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  Praise for Michael Cadnum

  “Not since the debut of Robert Cormier has such a major talent emerged in adolescent literature.” —The Horn Book

  “A writer who just gets better with every book.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Cadnum is a master.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Blood Gold

  “A gripping adventure set during the 1849 California gold rush. Complementing the historical insight is an expertly crafted, fast-paced, engrossing adventure story full of fascinating characters. This is historical fiction that boys in particular will find irresistible.” —Booklist, starred review

  “This novel is fast paced.… The well-realized settings, which range from remote wildernesses to sprawling cities, create colorful backdrops for Willie’s adventure. An enticing read.” —School Library Journal

  “The prose is lively.… A spirited introduction to the gold rush for older readers.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Breaking the Fall

  Edgar Award Nominee

  “Tension hums beneath the surface.… Riveting.” —Booklist

  “Eerie, suspense-laden prose powerfully depicts the frustrating, overwhelming and often painful process of traveling from youth toward adulthood.” —Publishers Weekly

  Calling Home

  An Edgar Award Nominee

  “An exquisitely crafted work … of devastating impact.” —The Horn Book

  “Probably the truest portrait of a teenaged alcoholic we’ve had in young adult fiction.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

  “Readers … will never forget the experience.” —Wilson Library Bulletin

  “[Readers] will relate to the teen problems that lead to Peter’s substance abuse and the death of his best friend.” —Children’s Book Review Service

  “Through the prism of descriptive poetic images, Peter reveals the dark details of his sleepwalking life.… An intriguing novel.” —School Library Journal

  Daughter of the Wind

  “Readers will enjoy the sensation of being swept to another time and place in this thrill-a-minute historical drama.” —Publishers Weekly

  Edge

  “Mesmerizing … This haunting, life-affirming novel further burnishes Cadnum’s reputation as an outstanding novelist.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “A thought-provoking story full of rich, well-developed characters.” —School Library Journal

  “Devastating.” —Booklist

  “A psychologically intense tale of inner struggle in the face of tragedy.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

  Forbidden Forest

  “Cadnum succeeds admirably in capturing the squalor and casual brutality of the times.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Heat

  “In this gripping look at family relationships Cadnum finds painful shades of gray for Bonnie to face for the first time; in her will to grasp the manner and timing of her healing is evidence that she is one of Cadnum’s most complex and enigmatic characters.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Compelling. Adopting the laconic style that gives so much of his writing its tough edge and adult flavor, Cadnum challenges readers with hard questions about the nature of fear and of betrayal.” —Publishers Weekly

  In a Dark Wood

  Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist

  “A beautiful evocation of a dangerous age … Readers who lose themselves in medieval Sherwood Forest with Cadnum will have found a treasure.” —San Francisco Chronicle

  “In a Dark Wood is a stunning tour de force, beautifully written, in which Michael Cadnum turns the legend of Robin Hood inside out. Cadnum’s shimmering prose is poetry with muscle, capturing both the beauty and brutality of life in Nottinghamshire. In a Dark Wood may well become that rare thing—an enduring piece of literature.” —Robert Cormier, author of The Chocolate War

  “[T]his imaginative reexamination of the Robin Hood legend from the point of view of the Sheriff of Nottingham is not only beautifully written but is also thematically rich and peopled with memorable multidimensional characters.” —Booklist

  “Cadnum’s blend of dry humor, human conflict and historical details proves a winning combination in this refreshing twist on the Robin Hood tale.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “A complex, many-layered novel that does not shirk in its description of [the period], and offers an unusually subtle character study and a plot full of surprises.” —The Horn Book

  The King’s Arrow

  “The King’s Arrow is an adventure story full of color and romance, as resonant as a fable, told in clear, clean, swift prose. A wonderful read.” —Dean Koontz

