Ellie Engle Saves Herself, page 1
Copyright © 2023 by Leah Johnson
All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 77 West 66th Street, New York, New York 10023.
First Edition, May 2023
Designed by Joann Hill
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Johnson, Leah (Young adult author), author.
Title: Ellie Engle saves herself / Leah Johnson.
Description: Los Angeles ; New York : Disney-Hyperion, 2023. • Audience: Ages 8–12. • Audience: Grades 4–6. • Summary: As twelve-year-old Ellie Engle navigates seventh grade and her changing relationship with her best friend, a freak accident occurs and gives Ellie the ability to bring things back to life through touch.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022023052 • ISBN 9781368085557 (hardcover) • ISBN 9781368090186 (trade paperback) • ISBN 9781368092517 (ebk)
Subjects: CYAC: Ability—Fiction. • African Americans—Fiction. • Best friends—Fiction. • Friendship—Fiction. • LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.J6286 El 2023 • DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022023052
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
About’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For the kid who needed a hero so badly that they became one.
For the kid who’s still clutching their cape, too afraid to put it on.
This book is for you.
A hero isn’t the one who always wins.
It’s the one who always tries.
—Miles Morales
If you want to be a hero
first you need a great origin story.
Wonder Woman is from an island of women warriors who rule with fairness and fierceness—and to top it all off, she’s the daughter of a Greek god. Green Lantern got his powers from an alien who saw that his heart was so pure that he’d never use them for evil instead of good. Black Panther inherited his abilities from a long line of supers, a family of rulers in the most technologically advanced country in the world. Whether you’re a hero at birth or become one later in life, one thing is for certain: You gotta be extraordinary.
But real life isn’t anything like comic books, because nothing in this town is extraordinary. Especially not me.
“New comic?” Abby hikes her duffel bag higher on her shoulder and falls into step next to me. I always meet her at her gym after Sunday-morning gymnastic practices. One, because I love hanging out with my best friend. But two, because it’s not like I have anything else to do.
My mom is working, like she does most weekends, and the house was too quiet and empty for me. So I grabbed a couple of my comic books and headed down to the Rising Phoenix Gymnastics Center to sit on the bench out front and wait for Abby to get done doing the impossible flips and tricks that sent her crashing into me in the first place.
We met in kindergarten, at recess. The Ortegas had just moved in next door, but we’d never spoken. And Abby and I weren’t in the same class, so I’d never seen her before. Then one day she was showing off on the playground, trying to remind everyone that she is the kind of nature-defying human that you can barely believe exists until you see her flying through the air. She overdid it on her back tuck, and I underdid it on my attempt to move out of the way. We’ve been stuck together ever since.
“Yeah, the new Nubia,” I say now, looking down at the cover with a smile. I love all comic books, but Nubia is special. There aren’t many heroes out there who look like me, and definitely not ones who have more strength than freaking Superman. I slip it into my backpack so I don’t mess it up with my sweaty fingers. “You want to go to the pool today? Last chance before you-know-what.”
“Ugh, I can’t. Mommy is taking me to get my nails done. You know how she is—wants to do some back-to-school bonding or whatever.” Abby’s wearing a pair of jean shorts over her leotard, which makes her brown legs look longer than they are. She starts fiddling with her slicked-back bun until her dark brown hair hangs around her shoulders. “Sleepover tonight, though?”
“Obviously.”
I try not to smile too hard at the thought of our annual back-to-school sleepover. I have some nervous flutters about starting at a new school tomorrow, for sure, but I can’t even focus on that right now. All I can focus on is knowing that I’ll get to stay up giggling and complaining and talking about schedules with Abby. We haven’t gotten to spend as much time together since her training schedule picked up this summer, and I miss it. I miss her.
“Obviously.” She does a bad imitation of my voice, and I laugh. “Well, okay, Captain Obvious. Oh my god, I almost forgot! You’ll never believe what Bethany Thomas did today.”
She goes on and on about her rival from her team landing a trick Abby can’t do yet, and I half pay attention to her, and half look at everybody around us.
We walk past the familiar strip of businesses on Main. I wave at Mr. Walker, who’s sweeping the sidewalk in front of his bakery, Patty’s Cakes, wearing winter gloves like he always does even though it’s summer. Miss French is trying (and failing) to get her mean dog, Goon, to do a trick in the fenced-in dog park next door for the five hundredth time in as many days. Maisie and Marley Keilor are posing and taking pictures against the white brick wall beside the wedding-dress boutique to post on Instagram, part of their endless campaign to become twinfluencers.
We went to sleepaway camp with Maisie and Marley last year, and all four of us shared a bunk, so I know them. But they only say, “Hi, Abby!” in unison as we walk by, like I’m not even there. It used to bother me, people noticing Abby and not me, but not anymore. I like how calm it is in her shadow. There’s no pressure to be and do anything except what I want to be and do. This is just how it is.
