I Am the Swarm - Softcover

Chewins, Hayley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593623886 ISBN 13: 9780593623886

Verlag: Penguin Young Readers Group, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

A propulsive YA novel in verse that blends the contemporary magic of Jandy Nelson with the simmering feminist rage of Laurie Halse Anderson’s Shout

As far back as anyone can remember, the women of the Strand family have been magical.

Their gifts manifest when they each turn fifteen, always in different ways. But Nell Strand knows that her family's magic is a curse. Her mother’s age changes every day; she's often too young to be the mother Nell needs. Her older sister bleeds music and will do anything to release the songs inside her. Nell sees the way magic rips her family apart again and again. 

When Nell’s own magic arrives in the form of ladybugs alighting on the keys of her beloved piano, the first thing she feels is joy. The ladybugs are a piece of her, a harmless and delicate manifestation of her creativity. But soon enough, the rest come. Thick-shelled glossy beetles that creep along her collarbone when her piano teacher stares at her. Soft gray moths that appear and die alongside a rush of disappointment. Worst of all are the wasps. It doesn’t matter how deep she buries her rage, the wasps always come. Nell will have to decide just how much of herself she’s willing to lock away to stop them—or if she can find the strength to feel, no matter the consequences.

An intense, emotional read simmering with rage and magic, I Am the Swarm is a captivating YA novel in verse that beautifully speaks to the complicated nature of growing up as a girl.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Hayley Chewins is the critically acclaimed author of The Turnaway Girls and The Sisters of Straygarden Place. She grew up in Cape Town, and now lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, with her husband and daughter. She is the singer and songwriter for EIGHT THOUSAND BIRDS. You can visit her at HayleyChewins.com.

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PART ONE
SEVENTEEN DAYS BEFORE THE WASPS
I get my magic on a Saturday.
Three days after I turn fifteen.
Like it nearly forgot about me.
Like I almost got free.
My fifteenth birthday arrives quietly,
like someone
opening a window
in a house
down the street.
I keep watching for the magic.
Watch myself from the inside. Find nothing.
In the afternoon,
Ouma comes over for tea,
her Yorkie, Hildegarde,
tucked under her arm.
The magic is already hours late,
and no one is mentioning that it’s late,
not Ouma, who sits down
and immediately starts feeding a lemon cream
to Hildegarde, and not Mamma,
who is cutting chocolate cake,
sucking icing off her finger.
We sit in the cool dining room,
the three of us, and the fact that Mora isn’t there
makes the house feel like one big echo.
The table is too wide. The chairs are too far apart.
Then Mamma’s phone rings.
Mamma is twenty-­nine today,
wearing bright-­green heels
and dangly earrings. Thin as an actress.
She comes back. Still holding the knife.
“Sorry, baby, I have to go.” She doesn’t explain.
Doesn’t say, “Your sister needs me.”
If she said it. If she actually said the words.
I would be able to ask questions.
I would be able to say:
“Do you really think that I don’t need you?”
Ouma and I,
we listen to Mamma
gathering her things.
Walking around,
whispering
that she can’t find her keys.
Until the door slams.

When Mamma’s gone,
Ouma says,
“Has everything been
all right at home, Nell?”
Ouma’s English is formal,
slowly and carefully pronounced.
Her accent is like cream
floating on the surface of her words,
making all the consonants softer.
“Things have been okay.”
“She’s twenty-­eight now?”
“Twenty-­nine.”
I’ve been watching
Mamma change for so long
that I always know.

Ouma nods. “That’s better. That’s—­”
“She’s been sixteen a lot, though.”
“I suppose it’s understandable.”
I cut myself a piece of cake. “She forgot to make the tea.”
“Nell,” says Ouma.
“Your mamma.
She’s trying very hard.”

Mamma’s magic:
her age is always changing.
She’s never younger than fifteen, the age the magic found her.
And she’s never older than her actual age.
In between fifteen and forty-­two,
there is a staircase.
The steps
are all
different heights.
You can’t walk up or down
without tripping.

Ouma watches me
make two cups of tea,
but I can see
her mind is elsewhere.
I can see
she’s thinking about
Mora’s empty room.

