When anti-protest brutality results in a life-changing injury for one of her friends, Bitter creates her most fearsome creature yet to seek revenge. There, she interacts with Miss Virtue, who runs the school her friend Blessing, who keeps Bitter’s hair cut short and the temporarily animate creatures Bitter creates from her own blood-streaked drawings. Surrounded on every side by escalating violence (“Everyone knew someone else who had died from something they didn’t have to die from”) and protests, Bitter “thought it was ridiculous that adults wanted young people to be the ones saving the world,” and stays within Eucalyptus’s walls, safe inside the protective bubble of her art. In this companion to National Book Award finalist Pet, Emezi introduces Bitter, a Black 17-year-old who attends private boarding art school Eucalyptus in the middle of Lucille, a city that’s on the brink of youth-led political change.
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