And all of us had something empty in our eyes. Something eager to be filled. There were some fully human refugees there who’d lived in the Hinterland too long to know what to do with themselves back on Earth, but most of us were ex-Story. When their world fell apart—our world—they came here.
Every week, the Hinterland’s refugees gathered in the psychic’s parlor to talk. Drink coffee. Settle grievances. It was a last stop before prison or an institution for lots of them. The violent ones, the Briar Kings, were already gone. Faded into the crowd, burying themselves where they could do the most damage, or dead. When a world dies, it doesn’t go with a whimper. I felt like an outsider there, too, but then we all did. I’d sat at enough misfit lunch tables in my life to know the feeling. We were each our own island, gathered together into one messed-up archipelago.
I stocked oats and pecans and lucuma powder at the co-op, and tried to stay in my own bed the whole night. I read books that helped pave over the chinks and canyons in my memory, and let Ella comb henna through my hair. On Sundays I drank bad coffee and listened to the refugees’ stories, and they started to fill me up. My memories became denser. I was building a scaffolding out of them to hang a real life on.
With a girl whose fairy tale had been so dark I didn’t see how she could be anything less than a sociopath, I made a pact: we’d go to school. Her for the first time, me again. By then the group had someone at work forging documents for anyone who needed them. My friend became Sophia Snow, a fairy-tale name I tried to talk her out of. I went with Alice Proserpine, and moved my birthday two years up. I wanted to be seventeen on the record.
The doors to the Hinterland were closed, the world winked out. The ice was out of me. The Spinner’s world had set Finch loose, too. At night, when I couldn’t sleep, I pictured him journeying through starry spaces and dusty doors, strange universes he could sift through like coffee beans.
Sometimes after those restless nights, I wake up early in the morning, woozy with dark dreams. I check my reflection in the mirror. I slide on sunglasses before Ella wakes up, and I go walking. I drink scalding tea and ride the ferry and breathe hard into my hands. When I come home again, my eyes are brown, and faultless, and you could almost, almost say they look like my mother’s. Ella Proserpine’s.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you first to Faye Bender, magnificent agent and tirelessly patient partner in explaining how all this stuff works, and then making it happen like a wizard. My friends and family have grown weary of my saying, “Man, I love Faye,” so I’ll just leave it here for posterity: Man, I love Faye.
To Sarah Dotts Barley, my book’s perfect love match: Thank you for making the editorial process an exciting, energizing, ridiculously fun one, free of dread. I couldn’t have asked for a better advocate and second brain for the book, or a happier home for it than Flatiron/Macmillan. Big thanks also to Amy Einhorn, Liz Keenan, Emily Walters, Patricia Cave, Nancy Trypuc, Robert Allen and the audiobook team, Anna Gorovoy, Keith Hayes, Lena Shekhter, and Molly Fonseca. For the gorgeous cover, illustrations, and endpapers (endpapers!), thank you to Jim Tierney.
Thank you to Mary Pender-Coplan, amazing film agent, and to the agents who helped this book find homes around the world: Lora Fountain (and Léo Tortchinski); Ia Atterholm; Sebastian Ritscher, Nicole Meillaud, and Annelie Geissler at Morhbooks; Milena Kaplarević, Ana Milenkovic, and Nada Cipranic at Prava i Prevodi; Gray Tan and Clare Chi at Grayhawk Agency; and Kohei Hattori at The English Agency. Thank you also to Ryan Doherty at Sony Pictures Entertainment, and to Lucy Fisher, Lucas Wiesendanger, and Charlie Morrison at Red Wagon Entertainment.
To my parents, Steve and Diane Albert. Thank you for everything, including a childhood so loved and secure I was free to lose myself in fictional worlds, to the ultimately happy detriment of my social life, eyesight, and standing at the Cook Memorial Library. I love you very much.
To Bryan, my childhood partner in crime. To Amy, my playmate then, my BFF now.
To my badass beta readers, brilliant writers alclass="underline" Jeanmarie Anaya, Natalie Zutter, and Jennifer Kawecki. To Emma Chastain, whose insightful, hilarious, true writing inspires me, for offering early encouragement. To Molly Schoemann-McCann, one of the funniest writers I know, for reading the first ten pages of the book and telling me it was the one to finish. To Joel Cunningham, a great SFF advocate, for general genre brilliance, support, and loving portal fiction.
To the Quidditch Bitches, Tara Sonin, Annie Stone, Sarah Jane Abbott, Kamilla Benko, and Ellie Campisano, for your feedback, your support, your writing I can’t wait to read every time we meet—and for being people I just want to hang out with, ultimately leading to me writing more words. To Kim Graff and Phil Stamper, for writing dates that socially pressured me to write more words instead of sitting at home eating watermelon.
Thanks to Dahlia Adler and the B&N Teen team, for your passion and advocacy for YA literature, and for consistently blowing up my to-read list.
To my sensitivity readers, Dylan Stasa and Mariah Barker (Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, respectively), for your smart and generous feedback, and for liking the Harry Potter references.
And, finally, to Michael, extraordinarily handsome husband who also happens to be the funny, wonderful love of my life. Thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melissa Albert is a web editor and the founding editor of the B&N Teen Blog. She has written for McSweeney’s, Time Out Chicago, and more. Melissa grew up in Illinois and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Find her on Twitter at @mimi albert. You can sign up for email updates here.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE HAZEL WOOD. Copyright © 2018 by Melissa Albert. All rights reserved. For information, address Flatiron Books, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.flatironbooks.com
Illustrations by Jim Tierney
Cover design by Jim Tierney and Keith Hayes
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-14790-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-19219-6 (international, sold outside the U.S., subject to rights availability)
ISBN 978-1-250-18829-8 (signed OwlCrate edition)
ISBN 978-1-250-14791-2 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250147912
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
First Edition: January 2018