Excerpt from Pet by Akwaeke Emezi, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Why can't they just tell me? Jam complained to her best friend, Redemption, as they left the school. Her hands were a blur as she signed, and Redemption smiled at her annoyance. It was the last day of classes before summer break, and while he was excited to do nothing for the next several weeks except train, Jam was—as always—on some hunt for information.

"You're giving yourself homework," he pointed out.

Aren't you curious? she replied. Who the old angels were, if they weren't human?

"If they were even real, you mean." Redemption adjusted the strap of his backpack. "You know that's what a lot of religion was, right? Just made-up things used to scare people so they could control us better."

Jam frowned. Maybe, she said, but I still wanna know.

Redemption threw an arm around her. "And you wouldn't be you if you didn't," he laughed. "I gotta go pick up the lil bro from his class and walk him home, but let me know what you find out, okay?"

Okay. She hugged him goodbye. Give Moss a kiss for me.

He scoffed. "I'll try, but that boy thinks he grown now."

Too grown for kisses??

"That's what I said." Redemption threw up his hands as he headed off. "Talk soon, love you!"

Love you! Jam waved goodbye and watched him break into a jog, his body moving with an easy grace, then she went to the library to look up pictures of angels.

The librarian was a tall, dark-skinned man who whizzed around the marble floors in his wheelchair. His name was Ube, and Jam had known him since she was a toddler pawing through picture books. She loved being in the library, the almost sacred silence you could find there, the way it felt like another home. Ube smiled at her when she walked in, and Jam took an index card from his counter, writing her question about angels down on it. She slid it over to Ube, and he grunted as he read it, nodding his head, then he wrote some reference numbers underneath her question and slid the card back to her. They didn't need to talk, which was perfect.

It took her fifteen minutes to find the old pictures, printed on thin, flaky paper and nestled between heavy book covers. Even though Ube hadn't said she should, Jam considered pulling on the white gloves nestled in the reading desk drawers to use in looking through the books, they seemed that old. But they weren't in the protected section, so she figured it was fine to run her bare fingers over the smooth and fragile paper. The room she was in was quiet, with large windows vaulting up the walls and domed skylights pouring in late-­afternoon sun. Jam sat for a few minutes with her fingers on the images, staring down, turning a page and staring at the next one. They were strong and confusing pictures. Eventually she closed and stacked the books, then lugged them to the checkout counter.

Ube raised a thick black eyebrow at her. "All of these?" he asked. His voice sounded unreal, deep and velvet, something that should live only in a radio because it didn't make sense outside in normal air.

Jam nodded.

"You gotta be careful with them, you know? They're mad old."

She nodded again, and Ube looked at her for a moment, then smiled, shaking his head.

"You right, you a careful girl. Always seen it." He scanned the books as he spoke. "You treat the books gentle, like they flowers or something."

She blushed.

"Don't be shy about it, now. Books are important." He stamped them for her. "You need a bag, baby?"

Jam shook her head.

"All right, now. Two weeks, remember?"

She hefted the books onto her hip, nodded, and left. They were a weight straining against her arm until she got home, and she took them straight to her mother's studio. Jam's mother had been born when there were monsters, and Jam's grandmother had come from the islands, a woman entirely too gentle for that time. It had hurt her too much to be alive then, hurt even more to give birth to Jam's mother, whose existence was the result of a monster's monstering. This grandmother had died soon after the birth, but not before naming Jam's mother Bitter. No one had argued with the dying woman.

Excerpted from Pet by Akwaeke Emezi. Copyright © 2019 by Akwaeke Emezi. Excerpted by permission of Make Me a World. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.