How to Make Friends with the Dark Read online

  “A rare and powerful novel, How to Make Friends with the Dark dives deep into the heart of grief and healing with honesty, empathy, and grace.”

  —KAREN M. McMANUS, New York Times bestselling author of One of Us Is Lying and Two Can Keep a Secret

  “In this raw, powerful, and heartbreaking meditation on loss and grief, Glasgow writes with unflinching beauty. We meet Tiger Tolliver at her most broken—at her darkest moment—and yet, somehow, How to Make Friends with the Dark teaches us how to let the light in.”

  —JULIE BUXBAUM, New York Times bestselling author of Tell Me Three Things

  “How to Make Friends with the Dark is breathtaking and heartbreaking, and I loved it with all my heart. It’s for all of us who have loved and lost and need to find our power again.”

  —JENNIFER NIVEN, New York Times bestselling author of All the Bright Places and Holding Up the Universe

  “A bold, fearlessly crafted story of loss and love. Kathleen Glasgow’s prose commands the page with its trademark beauty and grace, and Tiger Tolliver is a character readers will root for every step of the way—and won’t soon forget.”

  —COURTNEY SUMMERS, New York Times bestselling author of Sadie

  “Kathleen Glasgow is the rare type of skilled storyteller that knows you have to hurt your characters before putting them back together. I loved every word of this lyrical and devastating novel.”

  —KARA THOMAS, author of The Cheerleaders

  “A book as fierce, tender, and rare as its aptly named heroine, Tiger. How to Make Friends with the Dark is a gorgeously nuanced meditation on grief and family, and the incredible love that can pull you through the darkest of times.”

  —MEG LEDER, author of Letting Go of Gravity

  “Beautifully written and profoundly moving. From page one, Tiger Tolliver grabs your heart with her pain, her courage, her humor—and she doesn’t let go. Tiger, Cake, and Thaddeus (and Mae-Lynn, and Shayna, and Lupe, and LaLa, and Sarah, and Leonard, and June…all of Glasgow’s deeply wrought characters) will stay with me for a long time to come.”

  —ALYSSA SHEINMEL, New York Times bestselling author of A Danger to Herself and Others

  “Tiger Tolliver is so vulnerable and real, you’ll want to turn your porch light on and have the spare room ready for her. In How to Make Friends with the Dark, Kathleen Glasgow’s prose begs and pleads and grasps at the light, like a prayer.”

  —LYGIA DAY PEÑAFLOR, author of All of This Is True and Unscripted Joss Byrd

  “Lyrical, devastating, witty and raw—this is Kathleen Glasgow at her best. Her fans will not be disappointed to fall in love with Tiger Tolliver, no matter how much she breaks their hearts.”

  —BONNIE-SUE HITCHCOCK, author of The Smell of Other People’s Houses

  “A visceral, gut-wrenching, and heartbreaking take on the grieving process. I cried within the first fifty pages. You’ll want to hug Tiger and never let her go. Kathleen has done it again!”

  —TIFFANY JACKSON, author of Allegedly and Monday’s Not Coming

  “Magnificent. A beautiful, heartbreaking alleluia to survival.”

  —BRENDAN KIELY, New York Times bestselling coauthor of All American Boys and author of Tradition

  “This story hauls you into its heart to live the pain in all its careening, messy, and miraculous glory. A brilliant, honest, raw look at what it really means to lose someone essential and make grudging peace with what is gained in the exchange. You will never forget Tiger Tolliver. Not ever.”

  —ESTELLE LAURE, author of But Then I Came Back and This Raging Light

  “Gripping, powerful, and full of truth—an emotional level many novelists strive to reach, but few achieve.”

  —KAMI GARCIA, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Beautiful Creatures and author of Broken Beautiful Hearts

  BOOKS BY KATHLEEN GLASGOW

  Girl in Pieces

  How to Make Friends with the Dark

  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 © 2019 by Kathleen Glasgow

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Anders Rokkum

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! GetUnderlined.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Glasgow, Kathleen, author.

  Title: How to make friends with the dark / Kathleen Glasgow.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2019] | Summary: Tiger, sixteen, has been pushing away from her overprotective mother, but when her mother dies suddenly Tiger must learn to live when it feels she is surrounded by darkness.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018022933 (print) | LCCN 2018029204 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-101-93476-0 (el) | ISBN 978-1-101-93475-3 (hc) | ISBN 978-1-101-93477-7 (glb) | ISBN 978-1-9848-9312-3 (intl. tr. pbk.)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Grief—Fiction. | Death—Fiction. | Orphans—Fiction. | Single-parent families—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.G587 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.G587 How 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9781101934760

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

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Books by Kathleen Glasgow

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Before

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  After

  9:21 P.M.

