Sophie Littlefield - Banished

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

Copyright 2010 by Sophie Littlefield

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Littlefield, Sophie.
Banished / Sophie Littlefield. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Hailey Tarbell, raised by a mean, secretive grandmother, does not know that she comes from a long line of healers until her Aunt Prairie arrives with answers about her past that could quickly threaten her future.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89495-4
[1. HealersFiction. 2. IdentityFiction. 3. GrandmothersFiction. 4. AuntsFiction. 5. SupernaturalFiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L7359Ban 2010
[Fic]dc22 2009032711

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v3.1

For Sal.
Growing up is hard, but you are doing a beautiful job.

This book was touched by many hands along the way, and I am grateful to you all.

Barbara Poelle, my agent who employed the roadside-assistance-phone-call and cocktail-napkin methods to develop my idea,

Claudia Gabel, who took a chance on me,

And Stephanie Elliott, my editor, who worked tirelessly to help me shape the story.

Writing this book reminded me of a time when I was doing my best to grow up, and I would like to thank the friends who were there. Bobfirst and foremost. Mary. Julia, Sonja, Anne, and MaryAnn. Joellen and Margaret, and Ellen and John. And of course Kristen and Mike, who are always there.

W AKING UP HURT . Her head pounded and there was something in her eyes, something sticky and warm that made it hard to see.

She blinked hard and her eyes cleared, and she realized she was in a car.

Not just any carher boyfriends car. It was a pretty white Celica, and she brushed her hand against her lap, feeling smooth, silky fabric, and rememberedit was prom night, and they were driving out to Boone Lake and hed brought champagne, a bottle on ice in a cooler. She had slipped into the girls bathroom to fix her lip gloss and dab on a little extra perfume before they said goodbye to all their friends, to the school gym decorated with streamers and helium balloons, to the teachers, who smiled and nodded at them because they were nice kids, kids who got good grades and didnt make trouble.

Except that her boyfriend had been drinking since they got tothe prom, and he wasnt drunk, no, not drunk exactly, but theyd been laughing as he took the turns on State Road 9 just a little too fast, his hand slipping along the folds of her emerald green skirt.

And she hadnt stopped him. Because she liked having his hand there. And she couldnt wait to kiss him some more. And she liked going fast and reckless around the turns because it felt like the future, felt like the day when they would drive away from Gypsum and never come back.

But something had happened.

There were no lights in the car now, not even the glow of the dashboard. But the headlights were still on, one shining straight into the woods, to the right of the tree theyd hit.

The other beam twisted at a crazy angle. It lit up his body, lying on the ground ten feet from the car, bent in a way that didnt look the least bit natural.

She started screaming, yanked at the buckle of her seat belt and pushed against her doorit wouldnt open, it was stuck or jammed, and she crawled to the drivers seat, her knees grinding on something sharpoh, it was the windshield, the windshield had shattered, and she realized with horror that it was her boyfriends body that had broken it. He never wore his seat belthed gone flying through the windshield, across the hood of the ruined Celica, and landed on the hard ground, broken and bleeding.

The drivers-side door opened easily and she stumbled out of the car, tripping on the hem of her dress, her beautiful strapless dress that no one knew had come from the St. Benedicts thrift shop in Tipton, that fit her like it had been made for her alone.

She bunched the skirt in her fists and ran to her boyfriend, stumbling in her high heels before collapsing on her knees next to him. His hand, thrown out palm-open as though hed been reaching for something, twitched and his lips moved. His eyes were glassy and unfocused and she bent close to hear what he was trying to say.

Hurts , he managed, licking his dry, cracked lips.

No, no, please dont , she murmured as she tugged his tuxedo jacket open as gently as she could.

What she saw made her throat close with fear. It was too much. There was too much damage. The wound was open and black and glistening in the moonlight, so much blood draining into the cold, dry earth.

Her hands flew to the wound, her fingers working quickly to find the edges of the gash, the words coming to her lips even before she realized shed made a decision.

But he spoke first. I I love

His voice was so weak she almost missed it, but comprehension flickered in his beautiful brown eyes, and he looked at her the way he did when he picked her up for school, the way he had the first time shed passed in front of his locker last year, the way he did when he searched the crowd for her face after every play at football games.

It was a look that saw her, knew her, really knew her, the way her mother never would and her father, whoever he was, never chose to. It was the look shed hung every dream, every foolish hope on, and as he blinked twice, his eyes rolling up and going opaque, she said the words.

She said the words the way her grandmother had taught her, the syllables slipping like gossamer ribbons past her lips, words shed chanted a hundred times on a hundred long-ago nights lit by sputtering candles and her grandmothers eyes bright with purpose. A hundred times, a hundred nights, but tonight was the first time she prayed with all her soul that the words would work.

A twitch, a sighshe broke off in the middle of a word whose sound was burned into her memory, but whose meaning she didnt really know, not the way her grandmother did. Her boyfriend twitched again and blinked, and she stilled her fingers on his face.

Dont leave me, she whispered. Oh, please dont leave Her heart thudded hard in her chest because he wasnt gone; hed almost died but shed brought him back, shed said the words.

He was back.

She was bending to kiss him, to throw her arms around him, when his eyes blinked again and stayed open

And there was nothing there.

Vincent, she breathed, her heart going cold. Vincent, please, please, Vincent, please

But he said nothing. His eyes were empty and his lips were still, and the forest around them was dark and silent as a stone.

W HEN I WAS EIGHT , the social workers finally made Gram send me to school. Until then, she told the authorities she was homeschooling me, but after years of her never turning in her paperwork or showing up for the mandatory meetings, they finally got fed up and told her I had to go to regular school. Gram gave in; she knew when she was beat.