When things are predictable, my mom says, “I could set my watch by it.” And I kind of do set my nonexistent watch by how reliable the people in this town and the things they do are. I like how much I can rely on this place to be overwhelmingly, exceedingly normal. It makes me feel less like a stranger in my own skin. Makes me feel less like there’s something wrong with the fact that I’m just…what I am.
Unlike Abby, I like my life the way it is. Most of the time.
“I don’t understand why I can’t just, like, stop growing,” she groans. She runs her hands over her sides and sighs. “Coach Jillian says if I get much taller, I can pretty much kiss my dreams of vaulting in the Junior Nationals next year good-bye.”
I want to tell her that she’s pretty much perfect as she is. That she’s crazy-powerful at any height, and unfairly beautiful, whether she’s got crust in her eyes from just waking up or she’s flying through the air in a bedazzled swimsuit. Nothing could change that, not even the extra inch and a half of height she picked up over the summer. But I keep my mouth shut. Abby wants Big Things from her life. And what Abby wants, she gets. I really love that about her.
Instead, I say, “If anyone could tell their body to stop growing, and their body actually listened, it would be you.”
“Love you forever, bestie,” she says, just like always.
I don’t even have to think about my answer before it’s coming out of my mouth, I’ve said it so many times. “Forever and two days.”
She wraps an arm around my shoulder and smiles her huge smile, the one I usually only see when she sticks the landing on a dismount in competition. When I said I’m not extraordinary before, I guess I lied a little bit. When my best friend looks at me like that—like she only looks when she’s doing the thing she loves most in the world—I can make myself believe I’m a little spectacular.
’Cause I’d have to be to earn that smile from Abby Ortega.
The inside of my head isn’t a bad place to be
which is probably why I spend so much time there.
I know that sounds weird, but whatever. According to Abby, I am a little weird. After all, what kind of twelve-year-old would rather read in her room than do, I don’t know, anything else? I seem to be the only one at my school who does. Or, at least I was at our old school. Maybe things will be different at the junior high. I’m not holding my breath, though.
The thing is, I like my brain. Up there, I can dream up stories and symphonies and whatever else I want that doesn’t exist in P
Besides, Abby likes to talk. And she likes to show off. She likes to make bold outfit choices and Big Plans, and I think her bigness is enough for the both of us. As long as I get to be the first person she texts when she lands a new stunt in gymnastics, and who she spills her secrets to in passed notes during classes, and the one who gets to see her laugh so hard she snorts while watching Willa Moon movies, I feel big, too. Like her friendship makes me stronger just by association.
Back when my mom worked fewer hours and Abby came over to our house (because we had adult supervision—her mom is really strict about adult supervision), she used to say, “Abby has too much fire for her own good.” I didn’t really know what she meant, but it didn’t matter much. Abby’s fire has kept me warm for a long time, so it must be a good thing.
I think about what Abby must be planning to wear for the first day as I fold my outfit and put it in my small tote bag. I’ll be in my usual: a T-shirt, jeans, and a big old cardigan in case it gets cold in the classroom. I slip my issue of Nubia into my backpack. My heart starts beating a little faster because I know it’s almost time to see Abby again.
I walk downstairs and check the fridge for any notes from Mom. She could text me, but she likes the old-school way better. Her curly handwriting loops across the back of the envelope that’s held on to the fridge with an old Yardley and Sons Heating and Cooling magnet.
Make sure to lock up and feed Burt. Don’t forget to grab your lunchbox from the fridge. Love you, Belly Baby!
I take the paper and fold it before stuffing it in my back pocket. Ugh. My eyes feel hot all of a sudden like I’m about to cry, so I run my hands over my face as if I can scrub all the emotion off it. I know Mom works to take care of me and that’s why she’s gone so much. I know we never see each other because she loves me so much. I just have to remember that.
I love her, too, so I won’t cry. I need to be strong so she can do what she needs to do without having to worry about me.
I sprinkle some fish food into Burt the Betta Fish’s bowl on the counter and tell him good night as he swims to the surface to pick at the food I just dropped. I grab my lunchbox—the plain black one that my dad used to carry to work when he lived in Plainsboro—check my pocket for my keys and my phone, and leave my too-lonely house behind.
The Ortegas live next door, but it might as well be another world.
First of all, there are way more people here than at my house. It’s honestly hard to keep track of everyone coming and going. There’s Monty, Abby’s big brother, who’s gonna be a senior this year. He spends all his time listening to his music extra loud, trying to sneak his girlfriend into the house when Mr. and Mrs. Ortega aren’t paying attention, and drawing pictures he won’t let anyone see. And then there’s Iz and Dani, her two little sisters, who love to play pranks on each other (and like it even more if the prank makes the other one cry). Last year, Abby’s mom had a baby—Manny, who might be the cutest human being on the planet, even though his cries sound like a tornado siren and his diapers are disaster zones. And then there’s Mr. and Mrs. Ortega, who are always cooking something delicious or making embarrassing puns (that I secretly love) or kissing like their lives depend on it.
