Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from You Are Now Old Enough to Hear This by Aaron Starmer, which releases on March 24th 2026.

The Toe Beast looms large in the Barnes family lore—a tale concocted by twelve-year-old Roman’s grandpa to explain his missing toe. But Roman has never actually heard the full story, and after his grandpa dies suddenly, it seems like he never will.

That is, until Roman is tasked with clearing out his grandpa’s house, and stumbles upon some strange things. An old mason jar full of formaldehyde, a mysterious handwritten book about a girl and a pack of dogs, a rusty metal bucket with peculiar abilities. And they all tie back to extraordinary secrets from the distant past.

By unraveling even more unbelievable stories that have been hidden from him, Roman is forced to rethink how he fits into his family’s history. Now it’s up to him to see his own story through to the end. Because the Toe Beast was only the beginning . . .

EXCERPT

One Quick Thing

On the eve of his twelfth birthday, Roman Barnes made a wish. Alone in his room, tucked under his covers, he softly said the following words into the dark: “I wish I had someone to talk to, someone who understands me and what I’m going through, someone who will tell me everything is gonna be okay.”

The next morning, he received a gift.

“Oh, a magic eight ball,” he said as he sat cross-​legged on the sofa, opening a box covered in shiny silver paper. “You ask it ‘yes or no’ questions and it tells your fortune, right?”

“Yep, just give it a shake and voilà, the answer will appear,” Roman’s dad said, and then he turned to Roman’s mom. “Where’d you find that?”

She shrugged. “Wasn’t me.”

“Must’ve been from his real parents,” Roman’s brother, Alex, said. “I guess now’s as good a time as ever to reveal the family secret. You’re adopted, Roman.”

“Not true and definitely not funny, Alex,” Roman’s mom said.

Roman was used to this sort of teasing from his brother, so he focused on the magic eight ball instead. He asked it, “Will you be nice to me?”

Roman shook the ball and an answer emerged in the murky waters. It was a definitive:
Yes.

“Well, it is your birthday,” Alex said. “It has to be nice to you on your birthday.”

Maybe that was the case, but it turned out that the magic eight ball was nice to Roman all the time.

Over the next week, he asked it more questions. Countless queries about who he was and what he wanted to be.

“Am I smart?”

“Will I make a difference when I’m older?”

“Do I matter?”

Whatever Roman asked the magic eight ball, it always answered with the same solitary word.

Yes.

Roman knew magic eight balls were supposed to be equipped with a whole slew of answers, phrases like Without a doubt, or Outlook not so good, or even Ask again later. But this particular magic eight ball would only ever answer with that short and sweet yes.

Such unbridled optimism meant the toy was clearly ­defective. Perhaps the floating die inside was unevenly weighted, or maybe the entire thing was misprinted with the same word on every surface. Yes, yes, yes, twenty times over. For this reason, Roman didn’t dare ask it any morbid questions such as “Will my parents die soon?” or “Will I always feel so alone?” because he couldn’t bear to see it confirm these things. Though he did posit a few silly scenarios, like “Will I grow up to be a capybara?” and “If I started training now, could I jump high enough to touch the moon?”

Yes. Yes.

Eventually, Roman grew bored with the toy. He stuffed it away somewhere and forgot where he put it. He didn’t even think to ask it about the Toe Beast.

Part One
The Toe Beast

Chapter 1

Roman’s cousins weren’t afraid of the Toe Beast. Neither was his brother. To them, it was simply a creature in a creepy tale that Grandpa Henry told when he pulled off his slippers and revealed his nine toes.

“How’d you lose that pinkie toe, Grandpa?” one of his grandkids would say.

And Grandpa Henry would arch an eyebrow and reply, “The losing part is the prologue. The real story is what came after the losing.” Then he’d proceed to tell whatever crowd had gathered about the Toe Beast and they’d cringe or laugh or gasp, but they’d all act as if it were harmless fiction.

Roman suspected it was fiction, but he couldn’t know for sure. Because he had never heard the story. At least not the entire thing. Bits and pieces would slip out of his cousins’ mouths when they were crowded around the kids’ table at Thanksgiving or scrunched up in the back of Uncle Pete’s van on trips to the beach.

The storms. The ax. The jar.

Invariably Roman’s brother, Alex, would say something like, “He’s not ready for that yet,” and the others would clam up immediately. Roman found that suspicious, even though he appreciated it. As the youngest of the cousins, his default mode was to be on the defensive. In most other instances, his brother—​and the rest of the Barnes clan—​would not be quite so considerate of his feelings.

