Don’t look now but we’re about to start gushing over A.S. King! 

Have you read Still Life with Tornado yet?

If not, why?

WHY? 

The New York Times loved it: ‘Moving, unapologetically strange, skilfully constructed...Read this book, whatever your age. You may find it’s the exact shape and size of the hole in your heart.’

Sixteen-year-old Sarah can’t draw. This is a problem, because as long as she can remember, she has ‘done the art.’ She thinks she’s having an existential crisis. And she might be right; she does keep running into past and future versions of herself as she wanders the urban ruins of Philadelphia.

Insightful, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, this is a vivid portrait of abuse, survival and resurgence that will linger with readers long after the last page.

But more importantly, as one Texter puts it about A.S. King, ‘She’s actually a genius.’ 

Still Life with Tornado is remarkable. It will change you.

Read on for an extract.

THE TORNADO

Nothing ever really happens.

Or, more accurately, nothing new ever really happens.

My art teacher, Miss Smith, once said that there is no such thing as an original idea. We all think we’re having original ideas, but we aren’t. “You’re stuck on repeat. I’m stuck on repeat. We’re all stuck on repeat.” That’s what she said. Then she flipped her hair back over her shoulder like what she said didn’t mean anything and told us to spend the rest of class sorting through all the old broken shit she gets people to donate so we can make art. She held up half of a vinyl record. “Every single thing we think is original is like this. Just pieces of something else.”

Two weeks ago Carmen said she had an original idea, and then she drew a tornado, but tornadoes aren’t original. Tornadoes are so old that the sky made them before we were even here. Carmen said that the sketch was not of a tornado, but everything it contained. All I saw was flying, churning dust. She said there was a car in there. She said a family pet was in there. A wagon wheel. Broken pieces of a house. A quart of milk. Photo albums. A box of stale corn flakes.

All I could see was the funnel and that’s all anyone else could see and Carmen said that we weren’t looking hard enough. She said art wasn’t supposed to be literal. But that doesn’t erase the fact that the drawing was of a tornado and that’s it.

Our next assignment was to sketch a still life. Miss Smith put out three bowls of fruit and told us we could arrange the fruit in any way we wanted. I picked one pear and I stared at it and stared at my drawing pad and I didn’t sketch anything.

I acted calm, like I was just daydreaming, but I was paralyzed. Carmen looked at me and I shrugged like I didn’t care. I couldn’t move my hand. I felt numb. I felt like crying. I felt both of those things. Not always in art class, either.

When I handed in a blank paper at the end of class, I said, “I’ve lost the will to participate.”

Miss Smith thought I meant art class. But I meant that I’d lost the will to participate in anything. I wanted to be the paper. I wanted to be whiter than white. Blanker than blank.

The next day Miss Smith said that I should do blind drawings of my hand. Blind drawings are when you draw something without looking at the paper. I drew twelve of them. But then I wondered how many people have done blind drawings of their hands and I figured it must be the most unoriginal thing in the world.

She said, “But it’s your hand. No one else can draw that.”

I told her that nothing ever really happens.

“Nothing ever really happens,” I said.

She said, “That’s probably true.” She didn’t even look up from the papers she was shuffling. Her bared shoulders were already tan and it wasn’t even halfway through April. I stood there staring at her shoulders, thinking about how nothing ever really happens. Lots of stuff has happened to Miss Smith. I knew that.

My hands shook because I couldn’t draw the pear. She looked up and I know she saw me shaking. She could have said anything to me then. Something nice. Something encouraging. Instead, she repeated herself.

She said, “That’s probably true.”

So I stopped going to school.

It’s true about the letters they’ll send when you stop going to school. After a week or so they come after you and make you meet with the principal. But that’s happened before, just like tornadoes, so it didn’t impress me. My parents escorted me into the school building and they apologized a hundred times for my behavior but I didn’t apologize even once.

