Excerpt

Nobody

It's snowing. My fingers itch from the cold, but still, I can't go in. The house is too quiet, too empty. Without Grandma, it's got that too big, hollow feeling. It's been three whole weeks, but still, whenever I get home from school, there's a part of me that goes, Please be there. When she isn't—when she doesn't call, "Meme-ah? Is that you?"—I feel this hole getting larger inside me, and if I don't watch out, it'll swallow me up.

    Grandma once said, "When someone dies, Meme-ah, maybe she becomes a bird or a butterfly." So who knows? I go around to the back of the house, move Grandma's lawn chair to the wall of bushes between our house and the Sheng-Stevensons', and plant my butt in its snowy seat. The lawn is frosty white and full of animal tracks. Birds. Maybe squirrels. They disappear into the woods, where the ground is covered wit ... read full excerpt from Troublemaker and Other Saints ebook