The funny thing was, Roman really liked stories. But he couldn’t handle ones with blood and gore, and he suspected the story of the Toe Beast was full of both. So, whenever Grandpa Henry unveiled his foot, Roman would sneak away to another room until the tale was complete. He had no idea what the Toe Beast even was. He told himself he didn’t want to know.

There was a problem, however. Just because a guy tells himself he doesn’t want to know something, it doesn’t mean he won’t wonder about it. So, on some nights—​many, in fact—​Roman would lie awake in bed for hours pondering the Toe Beast. Was it a beast made of toes? Or was it a beast that ate toes? And what did it have to do with his nine-​toed Grandpa Henry?

Grandpa Henry lived alone as a widower in a small house not far from Roman’s home. His wife, Dorothy, was gone by the time Roman was a baby, but the old man still talked about her constantly and lovingly.

“You and your grandma would’ve been the best of pals,” he told Roman on more than one occasion. “She was a thinker like you.”

Roman wasn’t sure if he was a thinker, but his mind often wandered and clearly often wondered.

What does Grandpa Henry do all day alone? He comes to our house for Sunday dinners, and I see him cheering at all my Little League games, but how does he spend the rest of his hours?

It was on a blazing hot summer day when some of the things Roman wondered about began to reveal themselves. He had gone to Grandpa Henry’s house to cut the lawn, something his parents insisted he do because his grandfather, a former barber, had “already done two lifetimes’ worth of cutting.”

Roman found the old man behind the house, attaching a substantial padlock to his red toolshed. Sweat was dripping down his neck, and his hands were trembling.

“Roman!” Grandpa Henry said in shock, spinning around. “Why are you . . . I mean . . . I’m . . . happy to see you.”

He didn’t look happy, though. He looked scared.

“What’s going on?” Roman asked.

“It’s the Toe Beast,” he said, grabbing Roman by the shoulder a little too tightly. “He wants out again.”

Roman wished he hadn’t heard those words, because now he had to do something about them. “You look exhausted, Grandpa,” Roman said, pulling himself away from the old man’s grasp. “Do you have any lemonade inside?”

The boy knew the answer before even asking the question. Lemonade was a fixture in Grandpa Henry’s refrigerator, so of course the old man nodded in response, and Roman was able to take him by the arm and lead him into the house, away from the red toolshed.

When the two were sitting safely at the kitchen counter with tall, full glasses in front of them, Grandpa Henry once again put a firm hand on Roman’s shoulder. “Promise me you won’t let it out.”

“The Toe Beast?” Roman asked.

Grandpa Henry nodded vigorously. “I don’t know how much longer I have to live, but now that it’s fully grown, the Toe Beast might live for hundreds of years. Maybe thousands. They’ve found hair on mummies, you know?”

Roman took a long sip of his lemonade because he didn’t know how to respond. He was so worried.

“I’ve told you about that despicable Toe Beast, haven’t I?” Grandpa Henry said, pushing his glass of lemonade away from him like it was poison.

“You’ve told me many times,” Roman said, which was a lie, of course, but an understandable one. He certainly didn’t want to hear the story now. Not because he feared the Toe Beast but because he was scared for his grandfather. There was something not right about him. Something strange and different. An attitude? An . . . illness? Roman wasn’t clueless. He knew that when people got old, they sometimes suffered from delusions, and he wanted to stop this delusion right in its tracks. He figured the more he agreed with him, the sooner Grandpa Henry would change the subject.

“Hardly anyone believes me about the Toe Beast,” Grandpa Henry said. “Your Grandma Dorothy did. You do too, right?”

“Of course I believe,” Roman said, and he couldn’t feel bad for this lie either because it made his grandfather’s face brighten. But the brightness had a sheen to it, a redness, a simmering anger that didn’t look right on the typically serene old man.

“Good, good, good,” Grandpa Henry said, his lip curling. “You’re the only one I’m telling this. But you know what to do if it gets out, right?”

Roman had no idea what to do if some imaginary creature got out. He nodded just the same, which seemed to satisfy his grandfather, who nodded back and then retreated to the comfort of his bedroom. Before long, it started to rain and Roman realized he would have to wait to cut the lawn. He went home without saying goodbye.

Grandpa Henry died the next day.

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Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Aaron Starmer’s Night Swimming, which is out April 29th 2025.

One final swim of the summer. Let’s make it last all night…

Summer, 1994. Trevor can barely wrap his mind around the fact that he and his friends have graduated high school. And yet there’s no rush to get to college. He’s determined to live one night at a time. Riding shotgun from party to party, windows down, music up, his focus is entirely on his crush, the enigmatic girl in the driver’s seat. Will things ever go anywhere with Sarah?

