said sharply.
“This is public property.
Do your prayers at home.”
I was shaking my head.
“I wasn’t” I tried to say.I wasn’t, I wanted to scream.
But he was already walking away.
