The Ward (45 page)

Authors: Jordana Frankel

BOOK: The Ward

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I don’t say a word, though my jaw drops a little I’m sure.

Derek comes up behind me. I feel one of his hands on my shoulder, the other at the nape of my neck. “Look down,” he says into my ear, and I do.

And I stop breathing.

Littered in front of the door to the left—Benny’s doorstep . . .

Pennies
. Dozens. A hundred, maybe. Their copper catches the light perfectly, and it’s almost as though we’ve got a Milky Way’s worth of tiny suns shining up from Benny’s worn-out welcome mat. I laugh, and wipe my nose with my sleeve. They’re too pretty, and my heart starts to hurt.

I can’t believe that they mean what I think they mean. “I don’t get it. . . .” I whisper.

“Renata.” Benny laughs lightly, resting his hand on my other shoulder, squeezing it. “The people are not dumb. They saw the Blues removing our packages, and they saw that nothing was replaced. Rumor counts for a lot in this city, you should know that. Word of the infamous Red Rider and a team of dragsters dropping off the cure on sickhouse rooftops is newsworthy on any day.”

This is too much. . . .

“A hundred thank-yous, Ren. A hundred people wishing you luck.”

I choke on the last word
—luck
. Aven should be here right now. “Will I need it this time? To find her?” I ask, thinking no one but myself can hear.

Callum turns me around to face him. His blues are bluer than ever. “Never,” he answers. “You have us—all of us. We’re going to find her.”

Jones nods, along with Derek and Terrence and Benny, and I choke again, this time on the mixed ball of feelings rolling around inside me. Looking down at the galaxy of copper stars lighting up the doorstep, I start to get that fullness in my chest I had at the hospital, like my body simply don’t have enough room in it. There’s too much to feel.
They have their Avens back
.

And all of a sudden I’m able to do it . . . hold in my head all the numbers, even the ones that didn’t get the cure. Aven’s there, and it hurts, but I don’t dam myself off from it this time.

We’ll find her. We have to.

In the morning sky, the sun—the real sun—is its own shade of copper. Getting ready to shine for other people. Share its warmth across the globe.

For now, all I can do is watch it rise for everyone else. For the hundred others at my feet. ’Cause I know I’ll find my own again.

AUTHOR’S NOTES

T
here are a few things I’d like to bring to the reader’s attention in the hope that by separating fact from fiction we might honor the historical truths in this novel, which were both brutal and unprecedented.

In order to do this, what follows will look a lot like a history lesson.

If you grew up in the tri-state area, chances are you’ve heard of the Lenni Lenape. They were a peace-loving people who once inhabited much of the mid-Atlantic region, including New York and New Jersey, and were known by other Algonquin tribes for their diplomatic ability to settle disputes.

When the Dutch arrived in the early 1600s seeking to profit off the land’s many resources, the two cultures clashed; the concepts of profit and property were as foreign to the Lenape as the Europeans themselves.

In 1645, a man named Willem Kieft (sound familiar?) became the director, aka governor, of the region soon to be called New York City. Shortly after taking the position, Willem Kieft tried imposing taxes on the nearby native populations. The tribes resisted.

Kieft, angered by their refusal, launched a massacre.

That massacre, later known as Kieft’s War, ultimately got him fired from his position as director. Not only were most of the settlers against the movement, but the Dutch West India Company (which had chosen him as director) had never given him permission to attack.

It’s important to make clear here that Willem Kieft—the man who inspired my villain—started a war not because he believed the Indians would “resurrect,” but because they would not submit to colonization and taxation by foreigners. Kieft was not seeking a miraculous water source with healing capabilities. He wanted money and power, and upon this attack, no Lenape or any other tribesmen were inexplicably brought back to life. Though highly skilled warriors, there were hundreds of deaths, and each of them was final.

The Tètai—the guardians of the spring in the novel—are the product of my own imagination. The design for their tattoos, however, was adapted from images in the controversial Walam Olum—a historical narrative of the Lenape published in the 1830s by antiquarian Constantine Rafinesque. The document’s authenticity, however, has never been verified.

Lastly, though the Minetta Brook of
The Ward
is the stuff of fancy, a real two-mile-long Minetta Brook actually did run through Manhattan, emptying out into the Hudson River. You can even find Minetta Street on a current map of New York City. It’s a lovely, narrow little road in the West Village that the stream once traversed during its heyday.

The Minetta Brook may or may not still exist today, hidden deep beneath the city’s foundation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PHOTO BY JOSHUA SPAFFORD

JORDANA FRANKEL
is a creative-writing instructor at Writopia Lab and a former marketing associate at the Book Report Network. She received her BA from Goucher College and an MFA in creative writing from Hollins University. She currently lives in New York City.
The Ward
is her first novel. You can visit her online at www.jordanafrankel.com.

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CREDITS

Cover design by ERIN FITZSIMMONS

Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

T
HE WARD
. Copyright © 2013 by Jordana Frankel. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Frankel, Jordana.

The ward / Jordana Frankel.—First edition.

pages cm

Summary: “Set in a futuristic Manhattan after a catastrophic flood called the Wash Out, sixteen-year-old Ren must race against a conspiracy to find freshwater springs and a cure for the deadly disease that has stricken her sister and many others in the Ward.”—Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-06-209534-3

EPub Edition March 2013 ISBN 9780062095367

[1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Virus diseases—Fiction. 3. Sisters—Fiction. 4. Water supply—Fiction. 5. Science fiction.] I. Title.