Hummingbird Heart

Robin Stevenson

Description

Sixteen-year-old Dylan has never met her father. She knows that her parents were just teenagers themselves when she was born, but her mother doesn't like to talk about the past, and her father, Mark, has never responded to Dylan's attempts to contact him. As far as Dylan is concerned, her family is made up of her mother, Amanda; her recently adopted younger sister, Karma; and maybe even her best friend, Toni.


And then, out of the blue, a phone call: Mark will be in town for a few days and he wants to meet her. Amanda is clearly upset, but Dylan can't help being excited at the possibility of finally getting to know her father. But when she finds out why he has come—and what he wants from her—the answers fill her with still more questions. What makes someone family? And why has her mother been lying to her all these years?

Sujets

• Young Adult Fiction
• Family

Informations

• Publié par: Orca Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781459801561
• Langue: English

Extrait

ROBIN STEVENSON
ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS
Text copyright 2012 Robin Stevenson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication 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 now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Stevenson, Robin, 1968- Hummingbird heart [electronic resource] / Robin Stevenson.
Electronic monograph.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-1-55469-391-7 ( PDF ).-- ISBN 978-1-4598-0156-1 ( EPUB )
I. Title.
PS 8637.T487 H 84 2012 JC 813 .6 C 2011-907423-0
First published in the United States, 2012 Library of Congress Control Number : 2011942576
Summary : Dylan is sixteen when she first meets her father, who is looking for a donor match for his sick toddler.

Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council .
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Cover design by Teresa Bubela Cover artwork by Janice Kun Author photo by David Lowes ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS PO B OX 5626, Stn. B PO B OX 468 Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA V 8 R 6 S 4 98240-0468
www.orcabook.com Printed and bound in Canada.
15 14 13 12 4 3 2 1
To Maggie Bird
Contents
O ne
TWO
TH ree
F our
FIV e
SIX
S even
e IGHT
n I ne
T en
e L even
TW e LV e
THI r T een
F our T een
FIFT een
SIXT een
S even T een
e IGHT een
n I ne T een
TW en TY
TW en TY-O ne
TW en TY-TWO
TW en TY-TH ree
TW en TY-F our
TW en TY-FIV e
TW en TY-SIX
TW en TY-S even
TW en TY- e IGHT
TW en TY- n I ne
THI r TY
A c K no WL e DG men TS
O ne
I balanced the camera on a stack of books and squinted through the viewfinder, trying to line up the shot so that my mom and Karma were near the center and the teetering pile of books and papers on the end table wasn t visible.
Hurry up. Karma shifted her position, crossing her ankle over her knee and leaning forward. Just take a picture already.
I d be done already if you didn t keep talking. My finger hovered over the button. Mom? Could you at least smile a little?
My face is starting to ache. She brushed her hair back over her shoulder. Okay, fine. She bared her teeth. Cheese.
I set the timer, ran to the couch and crouched between them. Click.
The smile slid from Mom s face. Christ. Enough. She stood up and stretched. You do know you re wasting your time, right?
I shrugged and looked at the photo on the tiny screen. Want to see it?
Karma took a quick peek and made a face. I look like Kermit. The lighting in here s weird. Greenish.
Let me see. Mom took the camera from me and studied the picture, frowning slightly.
You re the photographer, Mom. If you want to do it
I didn t say anything. Anyway, I don t do portraits. You know that.
No kidding. If she did portraits, maybe we could afford to live somewhere halfway decent. As it was, Karma s room was barely big enough for her bed, the kitchen faucet dripped constantly, mold crept along the window frames and the downstairs neighbors grew marijuana in the shared backyard.
Fine, I said. I ll print it. You ll send it to him, right?
She sighed. He won t write back, you know. So don t get your hopes up.
He might. You don t know.
Well, he never has before. There was an unmistakable note of satisfaction in her voice.
I didn t say anything, because she was right. Every birthday since third grade I d made Mom mail my father a photo of me. The first few times I used my school photo, but for the last three years I d sent a family picture because sending one just of me felt sort of embarrassing. He d never replied. I told Mom that I wanted to get to know him, but I wasn t sure if I meant it. Sometimes I wondered if I sent the pictures because I wanted him to feel guilty. Either way, I knew Mom didn t like it.
Well, she said. She looked at me, her expression unreadable. Sweet sixteen.
When she was sixteen, she was pregnant with me. It wasn t something she liked to talk about, but you didn t have to be a genius to guess that her memories weren t all happy ones.

