The Fall of the House of Tatterly by Shanna Miles

Author:Shanna Miles [Miles, Shanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Published: 2023-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

New Kid

Aunt Sabrina dropped Issa and Theo off at the curb in front of the school.

“Come straight home after school today.”

“I got basketball tryouts,” Theo countered.

“No, no,” Aunt Sabrina said, shaking her head. She was barefaced, no makeup, wearing cuffed overalls, and she’d just pulled her hair into a sloppy turban she’d made from old Bethune-Cookman T-shirts. It wasn’t like her to be out like that. It wasn’t like her to get up that early at all. “Um . . . ask if you can come another day. Not today. I—need to check something.”

“Did you get a vision?” Issa asked.

“J-just do what I tell you, okay. Straight home!”

Aunt Sabrina slammed the car door and peeled out of the parking lot like she was being chased. Theo and Issa stared at each other.

“What was that all about?” Issa said, not really expecting anyone to answer.

“Maybe she’s got a date?”

They both swung around. It was Romare.

“Yo, what you doing here?!” Theo said as he dapped him up.

Romare shrugged. “Transferring. My mom talked to your aunt about the school. Guess she liked it.”

Theo could see Romare’s mom talking with the school principal in front of the building.

“Who’s that?” Romare asked, and Theo looked down to see Rupert sticking his head out of his pocket.

“My snake.”

Romare stuck out his finger to see if Rupert would lick it, and they fell into a conversation about the difference between public school and homeschool, which they’d both hated but all Bikin kids had to suffer until they could hide their powers. Then they talked about their matching obsessions with dinosaurs in the first grade and then at lunch it was Beats headphones vs. Apple AirPods. Theo had never really talked this much in his life, but maybe that was because he didn’t have someone to talk to. Someone just like him, but not. By the time school was over, he’d forgotten what his aunt had told him. Well, he didn’t really forget; he just put it out of his mind like the dead woman on the bleachers watching them line up for tryouts.

“You made it!” Frank said. He walked Romare and Theo over to the rest of the guys to introduce them. “Tryouts aren’t really about cutting people. At least that’s what my older brother says. It’s like Coach just wants to see how much abuse you can take or if you’ve got grit or whatever.”

Romare and Theo exchanged a look, but they suited up anyway. They didn’t call drills suicides for nothin’. How bad could it be?

There were guys much better than Theo, but then again, he wasn’t the worst on the court. The stands were mostly empty, save a few girls who came to watch ’cause they had nothing better to do and a few parents, including Ms. Carlisle, Romare’s mom, who was louder than anyone. Not that she needed to do anything to stand out. She was tall, with waist-length black hair that matched her pitch-black skirt suit and black lipstick. She also wore a black fedora tilted to the side.

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