Unbreakable / by Kami Garcia.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780316210171 (hc)
- ISBN: 031621017X (hc)
- ISBN: 9780316210188 (pbk.)
- Physical Description: 305 pages ; 22 cm.
- Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: New York ; Little, Brown and Company, 2013.
Content descriptions
General Note: | First International Edition--title page verso. |
Target Audience Note: | HL 670 Lexile. |
Study Program Information Note: | Accelerated Reader AR UG 4.9 9.0 163098. |
Awards Note: | Young Hoosier Book Middle Grades Award winner, 2015-2016. |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Demonology > Fiction. Secret societies > Fiction. Supernatural > Fiction. Love > Fiction |
Genre: | Young adult fiction. Love stories. Occult fiction. |
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Available copies
- 31 of 32 copies available at Evergreen Indiana.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 32 total copies.
Other Formats and Editions
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Akron Carnegie PL - Akron | YA FIC GAR (Text) | 75253000049776 | Young Adult | Available | - |
Attica PL - Attica | YA GARCIA, KAMI (Text) | 74231000106598 | Teen Area | Available | - |
Brazil PL - Brazil | TEEN GARCIA (Text) | 38160000671691 | Youth Services | Available | - |
Danville-Center Twp PL - Danville | YAF Gar (Text) | 32604030006033 | YA Fiction | Available | - |
Franklin Co PL Dist. - Brookville PL | TEEN GAR Bk. 1 (Text) | 38217000507448 | Teen Supernatural | Available | - |
Hamilton North PL - Cicero Main Branch | YA FIC.c Garcia, Kami (Text) | 78294000249941 | YA Fiction | Available | - |
Indiana State Library - Indianapolis | [IYRC] ISLI 813 G216u (Text) | 00000106163355 | IYRC Special Collections (Entrance shelves) | Available | - |
Indiana State Library - Indianapolis | [IYRC] ISLI 813 G216u (Text) | 00000106902604 | IYRC Special Collections (Entrance shelves) | Available | - |
LaGrange Co PL - Bookmobile | YA GAR (Text) | 30477100795735 | Young Adult: Fiction | Available | - |
LaGrange Co PL - LaGrange Main Library | YA GAR (Text) | 30477100733199 | Young Adult: Fiction | Available | - |
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Unbreakable
By Kami Garcia
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 1
SLEEPWALKER
As my bare feet sank into the wet earth, I tried not to think about the deadbodies buried beneath me. I had passed this tiny graveyard a handful of timesbut never at night, and always outside the boundaries of its peeling iron gates.
I would've given anything to be standing outside them now.
In the moonlight, rows of weathered headstones exposed the neat stretch of lawnfor what it truly wasâthe grassy lid of an enormous coffin.
A branch snapped, and I spun around.
"Elvis?" I searched for a trace of my cat's gray and white ringed tail.
Elvis never ran away, usually content to thread his way between my ankles wheneverI opened the doorâuntil tonight. He had taken off so fast that I didn't evenhave time to grab my shoes, and I had chased him eight blocks until I ended uphere.
Muffled voices drifted through the trees, and I froze.
On the other side of the gates, a girl wearing blue and gray Georgetown Universitysweats passed underneath the pale glow of the lamppost. Her friends caught up with her,laughing and stumbling down the sidewalk. They reached one of the academic buildingsand disappeared inside.
It was easy to forget that the cemetery was in the middle of a college campus. As Iwalked deeper into the uneven rows, the lampposts vanished behind the trees, and theclouds plunged the graveyard in and out of shadow. I ignored the whispers in theback of my mind urging me to go home.
Something moved in my peripheral visionâa flash of white.
I scanned the stones, now completely bathed in black.
Come on, Elvis. Where are you?
Nothing scared me more than the dark. I liked to see what was coming, and darkness wasa place where things could hide.
Think about something else.
The memory closed in before I could stop it....
My mother's face hovering above mine as I blinked myself awake. The panic in hereyes as she pressed a finger over her lips, signaling me to be quiet. The cold flooragainst my feet as we made our way to her closet, where she pushed aside thedresses.
"Someone's in the house," she whispered, pulling a board away from the wall to reveala small opening. "Stay here until I come back. Don't make a sound."