Turning sixteen didn t change anything. I still had to go to school the next day. I frowned at myself in the dingy hallway mirror. Wrinkles. I leaned closer and stared at the two faint vertical lines between my eyebrows. They were barely visible, but they were most definitely there. It figured, what with the hole in the ozone layer, the pesticides in our food and the thousands of toxic chemicals coursing through our veins. I d just read an article online about how my generation would be the first ever to have a shorter life span than the previous one.
Pickle! Mom yelled. You re dragging your ass this morning. Do you need a ride?
I frowned. In the mirror, my reflection frowned back at me and the lines deepened. I ll take my bike.
My mother drove an ancient gas-guzzling, carbon-spewing station wagon. A few months ago, someone put a sticker on her car-while she left it idling somewhere, I figured, though she denied it-that read I m responsible for climate change . She had laughed; then she d sighed and said not everyone could afford hybrids and Smart cars. It took her awhile to get around to it, but she d finally scraped the sticker off with nail polish remover and a dull kitchen knife.
In the kitchen, Karma was eating breakfast and Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, sketching. I grabbed a couple of slices of bread from the freezer and started making a peanut-butter sandwich.
Mom raised her eyebrows. Tell me you re not eating that frozen.
It ll thaw by lunchtime. What are you drawing?
Tattoo design.
I put down the frozen sandwich with a thunk . You said you wouldn t get any more.
She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped and shook her head. So? Maybe I changed my mind. Sometimes people do that, you know.
Karma looked at me and crossed her eyes.
I grabbed a sandwich bag and slammed the drawer closed, pinching the soft part of my little finger. I swore under my breath, shoved the sandwich in the bag and dropped it in my backpack. I have to go.
Pickle, don t be like that.
I m not being like anything. I don t want to be late, that s all. I avoided my mother s eyes. And don t call me Pickle.
Dylan
I have to go, I repeated. I tossed my backpack over my shoulder and headed down the stairs and out the front door.

My mother was obsessed with tattoos. Some of her interests-like belly-dancing and tai chi-were short-lived, but the tattoos, of course, were permanent.
It wasn t like I had anything against tattoos. Plenty of kids at school had used their fake ID s to get them. Even my friend Toni s mother, who was close to fifty, had a small butterfly on her ankle. But my mother was up to nineteen. She had birds-bright red and green and blue birds-flying up the inside of both forearms. Her feet and ankles were a swirl of green and black vines. Her belly button was circled by a sun. A lizard stretched lazily across her shoulder and a tree spread its dark branches across her lower back.
And apparently she wasn t done yet.
I got on my bike, cycled hard toward school and tried not to care. Whatever. It was her body. If Mom wanted to look like a walking canvas, that was her choice.
Judging by the state of his own arms, her latest boyfriend wasn t going to have a problem with it.

Toni waved from down the hall. Dylan! How s it going?
I hurried toward her so that she wouldn t try to have a conversation at full volume in front of half the school. Hey.
She pushed her curly hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ears. It sprang back out the second she took her hands away. How come you didn t call me last night?
Sorry. I there was a lot going on. I lowered my voice. Scott came over. One of the nice things about having the same best friend for a really long time was that you didn t always have to explain things.
Really? Your mom s new Toni trailed off.
Yeah. Her new whatever. We met downtown for dinner. I started walking slowly in the direction of class, and Toni looped her arm through mine in one of those casual gestures that seemed to come so easily to her. I was clumsy and awkward about that kind of thing; always elbowing someone, or standing too close, or not knowing how to let go again.
So? she asked. What s he like?
Total freak.
Details, please!
I focussed on the obvious. Tattoos from elbow to wrist, both arms. And lots of piercings. Other than the regular ones in ears and noses, I thought piercings were gross. Scott had piercings in his lips and tongue and eyebrow, and God only knew where else. Well, God and my mother, presumably, but I didn t want to dwell on that thought.
What does he do? Does he at least have a job? Toni knew my mom s track record. Her last boyfriend had borrowed two hundred bucks before taking off to Montreal.
Yeah, that s how they met. He ran a group Karma was in at the Boys and Girls Club.
Well, that s good, right? So he s-what? A counse