Alison Stine - Supervision

ALISON STINE

Harper Voyager

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper Voyager 2015

Copyright © Alison Stine 2015

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com;

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015.

Alison Stine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 978-0-00-811359-9

Version: 2015-03-09

For my mom, who taught me how to read—and for Henry, who is a Story

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page Supervision ALISON STINE

Copyright Harper Voyager An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk First published in Great Britain by Harper Voyager 2015 Copyright © Alison Stine 2015 Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com; Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015. Alison Stine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress. Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 978-0-00-811359-9 Version: 2015-03-09

Dedication For my mom, who taught me how to read—and for Henry, who is a Story

CHAPTER 1: Acid Loves You

CHAPTER 2: Wellstone

CHAPTER 3: Six Feet

CHAPTER 4: I’m Alive

CHAPTER 5: Death Beginning

CHAPTER 6: Sensitive One

CHAPTER 7: Riding Too Long

CHAPTER 8: Wickedness and Snares

CHAPTER 9: What Do You Want?

CHAPTER 10: Can You See Me?

CHAPTER 11: Mixed Up

CHAPTER 12: Door to Nowhere

CHAPTER 13: Dance or Die

CHAPTER 14: Mr. Black

CHAPTER 15: The Lower Vale

CHAPTER 16: A Nice Dare

CHAPTER 17: The Gift at the Table

CHAPTER 18: Red Shoes

CHAPTER 19: It’s Easy to Dye

CHAPTER 20: Dearest Annabelle

CHAPTER 21: Great-granddaughter

CHAPTER 22: Free

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Acid walked away the day he told me that he loved me.

He said those three little words, whispered them, and then the teacher slammed her hand on my desk, making me turn around and sit up straight and pretend to pay attention. By the time I glanced back, he had slipped out of the doorway into the hall, skipping class again.

I sat in the back at school. I felt different than everyone else. I wore different clothes. My school didn’t require a uniform, but I kind of wished it did. Acid wore expensive sneakers, but he’d had to scrimp for them, and I often saw him in the same shirt and jeans. Me, I was content to wear a sweatshirt, slipping the hood down over my face as far as I could, until I could hardly see.

The train the afternoon that Acid walked away was late, and when it came it was packed, only one seat in the back of the car I had chosen, near the operator’s booth. It was an hour’s ride home from school, forty-five minutes if I was lucky.

That was another way I was different: I was never lucky.

The subway rumbled and swayed. The car I was in emptied as more and more people got out. Hardly anyone got in as we traveled uptown. We were almost home when the train jerked and halted, and I was pushed into the sleeping man beside me. I moved away quickly, scooting over until my shoulder pressed against the side of the car. The man only snorted and went back to sleep.

The conductor’s voice came over the intercom, scratchy and garbled—but I knew what he was saying; I had heard it before. “This train is being held by supervision. We will be moving shortly.”

We were in between stops, and outside the window, the tunnel looked black. Inside the train, the lights flickered and went out. When they turned back on, there was something on the outside of the window.

Hand. It was a hand.

Someone was riding on the outside of the train.

I stood, my bag sliding off my lap and hitting the floor with a thud. The sleeping man grumbled. The operator came out of his booth and scanned the car.

I met his glance. “There’s someone out there.”

He didn’t look. “Kid, sit down.”

“Look!” I said.

Annoyed, he flicked his eyes in the direction I pointed, barely a glance. But the operator didn’t see. “Sit down,” he said. “We’ll be moving soon.” He opened the door to his little booth, and went back inside, muttering to himself, “Kids!”

I had heard about people riding on the outside of subway cars, trying to be funny, getting themselves killed. But when I turned to look again, to double-check, the hand was gone. I saw only the empty tunnel and the swinging work light. Why was it swinging, as if someone had knocked into it?

With a jerk, the train started moving again.

My stop was the last in Manhattan before the Bronx. My building was the last on the block before the highway, and our apartment was on the top floor, up five flights of stairs. No elevator. “It builds the muscles,” my sister had said when she was a dancer.

But she wasn’t a dancer anymore.

She was waiting for me in the hallway of the apartment when I unlocked the door, which was bad. Really bad. The Firecracker never got home before me, not since she started working her “real job,” as she called it, her “grown-up job” that kept her late, every night, sometimes until nine or ten. I checked my phone. It was six.

“The Head-of-School called,” the Firecracker said. “You’re getting a D in English.”

That hurt, but I tried not to let it. “So?” I said.

“So, they won’t let you out of the ninth grade if you don’t get at least a C.”