Fighting Words

  DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Copyright © 2020 by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Dial & colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

  Ebook ISBN 9781984815699

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  For any child who needs this story:

  You are never alone.

  And for Bart

  always

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  My new tattoo is covered by a Band-Aid, but halfway through recess, the Band-Aid falls off. I’m hanging my winter coat on the hook in our fourth-grade classroom when my teacher, Ms. Davonte, walks by and gasps.

  “Della,” she says, “is that a tattoo?”

  I hold up my wrist to show it to her. “It’s an ampersand,” I say, careful to pronounce the word correctly.

  “I know that,” Ms. Davonte says. “Is it real?”

  It’s so real, it still hurts, and the skin around it is red and puffy. “Yes, ma’am,” I say.

  She shakes her head and mutters. I am not one of her favorite students. I may be one of her least favorites.

  I don’t care. I love, love, love my ampersand tattoo.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  I am ten years old. I’m going to tell you the whole story. Some parts are hard, so I’ll leave those for later. I’ll start with the easy stuff.

  My name is Delicious Nevaeh Roberts. Yeah, I know. With a first name like that, why don’t I just go by Nevaeh? I never tell anyone my name is Delicious, but it’s down in my school records, and teachers usually blurt it out on the first day.

  I’ve had a lot of first days lately.

  If I can get it in before the teacher says Delicious out loud, I’ll say, “I go by Della.” I mean, I’ll say that anyhow— I answer to Della, not Delicious, thank you—but it’s easier if no one ever hears Delicious.

  Once a boy tried to lick me to see if I was delicious. I kicked him in the— Suki says I can’t use bad words, not if I want anybody to read my story. Everybody I know uses bad words all the time, just not written down. Anyway, I kicked him right in the zipper of his blue jeans—let’s say it like that—and it was me that got in trouble. It’s always the girl that gets in trouble. It’s usually me.

  Suki didn’t care. She said, You stick up for yourself, Della. Don’t you take crap from nobody.

  Can I say crap in a story?

  Anyhow, she didn’t say crap. She said something worse.

  Lemme fix that. Suki says whenever I want to use a bad word, I can say snow. Or snowflake. Or snowy.

  I kicked him right in the snow.

  Don’t you take snow from nobody.

  Yeah, that works.

  Okay, so back to me. Delicious Nevaeh Roberts. The Nevaeh is heaven spelled backwards, of course. There’s usually at least one other girl in my class called Nevaeh. It’s a real popular name around here. I don’t know why. It sounds dumb to me. Heaven backwards? What was my mother thinking?

  Probably she wasn’t. That’s just the truth. My mother is incarcerated. Her parental rights have been terminated. That just happened lately. Nobody bothered to before, even though by the time she gets out of prison, I’ll be old enough to vote.

  I can’t remember her, except one tiny bit like a scene from a movie. Suki says she was no better than a hamster when it came to being a mother, and hamsters sometimes eat their babies. It was always Suki who took care of me. Mostly still is.

  Suki’s my sister. She’s sixteen.

  I’m still on the easy part of the story, if you can believe that.

  Suki’s full name is Suki Grace Roberts. Suki isn’t short for anything, though it sounds like it should be. And that Roberts part—well, that’s our mother’s last name too. Suki and me, we don’t know who our fathers are, except they were probably different people and neither one of them was Clifton, thank God. Suki swears that’s true. I believe her.

  Can you say God in a story? ’Cause I wasn’t taking His name in vain, right there. I really am thanking God, whatever God there is, that Clifton ain’t my daddy.

  Suki used to have a photograph of Mama, from her trial. White pale face, sores on it, black teeth from the meth, pale white lanky hair. Suki says she bleached her hair, but whatever, you can see it’s got no texture to it. Hangs like string. Suki’s hair is soft and shiny, dark brown except when she dyes it black. It’s a prettier version of Mama’s hair, and her eyes look like Mama’s too. My hair has bounce. It tangles up all the time. My eyes are lighter than Suki’s and Mama’s.

  Suki’s skin is skim-milk white, so pale, her belly almost looks blue. She burns bright red when she goes out in the sun. My skin’s browner, and I don’t never need sunscreen, no matter what Suki says. So while me and Suki don’t know one single thing about our fathers, we’re guessing they weren’t the same.

  Which is good, right? Because if the same guy stuck around long enough to be the daddy to both me and Suki, he should’ve stayed and helped us out of this mess. Otherwise he’d just be a snowman. What Suki thinks, and me too, is that Mama probably never told either of our daddies that she was going to have their baby, so we can’t blame them for not being around. It’s possible they were great guys, fantastic i
n just every way except of course for hanging out with our mother, who was always a hot mess.

