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Intro
Young Subhi sometimes hears the magical Night Sea—he’s the only one who hears and sees it flood the refugee camp in the middle of the night. The waves bring him treasures, which Subhi believes are messages from his ba. Subhi believes his father on his way to join Maá, Subhi’s older sister Queeny, and Subhi. Subhi was born at the refugee camp, so he’s never met his father.
It’s scorching hot the next day, so the kind Jacket (guard) Harvey brings in a kiddie pool and some pool toys. Subhi hears a rubber duck talk to him, so he takes it. When he returns to the tent later, there’s a sparrow on his pillow. Terrified, Queeny tells Subhi that this is a sign of death. Following this, Subhi begins to see sparrows everywhere, including when he and his best friend Eli are walking the fences later. Eli and Subhi run a “package delivery” business, distributing supplies all over the camp. Though Eli is adamant that Subhi can’t run packages when the mean and violent Jacket Beaver is working, Beaver surprises Subhi while Subhi is delivering a T-shirt and throws Subhi against a wall.
Subhi is so traumatized from the incident with Beaver that he sleeps from afternoon until the middle of the night—and when he wakes, he realizes that for the first time ever, he forgot to ask Maá to tell him a story. That night, everything changes for Subhi when he walks out of the tent to see a girl in the camp who clearly doesn’t belong there. She has a book and asks if Subhi can read. He nods, and she disappears.
The girl, Jimmie, lives up the hill from the detention center. Her mum died three years ago and left her a Bone Sparrow necklace upon her death. Jimmie also kept the book, which was her mum’s, as it contains a story that Jimmie’s mum used to read to Jimmie. But Jimmie can’t read. She snuck down to the detention center and slipped through a weak spot in the fence because she was curious—a classmate said the kids there had new bikes.
The next day, the Jackets move Eli to Alpha Compound. This is a huge blow to Subhi: the bullies in the Family compound steal Subhi’s shoes and force him to kill a baby rat, knowing that Subhi considers the rats his friends. Subhi turns to the rubber duck for companionship, as well as to Jimmie. Jimmie begins visiting regularly in the middle of the night. During her visits, she brings Subhi hot chocolate and a flashlight so they can signal to each other.
Subhi begins to read the story in the book aloud for Jimmie, reading a little bit each night. The story is about Jimmie’s great-great-great grandparents, Oto and Anka, who are separated soon after Anka becomes pregnant when a war sweeps through their country. Mirka, a wise old woman, sends Oto to look for Anka with the Bone Sparrow necklace—which has a coin in it—to guide him. Oto seeks out Iliya, a healer in the mountains, to help him on his journey, but the two are separated when Iliya steps on a land mine. Oto retains the Bone Sparrow necklace, which lost the coin in the explosion, and ultimately finds Anka on a ship bound for another country. He believes Iliya died, but Iliya actually survived, became a renowned healer, and married a Rohingya woman. He passed the coin from the Bone Sparrow necklace to his children, not realizing the suffering the Rohingya people would endure generations down the line.
Subhi comes to rely more on more on Jimmie’s friendship. Maá now sleeps almost all the time, and Eli and Queeny are plotting something—Queeny has a camera that can upload pictures directly to the internet. The men in Eli’s new compound are staging a hunger strike, and several men sew their mouths shut. Tensions rise in the camp as the spoiled food gives refugees food poisoning and as more people join the hunger strike. And then, Eli learns that the camp is moving 50 men from his compound to another country. This news terrifies Eli, who fears he’ll be moved, too, and will have to leave his friends and family behind. Soon after this, Jimmie and her dad see a picture of the refugees with their mouths sewn shut in the newspaper.
One night, Jimmie brings Subhi a feast. Since he was born in the camp, Subhi has never had food that’s not just unidentifiable brown mush. It puts him in a good mood that lasts until the next day, when Queeny accuses Subhi of telling Harvey about her camera. She tears up Subhi’s sketchbook of drawings, and Subhi goes for a walk to calm down. He sits in the corner where he and Jimmie usually sit, and he finds a big, sharp knife buried in the soft dirt. Believing that nobody will get hurt if he hides it, Subhi takes the knife and buries it behind the toilets. He still believes something awful is going to happen, however.
Jimmie, meanwhile, feels like she’s finally found peace after her feast with Subhi. She was so happy when she got home afterward that she went to the attic to look through her mum’s things, though she cut herself on the ladder when she came back down. Now, she’s sick. Though her dad makes her feel better when he reveals that he got a job as a groundskeeper at her school, he still has one more shift at his current job and will be away for a few days. When he leaves, Jimmie begins to believe that something terrible is going to happen.
When Jimmie visits Subhi the next night, she’s clearly sick: the cut on her arm is infected, she has a fever, and she’s delirious. They don’t read from her mum’s story—Subhi tells her one of Maá’s instead—and when she stumbles back through the fences, Jimmie drops the book. Subhi rescues it. When Jimmie gets back to her house, she realizes she’s locked out. She flashes her flashlight down the hill for help, but nobody comes. She falls asleep outside her front door.
Subhi sees Jimmie’s signal, but before he can go to help her, all the lights come on: the men in Alpha have barricaded themselves in. By morning, Subhi is distraught. Seeing the Jackets putting on riot gear, Queeny tells Subhi to wait in the tent. However, since the Jackets are so focused on the men in Alpha, Subhi takes the opportunity to sneak out unnoticed. He finds Jimmie, breaks into her house, and calls an ambulance for her. He reads her the end of Oto and Anka’s story while they wait for the ambulance, but he hides when the first responders arrive. He then starts back toward the detention center—and he sees it’s on fire. But realizing he wants to be with his friends and family, Subhi returns anyway.
Subhi takes cover by a tent and notices Eli running toward the downed fences with other refugees. But then Eli turns and runs the other way—and Subhi realizes he’s running away from Beaver. Beaver grabs Eli just as Eli is about to shimmy under the fence and beats him almost to death. Eli can’t fight back because Subhi moved the knife, which was Eli’s. Harvey appears and yells at Beaver to leave Eli alone, but when Beaver sees Eli’s hand move, Beaver murders Eli with a heavy rock. Harvey does nothing. Eli stays in his hiding spot, in shock, until Queeny and Harvey find Subhi the next day. After the doctors check Subhi over and declare that he’s fine, Harvey carries Subhi to the kitchens and asks what Subhi saw. Subhi can’t speak, but he can tell Harvey knows he saw Beaver murder Eli—and that Harvey didn’t stop Beaver.
For the next few days, Subhi moves in and out of sleep. Maá wakes up and sings to him, and Harvey again asks Subhi what he saw. Subhi realizes now that Queeny was right to say that the refugees are treated like rats. He considers telling someone what he saw, but when he and the rubber duck consult about this, Subhi becomes angry and upset and throws the duck across the compound. When Subhi wakes up later that night, the Night Sea has arrived. Subhi goes outside, cries with a giant whale that Eli used to describe in stories, and realizes he has to tell the truth.
In the morning, Queeny reveals that she’s been leaving the Night Sea treasures for Subhi. They’re all from Ba, who is dead and won’t ever return to them. The final treasure is a book of his poems. The following night, Subhi wakes up to Jimmie standing over him. She gives him the Bone Sparrow necklace and insists that sparrows symbolize change, not death.
Later, when “Outside people” come, Subhi agrees to tell a woman named Sarah about Eli’s death, and Harvey seems to give his permission. Sometime later, Maá receives a letter that she won’t show to Subhi, but that makes her very happy. Everything is going to change in five days, and Subhi is happy.
