The Martin Chronicles Read online




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

  Copyright © 2019 by John Fried

  Cover design by Claire Brown

  Cover illustration by Eric Hanson

  Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  grandcentralpublishing.com

  twitter.com/grandcentralpub

  First Edition: January 2019

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  Parts of this novel were previously published as the short story “Birthday Season” in issue 45 of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art.

  The chapter “Destroy All Monsters” was originally published in the Blue Penny Quarterly.

  The chapter “Nueve” was originally published in the North American Review.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Fried, John, author.

  Title: The Martin chronicles / John Fried.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018003658| ISBN 9781538729830 (hardcover) | ISBN

  9781549195266 (audio download) | ISBN 9781538729854 (ebook)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Bildungsromans.

  Classification: LCC PS3606.R545 M37 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018003658

  ISBN: 978-1-5387-2983-0 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-2985-4 (ebook)

  E3-20181111-DA-NF

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Destroy All Monsters

  Safe

  Birthday Season

  A Rifle Is Not a Gun

  Change of Light

  Nueve

  Ghosts

  I.D.

  Fortress

  The Castle or the Wall

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Author

  Newsletters

  for Laura

  Destroy All Monsters

  GIRLS INVADED OUR SCHOOL a month into sixth grade. We watched from the window of Mr. Harding’s second-floor classroom, craning our necks to catch a glimpse of them, but their school bus, pristine and glowing orange against dark dirty brownstones, blocked our view. We could only hear their high-pitched voices vibrating outside the entrance of our school. As the sound grew closer, all of us ran to the door of the classroom, waiting to see what appeared at the top of the stairs.

  “How long are they staying?” my friend Dave asked. All we had been told was that they were from our sister school across town and that there had been some kind of water-main break. Most of us didn’t even know we had a sister school.

  “I heard they’re going to be here months,” my friend Max, the perennial exaggerator, said. “Maybe all year.”

  “That’s okay with me,” Alan Oates, the classroom Casanova, said with a smirk. Alan wore his blazer with the sleeves pushed to his elbows, and his tie dangled loosely around his collar. Rumor was that he had made it to first base with a girl and got thrown out stretching it into a double, but most of us weren’t even sure what that meant.

  “Boys!” Mr. Harding, our sixth grade homeroom teacher, shouted. “Back to your seats, tout de suite!” Mr. Harding was also the middle school language teacher, English teacher, and math teacher, a compact man who wore oversized corduroy blazers and had a long beard that made his mouth vanish when he wasn’t speaking.

  We ran back to our seats, mine the last in the back row, a choice spot for keeping a low profile. I was a decent student, but I preferred to stay away from the action, particularly from Mr. Harding, who marched in front of the class, calling on random students. Kids in the front row, the easiest targets, often looked beaten up by the end of the day.

  Mr. Harding shuffled to the door, his sneakers slapping against the linoleum floor. From the hallway, we could hear a woman’s voice shouting out names, sending the girls to different rooms, including our own. When they appeared, Mr. Harding opened the door with a grand flourish, and said, “Bienvenue! Willkommen! Benvenuto!” The girls filed in, gathering by the blackboard. Like us, they were in matching uniforms—white dress shirts and plaid jumpers—but they looked very different from one another, some as tall as Mr. Harding while others were as small as lower school kids. The boys in my class all looked the same, small and childlike, our hair cut neatly close to our heads, our skin untouched by acne. It was hard to believe we shared anything in common with these girls.

  Mr. Harding asked the girls to introduce themselves and they gave typical girl names. When they were done, he was about to say something when another girl came running into the room. Boys started to laugh, whispering to one another. This girl had bright red hair and a face full of freckles, but that wasn’t what had set them off. It was the wire mouth gear circling her face from ear to ear and strapped around her head like a catcher’s mask. “Silencio!!” Mr. Harding shouted.

  I recognized the mouth gear immediately. I had worn one last year every night. I hated the way the retainer dug into my mouth, the straps pulling at my skin and hair as I slept. Wearing it during the day seemed like torture. Everyone continued to laugh, even me.

  “Boys!” Mr. Harding shouted, and we quieted down. He turned to the new girl and said, “Welcome, my dear. What’s your name?”

  She said, “Alice Jakantowicz.”

  Her name sounded as jumbled as the tangle of metal in her mouth.

  “Nice to meet you, Miss Jakantowicz. Now, boys,” he said, returning to us, “it’s your turn for introductions. And please offer these young ladies more than your name, rank, and serial number. An interesting fact about yourself perhaps.”

  Daniel Ashford started, announcing that his cat’s name was Itchy. That set the trend. Peter Barson had a rabbit named Ruben. Alan Oates had a pair of guinea pigs named Peanut Butter and Jelly. Dave had a dog named Zipper.

  “I’m Marty,” I said, when it was my turn. “Martin Kelso. Eleven years old. I don’t have a pet.”

