The Hollow
- 237 pages
- 32 chapters
- Paperback
Seventeen-year-old Ash Callen has always noticed what his city is built to keep people from noticing — the filtered air, the manufactured happiness, the quiet machinery of a world optimized so no one looks too closely. Then an old man watches him from a bench and leaves behind a small, strange object covered in markings he can't read — and when Ash holds it, the noise of the city pulls back and the whole world goes quiet. Soon a substitute teacher who knows far too much tells him something that changes everything: he's been doing it his whole life, without knowing. Alongside his sharp-eyed best friend Rook, Ash is pulled into a hidden layer of his own world, racing to understand what the object is, what he is, and what the people watching him really want — before the gray, ordinary city he's spent his life seeing through decides what to do with someone who can finally see all of it. A young-adult sci-fi mystery about perception, control, and the cost of finally seeing clearly.