Read the opening of The Bone Sparrow

Sometimes, at night, the dirt outside turns into a beautiful ocean. As red as the sun and as deep as the sky. I lie on my bed, Queeny’s feet pushing against my cheek, and listen to the waves lapping at the tent. Queeny says I’m stupid, saying that kind of stuff. But it’s true. She just doesn’t see it, is all.

Our maá says there are some people in this world who can see all the hidden bits and pieces of the universe blown in on the north wind and scattered about in the shadows. Queeny, she never tries to look in the shadows. She doesn’t even squint. Maá sees, though. She can hear the ocean outside too. ‘You hear it, né?’

I whisper, my fingers feeling for her smile in the dark. In the morning, the ground still wet and foamy from where those waves washed up, I sit and trace the hundreds of animals that have swum all the way up to the tent, their faces pushing against the flaps, trying to get a look at us inside on our beds.

Queeny says they aren’t real beds, but just old army cots and even older army blankets. Queeny says that a real bed is made with springs and cushions and feathers, and that real blankets don’t itch. I don’t think those animals would know the difference or really care much either. This morning I found a shell washed up right along with those animals.

I breathed in its smell. All hot and salty fish, like the very bottom of the ocean. And even though Queeny doesn’t believe, and grunted about when was I ever going to grow up and could I please quit bothering her all the goddamn time, she still gave me her last bit of paper and said I could borrow her pen so I could write the words in black at the top of the page.

The Night Sea With Creatures. I drew a picture as best I could with no colours and paper that curled from the damp.