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Winner of the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize 2013, KETCHUP CLOUDS tells the story of one teenage girl with a very big secret.
Fifteen-year-old Zoe has a secret - a dark and terrible secret that she can't confess to anyone she knows. But then one day she hears of a criminal, Stuart Harris, locked up on death row in Texas. Like Zoe, Stuart is no stranger to secrets. Or lies. Or murder.
Full of both heartache and humour, Zoe tells her story in the only way she can - in letters to the man in prison in America. Armed with a pen, Zoe takes a deep breath, eats a jam sandwich, and begins her tale of love and betrayal.
| ISBN-13: | 9781780620329 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hachette Children's Group |
| Publication date: | 12/27/2012 |
| Sold by: | Hachette Digital, Inc. |
| Format: | eBook |
| Sales rank: | 844,743 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
| Age Range: | 12 - 15 Years |
Annabel graduated from Oxford University with a degree in English Literature and an ambition to be a children's author. She had a variety of jobs before deciding to travel the world and focus on writing. Annabel now lives in Yorkshire with her husband and two young sons.
Her first book, MY SISTER LIVES ON THE MANTELPIECE, won the Branford Boase and a Betty Trask Award in 2012 and KETCHUP CLOUDS won the 2014 Waterstones Children's Prize. Annabel's work has been shortlisted for numerous prestigious awards including the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Galaxy British Book Award and the Red House Children's Book Award and longlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the 2012 CILIP Carnegie Medal.
Visit Annabel's website at www.annabelpitcher.com and follow her on Twitter @APitcherAuthor.
S. Harris #993765
Polunsky Unit (Death Row)
Livingston, Texas 77351
USA
August 1
Dear Mr. S. Harris,
Ignore the blob of red in the top left corner. It's jam, not blood, though I don't think I need to tell you the difference. It wasn't your wife's jam the police found on your shoe.
The jam in the corner's from my sandwich. Homemade raspberry. Gran made it. She's been dead seven years, and making that jam was the last thing she did. Sort of. If you ignore the weeks she spent in the hospital attached to one of those heart things that goes beep beep if you're lucky or beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep if you're not. That was the sound echoing around the hospital room seven years ago. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. My little sister was born six months later, and Dad named her after Gran. Dorothy Constance. When Dad stopped grieving, he decided to shorten it. My sister is small and round so we ended up calling her Dot. My other sister, Soph, is ten. They've both got long blond hair and green eyes and pointy noses, but Soph is tall and thin and darker-skinned, like Dot's been rolled out and crisped in the oven for ten minutes. I'm different. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Medium height. Medium weight. Ordinary, I suppose. To look at me, you'd never guess my secret.
I struggled to eat the sandwich in the end. The jam wasn't rotten or anything, because it lasts for years in sterilized jars. At least that's what Dad says when Mum turns up her nose. It's pointy, too. Her hair's the same color as my sisters' but shorter and a bit wavy. Dad's is more like mine, except with gray bits above his ears, and he's got this thing called heterochromia, which means one eye's brown but the other's lighter. Blue if it's bright outside, gray if it's overcast. The sky in a socket, I once said, and Dad got these dimples right in the middle of his cheeks, and I don't know if any of this really matters, but I suppose it's good to give you a picture of my family before I tell you what I came in here to say.
Because I am going to say it. I'm not sitting in this shed for the fun of it. It's bloody freezing and Mum would kill me if she knew I was out of bed, but it's a good place to write this letter, hidden away behind some trees. Don't ask me what type, but they've got big leaves that are rustling in the breeze. Shhhhwiiishhh. Actually, that sounds nothing like them.
There's jam on my fingers so the pen's sticky. I bet the cats' whiskers are, too. Lloyd and Webber meowed as if they couldn't quite believe their luck that the sky was raining sandwiches when I chucked it over the hedge. I wasn't hungry anymore. In actual fact I never was, and if I'm being honest, I only made the sandwich in the first place to put off starting this letter. No offense or anything Mr. Harris. It's just difficult. And I'm tired. I haven't really slept since May 1.