Long after Ouma goes home,
I hear Mamma’s car singing up the road.
“How was she?” I ask
when she steps through the door.
“Nell, I can’t talk now.”
In the light of the entrance, she’s younger,
leaning against the doorframe as she kicks off her shoes.
She’s fifteen.
She has been
fifteen
too many times to count.
I will only ever turn fifteen once.

Go to my room. Sit at the piano.
But my fingers won’t move.
Even before I’ve started to play.
I’ve already given up.

I lie on my bed and I think about the magic.
About how it’s going to come. How I can’t stop it.
All the women in my family have some kind of magic.
It’s the kind that goes crooked through you,
growing at a slant, like trees bowing to the icy Atlantic wind
that shrieks over Cape Town.
Ouma says it’s always been this way. Her mother, her mother’s mother.
The magic is passed down the line, a cursed family heirloom that nobody wants.
I’ve never wanted it. But that has never mattered.
No matter what I want. I’m still going to get it.
I can’t say this to anyone, though.
I never talk to Dad
about magic,
and Ouma is gone now,
and Mamma is fifteen tonight,
doesn’t want to talk.

One daughter’s magic
is already too much to carry.

The next evening, we visit Mora at the clinic,
even though Mamma is so young she could be Mora’s twin.
Dad never comes with us.
Somehow, every time we plan on going, he manages to have a phone call that can’t wait.
Meeting. Crisis. Unhappy client.
Tonight, he’s pacing up and down the pathway that leads to the garage,
his phone lighting the side of his face. Half shadow. Half ghost.
We brush past him, but he doesn’t notice.
Mamma stops on the path and watches him not seeing her.
She squeezes his arm softly to say goodbye, so she doesn’t interrupt his conversation.
She’s sixteen, and Dad is his unchanging forty-­four, and she looks small beside him,
and her eyes speak quietly about all the things she wants to ask for but can’t mention.
He raises his eyebrows. She raises her eyebrows back.
Then she walks to the car, and I follow her.
I never try to talk to Dad when he’s on the phone. I already know. He’s unreachable.

We sit in the visitors’ room,
waiting for Mora to appear.
Then she’s there,
in the narrow doorway,
her sleeves tugged down
over her hands,
her hair greasy at the roots.
“Mori,” Mamma says, patting the chair beside her,
but Mora leaves space between them.
I can see Mamma is trying not to look hurt,
but when she’s this young
everything shows up on her face
like light reflecting off still water.
“How’s it going?” Mamma asks,
reaching for Mora across the empty space, not touching her.
Mora shrugs. She shoves her sleeves up
and I see the scars that have Jackson Pollocked her forearms.
I know they go all the way up to her shoulders,
slipping across her collarbones. Some of the scars are thick as fingers,
shiny as fish scales. There are fresh scabs, too, reddish, rough as gravel.
“Why do you keep coming?” she barks.
And it takes me a second to realize she’s talking to me.
“Nell,” she says. “What are you doing here?”
“She’s your sister,” says Mamma.
“I don’t want her here,” says Mora.
“Mora—­”
“I don’t want her here.”
That’s when Mora starts to scream.
She leans forwards in her chair and screams in my face,
scratching at her scarred arms.
A line of blood
trickles down towards her right wrist,
and I can hear it.
It’s soft, but it’s still there:
the music trapped inside.
Right there, in the waiting room,
delicate harmonies waver,
humming like a hall of old fridges.
“I think we should go,” says Mamma.
Looks at me. Like I did something wrong.

Mora got her magic
the second she turned fifteen
because that’s what she’s like:
everything is drawn to her quicker.
She was fifteen.
I was almost fourteen.
The first time I heard it.
She was sitting in the dripping garden,
cross-­legged on the orange bricks,
the last of October’s rain darkening the grout,
deepening the color of the grass.
It was chilly. She shivered as she said,
“Nell. Listen to this.”
She cut into her clean white forearm with a razor blade,
a silver thing turning light into violence.
“Listen,” she said again.
There was music coming out of the cut.
Bright music. The reddest I had ever heard.
I put my ear close to the wound.
It crept into me. That...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Young Readers Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593623886
• ISBN 13: 9780593623886
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 337
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: VIKING; https://www.penguin.com/overview-vikingbooks/; ; Attn: Andrea T Sheridan 1745 BROADWAY; New York; NY; 10019; USA
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