  Nightsong: The Legend of Orpheus and Eurydice

  “Cadnum (Starfall: Phaeton and the Chariot of the Sun) once again breathes life into classic mythological figures.… Skillfully creating a complex, multidimensional portrait of Orpheus (as well as of other members of the supporting cast, including Persephone and Sisyphus), Cadnum brings new meaning to an ancient romance.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Another excellent retelling of one of Ovid’s mythical tales. This well-written version is a much fuller retelling than that found either in Mary Pope Osborne’s Favorite Greek Myths or Jacqueline Morley’s Greek Myths. The story is a powerful one, delivered in comprehensible yet elevated language, and is sure to resonate with adolescents and give them fodder for discussion.” —School Library Journal

  Raven of the Waves

  “[A] swashbuckling … adventure set in the eighth century, Cadnum (In a Dark Wood) shows how a clash of cultures profoundly affects two distant enemies: a young Viking warrior and a monk’s apprentice.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Convey[s] a sense of what life might have been like in a world where danger and mystery lurked in the nearest woods; where cruelty was as casual as it was pervasive; where mercy was real but rare; and where the ability to sing, or joke—or even just express a coherent thought—was regarded as a rare and valuable quality … Valuable historical insight, but it’s definitely not for the squeamish.” —Booklist

  “Hard to read because of the gruesome scenes and hard to put down, this book provokes strong emotions and raises many fascinating questions.” —School Library Journal

  Rundown

  “Deep, dark, and moving, this is a model tale of adolescent uneasiness set amid the roiling emotions of modern life.” —Kirkus Review

  “Cadnum demonstrates his usual mastery of mood and characterization in this acutely observed portrait.” —Booklist

  Ship of Fire

  “Brimming with historical detail and ambience, this fact-paced maritime adventure will surely please devotees of the genre.” —School Library Journal

  Starfall: Phaeton and the Chariot of the Sun

  “Cadnum (In a Dark Wood) once again displays his expertise as a storyteller as he refashions sections of Ovid’s Metamorphoses into a trilogy of enchanting tales. Readers will feel Phaeton’s trepidation as he journeys to meet his father for the first time, and they will understand the hero’s mixture of excitement and dread as he loses control of the horses. [Cadnum] humanize[es] classical figures and transform[s] lofty language into accessible, lyrical prose; he may well prompt enthusiasts to seek the original source.” —Publishers Weekly

  Taking It

  “Cadnum keeps readers on the edge of their seats.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Cadnum stretches the literary boundaries of the YA problem novel. This one should not be missed.” —Booklist, starred review

  Zero at the Bone

  “Riveting … [an] intense psychological drama.” —Pub
lishers Weekly, starred review

  “Much more frightening than a generic horror tale.” —Booklist, starred review

  “A painful subject, mercilessly explored.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Heat

  Michael Cadnum

  for Sherina

  This morning the fish

  swim into

  the shadow of my hand

  CHAPTER ONE

  Someone was saying my name.

  I opened one eye and couldn’t focus. Light—I could see light. And shapes—human figures. I opened the other eye and blinked, a big effort, like opening and shutting a very heavy garage door.

  “She’s still not breathing.”

  It was Miss P’s voice. Her words made perfect sense now—someone couldn’t breathe. Sunlight slanted through a huge, empty place, an abandoned arena with rows of empty seats. My head shifted to one side. High above the loftiest row of seats a green EXIT caught my gaze and held it. People kept getting in the way, tense onlookers, staring in my direction.

  I wanted to tell everyone that I was all right. If I wasn’t breathing why wasn’t I gasping and thrashing—flopping, like a fish? Why was I blinking my eyes peacefully if there was such an emergency?

  Why wasn’t I afraid?

  Okay, I couldn’t breathe. I was lying in a lukewarm puddle, pool water, the smell of chlorine all around. I would say something to make them all feel better in a moment, I promised myself. I would lift my hand, crook my knees.