It makes me sad sometimes how much their house reminds me of the way things used to be at mine, but mostly I’m just happy to be a part of it. Even when the sound of two pairs of feet thundering down the hallway outside Abby’s bedroom for the hundredth time in the past five minutes is so loud, it rattles the walls a little.
“You two, I swear if you don’t cut it out, I’m gonna scream!” Abby pokes her head out the door to yell at her sisters. Dani and Iz have been racing each other up and down the carpeted hallway over and over again, trying to decide who’s the fastest between them. Sometimes Abby gets squashed in the sandwich of her brothers and sisters and all their commotion. Monty and his music, the twins and their pranks, the baby and his crying. I’m surprised Abby manages to keep her hair looking so good all the time, because I’m pretty sure I’d be pulling mine out. I love the Ortegas, but they’re a lot to handle.
When the twins don’t stop racing each other, Abby yells for her dad. “Daddy, can you please tell these two monsters to cut it out? Me and Ellie need our beauty rest for our first day tomorrow!”
I hear his voice in the hallway before I see him. When his face appears in the doorway, he’s got a giggling Dani and Iz under each arm and that big smile he always has on his face.
“You don’t need beauty rest, mami.” He leans in and kisses Abby on her forehead. “You get any more beautiful, and I’m gonna have to start scaring boys away from our front yard.”
Abby rolls her eyes, but I can tell she’s happy. “Us girls can take care of ourselves, Daddy.”
“Of course you can. But where’s the fun in that for me?” He winks at both of us and laughs. “Night, you two. See you in the morning!”
When he leaves, Abby shuts the door and climbs back onto the bed with a sigh. The two of us sit cross-legged on her bedspread, facing each other. We only have about an hour before we need to go to sleep since we have to be up bright and early for school in the morning, so we’re doing the same thing we’ve done for every back-to-school sleepover for the past six years: I’m half reading a comic book while pretending to understand anything Abby’s saying about the celebrities she’s freaking out over.
“Isn’t she just so chic? I’m thinking about growing my hair out long. Like this.” Abby points to a picture of Willa Moon on the cover of the most recent issue of Teen Vogue. Willa’s hair is white-blond and reaches all the way down to her butt, even in the high ponytail she’s wearing. “What do you think?”
“I think Willa Moon should start going by DeeDee the Detective again. That was her best work.” I smirk.
Before Willa was a big-time pop star, she had a TV show where she played a kid detective who sang and danced to figure out the clues to her cases. It was weird, but I kind of liked it. When I was eight.
Now she’s more famous than Jojo Siwa with more money than Taylor Swift. She even has a reality show about her life in Malibu with her two yippy little dogs, Monkey and Martian, which everyone—from my classmates to my poppy (well, before he died)—watches. It’s pretty intense.
Abby loves the idea of being famous. She loves reading about the glamour and the attention (and especially all the drama). Her collection of glossy magazines is nearly as big as my collection of comic books. I guess I understand why she cares so much. I mean, the life of a world-famous celebrity feels like a dream—too shiny and perfect to be real. When I was younger, I thought about what it might be like to be a different kind of person, one who loved having the whole world know my name, who would think it was fun to go to fancy parties and dinners and hang out with beautiful, worldly people.
But I’m not cut out for that stuff. Not the parties or the gowns or the paparazzi. Honestly, all that would probably make me wanna shrink down to the size of a meatball and roll myself out the door just like that old camp song. Besides, I always came back to the same thing, that my life was good as it is. That there was no world better than one where I get to live next door to the Ortegas, and dance in the living room with my mom, and go to Wrigley’s to read comic books with my poppy.
And then my dad left, and Poppy passed away, and I thought about it again. All the time. Abby would flip through her magazines, and I’d look at the posed pictures of shiny, polished celebrities getting caught off guard by paparazzi, and wonder what it would be like to have all the money in the world. Not what it would be like to wear diamonds and super-pointy high heels, but to never have to worry about whether the coupons in the drawer were expired. Or if your mom was gonna have to work for twelve hours straight to pay the bills again. It felt like a fair trade: You might lose your privacy, but at least you could take care of the people you loved most in the world.
Abby reaches behind her, pulls out the puffy pillow she’s lying on, and brings it down on my head with a soft thunk. She scrambles out of the bed to avoid my retaliation and giggles, “That’s what you get for not having better opinions on my hairstyles!”
I dive after her with a pillow of my own, and now Iz and Dani aren’t the only ones in the house causing a ruckus. I get a solid hit in with my pillow, and Abby holds a hand up to her forehead and pretends to swoon like a woman from one of those old black-and-white movies. Forget gymnastics; Abby should be an actress, she’s so dramatic sometimes.
