Authors: Nalo Hopkinson
The Chaos
Scotch has never quite fit in.
With her white Jamaican father and black Canadian mother, she doesn’t belong with the Caribbeans, whites, or blacks. Though recently she feels different for stranger reasons—her skin is being covered in spots of black stickiness that won’t go away no matter what she tries. Not to mention that she sees floating, bodiless horse heads that no one else can.
But soon Scotch has even bigger problems. She’s out for a night with her brother when a bubble of light appears. Scotch dares her brother to touch it. He does, and then he disappears. A moment later a volcano emerges in Lake Ontario, and all Toronto is invaded by the Chaos.
Scotch is desperate to find her brother, but she doesn’t know where to begin searching in a city gone mad. Mythical creatures such as Sasquatches are walking down the streets, and ordinary people are transforming in truly weird ways. Scotch herself is getting blacker and blacker. Can she find her brother before she becomes completely unrecognizable?
Renowned author Nalo Hopkinson mixes fantasy and Caribbean folklore in this rollicking story of identity and self-acceptance in a world given over to Chaos.
NALO HOPKINSON
is the award-winning author of numerous novels and short stories for adults. Nalo grew up in Jamaica, Trinidad, and Guyana before moving to Canada when she was sixteen. This is her first young adult novel. To learn more, visit Nalo online at
nalohopkinson.com
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Margaret K. McElderry Books
Simon & Schuster
New York
Watch videos, get extras, and read exclusives at
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THE CHAOS
MARGARET K. McELDERRY BOOKS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Nalo Hopkinson
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
M
ARGARET
K. M
C
E
LDERRY
B
OOKS
is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Book design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover
The text for this book is set in Electra LT Std.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hopkinson, Nalo.
The Chaos / Nalo Hopkinson.— 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Toronto sixteen-year-old Scotch may have to acknowledge her own limitations and come to terms with her mixed Jamaican, white, and black heritage if she is to stop the Chaos that has claimed her brother and made much of the world crazy.
ISBN 978-1-4169-5488-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4424-0955-2 (eBook)
[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction. 3. Identity—Fiction. 4. Racially mixed people—Fiction. 5. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 6. Family life—Canada—Fiction. 7. Toronto (Ont.)—Fiction. 8. Canada—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H778127Ch 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2011018154
Deepest love and thanks to David,
for powering me through the last rough patch of years
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to David C. Findlay for creating the lines of spoken word poetry that Richard recites during the open mike.
This book became stalled when a combination of new and chronic medical conditions overwhelmed my life partner and me, made us both unable to work, and tumbled us into four years of destitution and eventually homelessness. While we were struggling to regain some kind of balance and self-sufficiency, so many people looked after us in one way or another! I still tear up when I think of it. I’m enormously grateful for the wealth of love and support that helped me regain my strength and my ability to write. There are so many people to thank that I’d probably run out of space if I tried to do it here. Just know, each and every single one of you, that you’ve helped to give me the most precious gift: my life back.
Thank you
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NALO HOPKINSON
“Okay, people,” Mrs. Kuwabara called out cheerfully. I’d been back in school barely two weeks since summer break, but I’d already learned that our new English teacher was cheerful about everything. “The bell’s going to go in about fifteen minutes. Finish up the questionnaire you have in front of you now, because I have one more for you.”
Beside me, Ben sighed and rolled his eyes. “Oh, God,” he muttered. “I don’t want to know myself this well.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t people go blind that way?”
Ben chuckled. Mrs. Kuwabara had decided that it would be a good idea to spend the first weeks of eleventh grade doing this boring old self-knowledge questionnaire, a little bit every English class. She’d told us that no one was ever going to read them unless we gave them permission, not even her, so we should write whatever we wanted. I ask you, what was the use of doing all that work in school if you couldn’t even get a grade for it?
Mrs. Kuwabara handed Jimmy Tidwell a stack of sheets of lavender-colored paper. He blushed. He was all elbows and angles and zits, and he fell over his own feet as often as he walked on them, and he blushed at everything. He was mad good at trig, though. And a decent private tutor, once he got absorbed in the work and stopped blushing and stammering. His face crimson, he stood up and started handing the sheets out to the class. He was cute, in a skinny white boy kinda way. He always tried really hard to talk to my face, not to the front of my sweater. That earned him extra points in my book.
I reread the part of the last questionnaire I’d just spent thirty-five minutes filling in. Mrs. Kuwabara had copied the questionnaire onto sunshine yellow paper. Mrs. Kuwabara was big on colors. At the top of the sheet, printed in swirly black letters surrounded by scrollwork, were the words:
FIVE THINGS THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY
The rest of the sheet had five boxes, made up of more swirly scrollwork, for filling in the answers. I’d written:
1. Wine Gum jelly candies, but only the black ones. I think they’re supposed to be licorice flavored, so I should hate them because I hate licorice, but black Wine Gums don’t taste like licorice at all. Wine Gums don’t even have any wine in them, either. I know, because when I was little, my parents checked the list of ingredients before they’d let me eat any. Maybe those black ones aren’t licorice at all. Maybe they’re meant to be black currant, or something. The other colors taste like ass. Can I say that? Oh, right; Mrs. Kuwabara won’t be reading this, so I can say whatever I like. Problem is,
you can’t buy a roll of Wine Gums of just one flavor. So I get Glory to buy them and give me the black ones. At least, that’s what I used to do back when Glory and I were still friends. Ben doesn’t eat candy. He’s watching his figure. Really, it’s weird how much I love black Wine Gums, seeing as other gummy things freak me out.
2. Hailstorms in the middle of summer. First time I saw one, I was a little girl. Maybe eight years old. I stepped outside our house in the middle of a boiling hot summer day, and little stinging things were pelting my skin. At least, that’s what I thought they were at the time. They lay there, sparkling clear in the green grass, melting even as I watched. I went inside and told my dad that there were diamonds on the ground outside. He’s the one who explained hail to me, but I still like to think of it as diamonds falling from the sky.
3. Hanging out with my friends Gloria and Ben. At least, I did like that. I still like it now, even though it’s only me and Ben any more. We can talk about anything—why boys are so dumb (Ben thinks boys can be dumb, too, even though he is one); why girls are so dumb; whether you should keep your eyes open or closed when you kiss someone, and if you keep your eyes open, how you stop yourself from laughing at how funny someone looks that close up with their pores showing and their eyes crossed from trying to look back at you; whether it’s better to have a happy life and die young or to have a miserable life and die old. I met Glory and Ben when I transferred to this school in grade nine. We hang out together, but not like the Thompson Twins. Ben’s
on and off dating this boy named Stephen, and Glory’s trying to steal my boyfriend. Okay, he’s my ex. But that’s why I’m not talking to her anymore, ’cause she turned out to be such a big skank. I used to think that together, me, Ben, and Glory could do anything. Now I think that about just two of us. I mean, right now, it’s kind of like a three-legged stool with only two legs, you know? But Ben and me, we’ll figure it out. Human beings can walk and run, and we only have two legs. Right? It’ll be okay.