  11:04 P.M.

  Chapter 5

  16 Hours, 1 Minute

  22 Hours, 4 Minutes

  22 Hours, 5 Minutes

  Chapter 6

  47 Hours, 15 Minutes

  2 Days, 6 Hours, 9 Minutes

  3 Days, 10 Hours, 9 Minutes

  Chapter 7

  4 Days, 10 Hours

  5 Days, 22 Hours, 22 Minutes

  6 Days

  6 Days, 12 Hours

  7 Days, Part Two

  Chapter 8

  7 Days, 10 Hours

  7 Days, 11 Hours

  7 Days, 11 Hours, 50 Minutes

  7 Days, 21 Hours

  Chapter 9

  8 Days, 4 Hours, 35 Minutes

  8 Days, 10 Hours

  Chapter 10

  8 Days, 16 Hours

  8 Days, 17 Hours

  10 Days, 12 Hours

  10 Days, 13 Hours, 19 Minutes

  11 Days, 12 Hours

  12 Days, 16 Hours

  Chapter 11

  13 Days, 10 Hours

  13 Days, 1
1 Hours, 39 Minutes

  13 Days, 12 Hours, 9 Minutes

  17 Days, 13 Hours, 9 Minutes

  17 Days, 19 Hours, 40 Minutes

  Chapter 12

  23 Days

  24 Days, 10 Hours

  27 Days

  27 Days, 16 Hours

  29 Days, 18 Hours, 39 Minutes

  30 Days, 16 Hours

  30 Days, 23 Hours, 17 Minutes

  31 Days, 12 Hours, 39 Minutes

  32 Days, 2 Hours

  32 Days, 5 Hours

  Chapter 13

  32 Days, 15 Hours

  34 Days, 10 Hours

  34 Days, 12 Hours

  40 Days

  41 Days, 22 Hours

  51 Days, 15 Hours

  53 Days, 12 Hours

  53 Days, 14 Hours

  60 Days, 14 Hours

  Chapter 14

  64 Days, 16 Hours

  65 Days, 17 Hours

  Now

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Author’s Note

  Resources

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  this book

  is for the grievers

  this book

  is for the left behind

  this book

  is for every broken heart

  searching for a home

  I FIND THE BILLS BY accident, stuffed underneath a pile of underwear in the dresser my mother and I share. Instead of clean socks, my hands come away with a thick stack of envelopes marked Urgent, Last Notice, Contact Immediately.

  My heart thuds. We don’t have a lot, we never have, but we’ve made do with what my mom makes as the county Bookmobile lady and from helping out at Bonita’s daycare. Come summer, we’ve got the Jellymobile, but that’s another story.

  You don’t hide things in a drawer unless you’re worried.

  Mom’s been on the couch since yesterday morning, cocooned in a black-and-red wool blanket, sleeping off a headache.

  “Mom,” I say, loudly. “Mommy.”

  No answer. I check the crooked clock on the wall. Forty minutes until zero period.

  We’re what my mom likes to call “a well-oiled, good-looking, and good-smelling machine.” But I need the other half of my machine to beep and whir at me, and to do all that other stuff moms are supposed to do. If I don’t have her, I don’t have anything. It’s not like with my friend Cake, who has two parents and an uncle living with her. If my mom is sick, or down, I’m shit out of luck for help and companionship.

  And rides to school.

  “Mom!” I scream as loud as I can, practically ripping my throat in the process. I shove the bills back beneath the stack of underwear and head to the front room.

  The scream worked. She’s sitting up, the wool blanket crumpled on the floor.

  “Good morning to you, too,” she mumbles thickly.

  Her short hair is matted on one side and spiky on the other. She looks around, like she recognizes nothing, like she’s an alien suddenly dropped into our strange, earthly atmosphere.

  She blinks once, twice, three times, then says, “Tiger, baby, get me some coffee, will you?”

  “There’s no coffee.” I use my best accusatory voice. I have to be a little mean. I mean, come on. It looks like we’re in dire straits here, plus, a couple other things, like Kai, are currently burning a hole in my brain. I need Mom-things to be happening.

  “There’s nothing,” I say. “Well, peanut butter. You can have a big fat hot cup of steaming peanut butter.”

  My mom smiles, which kills me, because I can’t resist it, and everything I thought I might say about the stack of unpaid bills kind of flies out the window. Things will be fixed now. Things will be okay, like always.

  We can beep and whir again.