  “What else, Martin?” Mr. Harding’s tone was impatient. “Why don’t you tell our guests something about our fine institution?”

  All I could think about was food. Lunch was less than an hour away. “Today’s lunch is meatloaf,” I said. Mr. Harding pressed me with his eyes. “This means tomorrow’s lunch will be hamburgers because no one eats the meatloaf. Which means the next day’s lunch will be sloppy joes because they have to finish the meat. They’re good. The sloppy joes.” Mr. Harding raised his hand as if to change the topic, but I was rolling.
“The next day it’ll be something different because they can’t do much with sloppy joes, although someone once said the chili dogs are just hot dogs with sloppy joe on them. Basically a hot dog with meatloaf on it.” I paused. “Stay away from them. The chili dogs, I mean.”

  The boys around me nodded their heads. The girls looked bewildered. “Fascinating,” Mr. Harding said, tugging on his beard. We finished introductions and then Mr. Harding said he would find places for the girls to sit. He looked around the room and pointed at the girl with the mouth gear. “Miss…” he said. “Miss…”

  “Brace Face,” I whispered to myself, but evidently it was loud enough for everyone to hear. I couldn’t believe I had said it. I was just thinking about what I had been called when I first got braces, the way I had been teased for weeks until two other boys came in with braces and what had seemed so strange became normal. When I said it, all the boys started to laugh again, even some of the girls.

  “Mr. Kelso,” my teacher said. “Your first demerit. Che buona fortuna.”

  Demerits were these bright yellow note cards teachers handed out when kids did something wrong. Max got them for talking in class. Alan Oates collected them for wearing his shirt untucked. Even Dave, who never got in trouble, got one once for picking his nose in the middle of class. They really didn’t mean anything unless you got three, because then you had to get the demerit signed by your parents. I hadn’t gotten any so far this year. In fact, I had never gotten a demerit. It was a point of pride for me, like being the Attendance Iron Man (only three absences since kindergarten) or the Times Table Titan in third grade. But the day the girls arrived, I got my first demerit. It had to be their fault.

  I didn’t want to look at Brace Face and she clearly didn’t want to look at me, but as she walked to her seat, our eyes met. She didn’t look defeated or upset. Her expression was determined, almost fierce, as if she were prepared to attack. I turned away and tried my best not to look at her again the whole class.

  * * *

  Girls were invading my life at home as well. My mom’s sister Beth was visiting for a few days with her daughter, Evie. Aunt Beth lived in upstate New York, but she was thinking about moving to the city and had pulled Evie out of school so they could look at apartments. They were sleeping in the guest room, which shared the bath off my room. I spent every trip to the bathroom holding the door closed with my foot.

  When I walked into our apartment that afternoon, I found my mom and Aunt Beth in a smoky kitchen, shouting above the sound of the fire alarm. Evie was sitting at the kitchen table, turning pages of a magazine, as if nothing was going on around her.

  “What’s that smell?” I said.

  “It’s cassoulet,” my mom said, standing on a chair to get to the alarm. Aunt Beth stirred a large pot on the stove. “It’s been cooking since this morning,” she added.

  Ever since Uncle Karl died, Aunt Beth was always into something new. Two visits ago it was hairstyling, and when she left, my dad and I both had crooked haircuts. The last time she visited, it was palm reading. One evening she looked at my hand and told me I needed to stay away from alcohol and drugs and that she saw a career in either watercoloring or gynecology.

  The alarm finally stopped. “It’s French,” my mom added, battery in hand. I nodded and turned to leave.

  “Marty,” my mom called. “You didn’t say hello to your cousin.”

  I turned and looked at Evie, her eyes still locked on her magazine. For years our families had rented a house together every summer on Cape Cod. Evie and I had been inseparable. She was four years older than me and had ordered me around, but I didn’t mind. She taught me how to snorkel and catch tadpoles in the tidal pool. Every night we would play hide-and-seek until bedtime. Evie was a master at squeezing into small cabinets and tiny crawl spaces of the dusty bungalow. I often gave up, wandering the house and shouting her name until she came out. Once a week, we would make our parents order pizza. Evie told me that the proper way to eat pizza was to rip off the crust first, then dab it over the surface to collect the oil. I followed her dutifully.

  After her dad died two years ago, we didn’t take the Cape trip again. We mostly saw them on holidays. It didn’t matter, because Evie seemed to have changed, growing sullen and quiet. I knew that her dad’s death had shaken her up, but it was also clear that she wanted nothing to do with me anymore. The four-year difference in our age had become insurmountable and only confirmed my theory that girls were creatures from an alien planet. “Hey,” I said, and waved at her.

  “Hey,” Evie said, her expression blank, as if she barely knew me at all.