  Suki and me gave up on Mama a long time ago. Had to. Not only is she incarcerated, she had what’s called a psychotic break as soon as she got to prison. It comes from the meth, and it means she’s bad crazy in a permanent way. She wouldn’t likely even recognize us were we to walk into her cell, not that we could, since she’s incarcerated in Kansas somewhere, which we have no current means of getting to. She doesn’t write or call because she can’t write or call, not so as she would make any sense. And it would never occur to her to do so. She’s forgotten all about us. I’m sorry about that, real sorry, but it’s nothing I can change.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  I got a big mouth. That’s a good thing. It’s excellent. Let me tell you a story to explain. Last week at school—this was a couple of days before I showed up with my new tattoo—Ms. Davonte told us we all had to draw family trees. She showed us what she wanted: lines drawn like branches, mother, father, grandparents. Aunts and uncles and cousins.

  My tree would dead-end at Mama, behind bars, with Suki sticking off to one side. Wasn’t no way I was going to draw that, especially since I suspected it was something Ms. Davonte planned to hang up in the hall outside our classroom for the entire school to see.

  Ms. Davonte still doesn’t get it. I don’t know why not. I thought she was starting to.

  Instead of a family tree, I drew a wolf. I’m getting better at wolves. I made her eyes dark and soft but her mouth open, showing fangs. I borrowed Nevaeh’s silver markers to outline her fur.

  Ms. Davonte came past and said, “Della, what are you doing? That’s not the assignment.”

  I said, “This wolf is my family tree.” I gave her a look. Ms. Davonte doesn’t know my whole story, but she knows an awful lot of it. Especially given all that’s happened lately. If Ms. Davonte stopped to think, even for just a moment, I bet she maybe could guess why I didn’t want to draw a family tree. Nope. She tightened her lips and said, “I want you to do the assignment I gave you.”

  I said, “The assignment is snow.”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  I got in trouble for saying snow.

  I knew I would. It’s why I said it. I got to take a little trip down to the principal’s office. The principal and I are practically friends by now. Her name is Dr. Penny. (Penny is her last name. I asked.)

  Dr. Penny said, “Della, to what do I owe the pleasure of seeing you this time?”

  I said, “I’m not doing that assignment. I can’t fix my family tree, and it’s nobody’s business but mine.”

  “Oh,” said Dr. Penny. Then she asked what I was doing instead of the assignment, and then she agreed that drawing a wolf seemed like a reasonable compromise. She said she’d have a word with Ms. Davonte.

  I said, “Luisa doesn’t want to draw her family tree, either. Or Nevaeh.” Nevaeh’s dad left a few years ago. Luisa, I didn’t know her whole story, but I saw the way her eyes emptied out when Ms. Davonte told us what she wanted us to do. “Ms. Davonte is still not listening until she has to.”

  Dr. Penny sighed. I don’t know who she was sighing at. She said, “I’ll talk to her, Della.”

  I said, “She ought to be paying better attention.” I’m only ten years old, and I noticed Luisa’s eyes and the way Nevaeh’s shoulders tightened. Ms. Davonte is the teacher.

  Francine says you can trust some people, but not all of them. I didn’t think I would ever trust Ms. Davonte.

  Dr. Penny said, “It might be helpful, Della, if you quit using words like snow.”

  I said, “Probably not.” I wasn’t trying to give her lip. I said, “When I said snow I got to come down here and explain this to you. If I didn’t say snow, I’d have to say why I don’t want to draw a family tree. The whole class would have heard my business. And then I’d get made fun of on the playground.”

  Dr. Penny paused. She looked at me for what felt like a long time. Then she said, “Thank you for that explanation.” She suggested I sit in the comfy chair in her office until recess. She had a shelf of books I could read. I don’t like books much, but there was one about dinosaur poop that was interesting.

  I don’t know what Dr. Penny said to Ms. Davonte, but I didn’t have to make a family tree, and Ms. Davonte didn’t hang any of them in the hall.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  See? It’s useful, having a big mouth. Next thing I’m gonna do with it is help put Clifton in prison for a long, long time.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  We are still on the easy parts of the story.

  2

  Suki and I live with Francine. She’s our foster mother. That’s the word they use, foster mother, but there is nothing motherly about Francine. She don’t even have meth for an excuse.

  “Happy to have you,” she said, when the social worker first brought us to her house. That was a couple of months ago, late August, still hot every single day. It was a week after we got away from Clifton. Feels like a year ago. A lifetime. But it wasn’t.

