Excerpt from We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Hi, Mama Letty. How are you feeling? Anything you need?"

"I need a lot of things," she said, crossing the room in light strides. "None of which yo ass can get." She stopped at one of the bookshelves and grabbed a small wooden box with a gold clasp from the top shelf. She didn't look at me as she ran a hand over the lid. Staring at the side of her face caused another splotchy memory to appear, as soft as a bubble blowing from a wand.

Christmas lights. Mama Letty's hair more black than gray. Her wrinkled brown fingers clutching a box like this one. Screams.

"What's in the box?" I asked.

She shot me an icy gaze. "Your mama raise you to be this nosy?"

I folded my arms over my chest. "Didn't realize it was a secret."

She snorted and left the room as quietly as she arrived. Her bedroom door slammed seconds later, and I slumped in the chair again. I had a nagging feeling that Dad's definition of a "trying time" wouldn't hold a candle to Mama Letty.

"Temporary," I whispered. "All of this … is temporary."

* * *

I spent the next two days unpacking and settling into the small, strange quiet of Bardell. In DC, my life was loud and expansive, full of Mom's domed planetarium lectures and Dad's jazz piano melodies padding every corner of our row house. The gridded streets of the city hummed with busy people, honking traffic, and pulsing energy, whereas the noises that comprised Mama Letty's home could be contained in a thimble. Crickets chirped all night. Mama Letty's coughs blended in with her groaning rocking chair. Mom sighed loudly from the den every fifteen minutes.

I was lonely. As an only child, I was used to finding ways to entertain myself. In DC, that usually meant going around the corner to Hikari's house to lounge by her backyard firepit. But in Bardell, there was nothing but me and my thoughts and a growing resentment toward Hikari and Kelsi I still couldn't name. My silence toward them finally broke when I texted them my class schedule the afternoon before the first day of school. They ridiculed my course load, like I knew they would.

Kelsi: 10th grade called, Hicktown High. They want their classes back.

Hikari: Only 3 APs???

Kelsi: you think Georgetown will still take you?

Hikari: Totally. It's not Avery's fault she had to change schools.

I thought about texting something snarky back. Something like, hey bitches, my grandmother is DYING. There were more important things to worry about than stupid AP classes. But I stayed silent because although they were annoying me, I understood why they cared so much.

COVID had taken a giant shit all over our grand high school plans. As starry-eyed freshmen, we imagined becoming officers in important clubs. We thought about the volunteer work that would push our college applications over the edge and made bets on who would get the highest PSAT score. Instead, what we got were clusterfucked virtual classes and half-hearted attempts at online extracurriculars. The experience ignited a fire that burned in the three of us equally to make the most out of senior year and beyond.

We had a plan. Three Georgetown acceptances, a triple room. Kelsi and Hikari were going pre-law, inspired after too many binges of How to Get Away with Murder. I was supposed to follow in my mother's footsteps and study the stars. But somewhere between the needle sinking into my lower lip and Kelsi's "We Should Just Be Friends" speech, my spark for academics—and Kelsi and Hikari—had extinguished.

There was a swift knock on my door, and Mom poked her head in. Her tight coils were covered in a gorgeous royal-blue headwrap. "Hey, Avery baby."

"Hey, Mom."

She swept into the room, ivory linen dress swirling around her ankles. "Love what you've done with the place," she said, and we laughed because there wasn't much that would improve the unremarkable room short of tearing it down and starting all over.

Excerpted from We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds. Copyright © 2022 by Jas Hammonds. Excerpted by permission of Roaring Brook Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.