I squeezed inside as she worked the board back into place. I had never experiencedabsolute darkness before. I stared at a spot inches in front of me, where my palmrested on the board. But I couldn't see it.
I closed my eyes against the blackness. There were soundsâthe stairscreaking, furniture scraping against the floor, muffled voicesâand onethought replaying over and over in my mind.
What if she didn't come back?
Too terrified to see if I could get out from the inside, I kept my hand on the wood.I listened to my ragged breathing, convinced that whoever was in the house couldhear it, too.
Eventually, the wood gave beneath my palm and a thin stream of light flooded thespace. My mom reached for me, promising the intruders had fled. As she carried meout of her closet, I couldn't hear anything beyond the pounding of my heart, andI couldn't think about anything except the crushing weight of the dark.
I was only five when it happened, but I still remembered every minute in thecrawl space. It made the air around me now feel suffocating. Part of me wantedto go home, with or without my cat.
"Elvis, get out here!"
Something shifted between the chipped headstones in front of me.
"Elvis?"
A silhouette emerged from behind a stone cross.
I jumped, a tiny gasp escaping my lips. "Sorry." My voice wavered. "I'm lookingfor my cat."
The stranger didn't say a word.
Sounds intensified at a dizzying rateâbranches breaking, leaves rustling,my pulse throbbing. I thought about the hundreds of unsolved crime shows I'd watchedwith my mom that began exactly like thisâa girl standing alone somewhere sheshouldn't be, staring at the guy who was about to attack her.
I stepped back, thick mud pushing up around my ankles like a hand rooting me tothe spot.
Please don't hurt me.
The wind cut through the graveyard, lifting tangles of long hair off the stranger'sshoulders and the thin fabric of a white dress from her legs.
Her legs.
Relief washed over me. "Have you seen a gray and white Siamese cat? I'm going tokill him when I find him."
Silence.
Her dress caught the moonlight, and I realized it wasn't a dress at all. She waswearing a nightgown. Who wandered around a cemetery in their nightgown?
Someone crazy.
Or someone sleepwalking.
You aren't supposed to wake a sleepwalker, but I couldn't leave her out here aloneat night either.
"Hey? Can you hear me?"
The girl didn't move, gazing at me as if she could see my features in the darkness.An empty feeling unfolded in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to look at somethingelseâanything but her unnerving stare.
My eyes drifted down to the base of the cross.
The girl's feet were as bare as mine, and it looked like they weren't touching theground.
I blinked hard, unwilling to consider the other possibility. It had to be an effectof the moonlight and the shadows. I glanced at my own feet, caked in mud, andback to hers.
They were pale and spotless.
A flash of white fur darted in front of her and rushed toward me.
Elvis.
I grabbed him before he could get away. He hissed at me, clawing and twistingviolently until I dropped him. My heart hammered in my chest as he darted acrossthe grass and squeezed under the gate.
I looked back at the stone cross.
The girl was gone, the ground nothing but a smooth, untouched layer of mud.
Blood from the scratches trailed down my arm as I crossed the graveyard, trying toreason away the girl in the white nightgown.
Silently reminding myself that I didn't believe in ghosts.
CHAPTER 2
SCRATCHING THE SURFACE
When I stumbled back onto the well-lit sidewalk, there was no sign of Elvis. Aguy with a backpack slung over his shoulder walked by and gave me a strange lookwhen he noticed I was barefoot, and covered in mud up to my ankles. He probablythought I was a pledge.
My hands didn't stop shaking until I hit O Street, where the shadows of the campusended and the lights of the DC traffic began. Tonight, even the tourists posing forpictures at the top of The Exorcist stairs were somehow reassuring.
The cemetery suddenly felt miles away, and I started second-guessing myself.
The girl in the graveyard hadn't been hazy or transparent like the ghosts in movies.She had looked like a regular girl.
Except she was floating.
Wasn't she?
Maybe the moonlight had only made it appear that way. And maybe the girl's feet weren'tmuddy because the ground where she'd been standing was dry. By the time I reached myblock, lined with row houses crushed together like sardines, I convinced myself therewere dozens of explanations.
Elvis lounged on our front steps, looking docile and bored. I considered leavinghim outside to teach him a lesson, but I loved that stupid cat.