There's no danger of me dropping off in here. The box of tiles is digging into my thighs, and a draft is blowing through a gap underneath the shed door. I need to get a move on because, just my luck, the flashlight is running out of battery. I tried holding it between my teeth, but my jaw started to ache so now it's balancing near a spiderweb on the windowsill. I don't normally sit in the shed, especially not at 2 AM, but tonight the voice in my head is louder than ever before. The images are more real, and my pulse is racing racing racing, and I bet if my heart was attached to one of those hospital things, all the fast thumping would break it.
When I got out of bed, my pajama top was sticking to my back, and my mouth was drier than probably a desert. That's when I put on my bathrobe and tiptoed outside because I knew it was time to write this letter. I can't keep it in anymore. I have to tell someone, and you're the person I chose.
I got your contact details off a Death Row website, and I found the website because of a nun, and that's not a sentence I ever thought I'd write, but then my life isn't exactly turning out the way I'd imagined. There was a picture of you looking friendly for someone in an orange jumpsuit with a shaved head, thick glasses, and a scar down one cheek. Yours wasn't the only profile I clicked on. There are hundreds of criminals who want pen pals. Hundreds. But you stood out. All that stuff about your family disowning you so you haven't had any letters for eleven entire years. All that stuff about your guilt.
Not that I believe in God, but I went to confession to get rid of my guilt after triple-checking on Wikipedia that the priest wouldn't be able to say anything to the police. But when I sat down in the booth and saw his silhouette through the grille, I couldn't speak. There I was, about to confess to a man who'd never done anything wrong in his life, except for maybe having an extra sip of Communion wine on a bad day. Unless he was one of those priests who abuse children, in which case he would have known all about sin, but I couldn't be sure so I didn't risk it.
You're much safer. And you sort of remind me of Harry Potter to be honest. I loved those books when I was little. I can't remember when the first one came out, if it was before or after your murder trial, but anyway in case you're confused Harry Potter has a scar and glasses and you have a scar and glasses, and he never got any mail, either. But then all of a sudden he received a mysterious letter saying he was a wizard and his life was miraculously transformed.
Now, you're probably reading this in your cell thinking, I wish this letter was about to tell me I had magical powers, and if the website is anything to go by, I bet you're imagining healing every single one of those stab wounds in your wife. Well, sorry to disappoint you and all that, but I'm just an ordinary teenage girl, not the headmaster of a School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Trust me, though, if this pen was a wand, then I'd give you the magic to bring your wife right back to life, because that is the thing we have in common.
I know what it's like.
Mine wasn't a woman. Mine was a boy. And I killed him three months ago exactly.
Do you want to know the worst thing? I got away with it. No one's found out that I'm responsible. No one has a clue and I'm walking around saying all the right things and doing all the right stuff, but inside I'm sort of screaming. I daren't tell Mum or Dad or my sisters, because I don't want to be disowned and I don't want to go to prison, even though I deserve it. So you see Mr. Harris I'm less brave than you, so don't feel too bad when you go for the lethal injection, which I wouldn't worry about, because when my dog was put to sleep, it really did look peaceful. The website says you'll never forgive yourself, but at least now you know there are people in the world far worse than you. You had the guts to own up to your mistake, but I'm too much of a coward even to reveal my real identity in a letter.
So yeah, you can call me Zoe. And let's pretend I live on Fiction Road, I don't know, somewhere near Bath, which is an old city with ancient buildings and lots of weekend tourists taking pictures of the bridge. Everything else I'll write will be the truth.
From, Zoe
1 Fiction Road
Bath, UK
S. Harris #993765
Polunsky Unit (Death Row)
Livingston, Texas 77351
USA
August 12
Dear Mr. Harris,
If you've opened this letter, I guess it means you're interested in what I have to say. That's nice but I'm not taking it as too much of a compliment, because let's be honest, you must be bored in that cell with nothing to do except write your poems, which by the way are really good, especially the sonnet about lethal injections. I read them on your profile and the one about the theater made me sad. I bet you had no idea when Dorothy followed the yellow-brick road that in forty-eight hours you were going to commit murder.