  Miss P turned my head and her fingers worked into my mouth, following the instructions she had taught us but which we had never had to use. Check for obstructions. She took a deep breath. The pleasant warm flavor on my lips was the wild-cherry-flavored lip balm Miss P used, a nervous habit wherever she went, using up tubes of the stuff. I made a gagging sound.

  I struggled to sit up, but hands forced me back. I took a ragged gulp of air. A loud, breathy howl, in and out. Air was shrieking in and out of me, and I couldn’t get enough.

  I coughed hard, and I inhaled again, an ugly noise. “Good, Bonnie, you’re doing fine,” said Miss P.

  I let myself relax back down again to the concrete surface. I was doing fine. I felt uneasily pleased at the compliment, even though I knew. I knew this was a kind of lie, the sort of thing you say when someone isn’t doing so well.

  Jesus, what happened? A metal door wrenched open and footsteps approached, slap slap slap, fast, to where I was lying, my hands outstretched. The concrete was hard under my elbows, and the swimming pool sloshed in the distance, the filter valves gurgling. I drew breath and exhaled, just to show I could keep this up.

  “Bonnie, everything’s going to be all right,” said another familiar voice, panting, bending over me. “I called 911,” Denise added in a different tone, addressing the onlookers. Then, as though I couldn’t hear, “I thought she was dead.”

  Denise looked odd, as people do when you see them sideways or upside down, her eyebrows underneath her eyes, her tight bathing cap giving her forehead a long wrinkle, one of the reasons I hate wearing one.

  Miss Petrossian’s eyes peered down into me. I felt naked. A swimsuit isn’t much more than a second skin, no extra padding, nothing. I opened my mouth to speak and my body jerked, a shocking spasm, like when you drift asleep and wake with a start. I felt my head roll to one side, independent of my will, a large, bony jack-o’-lantern. Warm fluid spilled from my lips.

  “That’s good!” said Miss Petrossian.

  This was probably the first time I had ever been praised for throwing up. My embarrassment sharpened, but I couldn’t help thinking, Hey, it was easy.

  “Don’t move,” Miss Petrossian was saying. I struggled, but Miss P held me down again. “Don’t,” she insisted. I struggled, knocking her arms away with my hands. I sat upright. I was one of those dolls you can snap into different positions, but always dummylike, fake.

  “You had an accident,” Miss P was saying, her hands on my shoulders so I couldn’t climb to my feet. My swimsuit was clammy on me now, a ridge digging into my spine where the straps crisscrossed.

  Accident—I associated the word with cars, fender-benders, bad traffic. And with toilet training. I remembered my mother hating it when a friend’s toddler had an “accident” in the car. I gave Denise a look, asking her without talking. “You hit your head,” she said.

  I must have over-rotated entering the water. I did a reverse two-and-a-half somersault, and screwed up on the rip, the entry. The judges would have scored me 4.0 or 4.5 at best, a really bad score, despite a respectable difficulty factor.

  No judges today, though. This was training, rep after rep.

  I do it every day.

  The near silence was wonderful but spooky, the soft slopping sound a pool makes when it breaks over the edge of the pool, guttering in the filter valves. “You were practicing your tucks,” Miss P said. “You hit your head on the platform.”

  I tried to play it through my own mental video, how I was on maybe my twentieth dive of the day, leaping, stretching out. I couldn’t remember it.

  Fractured skull, I thought. A hematoma in my brain, far from the centers of speech and memory, but close to where the nerves from the spine secrete themselves in the skull.

  My swimsuit was icy, everyone standing too close. I hate constriction and never wear goggles, even for laps, preferring bloodshot eyes to the sensation of a strap around my head.

  I wanted to call out for everyone to back off, give me some room. It was only Denise and Miss P and a few others, the spring-board divers, and a few wannabes, people in gym shorts. Just a few tanned loiterers and the guy with the video camera, one of Miss P’s assistants.