I still remembered the day my mom bought him for me. I came home from school cryingbecause we'd made Father's Day gifts in class, and I was the only kid without afather. Mine had walked away when I was five and never looked back. My mom hadwiped my tears and said, "I bet you're also the only kid in your class getting akitten today."
Elvis had turned one of my worst days into one of my best.
I opened the door, and he darted inside. "You're lucky I let you in."
The house smelled like tomatoes and garlic, and my mom's voice drifted intothe hallway. "I've got plans this weekend. Next weekend, too. I'm sorry, butI have to run. I think my daughter just came home. Kennedy?"
"Yeah, Mom."
"Were you at Elle's? I was about to call you."
I stepped into the doorway as she hung up the phone. "Not exactly."
She threw me a quick glance, and the wooden spoon slipped out of her hand andhit the floor, sending a spray of red sauce across the white tile. "Whathappened?"
"I'm fine. Elvis ran off, and it took forever to catch him."
Mom rushed over and examined the angry claw marks. "Elvis did this? He'snever scratched anyone before."
"I guess he freaked out when I grabbed him."
Her gaze dropped to my mud-caked feet. "Where were you?"
I prepared for the standard lecture Mom issued whenever I went out at night: alwayscarry your cell phone, don't walk alone, stay in well-lit areas, and her personalfavoriteâscream first and ask questions later. Tonight, I had violatedthem all.
"The old Jesuit cemetery?" My answer sounded more like a questionâas in,exactly how upset was she going to be?
Mom stiffened and she drew in a sharp breath. "I'd never go into a graveyardat night," she responded automatically, as though it was something she'd said athousand times before. Except it wasn't.
"Suddenly you're superstitious?"
She shook her head and looked away. "Of course not. You don't have to besuperstitious to know that secluded places are dangerous at night."
I waited for the lecture.
Instead, she handed me a wet towel. "Wipe off your feet and throw that away. Idon't want dirt from a cemetery in my washing machine."
Mom rummaged through the junk drawer until she found a giant Band-Aid that lookedlike a leftover from my Big Wheel days.
"Who were you talking to on the phone?" I asked, hoping to changethe subject.
"Just someone from work."
"Did that someone ask you out?"
She frowned, concentrating on my arm. "I'm not interested in dating. Onebroken heart is enough for me." She bit her lip. "I didn't meanâ"
"I know what you meant." My mom had cried herself to sleep for what felt likemonths after my dad left. I still heard her sometimes.
After she bandaged my arm, I sat on the counter while she finished the marinarasauce. Watching her cook was comforting. It made the cemetery feel even fartheraway.
She dipped her finger in the pot and tasted the sauce before taking the pan offthe stove.
"Mom, you forgot the red pepper flakes."
"Right." She shook her head and forced a laugh.
My mom could've held her own with Julia Child, and marinara was her signaturedish.She was more likely to forget her own name than the secret ingredient. I almostcalled her on it, but I felt guilty. Maybe she was imagining me in one of thoseunsolved crime shows.
I hopped down from the counter. "I'm going upstairs to draw."
She stared out the kitchen window, preoccupied. "Mmm ... that's a good idea. It willprobably make you feel better."
Actually, it wouldn't make me feel anything.
That was the point.
As long as my hand kept moving over the page, my problems disappeared, and I wassomewhere or someone else for a little while. My drawings were fueled bya world only I could seeâa boy carrying his nightmares in a sack as bitsand pieces spilled out behind him, or a mouthless man banging away at the keysof a broken typewriter in the dark.
Like the piece I was working on now.
I stood in front of my easel and studied the girl perched on a rooftop, with onefoot hanging tentatively over the edge. She stared at the ground below, her facetwisted in fear. Delicate blue-black swallow wings stretched out from her dress.The fabric was torn where the wings had ripped through it, growing from her backlike the branches of a tree.
I read somewhere that if a swallow builds a nest on your roof, it will bring yougood luck. But if it abandons the nest, you'll have nothing but misfortune. Likeso many things, the bird could be a blessing or a curse, a fact the girl bearingits wings knew too well.
I fell asleep thinking about her. Wondering what it would be like to have wingsif you were too scared to fly.
I woke up the next morning exhausted. My dreams had been plagued withsleepwalking girls floating in graveyards. Elvis was curled up on the pillownext to me. I scratched his ears, and he jumped to the floor.