Maybe? Because Sarah has proposed a mission: They’re going to swim all the pools in town. Before long, they’re sneaking into backyards every night, splashing, floating, and loving every minute of it. But it’s still not enough for Trevor. He yearns for Sarah, despite her college boyfriend, despite her “not yet”s, despite the way she keeps pulling away the moment it starts to feel truly magical.

Things finally change when they learn about a natural pool hidden deep in the woods. It seems like just another spot to check off their summer bucket list. But once they get there, they realize that this place has a curious hold on them, and something very strange is happening…

As I watch you sleep, I sing to myself, soft and mournful, a calming melody that laps against the shores of my addled mind. I doubt you can hear it, but it’s our song, the one you sing to me. The lyrics mean so much more than you might realize.

I thought I knew you, but I can’t judge you. I thought you knew me, but underneath I’m, well, not laughing ­but . . . different?

The lyrics don’t tell the whole story, obviously.

What it ­deserves—​­what I ­deserve—​­isn’t a quiet night. Not anymore. I thought I did, but I know now that it only makes the noise in my head grow louder.

This is my choice. My journey. Only mine. I’m heading back alone.

NIGHTSWIMMING

They were floating. It didn’t feel the least bit like real life. Twelve ­years—​­thirteen, counting kindergarten. An eternity, now in the rearview.

Trevor’s hand was out the car window, a dolphin swimming away from Sutton High through the muggy June air. Sarah was driving, as always. And as always, she was driving the Toyota Tercel, a family car passed down two years ago when her older sister, Janine, departed to Tufts. Janine had called it the Silver Bullet, but Sarah referred to it as the Rat. A demotion on account of rust and dents and stains? Perhaps. It was a loving name, though. The Rat was a survivor. It had seen Sarah through so much. Long detours in the farmlands after her multiple breakups with Mike. Road trips to Rochester and Vermont to see Phish. Predawn journeys to basketball practice and late-​­night commutes home from the job at Wegmans. And of course, the drives to school.

To school and from school, every weekday for the last two years. For the final six months of senior year, Trevor joined her, proudly sitting shotgun. An assorted list of guest stars rode in the back. Jared, Schultz, and Bev had once been the other regulars. The core. But ever since Bev saved up and got a Civic in March, those three usually rode together. Separately. Like today.

Yes, today it was only Sarah and Trevor. They both preferred it that way, even if they were both hesitant to admit it.

“Wow,” Sarah said as she shook her head in disbelief.

“Wow what?” Trevor asked.

“Just wow. It’s over, huh? That’s it.”

“Yeah. I ­mean . . . yeah.”

What else was there to say? Class of ’94 had made it. Graduation ceremony was still to come, but school was D‑­O‑­N‑­E done. Regents requirements met. AP tests in the books. ­Everything . . . complete. Trevor had prepared for it, talked and thought about it constantly, but now that it was here, he didn’t know what to do.

So, he turned on the stereo. A mix was in the deck, one that Sarah made called Sun / Rain. One side had songs with Sun in their titles. The other side, Rain. It was on the Sun side. The Sun side always got more play.

When that fat old sun in the sky is ­falling . . .

Trevor let the music do the talking for a while, as they passed the fields on Sudbury, all dusty and bulldozed, ready for development. Soon enough construction would start. Houses with pastel paint jobs, flimsy transplanted trees, and in‑­ground pools would erupt from the weeds, though probably not before Trevor would leave for college. When he returned home next summer, however, he’d be coming back to a slightly different world.

“What time does Schultz’s party start?” Trevor asked.

“Already started,” Sarah said. “I saw them pouring Zimas into Sprite bottles at lunch, then heading for the parking lot.”

“Should we go straight there?”

Sarah reached over to Trevor’s thigh and gave it a ­pat—​­mostly ­fingertips—​­and paused for a moment to look at him before saying, “Yeah, straight there.”

The driveway was already clogged with cars, so Sarah parked along the road. From the ­knee-​­high grass, she plucked a dandelion that had gone to seed and blew it at Trevor, but the wind stole the fluff before it could hit his face.

“Boooo,” she said. “I wanted to fuzzify you.”

“Did you at least make a wish?”

“Obviously. Now come on.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the backyard. The Schultz house was the last one on a ­dead-​­end road, way out past the water treatment plant, where the neighbors were too far away to complain and the cops never bothered to go. There were a few dozen kids there already, mostly in the yard. On the deck, Andrew Schultz reclined on a ­ratty-​­cushioned chaise lounge.