  I worked the puzzle logically. This wasn’t the quarter finals—there weren’t enough people here. This wasn’t the invitationals. We must have been practicing, a routine weekday afternoon. I reassured myself that I might throw up again—it was something I knew I could do.

  When men in Day-Glo yellow raincoats and black rubber boots swung through the metal door I didn’t associate them with me. There must be a blaze somewhere, I thought, being patient with Miss P, giving her a grateful smile. She pressed a rolled-up towel against the back of my head hurting something back there, a gash.

  A woman in a yellow plastic vest stenciled OFD swung a suitcase down beside me. She unfastened a strap. She got a red tank out of the canvas bag, the white-lettered 02 Pack sagging inward, the taste of rubber filling my mouth, and an empty, neutral wind, not at all refreshing or pleasant. I shook my head, but she pressed in with the rubber mask. I had seen athletes on TV sucking oxygen like it was pure, crisp mountain air, and here it was just so much neutral gas. I can quit diving. I don’t have to do it anymore.

  I put the thought out of my head. Miss P was giving the paramedics a rundown, pointing up at the ten-meter platform. And I could see the emergency crew gawk up at the platform, thirty-three feet up, stainless steel rails gleaming, and then look down at me. I felt a little pride mixed in with my self-consciousness. I could see in their eyes that they wouldn’t like to take flight off a diving platform taller than a third-story balcony.

  I put my fingers to my forehead. I was a mess, blood all over my front, only you couldn’t see it against the black nylon-and-Lycra-blend swimsuit. I was going to have some awful injury, a big shaved place on my head, and bruising. Or worse. My face would be blue and swollen when my dad got back from his honeymoon in Maui. His new wife, a person I had never actually met, would look at me and feel that she had to be especially kind, and stifle her shock—she had not heard that I was disfigured.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I can walk,” I protested. They cinched me tight into the stretcher with three gray straps that squeezed me into sections.

  “We’re going to roll you along outside,” said the O2 Pack woman, and that’s just what they did, and if anything made me feel queasy it was rolling so fast, watching the odd light the Olympic-size pool gives to the place, muted glitter on the walls.

&nbs
p; Sunlight, and the freshness of outdoors, juniper leaves and wet grass, a sprinkler chattering far away. “They’re just worried about lawsuits,” said Miss P, running to keep up. “If you get up and fall and—hurt yourself.” If you fall and crack your head again, she nearly said.

  She was aware that I knew all about legal proceedings, my dad being a lawyer who sued companies for constructing buildings that fell apart. But I could hear the lie in her voice, pretending I wasn’t really badly hurt. We both knew that you don’t let a concussed individual get up and walk around. They were rushing things as it was, transporting me in a stretcher—you were supposed to use cold compresses and let the victim lie still.

  The Lloyd-Fairhill Academy campus was summer-quiet, a few seagulls settling on the eaves of the computer lab. One of the janitors, good-looking, with dark glasses and a mustache, watched me go by. My hair was sticky with blood, and the stuff was drying on my face—I could feel it like an avocado-and-yucca-butter facial clay left on too long. They jostled me up the stairs to the main street and huffed along, not in very good shape for a crew that was supposed to keep people from dying.

  “This isn’t necessary,” I said, feeling a little sorry for them—they should watch their fat intake and ease off on the Twinkies.

  I felt the antiseptic pad under my head growing sodden, and the words came out weak.

  When an ambulance screams past you on the street you think: How exciting, or frightening, or reassuring it must be to occupy such a vehicle, traffic jerking this way and that, getting out of the way. You imagine the ride having an emotional rush, chilling or heartwarming.

  But it’s disorienting. You lie on your back and the electronic weep weep of the siren sounds like a warning that has nothing to do with you or your future. I lay there strapped in, trying to figure out where we were by the shifting shadows on the ceiling, down Lincoln Avenue, up past the doughnut shop on Fruitvale, guessing. I only knew for sure when I felt the long whine of the engine as it accelerated up the on ramp onto 580.