Emily Barth Isler - Aftermath

Advance Praise for
A fter M ath

This book is a gift to the culture.

Amy Schumer, writer, actor, and activist

Lucys story of grief and healing packs an emotional punch that will tug at your heartstrings long after youve read the last page.

Edith Cohn, author of Birdies Billions

AfterMath is gorgeously written, infinitely heart-wrenching, and tragically timely. Lucys voice is powerful and distinct. I loved this novel.

Leslie Margolis, author of Ghosted , We Are Party People , and the Maggie Brooklyn Mysteries

AfterMath is both heartbreaking and filled with hope. Gentle, nuanced, and honest, Islers extraordinary debut will stay with readers long beyond the final page.

Alex Richards, author of Accidental

Parents arent perfect, friendships arent perfect, and life most certainly isnt perfect, but this novel comes pretty close to perfect in its fearless and compassionate exploration of the sorrows, struggles, and hard-won maturing of a spunky twelve-year-old as she deals with the aftermath of loss. The losses are real, the pain is real, but sothe author persuades usis the saving grace of loving connection.

Judith Viorst, author of The Tenth Good Thing about Barney

Emily Barth Isler handles so many potentially explosive topics with grace and subtlety but also with enormous assurance and power. This is a brave, important and even essential novel.

Yona Zeldis McDonough, author of The Bicycle Spy and Courageous

Text copyright 2021 Emily Barth Isler

All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review .

Carolrhoda Books

An imprint of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

241 First Avenue North

Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com .

Cover illustration by Dien Ton That.

Main body text set in Bembo Std.

Typeface provided by Monotype Typography.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Isler, Emily Barth, author.

Title: AfterMath / Emily Barth Isler.

Description: Minneapoli s : Carolrhoda Books, [2021 ] | Audience: Ages 1114 . | Audience: Grades 46 . | Summary: After her younger brothers death from a heart defect, twelve-year-old Lucy moves to a town that was devastated by a school shooting four years earlier, where she must navigate different kinds of grief.

Identifiers: LCCN 2 020012553 (print ) | LCCN 2 020012554 (ebook ) | ISBN 781541599116 (trade hardcover ) | ISBN 781728417400 (ebook)

Subjects: CYAC: GriefFiction . | School shootingsFiction . | Middle schoolsFiction . | SchoolsFiction . | Moving, HouseholdFiction.

Classification: LCC P Z7.1.I874 Aft 2021 (print ) | LCC P Z7.1.I874 (ebook ) | DDC [Fic]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012553

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012554

Manufactured in the United States of America

1-48107-48760-4/8/2021

For Jim.
And for kids everywhere, who deserve to go to school without fear.

Prologue

Ive never been a pink girl. I dont do princesses, ponies, or purple either, for that matter. Nothing against things that start with the letter P Im cool with penguins, prime numbers, peanut butter, and polynomials. Ive just never liked pink.

Choose one, Lucy. Its just wallpaper.

My mother is holding up three samples for me to see. One is pink, one is purple, and one, literally, has pink and purple ponies on it. What are the odds?

Youre wrinkling your nose, she says. She looks more sad than frustrated now, and I feel guilty.

Im twelve, Mom. Those are all kind of babyish. I try to ex plain, not com plain, like they teach you in therapy, but its hard not to whine when your mom doesnt get you at all. And sometimes I dont feel like being extra nice even though Theo died. He was my brother, but no one is cutting me any slack. Eight months on and Im supposed to just embrace this fresh start. As if a new school and a new town arent enough, apparently there also has to be new wallpaper.

Oh. My mother looks around the store, at the piles and piles of wallpaper samples and books full of them. I grab one and flip it open to a random page. Its floral but yellow, which is better.

How about this? I ask.

Now shes the one wrinkling her nose. Yellow?

I shrug. Im not committed to yellow. I can do green. My mom squints. Or blue? I say hesitantly.

My mother looks exasperated. It seems like you dont even really care, Lucy.

I dont, I say before I can stop myself. I mean, I dont have strong feelings. Im digging my toe into the industrial carpeting, as if, in the time it will take us to select wallpaper, I might be able to burrow into the ground and disappear.

Well, I wish you did have strong feelings. Its your room. I want it to feel like home.

Thats the problem. She wants it to be my room. She wants our new house to feel like home to me. But thats going to take a lot more than wallpaper.

We eventually settle on a fresh coat of paint. Blue, which is somehow not a controversial color for either of us.

It doesnt really matter. Blue paint isnt going to cover the fact that my room used to belong to a dead girl.

Chapter 1

Kenton, Maryland, and Queensland, Virginia, are 31.5 miles apart via the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and the speed limit averages 45 mph along the way. However, via I-95, the towns are 38 miles apart but with a speed limit that averages 60 mph. Which is the faster route from Kenton to Queensland?

distance divided by speed = time

via the BW Parkway: 31.5 / 45 = 0.7 hours, or 42 minutes

via I-95: 38 / 60 = 0.63 hours, or about 38 minutes

But in reality, it might as well take seven million hours either way, because it seems like were never going back there.

I live in a dead girls house. I sleep in her room.

We knew this before we bought the house. Our real estate agent, Cheryl Ann (her full namewho on earth has the last name Ann???), mentioned it during our tour. Well, technically she only said that the couple who were selling the house had lost a daughter in the Queensland school shooting. But I know that my room is the one that used to belong to the daughter, because in my new closet, on the edge of the sliding doorscovered in an anemic, barely-there coat of white paintI found a vertical set of hash marks, with a date written next to each mark and the name Bette written at the top.

Its a height chart. I had one just like it on my wall at home. My dad used to measure Theo and me every few months and draw lines where we stood to show how much wed grown. Then hed write our names and the date.