  Francine’s house was half of a double-house, if you will, with a tiny little yard and a cramped living room. It wasn’t dirty and it smelled okay. “Here’s your bedroom,” Francine said. “I don’t usually take girls as young as you, Della, but I like that you two are sisters. Probably won’t fight as much.”

  Back then Suki and I never fought with each other.

  The bedroom was nice. Bunk bed made up with sheets and pillows and blankets. Two wooden chests of drawers. One each.

  “Huh,” Suki said. “Not much space.” She took the plastic grocery bag out of my hand and dropped it into the top drawer of the first dresser. Dropped her own plastic bag into the top drawer of the second.

  That was all the stuff we had. We were in a hurry when we left Clifton’s place.

  We were running.

  “Beats the emergency placement witch,” I said. I meant the woman who took us in the first few days. The room at Francine’s was smaller than the one at the witch’s house, but it seemed friendlier, and so did Francine.

  Suki sniffed. “We’ll see.”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Back in the family room, Francine said, “Didn’t they let you go back for your clothes? Books, toys, anything?”

  “Clifton burned our stuff,” Suki said. “That’s what the cops said.”

  We’d seen the smoke from Teena’s house. Clifton threw everything we had onto the burn pile in the backyard, doused it with gasoline, and lit a match. Cops said he was trying to pretend we didn’t live with him.

  Francine turned to the social worker, who was still shuffling papers. “They get a clothing allowance?”

  Social worker checked her notes, and said we did.

  So, soon as the social worker left, Francine piled us into her old junker car and drove us to Old Navy. I got to pick out whatever I wanted, two hundred dollars’ worth. And Suki got two hundred fifty, ’cause she was older.

  “Don’t forget underwear,” Francine said on the way there. “Socks, pajamas, whatever else. I ain’t buying you anything more till your checks start coming in.” She paused a moment. “You need school stuff? Backpacks, notebooks, pencils?”

  I shook my head fast. No way was I spending my two hundred dollars on that.

  Suki said, “Clifton wrecked my laptop. The one the school loaned me for the year.”

  Francine sighed. “I’ll have to sort that out,” she said. “I’ll head over to the high school tomorrow morning, after I get Della settled. I work at the DMV, lucky they don’t open until ten. You got a driver’s license, Suki?”

  Suki nodded. She’d taken driving at school and passed the test. She traced her finger along the passenger-side window. “Left it at Clifton’s,” she said.

  “I can
get you a replacement,” Francine said. “We’ll work on that too. You’ll need to get insurance before you ever drive my car. You a decent driver?”

  Suki said, “So far.”

  It was strange losing all our stuff at once. On the one hand, I loved getting all new things, and from Old Navy, no less. A fancy store. Most of my clothes came from the free clothes closet. Sometimes Teena gave me hand-me-downs, but since she usually got her clothes from the free clothes closet in the first place, they weren’t actually any better. But I’d had a purple sweatshirt I really loved, and a couple of nice T-shirts.

  I reached into the front seat and grabbed Suki’s arm. “Hey,” I said. “I’ll be starting school wearing all new stuff.” It’d be fabulous. Like I was one of the kids with a real mom who had a job and everything.

  I was going to a new school. Not the one I’d gone to my whole life, and not the emergency placement school I’d gone to for the last few days. Brand-new. A do-over.

  “Great,” Suki said, not sounding like she meant it. She’d be wearing new clothes too, but to the same old place. Our town had a bunch of elementary schools, but only one middle school and one high school.

  We went inside Old Navy and we both grabbed a cart. Suki walked with me to the girls’ section. “Start with underwear,” she said. She pulled out a seven-pack of hipsters, checked the size, and threw them into my cart.

  “Hey!” I said. “Let me pick!” She’d grabbed white. I wanted colors.

  “’Kay,” Suki said. “Get what you want. One pair of pajamas. Two pairs of blue jeans and at least three shirts. Try things on. Make sure you’ve got room to grow.”

  I tried on blue jeans and found some I liked. Brand-new. I grabbed some T-shirts off the sale rack. Two hundred dollars was a lot of money, but Old Navy was expensive. Then I saw a hot-pink hoodie with OLD NAVY written on it in purple glitter. It wasn’t on sale, and August wasn’t exactly hoodie weather, but I loved wearing hoodies any time of year. All the fabric snug around my neck, and when I put the hood up, I could see people but they couldn’t see me. Also I had two hundred dollars. I threw the hoodie into my cart.