They come out from behind the alleys, seep through the floorboards, and latch onto the pipes. They crawl along the walls of the towers and peer inside for candy. And if they can’t find it, they will trick a Sun Bearer into joining the shadows and are rewarded for bringing one more person into the darkness.

Sun Bearers have to leave the house in pairs, get home before dark, and watch over their children carefully. When the Sun Bearers see relatives they used to know, people who are now shadows, they cry. They want to hold them in their arms, but instead they cross the street because they know shadows feel nothing.

The Kingdom of Heirloom is now the city of shadows. But some people still remember the days of magic and light . . .

My homework came back and my grade was ninety-two. I was supposed to be happy, but I wasn’t. Mama asked me why, and I didn’t have an answer. She wanted to cheer me up, so she took me to her friend’s apartment—Mrs. Ross. We went up to the roof, and Mama pointed to a large window a few blocks over. It’s a ballet studio where Black dancers are gracefully flying through the air!

“Those dancers are from Dance Theatre of Harlem. They just started rehearsing in this studio. There’s some beauty in this world, li’l bit. You got to learn to look for it,” she said. She was right; some things in the kingdom are bad, but some things are pretty good—like Black ballerinas and front-row seats with Mama.

Later, as I was getting ready for bed, it finally came to me: the reason I was unhappy with my story was because it’s actually a mystery. And it leaves me with two questions I don’t have the answer to:

Who dropped the candy from the sky?

And why?

Chapter Fifteen

Top Five

I didn’t jump to find the next clue on the card because I liked spending time with the kid version of my mom. I wanted more time with her, even if it was only through the pages of an old journal. Later that night, after rereading it for the hundredth time, I was finally ready to move on to the third item inside the envelope: a card with the second set of clues. And just as I am about to read the new clues, my uncle enters my room and informs me that I can’t continue with the hunt until after my math test. I argue, but it’s no use. He takes the box away and says he will only return it after the math test.