I couldn’t think of one reaction to the meeting with the principal that was original. Apologizing, crying, yelling, spitting, punching, silence—none of those things are original. I tried to levitate. I tried to spontaneously combust like a defective firework.

Now that would be original.

BUS STOP

I’m at the bus shelter two blocks from school and it’s raining and I’m pressed back as far as I can be into the shelter and I’m not doing or thinking anything original. I am on my way to City Hall to change my name. Still not original, but at least I won’t be Sarah anymore.

Dad was perky this morning. He said, “I wish you’d do something constructive with these days. You could paint or sculpt or something. At least you’d be productive.” He didn’t hear the spaces between those words. He didn’t hear the rests between the notes. “But I know you’re going to school today because we have a deal, right?”

Deals. That’s what life with Dad is—a series of deals. He thought I was going to school on the bus and I did go on the bus, but I didn’t get to school. I got off one stop early to catch another bus, like I’ve done for the last eight school days. I could be shooting heroin or dabbing or smoking meth. I could be flirting with boys after school like normal girls do. I could be pregnant. Of course, none of those things are original, but they would be constructive and productive, which is what Dad seems to want. Right now, I’m going to City Hall.

I still don’t know what name I’ll choose. I have twenty minutes until I have to decide. I catch my distorted reflection in the windows of the passing cars, and I think about how people elope to City Hall and get married without telling anyone. I’m doing that, but I’m doing it by myself. I will elope with the new me. I will come out with a new name but I’ll still have the same face and everyone will call me Sarah but I’ll really be whoever I decide to be. I will confuse the Social Security Administration. My number will now match the wrong name. I will not tell my parents what my new name is. I won’t even tell myself.

A woman walks up and sits down next to me in the bus shelter. She says hello and I say hello and that’s not original at all. When I look at her, I see that she is me. I am sitting next to myself. Except she looks older than me, and she has this look on her face like she just got a puppy—part in-love and part tired-from-paper-training. More in-love, though. She says, “You were right about the blind hand drawings. Who hasn’t done that, right?”

I don’t usually have hallucinations.

I say, “Are you a hallucination?”

She says no.

I say, “Are you—me?”

“Yes. I’m you,” she says. “In seven years.”

“I’m twenty-three?” I ask.

“I’m twenty-three. You’re just sixteen.”

“Why do you look so happy?”

“I stopped caring about things being original.”

When the bus comes she gets on it with me, and to prove she’s really real she stops and slots a token into the machine. There are two Sarahs on this bus. We are going to City Hall.

“We’re eloping,” she says.

I’m conflicted. Is this what eloping with the new me looks like? Riding to City Hall on a bus with myself? How will I ever fool the Social Security Administration if there’s a witness? Even if the witness is me? I try to concentrate on names I like. Wild names. Names that surprise people. I can’t come up with any names. I just keep looking at twenty-three-year-old Sarah and my brain is stuck on one name.Sarah. Sarah. Sarah. I can’t get away from myself.

SUIT YOURSELF

I’m stuck on a bus with Sarah who is twenty-three. She has a snazzy haircut and highlights. My hair is still long and stringy like it always has been. It doesn’t stop people from staring at us like we’re identical twins. She’s comedy and I’m tragedy. Even that thought isn’t original.

She says, “You’re not really going to change your name, are you?”

I say, “You tell me.”

She smiles again and I want to tell her stop smiling so much. We have an ordinary smile and it annoys me.

She says, “I’m still Sarah.”

“I’m still going to City Hall,” I say.

“Fine with me.”

“I don’t want you to come with me.”

She smirks. “You can’t even change your name yet. You’re only sixteen.”

“I’m practicing,” I say.

She rolls her eyes. “I guess.”

When the bus nears the next stop, I repeat myself. “I don’t want you to come with me.”

“Suit yourself,” she says.

She gets off at the next stop, and as the bus pulls away, I watch her walk up 12th Street and see she still has our favorite umbrella.

