Threads Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Ami Polonsky

  Cover design by Tyler Nevins

  Cover illustration © 2016 by Raquel Aparicio

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-4847-4852-7

  Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Author’s Note

  Praise for Gracefully Grayson

  About the Author

  For Ben and Ella again,

  because everything will always be for you

  Yuming

  The middle of May

  To Whom It May Concern:

  Please, we need help! There is pale pink factory, few hours outside of Beijing, somewhere in Hebei Province. 22 children in here—young boys and girls. Trapped. Working day and night on purses. Hardly food or rest. Please if you could help us. I am 13. We have been kidnapped by Mr. Zhang, and I have no family to help me. He pays off police. DO NOT CALL POLICE!

  Please help!

  Yuming Niantu

  Clara

  I REST MY cheek against the car window as Dahlia’s mom pulls into the parking lot at the mall. I wish I were at home; I have no idea how I let Mom convince me that I should spend the afternoon with my used-to-be best friend.

  “Whoa, look how crowded it is,” Dahlia says enthusiastically from the passenger seat in front of me.

  “Everyone’s probably trying to escape the heat,” her mom says, stopping in front of the main doors to Bellman’s department store. “So, it’s almost three thirty.” She glances at Dahlia and then looks at me in the rearview mirror. I sit up straight. “Should I get you guys at five?”

  “Sure, that’s fine,” I say.

  “How about five thirty?” Dahlia asks, opening the door and sliding out.

  I sigh quietly.

  “All right. Five thirty, right here,” Dahlia’s mom confirms. She turns her head and gives me a sad little smile as I unbuckle my seat belt. “Try to have fun, sweetie, okay?”

  I know she’s trying to help, just like Mom was trying to help by persuading me to get out of the house for the afternoon. I wait for her to add something like That’s what Lola would have wanted, but she doesn’t. She just waves and I close the door and join Dahlia on the sidewalk.

  It’s about a million degrees out. As her mom drives away, Dahlia grabs my arm and pulls me through the automatic glass doors, into Bellman’s.

  Goose bumps jump out on my bare arms as soon as we walk through the entrance. “God, it’s freezing in here,” Dahlia squeals, hugging herself and rubbing her arms. I’ve known Dahlia since we were babies. I have no idea why it took me twelve years to figure out how annoying she is.

  She spots a display of silky scarves and walks over to them. “These are so awesome!” she calls over her shoulder. I follow her and sigh again as I sift through the scarves.

  They’re thin and soft, and touching them makes me think of spring. I pick up one with green and turquoise splotches, tie it around my neck, and look in a nearby mirror.

  Dahlia pops up in the reflection. “That’s so cool!” she practically yells. “You should ask your mom if you could get it!”

  “Dahlia, it’s, like, eighty dollars,” I say, examining the tag. “This is Bellman’s.” And anyway, it’s kind of choking me. I loosen it.

  “Yeah, everything here is way too expensive. But it’s gorgeous—see how it brings out the blue in your eyes?”

  I study Dahlia in the mirror. I can’t remember life before I knew her. Our parents were introduced to one another in a meet-up group for families with adopted kids. But it’s not like Dahlia and I need to be best friends forever just because she and my sister were both adopted from China. I mean, where you’re born doesn’t mean anything—obviously. I tug the scarf off quickly.

  “Anyway,” Dahlia says, “I’m starving. Are you? Do you want to go to the café? Remember those brownies they have? Those are the best.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Dahlia’s always hungry. At least we still have that in common.

  We walk through the scarves, past the shoes department and the makeup counters, the sign for Bellman’s Spa, and the wallets and purses, to the café at the back of the store. The lady at the counter takes our order and hands us a number to bring to our table.

  “So, how are your parents?” Dahlia asks as we sit down, like she’s an adult or something.

  “They’re okay.” I want to roll my eyes, but I don’t. It’s so ridiculous that Dahlia is asking me about them, like she could understand anything about what our lives have been like since May fifteenth. I stare out of the window behind her, into the sunny parking lot. I think about the nothingness at home—the huge hole where my sister used to be.

  “Hello?” Dahlia waves her hand in front of my face. I look back at her.

  Sometimes, especially when I wake up in the middle of the night, the hole gets so big and black and suffocating that I feel like I might slip into it and disappear. Like Lola did.

  Dahlia shakes her head. “This must be so hard.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I mumble. A waitress brings over two brownies on fancy little plates, my water, and Dahlia’s iced tea. I look past Dahlia again, around the café.

  Melanie Sanders, one of Mom’s friends, is getting up from a table across the room with another lady. I wonder what she’s doing here; she doesn’t seem like the Bellman’s type. I rest my cheek on my hand and turn my body away so she won’t notice me. I don’t feel like answering all the typical questions: How are you feeling, sweetie? How’s your mom today? Is she doing okay, back at work so soon? And how about your dad? Does he really have to teach summer school? He deserves a break, you know?

  She and her friend inch past me as I study my brownie. I catch a whiff of heavy perfume and feel like gagging.