  Mom gets up and walks to the red coffeemaker. Coffee is my mother’s drug. That and cigarettes, no matter how much Bonita and Cake and I tell her they’re disgusting and deadly. When I was little, I used to wake up at the crack of dawn, ready to play with her, just her, before she’d drag me to the daycare, and I always had to wait until she had her first cup of coffee and her first cigarette. It was agony waiting for that stupid machine to glug out a cup while my hands itched with Legos or pick-up sticks.

  She heaves a great sigh. “Shit,” she says. “Baby! I better get my ass in gear, huh?” She’s standing at the sink, trying to turn on the faucet, but nothing is coming out. “The water’s still crappy? I was hoping that was just a bad dream.” She nods to the faucet.

  “Pacheco isn’t returning my calls,” I say. Mr. Pacheco is our landlord and not a very nice one.

  She murmurs, “I guess I’ll have to deal with that today, too.”

  I’m silent. Is she talking about the bills? Maybe I should—

  Mom holds out her arms. “Come here, baby. Here. Come to me.”

  I run so fast I almost slip on the threadbare wool rug on the floor and I go flying against her, my face landing just under her collarbone. Her lips graze the top of my head.

  Mom trembles. Her shirt’s damp, like she’s been sweating. She must need a cigarette. “I’m sorry,” she whispers into my hair. “I don’t know what happened. What a headache. Bonita leaving, the daycare closing. I just…it was a lot all at once, and I guess I stressed. Did you even have any dinner last night?”

  I had a pack of lime Jell-O, and my stomach is screaming for food, but I don’t tell her this. I just keep nuzzling her.

  My mother pulls away and laughs. “Grace,” she says. Hearing my real name makes me cringe. “Gracie, that pajama top doesn’t quite fit you anymore, baby doll.”

  I pull defensively at the hem of the T-shirt and cross my arms over my chest.

  My mom sighs. I know what’s coming, so I prepare my I’m bored face.

  “Tiger,” she says firmly. “You’re a beautiful girl. I was just teasing, which I shouldn’t have done. You should never hide you. You’re growing into something wondrous. Don’t be ashamed.”

  Wondrous. She and Bonita are crazy for the affirmation talk. Cake likes to say their mission in life is to Build a Better Girl Than They Were. “You know,” she said once, “their moms probably put them on diets of cottage cheese before prom and told them to keep their legs closed around boys.”

  I roll my eyes and groan. “You have to tell me those things,” I answer. “You’re my mom. It’s in your job description.”

  Her face softens and I feel guilty. Once I overheard her say to Bonita, “I try to tell Tiger all the things I never got to hear, you know?”

  And I always want to know, what didn’t she get to hear? Because she’s tight-lipped about her early, non-Mom, kidlike days. Her parents died when she was in college, and she doesn’t like to talk about them.

  My mother rummages around in the cabinets and somehow, somewhere, finds a lone can of Coke, even though I scoured the cabinets last night for spare eats. She takes a long, grateful sip and then wipes her mouth. She fishes in her purse for a cigarette.

  “Go get dressed, Tiger. I’ll drop you at school and then I’ve got a lot of things to do. Today is going to be one hell of a day, I promise. Food, Pacheco, the works. I’ll make up for being out of it, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Mom heads out in the backyard to smoke and I hit my bedroom, where I frantically try to find something suitable in my closet of mostly unsuitable clothing. My mother thinks finding clothes in boxes on the side of the road is creative and fun and interesting and environmentally conscious (“One person’s trash is another person’s treasure!”) and not
actually a by-product of our thin finances, but sometimes I wish I went to school dressed like any other girl, in leggings and a tee, maybe, with cute strappy sandals to highlight pink-polished toenails. Instead, I mostly look like a creature time forgot, dressed in old clothes that look like, well, old clothes.

  I drag on a skirt and a faded T-shirt and jam a ball cap on my head, because the water in the shower is starting to look suspicious, too, so a shower is out of the question. I brush my teeth like a demon in the bathroom and splash water on my face.

  Then, like I always do, I allow myself a minimum of three seconds to wonder: Who the hell is that? Where did she come from?

  Because the dark and straight hair is nothing like my mother’s short, light mop. My freckles look like scattered dirt next to her creamy, blemish-free face.

  So much of me is from The Person Who Shall Not Be Named. So much of me is unknown.

  But here I am, and for now I need to get my mother in gear, get to school, make it through zero period and the little five-day-a-week shit-show I like to call “The Horror of Lupe Hidalgo,” which, if I survive, leads to Bio, and to Kai Henderson, the very thought of whom makes my heart start to pound like a stupid, lovesick drum, and who is one of the things I need to talk to my mother about.