Maybe I’m snapping. Maybe I’ve already snapped and I’m coming back to real life. Maybe this is some sort of existential crisis. I couldn’t tell you right now whether my life has meaning or value. I don’t even know if I’m really living. Either way, I’m going to City Hall. Either way, I’m changing my name.

As the bus goes east, we pass through the University of the Arts campus. This is where I say I want to go to college. Except I’m skipping school, so I probably won’t get to go to college. Or maybe I will. I’m not sure. Going to college doesn’t seem original. Not going to college doesn’t seem original unless I plan to do something original instead of just not going to college.

I thought being an artist would be the right thing to do. Since I was little, everybody told me I was good at it. Every year on my birthday Dad gave me something a real artist should have—a wooden artist’s model, a set of oil paints, a palette, an easel, a pottery wheel. When I was nine, he woke me up every summer morning saying, “Time to make the art!” And I made art. Sometimes I made great art and I knew it because people’s expressions change when they look at great art. When I was ten, after we went to Mexico, he stopped waking me up that way, but I still made the art. Right up until Miss Smith and the pear. It wasn’t the pear’s fault. It was building for months because sixteen is when people stop saying great things about a kid’s drawings and start asking questions like “Where do you want to go to college?”

I just don’t think college is where artists go. I think they go to Spain or Macedonia or something.

UMBRELLA

By the time I get to City Hall, I figure the idea to change my name isn’t original anymore. The idea is now two hours old. I don’t even go to the sixth floor to get the paperwork so I can practice how I’ll do it when I turn eighteen.

I decide my name is Umbrella, but I won’t tell anyone else. Not even the Social Security Administration. Changing one’s name without actually changing one’s name has been done before, but I doubt anyone else on Earth ever opted to call themselves Umbrella.

I take the next bus that comes around. The rain has stopped, which makes my new name ironic. I am useless now in every possible way. I am a sixteen-year-old truant. I am Umbrella on a day with no rain. I am as blank as a piece of white paper in a world with no pencils. While this may sound dramatic and silly, it’s comforting to me so I don’t care how it sounds. The whole world thinks sixteen-year-old girls are dramatic and silly anyway. But really we’re not. Not even when we change our names to Umbrella.

Everything I see from the bus window is the same. The streets, the sidewalks, the people are all the same. Homeless people sit on corners. Businesspeople walk with purpose. Tourists look at maps, trying to find the Liberty Bell or Betsy Ross’s house. Half the people are looking at or talking into their phones. Other people are holding their devices as if they could ring any second—like soldiers in wartime—guns always at the ready. But nothing ever really happens.

It starts to drizzle again and I think back to Miss Smith’s art class two weeks ago. I couldn’t draw the pear. I couldn’t draw my hand one more time. If someone asked me to draw anything right now, I wouldn’t be able to do it. My hands do not work. Not in that way. Mom tells stories about patients in the ER who need amputations. Arm/hand/multiple-finger amputations. People who drive with their arms out car windows. Unlucky motorcyclists. Lawn mowers. Snowblowers. At least I still have hands. I have nothing to complain about.

I can’t draw a pear, though. Or anything else.

My hands ran out of art.

I am simply Umbrella. I am the layer between the light rain and a human walking down Spruce Street talking into her phone, maybe finding out her cat just threw up on the new Berber carpet. I am the barrier between the bullshit that falls from the sky and the humans who do not want bullshit on their pantsuits. In eight days of riding around, that’s what I’ve discovered. It’s raining bullshit. Probably all the time.

Twenty-three-year-old Sarah gets on the bus again. She sits next to me and smiles, just like last time. But now, there’s something condescending in her smile. Unsympathetic. It says I am silly and dramatic. We don’t say a thing to each other and when we get off at the stop near home, the rain has started again and she opens her umbrella and walks north. I walk south and let the rain hit me until I’m soaked.

DROPOUT

“She told me that we should let her drop out for the year,” Mom says. “She could do summer classes and then she’d be able to come back next year and reenroll as a junior.”

