Excerpt from Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Are you mad?" Waldemar asks, kicking a little rock across the road.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I didn't sleep well. I'm all testy. My brain is like a bug bite I scratched bloody. Sorry," I say again.

Waldemar puts his arm around my shoulder, plucks some berries from the bush as we walk past. He puts one up his nose and hands me the rest.

"Thanks," I tell him, but I don't swallow any berries. I don't want to be poisoned anymore. I want to be awake and ready to jump and dive down into the hole when it opens up for me. I don't want to be sleepy and miss my chance, in case the hole is only open for a second. And I want to be on my toes for when I kill Jarek Jaskolka. Waldemar puts another berry up his nose. I feel I have more courage than Waldemar now. He seems like the sad lost child the woman had said he'd looked like the day before. I let the poison berries in my hand drop to the ground. When we reach the square, I turn in the direction of the cemetery. Waldemar turns to the road that leads to school. We stop and look at each other.

"Are you really doing it?" Waldemar asks.

"It's worth a try," I shrug. I am just pretending to be easygoing. Inside, I am determined.

"I'll come with you," Waldemar says. "I mean that I'll walk to Jarek Jaskolka's house with you, just to see what happens. If he is really your person, and you kill him and the hole opens up, maybe I can jump through with you."

Somehow I don't believe what Waldemar is saying. I feel like he's just giving an excuse to follow me. I worry that he might sabotage my plans. But then I look into his eyes. No. He won't get in my way. He is my brother. He will never keep me from being happy.

So I allow Waldemar to follow me on the road to the cemetery. We are quiet as we walk. I don't ask what he's thinking. I don't want to know. When we get to Jarek Jaskolka's house, we stand and watch the dark, curtained windows for a while. A meadlowlark comes and taps its beak on the glass and hovers. Then another comes and flies right into the glass and breaks its neck. Its body falls to the ground. The first meadlowlark flies away. This seems like a good omen.

The sun comes out from behind a cloud. The shadows of my body and Waldemar's body lie out in front of us like holes in the ground. I carefully lay my satchel down and put my arms around my brother.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I have to go in there alone. You know the hole will only be big enough for one. You know that, right?" I ask.

Waldemar nods. All our lives, we've understood each other. Even when we are angry, there is too much love to pretend to think that what we know to be true is only a made-up story. That's the cruel way of all those silly people: they tell you that what you believe is just some silly story. That's why I hate it here. Everybody thinks that I am crazy. I let go of Waldemar and pick up my satchel and start up the big broken concrete slabs to the door of Jarek Jaskolka's house.

"Will you come back for me?" my sweet brother asks. There are tears in his eyes. He looks so small and lost and sad from where I stand up high above him. I tell him I wish I could stay with him, but not here, not on Earth. Earth is the wrong place for me, always was and will be until the day I die.

"Just try, if you can, to send me a letter from the place. And if there's some way you can come back, come get me."

"Okay, Waldemar. I'll try," I say, but I will never come back. Even if I can come back, I won't. I drop my satchel down into the dirt below. The books land hard like the sound of "good-bye." I hold my arms behind my back, and with the butcher knife in one hand, the jar of poison jam in the other, I kick on Jarek Jaskolka's door. Waldemar cries and hides against the wall of the house, holding the dead meadlowlark in his hands. He pinches his eyes closed.

Excerpted from Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh. Copyright © 2017 by Ottessa Moshfegh. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.