  * * *

  The next day, the girls were back at school. It had rained all morning and the hooks where we hung our dark blue school ponchos were covered with red and yellow and pink raincoats, the floor beneath them lined with matching boots. Mr. Harding rearranged the classroom alphabetically, which meant I was in the second row, way too close to the action. Brace Face sat in front of me. I stared at the back of her head, the strap of the brace caging the top of her skull. Her red hair, fiery in the fluorescent light, spilled out below the straps, draping over the back of the chair. I was about to reach out and touch it, when I realized Mr. Harding was calling my name.

  “Attention, Mr. Kelso?”

  “Yeah?” I said. “I mean, yes?”

  Mr. Harding walked over to my desk, his beard hanging over me. “Can you tell me what a homonym is?”

  “A homo-what?” I said.

  Several boys snickered. Mr. Harding cleared his throat. “A homonym.”

  We had started a lesson about homonyms the day before the girls had gotten there, but I didn’t remember any of it. My stomach gurgled, still digesting what little of the cassoulet I had managed to get down. “I don’t know.”

  “You may not know,” he said, with added emphasis, “but you just used one.”

  “I did?”

  “Does anyone know,” he said, pausing dramatically, “what homonym Mr. Kelso just used?” Again, silence. Brace Face’s hand shot up.

  “Ms. Jakantowicz,” Mr. Harding said.

  “Homonyms are words that sound the same but are spelled different. I mean, differently. Know, K-N-O-W, and no, N-O.”

  “Excellent,” he said.

  “We did that last year,” she added, and all the girls around her nodded. Dave looked over at me and curled his lip into a snarl directed at Brace Face.

  In the afternoon, we had music class with Mrs. Ablethorpe. Usually she had us listening to music from different cultures and marching around the room shaking tambourines and gourds, but with the girls visiting, Mrs. Ablethorpe wanted us to sing. “It’ll be so nice to have the different pitches, the tonal variations,” she said, her hands folded in front of her with delight. She read our names, arranging us alphabetically in a tight semicircle, shoulder to shoulder. “Alice Jakantowicz?” she called out.

  “Coming,” Brace Face said, as she stuffed something into her book bag. When she stood up and took her place, I almost didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t wearing her mouth gear. Her face was immediately rounder, almost softer, as if the brace had been contorting it into odd shapes. I hadn’t noticed her eyes before, but now I couldn’t stop looking at them—a bright, translucent candy green. Mrs. Ablethorpe called my name and I went to stand next to Brace Face.

  “Hey,” I said, but she ignored me.

  We started out singing “De Colores,” a Mexican folk song we had butchered all through fourth and fifth grade. Today wasn’t much better. Alan Oates was on one side of me, booming out verse after verse, his voice as flat as the floor. It didn’t matter. I was listening to Brace Face. It wasn’t that her voice was so good, but rather that as she sang, I could not only hear her voice, but feel it resonating through our touching shoulders and down into my body. This closeness was a little unnerving at first, but after a few verses I started to enjoy it. I stopped singing just to feel her voice inside me. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before
. When the song ended and she stopped singing, I felt empty, as if I had been given something wonderful and then had it abruptly taken away. Brace Face turned to me and said, “You’re not singing.”

  “Yes, I am,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “You’re moving your mouth, but nothing is coming out.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “Shut up, Brace Face.”

  Her hand shot up.

  “Yes? Ms. Jakantowicz?” the music teacher asked.

  “Martin isn’t singing,” she said.

  “Martin?” Mrs. Ablethorpe said, walking over to stand in front of me, her expression grave. “Is this true?”

  “I’m singing,” I said.

  Mrs. Ablethorpe raised an eyebrow. “I hope so.”

  We started a new song, rounds of “The Erie Canal.” Again, I mouthed the words, letting the sound of Brace Face’s voice pour through me. I closed my eyes, losing myself in the hum of her voice vibrating across my skin. Halfway through the song, I heard a cough in front of me, and when I opened my eyes, there was Mrs. Ablethorpe, still conducting with one hand and waving a yellow note card with the other. A demerit. Next to me, Brace Face scooted away. Even with the space between us, I could still feel the heat from her shoulder on mine.

  * * *

  That afternoon, Dave came over to my house to watch Destroy All Monsters, one of our favorite afternoon monster movies. In the movie, a band of alien moon women used mind control to get the monsters to destroy major cities around the world. We had seen it dozens of times, but it never got old. Our favorite part was when the newscaster announced, “Godzilla is now in New York City! The city’s been invaded by Godzilla!” People ran through the streets, screaming in terror. We would say the line and stomp around the living room carrying old toy trucks and police cars we never played with anymore, bashing down pretend buildings like a pair of Godzillas invading our own city. After, we sat in my room running through our favorite Godzilla battles: Godzilla versus Mothra. Godzilla versus King Ghidorah. Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla. Finally I said, “Who would win in a battle between Godzilla and Brace Face?”