“No,” Dad says. “She’s sixteen. She’s talented. What about her future?”

“That doesn’t seem to matter to her,” Mom says.

“You said you’d back me up on this. We made a parental deal. She can’t drop out of high school.”

“It’s that or expulsion. Expulsion would stay on her record.”

“I should have called. You’re a shitty communicator,” Dad says.

I sit soaked and cross-legged on the hall carpet at the top of the stairs and I zone out. This is the most unoriginal conversation I ever heard. Two parents discuss their truant daughter and within five sentences, one of them is blaming the other for something that isn’t even relevant.

And yet, this conversation is a novelty. They are rarely awake or at home at the same time. Today, Dad was only home before seven to meet with some guy about inspecting the roof for damage. There was hail last week, and Dad is in insurance. He’s a fanatic about maintaining façade and building-envelope integrity. He knows all about code and how our kitchen bathroom does not meet code because it’s too small. I do not meet code because I’m not going to school. Mom doesn’t meet code either because they made a parental deal and she’s not keeping up her side of the bargain.

As I listen to them bicker about who should have called the principal and who’s busy keeping a roof over my head, I notice they call each other by their real names. They never do this in front of me. In front of me they call themselves Mom and Dad, and frankly, it’s annoying. But when they argue, they call each other Helen and Chet.

Example: “Why do I have to do all the important stuff, Chet?”

“That’s the problem with you, Helen. You never give me credit for all I do around here.”

“Shove your credit, Chet. I save lives every night and I never expect shit for it, but you take out the garbage and you need a gold star.”

We eat dinner together. It’s a quiet dinner and I shove food into my face as if I’m starving, because I am starving. I didn’t eat lunch today. I don’t think I even ate breakfast.

Dad says, “I heard you didn’t keep our deal.”

Mom turns to me and says, “The school called.”

Dad says, “Just one day, Sarah. For me?”

Mom mumbles something under her breath and I don’t hear it. Dad does. He gives her a look I know all too well. It’s like someone scraped his face off and replaced it with a guy who hates us all. Her, me, even himself.

I imagine I will go to school tomorrow.

Last week, on the third day of bus riding, I decided to transfer every time I saw the same bus shelter advertisement twice. It seemed like an original game. Eventually, I ended up in a neighborhood I’d never been in, in front of a boarded-up high school. It was an old building with graffiti-covered columns at the front entrance and the name of some dead educator carved in stone over the doors. I decided this would be my new school.

A guy in skinny jeans, curated high-tops, and chunky, hip glasses was standing on the sidewalk across the street staring into a camera on a tripod. He kept pulling his face away from the eyepiece and looking around. I could tell he was nervous. It wasn’t the nicest part of town. I decided he had to be an art student. They infest this town like hipster cockroaches. Every one of them thinks they’re original.

This guy looked like he was into ruin porn—breaking into abandoned buildings, climbing bare girders, and taking pictures of collapsed ceilings and piles of rubble. This was a thing now. Ruin porn. But this guy hadn’t even broken into the building; he was just taking pictures of the outside. First, from the tripod and then he walked around and tilted his camera in different directions and did close-ups of the usual things: graffiti, rust, broken windows. I knew if I looked hard enough I could find his page on The Social and look through his online portfolio. Maybe he went to the University of the Arts. Maybe he could sell me heroin. I didn’t look him up, though. Totally unoriginal. Plus, I don’t actually want to do heroin. I want to go to Spain or Macedonia. And I have more guts than to just see a thing from the outside.

When I wake up to my alarm, I smooth out my clothing and I don’t even change my underwear. I hear Mom getting in from her night’s work and I hear her collapse into her bed and turn on the sound machine that she needs to sleep all day. White noise. It sounds like someone left the TV on static.