For lack of a better word, Andrew was an ­odd-​­looking kid, with a nose that was crooked from being broken more than once (basketball, bike accident) and bulging eyes that bordered on amphibian. But what ­Andrew—​­or Schultz, as he was known to his ­peers—​­lacked in conventional attractiveness, he made up for in charisma. Pictures of him rarely did him favors. Meeting him, however, changed almost everyone’s tune. He was a disarming flirt. The young female teachers at the school knew better than to humor his advances, but they weren’t immune to them. Blushing around Schultz was common. So too was smiling. He was forever welcoming, the consummate host.

As Trevor and Sarah approached the deck, Schultz raised a red plastic Pizza Hut cup in salute. “My fellow graduates. We did it!”

“Barely squeaked by, huh?” Sarah said.

“Don’t joke,” Schultz said. “It was touch and go for me last year. Physics was kicking my ass.”

“And yet you got into Cornell,” Sarah said. “Strange how that happens.”

“Greatest comeback story of the twentieth century,” Schultz said with a shrug.

Trevor and Sarah joined him on the deck, where they too could lord over the revelers. The party wasn’t wild by any stretch of the imagination. But the smell of weed was in the air. A keg nested in a plastic tub of ice near the toolshed was already well on its way to empty.

“Your parents?” Trevor asked Schultz.

“At the lake until Sunday,” Schultz said. “Plenty of time to clean up after ­these . . . lovely people.”

“Speaking of lovely people, where’s the illustrious Miss Beverly Gleason?” Sarah asked.

Schultz pointed with his thumb to the screen door behind them.

“Well then, it’s been a pleasure, gents,” Sarah said as she slid the door open and slipped inside.

Schultz turned his head to watch her, and when she was safely out of earshot, he said, “So?”

“So?” Trevor responded.

“You and Sarah. Is that, ­like . . . ?”

“Friends. That’s it.”

“Right. Right.”

“It is right,” Trevor said. “She’s . . . a free spirit.”

This made Schultz laugh. Hard. “That she is.”

Trevor had no response, so he grabbed a seat in a nylon lawn chair, and the two guys quietly took in the crowd. More kids arrived. Trevor knew every face and voice. Sutton High wasn’t tiny, but it wasn’t big. ­Ninety-​­six seniors were graduating, which was two fewer than the ­ninety-​­eight who had started in September. Katie Crease had dropped out after giving birth in November. She had to find a job because her parents refused to support her and the baby, but she was well on her way to a GED. Clint Hoover had been arrested in April for stealing car stereos, and then stopped showing up at school. There were rumors that he was joining the army, but Trevor had seen him a few weeks before, manning the register at the ­mini-​­mart. They didn’t make eye contact.

Katie and Clint weren’t at the party, of course, but a good ­percentage—​­maybe ­thirty—​­of Trevor’s fellow graduates were there. Plus, a handful of former juniors and sophomores. When Trevor spotted Jared Delson near the keg, he got out of his chair.

“Check ya later,” Trevor said to Schultz, quoting their favorite movie.

“Check ya later,” Schultz echoed.

Then Trevor was off, weaving through the crowd, nodding hellos at acquaintances, raising an invisible glass to friends in the distance, until he was finally standing next to Jared by the keg. Jared had a Solo cup in his hand. Trevor tapped it with a finger.

“You’re drinking now?” he asked.

“Diet Coke,” Jared said, and then he patted himself on the belly. “Don’t want people to think I’m the new Katie Crease.”

“You look fine,” Trevor said, and he meant it. Jared was a skinny guy with long blond bangs that hung over his face. Skater’s bangs. He looked a lot like Tony Hawk, and so he played the part, sometimes well, of idling around parking lots and public buildings, attempting kickflips and rail slides. In a hope to indulge his passion, his mom and dad once offered to build him a ­half-​­pipe in the family’s barn, but he declined. “I’ll be the one who’s responsible for breaking my own neck, thank you very much,” he told them.

It was not the response they wanted to hear, and yet it was a response that fit Jared to a tee. It spoke to his independence. Also, to his darkness, a looming presence that Trevor often wished he could chase away from his friend. Out there, in the corner of Schultz’s lush and lively yard, Trevor tried to do just that. Putting his arm around Jared, he told him, “We’re gonna make this the best summer of your life.”

This lifted the kid’s spirits, or maybe he pretended that it did. “We goddamn better,” Jared said with a smile.

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