  “So, let’s go to the pool after my mom gets us,” Dahlia says, stirring an overflowing spoonful of sugar into her iced tea with a long silver spoon. She takes a bite of brownie.

  “Maybe.”

  “Come on! What else do you have to do?”

  “I don’t know, I was going to…” I don’t have an answer ready, and I clear my throat. If Lola were here, she’d be able to come up with the perfect excuse.

  “It’s, like, one hundred degrees out!” Dahlia goes on. “I bet everyone who’s not away at camp will be there.” She grins. “I bet Adam will be there.”

  “I don’t like him anymore,” I remind Dahlia, even though he is kind of cute. “I haven’t liked him since the beginning of sixth grade. That was practically a year ago.” That was when we still thought Lola was in remission, I think,
an image of her hospital room at Children’s Memorial exploding into my mind. That was before her relapse and the bone marrow transplant and the months and months of doctors that Dahlia wouldn’t understand the first thing about.

  “Listen, Dahlia,” I suddenly say, surprising myself, “I’m gonna go.” If Lola were here, she would totally approve.

  “What?” Dahlia asks, shocked. “Why? Where?”

  I stand up. “I don’t know.”

  Being in Bellman’s with Dahlia doesn’t feel right. Sitting in Lola’s hospital room had felt so unnatural all the time—especially in the spring, with the trees starting to bloom right outside her closed window. But now…now not being in the hospital room feels wrong.

  “My mom’s not coming for, like, almost two hours, though,” Dahlia says, looking up at me. “What am I supposed to do alone at the mall for that long?”

  I shrug.

  “But what about me?” Dahlia whines. “You’re being so rude! I can’t believe you’re just leaving me here.” She continues talking as I walk toward the exit. I’m almost past the shoes section when I hear her calling my name. “Clara! I’m sorry. Wait up!”

  “God,” I mumble under my breath. I don’t turn around.

  “I’m sorry, Clara! I know this is a hard time for you. Whatever you want! I’ll call my mom to come get us now. You can hang out at my house!”

  I roll my eyes and glance behind me. A bunch of high school kids pass between Dahlia and me. I duck behind a shoe polish display and count to twenty before peeking around it just in time to see Dahlia race past. “Clara? Where’d you go?”

  I dash back toward the café, weaving my way through the purses and wallets until I reach the spa at the far end of the store. There’s a leather bench just outside the doors, and I sit down and slide my phone out of my shorts pocket.

  Dad picks up right away. “Clara, honey, is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, everything’s fine,” I say. “I’m at the mall with Dahlia. I mean, I was with Dahlia. I want to go home.”

  Dad’s quiet for a minute. “I hear you,” he finally says. “I’m in the teachers’ lounge grading papers and eating a sandwich by myself. I want to go home, too.”

  I rest my head against the wall and study the fancy lights hanging from the ceiling.

  “I can be there in twenty minutes, okay? I just need to finish one quick thing. Can you hold out that long?”

  “Definitely,” I say, glancing around for Dahlia.

  “I’ll meet you in front of Brother’s Bakery at, let’s say, four fifteen? Is Dahlia getting a ride home later?”

  “Yeah, her mom is coming in a little bit.”

  “Okay, Claire-Bear. I’ll see you in a few, okay?”

  “’Kay. Bye, Dad.”

  I hang up and look around again. There aren’t too many people back here, and I wander around the closest displays of wallets and purses. I pick up a pink-and-green plaid wallet and turn it over in my hands.

  “Claaara?” I suddenly hear.

  I shove the wallet back on the rack and scoot around the display until I’m on the far side, next to a shelf of old-lady purses. I peek between them. I can’t see Dahlia anywhere.

  “Claaara?” Her voice sounds farther away and kind of worried. I feel bad for her, but I don’t really have the energy to think about it.

  I take a purse off the shelf right next to me and check the time on my phone. Fourteen more minutes. The purse is ugly—shiny and bluish green. The price tag hangs around the stiff handle. $215.00. I almost laugh out loud. Is it lined with diamonds? I think, unzipping it.

  Inside the purse are two pockets. I unzip the big one, and glance at my phone for the third time. A watched pot never boils, Mom always says. I zip up the pocket.

  I have no idea what I’ll say to Dahlia if she finds me. If Lola were here, she’d know exactly how to apologize and explain everything. I put the purse back next to a bunch of others just like it and imagine my conversation with Dad in the car. You hid from Dahlia in the purses? he’ll ask, smiling a little, but in a worried sort of way. Right underneath his smile will be a wisp of the black hole that Lola left behind.

  I lean around the purses to check for Dahlia, accidentally knocking the bluish-green one to the floor. The purse that was behind it is an ugly yellowish orange. It has a red CLEARANCE sticker on the price tag. I take it off the rack and turn it over to try to find what’s wrong with it, but it looks okay to me—aside from being hideous. It reminds me of a dress-up purse I used to play with. With Lola.

  I unzip it and try not to check my phone again, but I can’t help it. Twelve more minutes and I can make a run for Brother’s Bakery.

