Some of the Parts

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2016 by Hannah Barnaby

Cover photograph copyright © 2016 by plainpicture/Mark Owen

“I Better Be Quiet Now”

Words and music by Elliott Smith.

Copyright © 2000 by Universal Music—Careers and Spent Bullets Music

All rights controlled and administered by Universal Music—Careers.

International copyright secured. All rights reserved.

Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barnaby, Hannah Rodgers.

Some of the parts / Hannah Barnaby.

pages cm.

Summary: A devastated teenaged girl sets out on a quest to track down transplant recipients after she discovers that her older brother was an organ donor.

ISBN 978-0-553-53963-9 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-553-53964-6 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-553-53965-3 (ebook)

[1. Grief—Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.B253So 2016

[Fic]—dc23

2015012311

eBook ISBN 9780553539653

February 2016

Random House Children's Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

v4.1

ep

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

—
A
RISTOTLE,
M
ETAPHYSICS

saturday
9/20

W
e are driving around town in Mel's inherited Oldsmobile when we see the pig truck.

Mel and I first became friends when she was the only one in my comp class who liked my short story. It was called “The President Dreams of His Mother,” and it was about how the president of the United States had a dream that he was talking to his mother and she was completely naked the whole time and he was so disturbed by the dream that he couldn't concentrate on his job, which resulted in the nuclear annihilation of the entire East Coast.

Truthfully, the story wasn't very good. But Mel called it “delightfully obtuse” and clapped for an inappropriately long time at the end of my reading. I'm never sure if Mel knows what she's talking about but I make a lot of effort to believe that she does, because it's nice to think that someone is (a) knowledgeable and (b) on my side.

Mel never knew my brother very well—we were more friends within the boundaries of the school building than friends who paint each other's toenails at sleepovers. Amy and Zoey and Fiona had filled that category, but they hadn't come over since the accident and I hadn't tried to call them. Maybe none of us knew who was supposed to call first. Then Mel showed up at my house, and when she did, she acted totally normal. Her visit was like the social equivalent of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. For a week I had been holding my breath whenever I went anywhere because people were constantly coming up to me and hugging me, or pretending they hadn't seen me because they didn't know what to say. Mel just knocked on my front door and said, “Do you have any chocolate? I am
dying
for some chocolate.” She even used the word
dying
without cringing or gasping or anything. So I let her in.

Hanging out with Mel makes it easy for me to be quiet. There's no pressure for me to talk because Mel is always working on something and she is fully focused on whatever that is. She doesn't care if I zone out when I see a pair of mittens that look like the ones my brother had when we were little, or a car that looks like the one he was saving up for when he died.

A black Mustang.

There are more of those around than you might think.

So it's a decent arrangement, even though Mel is not always easy. Her voice is like gravel under tires and her laugh is harsh and she makes jokes that aren't funny. And she drives like a maniac. I don't think it occurs to her that I might have a personal issue with reckless driving. At least, I hope it doesn't. I hope it's just ignorance and not cruelty. It is useful to have a friend with a car. We are in the same grade, but she is a year older because once upon a time her parents sent her to an expensive school that was called “progressive” and then turned out to be a front for a religious cult. Mel had to repeat third grade, and her mother has never gotten over it.

It is difficult to keep my composure when she drives like that. I am always waiting for the next crash, the sickening crunch of metal and glass, the pain, the sirens, the chaos.

For all her faults, Mel insulates me from the rest of the world, the world that looks so bright and sharp now, in the after. She talks and talks and fills my ears so I don't have to listen for those terrible sounds. She keeps a list of word combinations that would make great band names. Terminal Butterfly. Soapbox Evangelists. She makes up games for us to play so I don't have to think. Our favorite is Opposite.

“What's the opposite of bridge?” I ask.

“Burn,” she tells me.

Today Mel is driving a bit more reasonably than usual because even she is not immune to the effect of the maple trees that line the highway, their leaves turning obscene shades of red and orange. I am holding my hand out the open window and letting it coast the invisible wave of air. And because my hand is pleasantly numbed by the chill-edged air, and because the leaves are rioting all around us, and because the sky is so blue, I am temporarily fooled into thinking that the world might be coming back online.

Mel has just said
burn
when the pig truck appears in the distance, like some strange mirage. We come up on it slowly. I recognize the sort of truck it is as we get closer, know to expect something alive inside of it by the ventilation holes all around the huge metal cargo container. It is not until we pull up alongside the truck that I see the shocking, dreadful pink of the pigs. Their bodies are pressed against the metal, bulging out of the holes like fleshy bubbles. I can't see their faces, can't make out their individual bodies, so it is as if there is just one endless mass of pig stuffed into the truck, as if they have all been mashed together into some kind of living, breathing, horrible pulp.

“Oh my god,” I whisper.

Mel looks over. “Gross,” she comments, but she says it so casually that I know she isn't having the same trouble breathing that I'm having. My chest is tight and my throat is, too, and I'm caught between wanting to retch and wanting to cry. This is how I am now. Unfeeling, numb, until something pierces my casing and I pour messily out into the world.

I try to gather myself back into place, but it's no use. The pigs are too pink, the sun deepening their color until they are almost as bright as the trees. All I can do is cover my eyes. It feels like cheating, but I do it anyway.

And Mel must see me do it because she says, “Hang on,” and I hear the enormous engine of the Oldsmobile groan with the effort of accelerating. I peek out from between my fingers to see the front edge of the trailer recede past my window, and as we pass the truck's cab, the driver waggles his fingers at us and grins.