I get my favorite umbrella and put it in my backpack even though there is no rain predicted for the day. Dad is in the kitchen making me breakfast, but I walk straight out the door and up to the vendor who makes the best egg, cheese, and ham breakfast sandwiches, and when he asks “Salt, pepper, oregano?” I say yes to all three even though I don’t like oregano. Then I sit on the curb and slowly eat every bite.

I’m late to my new school, because I don’t exactly remember the buses I took to get here before. There are no ruin porn photographers this time.

The minute I step into the building, I pretend this is my old school on any normal day. I open my umbrella. Superstition abounds. Students act as if I’ve brought a curse upon the building, but that’s only because they don’t know that there is already a curse upon the building. The curse is: Nobody focuses on the now.

In first-period English, the teacher asks me to close my umbrella and I comply. She says, “It’s nice to see you again, Sarah.” I smile. It feels like I have a disease.

By lunch, I’m ready to leave and take the bus to anywhere, but I decide to stay. I sit in the cafeteria at a table of the other sophomore art club geeks. Carmen is here and she’s talking about tornadoes. Henry is sketching his milk carton à la Warhol. Vivian eats Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets one after the other and washes them down with bottomless black coffee. None of them know that my name is now Umbrella. The senior and junior art club geeks sit at a different table now.

Three weeks ago, our art club suffered a fissure.

The art club seniors would say the fissure was my fault, but it wasn’t.

I should have bought two sandwiches for breakfast. I’m hungry, but the ceiling seems to have collapsed on the empty vending machines.

I skip gym class the next period and stand in the locker room shower stall. I imagine curtains where there should be curtains, but there are no curtains because my new school isn’t a school anymore. There is graffiti on the inside of the shower stall. The absence of violence is not love. I think about it for a minute but I don’t understand.

I close my eyes and listen.

“I hear [popular girl] is getting a nose job.”

“She should.”

“And I hear she’s thinking of getting a boob job while she’s at it.”

“What I wouldn’t give for rich parents.”

“I think I’m going to fail my English test.”

“I can help you study.”

“I’m so bad at tests.”

“Did you hear that Jen broke up with [popular boy]?”

“It means you can go after him now, you know.”

“Shit, we’re late.”

“Can I borrow a pair of socks?”

“Here.”

“Thanks.”

Here is proof that nothing ever really happens. The proof is everywhere. I just have to stand in one place and listen.

“Brrrrring!” I yell into a room full of empty toilet stalls.“Brrring!” My voice echoes down the row of spray-painted half-size lockers with random pried-off doors. In one of the torn-apart lockers is a diorama—a prison cell made of sturdy twigs with a papier-mâché sphere inside of it. The sphere is painted red. The twigs are painted silver. On the floor of the diorama are the words WE WERE HERE in black Sharpie marker.

Next period is art. I imagine the art club sophomores walking toward the art room and I join them but nobody says hello or anything.

Halfway down the hall, someone hands Vivian a note. It’s from her wannabe boyfriend. She reads it to us: “I was disappointed to find your name in the boys’ locker room bathroom stall. It was on a list titled GIRLS WHO DO ANAL. I always thought you were better than that.”

I say, “How original.”

Carmen says, “Henry, go scratch that out.”

Henry says, “I don’t go to the locker room. They all call me a fag.”

Vivian asks, “How do you change for gym?”

Henry says, “I skip gym.”

Carmen says, “I’ll go with you. We’ll get a lav pass and do it next period.”

Vivian says, “It’s probably not even there. This guy is such an asshole.”

“So why do you want to go out with him?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer. I decide she would say: “I’m attracted to assholes, I guess.”

I don’t expect to get nervous walking into the art room. I know I can do whatever I want. I can leave when I want. I can say what I want. But when I kick over the pyramid of Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboys (not original) arranged in front of the art room door, I’m nervous. The seniors trickle in and take their places at the back table and pull out their new projects. I haven’t been in school for nearly two weeks, so I have no project. I just want to get my stuff and get out. This is very easy to do when everyone in the room is ignoring me because none of us is here. Or I’m here, but they aren’t. Or they’re there, and I’m not. I have so much to learn at my new school. I sit on a three-legged desk and close my eyes again.

