I'll keep it short and sweet, since nobody clicked on this to hear me talk--here's the cover for my next YA book, NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED. I am unbelievably in love, and still freaking reeling that we found a girl who's Etta Etta Etta all over (look at her '70s clothes! and her ankles crossed in SUBTLE BALLERINA FASHION! and her eyes SEEING INTO YOUR SOUL).
Sooooo...
right? RIGHT? I could pretend to be modest but I mean I didn't design it so LOOK AT THAT DAMN THING.
Here's the summary of the thing:
Etta is tired of dealing with all of the labels and categories that seem so important to everyone else in her small Nebraska hometown.
Everywhere she turns, someone feels she's too fringe for the fringe. Not gay enough for the Dykes, her ex-clique, thanks to a recent relationship with a boy; not tiny and white enough for ballet, her first passion; and not sick enough to look anorexic (partially thanks to recovery). Etta doesn’t fit anywhere— until she meets Bianca, the straight, white, Christian, and seriously sick girl in Etta’s therapy group. Both girls are auditioning for Brentwood, a prestigious New York theater academy that is so not Nebraska. Bianca seems like Etta’s salvation, but how can Etta be saved by a girl who needs saving herself?
The latest powerful, original novel from Hannah Moskowitz is the story about living in and outside communities and stereotypes, and defining your own identity.
And here is where you should add it on goodreads 'cause I'm gonna be watching that like a creeper today.
Thanks for clicking! Tell me what you think, please!!
“So,” Josha said, his feet up on the railing of Beckan's balcony, his ass on the porch swing. They were watching the tightropers continue stringing their lines, and watching the fairies on the streets rushing around with their heads covered, like they were expecting rain. A news report blared from inside, where Beckan had left her father in front of the TV.
She knew what Josha was going to say, but she gave him nothing. She almost always knew what Josha was going to say. She loved him very much but had long ago given up hope.
“So,” Josha said. “Scrap?”
“He's teaching me to read.”
“How charitable.”
“Not really. Selfish. He wants someone to read his stupid stories. He's desperate.”
“Cricket won't read them?”
“Who?”
“His cousin,” Josha said. “They live together."
“I didn't know his name.” She had only seen him a few times. He was usually walking from room to room, usually with headphones jammed over his ears.
Josha said, “So you're really not crazy about him.”
“Scrap?”
“Either.”
“I told you.”
“Since you don't know his family or anything. Don't know anything about him.” He gave her a sloppy grin. “After all, you know me. So.”
She watched the trightropers instead of responding. Josha said “Cricket” quietly to himself a few times. “Must be a genius if he avoids the stories,” he mused.
“Cold-hearted genius, maybe.”
“A genius is a genius. I don't need another heart, anyway.”
Then the first bombs went off, and they sprang towards each other as if they had previously been stretched apart. Beckan felt some heat on her cheek, like the city was breathing on her, but she couldn't see where the bomb fell or detect any damage. From the porch of Beckan's house, at the bottom of the hill, it was hard to see much of anything.
The excerpt two posts down is the first chapter of my NaNoWriMo project. Here's the beginning of chapter 2. Because I like how the bits fit together.
--
A few months ago, Micah started fucking my boyfriend. I'm secretary of the student government, and that plus lacrosse team meant I only had time for a date with Jackson once or twice a month. Meanwhile, we're turning eighteen in three weeks and Micah was still a virgin, so I figured pairing him and Jackson up was such a charitable act that I could practically put it on my resume.
It's worked out well. Micah's had a crush on Jackson for years, so he's as close as he ever gets to happy. And Jackson puts up with him, which is as close as anyone's ever come to liking him. He's known Micah and I since we were kids, so he knows enough about CIPA that nothing surprises him anymore, but it's still not his reality, so he can still laugh when Micah's watch timer tells him to use the bathroom and think of my brother, at least some of the time, as a superhero. To Micah and me, it's all just bullshit routine. So it's good that he has Jackson to be amazed.
And I'm not threatened. I know Jackson likes me more, and Micah would never, ever let himself love anyone.
It's the first Friday of the month, which is one of Micah's days with Jackson, but he comes up to me after school and says he's foisting Jack off on me tonight.
I haul my backpack out of my locker. “I thought you finished Hudson's paper.” It's a very easy paper, but most everything is now. We're in the same class as the fourteen-year-olds. Younger than that, there are hordes of them, but there just aren't that many kids our age left, and we all have this skinny desperate look of survived prisoners. The little kids only know the plague as the newest pages in their history books.
He says, “It took me five minutes.”
“Took me nine. I must be off my game.”
“I fell.”
I look at him.
He shrugs his backpack strap up his arm.“Before Science.”
“How'd you fall?”
“Tripped.”
“Someone tripped you?” I'll fucking kill them.
“Tripped on my shoelace, Gwen, Jesus Christ. Ask Jackson, he was there.”