  The inside of the purse is light orange and silky. I can remember sitting on the basement floor with Lola when we were little, cutting green construction paper into strips to use as money for our pretend store. Even though Lola was only a year and a half older than me, she was always completely in charge. Coins go in this section, Clara, she’d say, dramatic and bossy. Dollar bills go in the zippered compartment.

  I smile, thinking of it—thinking of her—and I unzip the smaller of the inside pockets. In it are a white piece of paper and a photograph, both folded into neat squares.

  Yuming

  ALL AROUND ME, the sewing machines chug, chug, chug like blood rushing in and out of twenty-one pumping hearts. The sound never stops, and sometimes, when I’m especially tired and my guard slips down, the sound lulls me into a haze. The chug, chug, chug becomes the beat of Wai Gong’s curved knife as it rustled the yellowed rice stalks in our fields back home; it becomes the rhythm of brushstrokes as Wai Po combed my hair before bed; the chug, chug, chug is Bolin’s sleepy feet in the mornings, shuffling across cool, clay floors.

  But then I snap out of it. I snap out of it and the chug, chug, chug is nothing but the sound of the sewing machines—the sound that is the backdrop to this new life.

  In our hidden room, someone’s always sewing. Even while others are sleeping on the floor or on the benches, someone’s at a machine, hunched over, working extra hours to earn a cot for a night in the sleeping barrack. I’ve heard the chug, chug, chug practically every second since I was brought here in April—in the daytime, the nighttime, when I’m asleep, when I’m awake, because nothing has come of my note, nothing at all.

  Though I try not to let it, my mind wanders to Wai Po as I untangle the knot of emerald-green thread at the eye of my sewing needle. She would patch my thinning clothes with shaking hands, and when I’d offer to thread a needle for her, she’d shoo me back to my studies. Work hard, Yuming, she’d tell me. Use your brain as well as your heart. Her sweet face would momentarily turn sour, and I’d know she was thinking of her daughter—my mama, whom I never knew.

  I’d nod and say, I know, Wai Po.

  The sewing machines chug away. I try not to, but I think of Wai Gong and how he would stand in the doorway of our small home to see me off to school every morning, a glass of tea in his calloused hands. Study hard, Yuming, he would tell me. If you remain number one in your class, you will have a different life from this one—a better life.

  I don’t want a different life, Wai Gong, I’d tell him, and he’d cough and smile—a wide smile full of missing teeth.

  When he wasn’t busy planting or harvesting our rice crop, Wai Gong and I would walk to the park, where the old men congregated at stone tables to play xiangqi. The old men and me. Wai Gong’s friends would smile as we approached, their wrinkles creasing into endless ripples around their mouths. Yuming, they would say, we see you have come to whisper advice to your old Wai Gong again!

  How do you think she got so good at xiangqi to begin with? Wai Gong would ask them, taking out the soft, red bag of circular game pieces that his father had carved from a fallen willow tree. Great-Grandfather had painted the characters on the smooth wooden surfaces—fourteen in rich black, fourteen in gleaming red—and the pieces were heavy and slick with oil from four generations of hands. A few had teeth mark
s on them, from when I was a baby. Wai Gong told me the marks made our xiangqi set lucky.

  I can still hear his husky voice cutting through his old friends’ laughter as they’d share his fried peanuts. Weigh all of your options before you make your move, Yuming. Take your time. Measure the risk before you act.

  I cannot undo the snarl of green thread, so I snap it off the needle, tugging harder than I need to.

  Over and over since Mr. Zhang brought me here, I’ve weighed my options and measured the risk. I followed through on one idea—putting the note in the purse—but six weeks later, nothing has come of it. Since that day in May, I have thought and thought about another way out, but I cannot come up with a plan worth trying; the risk of a beating—or worse—is far too great. Until I can come up with a strategy, I have only one option: to follow Mr. Zhang’s orders and try not to slip off into memories. They cloud my mind; this lack of focus would be a disappointment to Wai Po and Wai Gong. My memories make me weak.

  I take a stiff emerald-green handle from the table next to me, align it with the edge of the purse on the base of my sewing machine, and begin to attach it. My machine chugs away.

  Maybe you could pretend the chug, chug, chugging is the sound of the birds flying over the fields back home, I’d told myself when I first got here. In my previous life, I’d return from school to Wai Po’s hot meals in the evenings and study late into the night. Then, in the mornings, I’d curse the birds for waking me. Stupid, I chide myself now. I push hard on the foot pedal of my sewing machine, and the stitching splays across the purse strap too fast—sloppy again, like on the day of the note. So stupid not to have always appreciated the birds.

  The light is dim in this windowless basement room; I never know the time. I pretend that the three dirty bulbs hanging overhead are miniature spirits watching over me. I’ve fallen into memories again, into that hazy, uncertain place. It is hard—so hard—to keep my mind from going where it longs to go.

  Jing watches from her seat on the bench next to me as I shake my overgrown bangs out of my eyes and look up at the bulbs. I can feel her concerned eyes studying me. Though we can’t speak to each another without risking punishment, our proximity in the last row has made her familiar and comforting.