Miss Smith, who should be taking attendance, is at the back of the room with the seniors and the rat shit chattering about art college and what her four years at Tyler were like. All I hear is “And the parties!” Miss Smith is an asshole. I wish one of Carmen’s tornadoes would suck her up. It would make things convenient for me, considering what I know about Miss Smith.

Vivian and Henry get their projects and supplies and go to work, and the seniors make an effort to say hello to them. One of them tells Vivian that she likes her T-shirt. Another one walks over to Henry and gives him a random hug.

Carmen is friends with everyone. It’s just her nature. She says, “What up?” and the seniors all wave. I’m standing right here. For the first time in weeks. Not one person says “Nice to see you back!” or “Hey, look! It’s Sarah!” or anything like that. Everyone gets to work sifting through the broken glass by the windows, looking for the perfect piece. The glass never seems to cut their skin even though they’re picking it up by the fistful. I turn and leave the room.

Not even Carmen says good-bye.

I stop a few feet from the door and stand in the hallway and listen.

First, silence.

Miss Smith says, “Well that was awkward, wasn’t it?”

Answers follow:

“I don’t know why she even came back.”

“She’s so weird!”

“Drama!”

“Can’t make it as an artist if you don’t have thick skin.”

Laughter.

That’s when I start walking. I go to my locker to empty what’s left inside. Thick skin? I have thick skin. They have no idea.

Someone is sleeping in front of the locker I decide is mine. I see his pink rain boots first. His head is resting on a balled-up coat and his face is covered by a filthy cap. He has one arm slung through a backpack strap. The other arm cuddles a can of spray paint.

I decide he’s welcome to whatever’s in the locker.

Anyway, it’s not about thick skin. It’s about one of them being a liar. Or all of them being liars—even Miss Smith.

It’s a long story.

When I get out of the building, I open my umbrella and walk home rather than taking the bus. It’s not raining. No one seems to care that my umbrella is open. Philadelphia is full of all kinds of crazy people. Maybe I’m one of them now. Yesterday I had a conversation with myself in seven years. This might make me crazy. Yesterday I changed my name to Umbrella.

When I get home, there’s a message blinking on the house phone’s answering machine and I listen to it. It’s the daily Sarah-isn’t-in-school-today message. I delete it and walk up the steps toward my room. I don’t have any homework because homework isn’t original and I’m not going back to real school tomorrow. Or ever.

At the top of the stairs there is a decorative mirror on the wall and a trio of pictures of my parents and me. I am not an only child. My brother is nine years older and lives out west and he doesn’t contact us anymore. He wrote me a private message on The Social about a month ago with just his phone number. Then I deleted my profile because what’s the point of having a profile if nobody wants to talk to you?

The last I heard about Bruce was that his church people are his family now. Mom and Dad never baptized us, so Bruce got himself baptized. Apparently he got naked in a river or a lake or something. Dad said that that’s why he doesn’t contact us. Dad said Bruce thinks he’s better than we are because he found God.

This was a while ago, so I don’t really know if any of it is true.

This was Dad, so I don’t know if he’s the right person to believe when it comes to Bruce.

I think that’s why Bruce sent me his phone number. Maybe he wants to set the record straight. Maybe he wants to convert me. Maybe he has cancer and will die soon. Maybe he got married and had a baby. If I don’t call him, then nothing will happen.

Mom gets home from the grocery store and after unloading bags in the kitchen, she walks up the stairs and sees me standing here and asks me if I’m okay.

“I’m fine.”

“You went to school?”

“Yes.”

“Was it good?”

“Nothing ever really happens,” I say.

“Okay,” she answers and then walks toward the bathroom.

When she comes out of the bathroom, I’m still standing here and listening to the world. It’s pretty quiet. Traffic outside is picking up, but no one is honking their horn and no car alarms are going off. The neighbors on both sides of us work until five and their kids won’t be screaming up the block until six or so.