Funny I can write that almost without blinking. It would be different if I hadn't done it, too. Before, I might not have touched you with a barge pole, but now we're in the same boat. Exactly the same boat. You killed someone you were supposed to love and I killed someone I was supposed to love, and we both understand the pain and the fear and the sadness and the guilt and the hundred other feelings that don't even have a name in all of the English language.
Everyone thinks I'm grieving so they don't ask too many questions when I turn up looking pale and thin, with bags under my eyes, my hair hanging in greasy clumps. The other day, Mum forced me to get it cut. In the salon I stared at the customers, wondering how many of them had skeletons in the closet, because the nun said no one's perfect and everyone's got good and bad inside them. Everyone. Even people you don't expect to have a dark side, e.g., Barack Obama or Lisa from The Simpsons. I try to remember that when the guilt gets bad enough to stop me from sleeping. It didn't work tonight so here I am again, and it's just as cold but this time I've used Dad's old jacket to cover the gap underneath the shed door.
I can't remember the nun's name, but she had one of those raisin faces you could still imagine as a grape because somewhere underneath the wrinkles there was something beautiful. She came into my school a week before the summer holiday to tell us about capital punishment. When she spoke, it was in this quiet voice that wobbled around the edges, but everyone paid absolute attention. Even Adam. Normally he pushes back his chair and throws pen lids at girls' heads, but on that day we could take down our hoods because no one was doing anything they shouldn't, and we all gawped at this old lady as she told us about her work to abolish the death penalty.
She'd done a lot. Petitions and protests and articles in newspapers and letters to criminals, who'd written back and confided all sorts. "Like their crimes and stuff?" someone asked. The nun nodded. "Sometimes. Everyone needs to be heard."
That's when I had the idea, right there in the middle of the Religious Education classroom as the nun said a load more things I can't even remember. When I got home, I ran upstairs to the study without taking off my shoes even though Mum had just bought beige carpets. I turned on the computer and found a Death Row website, ticking the box that said Yes, I am eighteen. My lie didn't shut down the computer or set off an alarm. It took me straight to the database of criminals who want pen pals and there you were Mr. Harris, second man from the left on the third row of the fourth page, as if you were waiting to hear my story.
It all started a year ago with an unexpected phone call. For a whole week last August, I'd been plucking up the courage to ask Mum if I could go to a house party on a Saturday night. This house party wasn't just any house party, but Max Morgan's house party, and everyone was invited to mark the end of the summer because we were due back in school a couple of days later. Unfortunately the chances of Mum agreeing to let me go were less than 1 percent because back then she never let me do anything, not even shopping in town with Lauren, because she was worried about me being abducted and also about my homework.
There was no slacking off in our house because Mum quit her job as a lawyer when Dot was little. She was a sickly baby, always in and out of the hospital, so I guess it was a full-time job to look after her. Mum was there when I woke up to ask what lessons I had that day, and she was there when I got home to supervise the work I had to do that night. The rest of the time she did chores. Because of the house's size, it was hard to keep it spick, never mind span, but Mum managed by sticking to a strict timetable. Even when she watched the news, she folded the laundry and paired the socks, and when she was supposed to be relaxing in the bath, she wiped the taps with a flannel to make them shine. She cooked a lot as well, always with the best ingredients. The eggs had to be free-range and the vegetables had to be organic and the cow had to have lived in the Garden of Eden or somewhere with no pollution and no chemicals so the meat wasn't contaminated with anything that could make us ill.
