Anna Priemaza - The Forgotten Memories of Vera Glass

PUBLISHERS NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-4197-5259-9

eISBN 978-1-6470-0209-1

Text copyright 2021 Anna Priemaza

Book design by Hana Anouk Nakamura

Published in 2021 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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To Katelyn Larson.

And to Laura Geddes.

Without you, the emptiness in my heart would weigh more than a thousand stars.

Sometimes I wonder how much better life would be without siblings. Well, maybe not better, but certainly quieter.

All four of us are in the dining room after school, plus Rivenwho isnt my sibling, but who comes home with me after school so often that she might as well be.

And so I told him that obviously the day structure in the creation story in the Bible is metaphorical because God didnt even make the sun until the fourth day, so how could days like we understand them now even exist before that, so believing in the Bible doesnt mean you cant also believe in the big bang theory and evolution and all that good stuff, says Al, who is standing at the head of the table, relating an argument he got in with his biology teacher.

Just one game. Pwease, Isaac begs Riven as he climbs into her lap and reaches for her phone.

Around us all skips Gertie, who is singing some song about ghosts and pumpkins that ends each verse with an ear-splitting Boo!

As a particularly loud Boo! reverberates right in my ear and I stare down at my nowhere-near-done math homework, I wish for one brief moment that I was an only child. I wish the quiet house Riven and I walked into before Al got home with Gertie and Isaacit was his turn to pick them up after schoolcould have stayed quiet for hours, and we could have gotten lost in our books, the ticking of the kitchen clock and the steady rhythm of our breathing the only noise.

But then Gertie skips over and throws her arms around me in a hug, and Al suggests we surprise Mom and Dad by making pasta for supper, and Riven compromises with Isaac by taking silly selfies of the two of them, and I swear that Isaacs giggles could cure cancer. And all my wishing flies out the window.

Riven offers to watch Gertie and Isaac while Al and I make pasta, so as she chases them around pretending to be an evil mutant rabbit from their favorite video game, Legends of the Stone, Al grabs two jars from the pantry and holds them up. Alfredo or marinara?

I choose marinara, since in my opinion it goes better with the zucchini, mushrooms, and peppers were planning to chop up. From the dining room comes the sound of Gerties and Isaacs giggles and screeches and Rivens roars.

I grab the zucchini and peppersorganic, of coursefrom the fridge, but before setting them down, I duck my head into the dining room. Its dark in there; Rivens flicked off the light to enhance the pseudo-scary atmosphere. Hey, Riven, I say, youre on the island, and you come across Bob and Fred. Bob says, Were both knaves. Whos what?

Riven stops chasing Gertie and Isaac around like a monster for a moment and throws her hand toward the ceiling to send all four bulbs of the rectangular, hanging light fixture to life. She looks at me in the now-illuminated room. Thats it? Thats all I get for clues? Only one of them says something?

Riven is used to me tossing these questions at her. I love logic problems, especially the knights and knaves problems. In them, youre on an island filled with knaves, who can only lie, and knights, who can only tell the truth. You come across groups of people, and based on what they say, you have to figure out whos a knight and/ or whos a knave. I love problems that rely only on logic and deduction to solve them.

Bobs a knave and Freds a knight! Al calls from the kitchen behind me.

Hey! Riven calls back. You didnt give me time to answer!

You want another one? I ask her.

Oh no. Im much too busy being a monster to think about things like knights and knaves. She makes her fingers into claws and lunges at Gertie and Isaac, who squeal and dive under the table. Rather than chase after them, though, Riven pauses like shes still trying to think through the problem.

If Bob was a knight, hed say so, I explain. Which means he has to be a knave. Which means the both part of his statement has to be a lie. Which means

That Freds a knight. Yeah, yeah, I got it. She scrunches up her nose at me, grins, and says, Hey, can you flick the lights back off on your way out? Then she roars like a dinosaur and dives under the table.

I shake my head and return to the kitchen, flicking the light switch on the way and undoing Rivens small burst of magic. Riven thinks that the sort of one-way-ness of magic makes her light aptitude a pain in the butt, but Id much rather have that than my mostly useless unlocking aptitude. (Useless unless you want to be a criminal, that is, which isnt exactly my life goal.)

Al has started chopping the mushrooms, so I pull out a second cutting board and settle in beside him, slicing open the peppers and putting the stems and innards in our compost bucket.

How was your day? Al asks as we chop. Hows your new science partner? Al and I fight a lotusually over whose turn it is to use the laptop we sharebut we talk a lot, too. And my favorite thing about my big brother is that he always remembers the things that I tell him. He genuinely listens.

She seems all right. Quiet. But she does what I tell her to. We got an A on our first lab assignment.

Thats a relief, Al says. We both know the fear of group projects, of slacker partners who threaten to bring down our straight-A averages, turning us into the underachievers of our family. Mom and Dad would understand if our grades dipped, of course; Al and I are harder on ourselves than they are. Hey, I need the laptop later, he adds. For a history project.

No way! Al! Ive been telling you all week that I need it tonight to write up my English paper! You cant I break off as I notice Als grin. You jerkface! Dont joke about things like that!

Sorry, Vera, Al says, though the smirk on his face says hes not actually sorry at all.