I didn't drag myself out of bed until Elle showed up in the afternoon. She neverbothered to call before she came over. The idea that someone might not want tosee her would never occur to Elle, a quality I'd envied from the moment we metin seventh grade.
Now she was sprawled on my bed in a sea of candy wrappers, flipping through amagazine while I stood in front of my easel.
"A bunch of people are going to the movies tonight," Elle said. "What are youwearing?"
"I told you I'm staying home."
"Because of that pathetic excuse for a guy who's going to be the startingreceiver at community college when we graduate?" Elle asked, in the dangeroustone she reserved for people who made the mistake of hurting someone she caredabout.
My stomach dropped. Even after a few weeks, the wound was still fresh.
"Because I didn't get any sleep." I left out the part about the girl in thegraveyard. If I started thinking about her, I'd have another night of bad dreamsahead of me.
"You can sleep when you're dead." Elle tossed the magazine on the floor. "Andyou can't hide in your room every weekend. You're not the one who should beembarrassed."
I dropped a piece of charcoal in the tackle box on the floor and wiped my handson my overalls. "I think getting dumped because you won't let your boyfriend useyou as a cheat sheet rates pretty high on the humiliation scale."
I should've been suspicious when one of the cutest guys in school asked me tohelp him bring up his history grade so he wouldn't get kicked off the footballteam. Especially when it was Chris, the quiet guy who had moved from one fosterhome to anotherâand someone I'd had a crush on for years. Still, with thehighest GPA in History and all my other classes, I was the logical choice.
I just didn't realize that Chris knew why.
The first few years of elementary school, my eidetic memory was a novelty. Backthen, I referred to it as photographic, and kids thought it was cool that Icould memorize pages of text in only a few seconds. Until we got older, and theyrealized I didn't have to study to earn higher grades than them. By the time Ihit junior high, I had learned how to hide my "unfair advantage," as the otherstudents and their parents called it when they complained to my teachers.
These days, only a handful of my friends knew. At least, that's what I'dthought.
Chris was smarter than everyone assumed. He put in the time when it came toHistoryâand me. Three weeks. That's how long it took before he kissed me.Two more weeks before he called me his girlfriend.
One more week before he asked if I'd let him copy off me during our midterm.
Seeing him at school and pretending I was fine when he cornered me with hishalf-assed apologies was hard enough. "I didn't mean to hurt you, Kennedy. Butschool isn't as easy for me as it is for you. A scholarship is my only chance toget out of here. I thought you understood that."
I understood perfectly, which was the reason I didn't want to run into himtonight.
"I'm not going."
Elle sighed. "He won't be there. The team has an away game."
"Fine. But if any of his loser friends are there, I'm leaving."
She headed for the bathroom with her bag and a smug smile. "I'll start gettingready."
I picked at the half inch of black charcoal under my nails. They would requireserious scrubbing unless I wanted to look like a mechanic. The giant Band-Aid onmy arm already made me look like a burn victim. At least the theater would bedark.
The front door slammed downstairs, and Mom appeared in the hallway a momentlater. "Staying home tonight?"
"I wish." I tilted my head toward the bathroom. "Elle's making me go to themovies with her."
"And you're okay with that?" Mom tried to sound casual, but I knew what she wasworried about. She had baked brownies and listened to me cry about Chris forweeks.
"He's not going to be there."
She smiled. "Sounds dangerous. You run the risk of having a good time." Then herexpression changed, and she was all business. "Do you have cash?"
"Thirty bucks."
"Is your cell charged?"
I pointed to my nightstand, where my phone was plugged in. "Yep."
"Will anyone be drinking?"
"Mom, we're going to a movie, not a party."
"If for some reason there is drinkingâ"
I cut her off, reciting the rest by heart. "I'll call you and you'll pick me up,no questions asked, no consequences."
She tugged on the strap of my overalls. "Is this what you're wearing? It's agood look."
"Grunge is coming back. I'm ahead of the curve."
Mom walked over to the easel. She put her arm around me, leaning her headagainst mine. "You're so talented, and I can barely draw a straight line. Youcertainly didn't get it from me."
We ignored the other possible source.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Unbreakable by Kami Garcia. Copyright © 2014 Kami Garcia. Excerpted by permission of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.