Mr. Harris I tried to Google your mum to find out if she was strict, making you try hard at school and be polite to your elders and stay out of trouble and eat all your greens. I hope not. It would be a shame to think you spent your teenage years munching broccoli now that you're locked up in a cell with no freedom to speak of. I hope you had some crazy times like sprinting naked through a neighbor's garden for a dare, which is what happened last year at Lauren's party after I'd gone home early. When Lauren told me about it at school, as per usual I put on my unimpressed face to show I was too mature for such things. But when my History teacher asked us to stop whispering and look at the worksheet, I didn't see the Nazis, just all these boobs boinging in the moonlight.
I was sick of missing out. Sick of listening to Lauren's stories. And jealous, really jealous, that I didn't have a few of my own. So when I was invited to Max's party a couple of months later, I made up my mind to ask Mum in a way that would make it impossible for her to refuse.
On Saturday morning I lay in bed trying to work out how to word the question before my shift at the library, where I stack shelves for three fifty an hour. That's when the phone started ringing. I could tell from Dad's voice it was serious so I climbed out of bed and went downstairs in my bathrobe, the exact same one I'm wearing right now, which FYI has red and black flowers and lace around the cuffs. A moment later, Dad was jumping into the BMW without even having breakfast and Mum was chasing after him onto the drive in an apron and yellow washing-up gloves.
"There's no need to rush off," she said, and Mr. Harris now we're getting into the proper conversations, I think I'll set them out properly to make them easier for you to read. Of course, I don't remember every single thing that everyone said so I'll paraphrase a bit and also miss out any of the boring stuff, i.e. anything at all about the weather.
"What's going on?" I asked, standing on the porch, probably with my face looking worried.
"At least have a slice of toast, Simon."
Dad shook his head. "We've got to go now. We don't know how long he's got."
"We?" Mum asked.
"You're coming, too, aren't you?"
"Let's think about this a minute."
"He might not have a minute! We need to get going."
"If you feel you have to go, I'm not going to stop you, but I'm staying here. You know how I feel about—"
"What's going on?" I said again. Louder this time. My face probably more worried. Not that my parents noticed.
Dad rubbed his temples, his fingers making circles in the patches of gray hair. "What do I say to him after all this time?"
Mum grimaced. "I've no idea."
"Who're you talking about?" I asked.
"Do you think he'll even let me in his room?" Dad went on.
"By the sound of it, he'll be in no fit state to know if you're there or not," Mum said.
"Who won't?" I asked, stepping onto the drive.
"Slippers!" Mum called.
I stepped back onto the porch and wiped my feet on the mat. "Will someone tell me what's going on?"
There was a pause. A long one.
"It's Grandpa," Dad said.
"He's had a stroke," Mum said.
"Oh," I said.
It wasn't the most sympathetic reaction, but in my defense I hadn't seen Grandpa for years. I remember being jealous of the wafer Dad received during Communion when Mum stopped us going up to the altar at Grandpa's church. And I remember playing with the hymn book, trying to snap it shut on Soph's fingers, humming the Jaws theme tune as Grandpa frowned. He had this big garden with huge sunflowers, and once I built a den in his garage and he gave me a bottle of flat lemonade to serve to my dolls. But then one day there was an argument and we never visited him again. I'm not sure what happened, but I do know we left Grandpa's without even having lunch. My stomach was rumbling, so for once we were allowed to eat at McDonald's and Mum was too distracted to stop me from ordering a Big Mac and extra-large fries.
"You're really going to stay here?" Dad said.
Mum adjusted the washing-up gloves on her hands. "Who else is going to look after the girls?"
"Me!" I said suddenly, because a plan had popped into my mind. "I can do it."
Mum frowned. "I don't think so."
"She's old enough," Dad said.
"But what if something goes wrong?"
Dad held up his phone. "I've got this."
"I don't know." Mum bit the inside of her cheek and stared at me. "What about your shift at the library?"
I shrugged. "I'll just ring and explain there's a family emergency."
"There you go," Dad said. "Sorted."
Excerpted from Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher. Copyright © 2013 Annabel Pitcher. Excerpted by permission of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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