Mom comes out of the bathroom.

“Are you on drugs?” I imagine she asks.

I get asked this question a lot. For the record, no. I am not on drugs.

I say, “I’m thinking about taking a trip somewhere.”

“School, Sarah.”

“Maybe just a weekend thing.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Maybe I could go out and see Bruce.”

She looks concerned. We don’t talk about Bruce. I don’t see what’s so scary about him.

***

When Dad gets home I’m still standing at the top of the steps in the dark.

Since I don’t say anything to him, he’s the first one to speak. “Holy shit, Jesus Christ, what the fuck are you doing up here in the fucking dark? Christ! You scared the shit out of me!” That’s what he says.

SHITTY HAIR

I’m at the bus stop again. This isn’t the same bus stop as the other day. Philadelphia has a lot of bus stops.

I was thinking last night about our trip to Mexico when I was ten. It’s the last time I saw Bruce. I don’t remember some things from that trip. I remember the fish. I remember the food. I remember the flight home—me and Dad in two seats up front so Dad had extra legroom, Bruce and Mom in two seats a few rows back even though Bruce needed leg room, too. Maybe the answer to why Bruce left us is still there in the airplane. Maybe if I find ten-year-old Sarah the way twenty-three-year-old Sarah found me, I can ask her.

She’s on the bus, sitting in the long backseat, so I sit next to her when I get on.

I say to her, “Did you know that there’s no such thing as an original idea?”

She says, “Okay.”

I say, “I want to have original ideas.”

She says, “We have original ideas all the time. Whoever told you that is full of shit.”

I used to have quite a swearing habit. I tell her that one day she won’t swear as much. She laughs like I’m not real. Which is ridiculous because she’s the one who can’t be real. I am the dominant Sarah. I am sixteen.

I say, “Do you remember the trip to Mexico?”

She holds out her arms and shows me her tan and the speckled evidence of peeling skin on her shoulders. “It was a month ago.”

“Do you remember how you drew things in the sand and the water washed them away?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“That’s what original ideas look like.”

She stares at me for a while and frowns. I think she’s going to say something about Mexico or the sand washing away the things she drew. Instead she says, “Why don’t you wash your hair?”

I say, “Don’t be mean.”

“I just don’t want us to have shitty hair,” she says.

I say, “Do you remember Bruce?” It’s a stupid question, so I rephrase it. “I don’t mean do you remember him, but I mean do you remember if he was nice or not? Did he ever feel like a brother?”

“He’s a great brother. He takes me out for ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s when Dad works late,” she answers. Ben & Jerry’s closed years ago. “Hold on,” she says. “Did he die or something?”

“He didn’t die,” I say.

She looks sad. “Did he come back yet?”

“No,” I say. “It’s been six years.”

“Do you remember that thing he said to me in Mexico?”

I don’t remember what Bruce said in Mexico. I suddenly feel stupid. Like maybe I’m going crazy beyond sitting next to myself on a bus. Ten-year-old Sarah has freckles and her face is browned. She seems happy enough to be riding the bus with me even though the bus smells like farts. I don’t want to ruin her day. I don’t even know if her day is real. I don’t even know if my day is real. I say, “Can you tell me what Bruce said so I know I remember it right?”

“He said ‘You can always come stay with me, no matter where I am’ and he was crying,” she says.

“I remember him crying,” I say. “But I don’t know why he was crying.”

“I do,” ten-year-old Sarah says.

People on the bus think ten-year-old Sarah and I are sisters. They smile as if I’m taking her somewhere educational or something. They are happy with us. They don’t think we’re skipping school. They don’t visit other ideas. They just think about themselves, mostly.

I get off the bus at the art museum and she follows me.

We think it’s important to repeat this. ‘She’s actually a genius.’

Go read the rest of this book. You won’t regret it.

Still Life with Tornado by A.S. King is available now in all good bookshops and in ebook.