“He saw you fall?”
Micah says, “He said the fall was uncanny. That was the word he used. Uncanny.”
“That's not a good word.”
“Not for a fall, yeah.”
I reach out and touch his arm, and he lets me for maybe a second before he rolls his shoulders back to squirm away. He always does that—waits just long enough to flinch away that he can deny it was a flinch. It was just a shift in weight. A trick of the light. Something. It's never made sense to me. Touch is the only thing he can feel, and he does, as acutely as anyone else. And he squirms away from it. I guess that's Micah in a nutshell.
He clears his throat and says, “So I'm going to go to the hospital after school, I guess, just to make sure.”
I should probably offer to go with him. But I don't go back to the hospital, ever. When I need shots or antibiotics, I go to the adult hospital, even though it's two buses and half an hour. I don't think Micah's ever gone, even though he hardly needs this fall as an excuse to visit the children's hospital; he's there ever week, convinced he's dislocated a joint or contracted meningitis. Our uncle's mansion is next door. There's no reason for Micah not to know, every second, that he's safe. It's an addiction he never tries to fight. And I'm not going to be the one to encourage him to fight.
“Be safe,” I tell him.
“Yeah. Look, I got to go.” He backs away for a few steps, then turns around walks out of the school. I guess I should be happy. That's the longest conversation we've had in weeks. Really, fucking the same guy is the closest we come to communicating.
This is the first chapter of my NaNo, which is called PLAGUE BABIES for the time being.
--
We were six years old, and it was the hottest day of the year. My mother had all her hair pulled back, except for her frizzy bangs that bowed over her forehead like a spiderweb. I was at the window, looking down at the bare streets.
Micah said, “You're going to hurt him,” which was what he always said.
I turned around and watched Roo slip his hand into Micah's. Their hands were small and identical. Like a china doll holding itself. But Roo's fingers had tiny scars radiating out from all of his knuckles, and Micah had a band-aid wrapped around his pinky, from where he burned it badly the other day. He didn't know the stove was on.
I was pristine.
“She's not going to hurt me.” Roo said. His real name was Reuben, but we always called him Roo, because he was a little kid. I don't know what we would call him now.
Our mother finished rinsing the cookie sheet and brought it to Roo in the reclining chair. He lifted his leg up and lay it across the sheet, and she used sleeves from two of his dirty shirts to tie his ankle and thigh to either end.
“How many lollipops?” Roo asked.
“Four,” Mom said.
Roo looked at his leg while Mom rifled through the kitchen drawer. “Five,” he called.
“Fine. Fine. Five.”
“I want to sit with Roo,” I said. It was the best chair.“It's my turn.”
“You don't get a turn.” Mom came with the hammer, licking her dry lips. “It's Micah's turn, really.” She looked at him.
Micah had to let go of Roo's hand to shrink back as much as he wanted to. So he did.
Roo said, “You can go, Micah. You want a lollipop?”
He shook his head.
“Green ones,” Roo said.
“What if it hurts?” Micah said. Micah talked more about pain than any little kid in the world. Definitely more than any little kid who had never felt pain, and never would.
I was supposed to protect them. I hated Micah's bandaged fingertip.
“Do me this time,” I said.
Mom said, “Gwen, I've told you,” in her warning voice, so I backed off. I like to think that I didn't really understand what was happening.
My mother knelt by the recliner and tested the bonds on Roo's leg. “Ready?” she asked him.
“Swear five lollipops?”
“I swear,” she said, and she gave Roo's knee two solid cracks with the hammer. His knee bent back limply against the cookie sheet, and his bones tinkled like a wind chime.
I winced. Roo leaned over to look at his leg. “Did you break it?” he said.
“I think so.” Mom pushed her bangs off her sweaty forehead and untied my brother. “Get up and try to walk.”
Roo climbed out of the chair and took half a step before his leg creaked and he fell over. He laughed.
“Let's go,” Mom said. She picked up Roo and nodded for Micah and I to follow. On the way out the door, she splashed Roo with some cold water from the sink, and I splashed Micah. It was the only way to keep them cool. I was already sticky underneath my arms and behind my unbruised knees.
Our apartment building was full of open doors and empty spaces where the looters had already been. Our best friend Carly used to live in the apartment on the ground floor, but she'd died a few weeks ago, at the hospital. Roo had cried so hard he had a stuffy nose all day.
The regular hospital was across town, big and silver with state of the art equipment and doctors with foreign last names. The children's hospital was two blocks from home. Small. Quaint. Little murals on the walls. Even before Mom thought of breaking Roo's bones, we were there all the time, when one of the boys took an awkward fall or started running a fevers, and they'd get MRIs and blood tests and two doctors and three nurses pressing on all their joints and junctions and lymph nodes, feeling for something out of place.
Back then, the hospital was full and loud. Nurses in masks rushed back and forth between children screaming and coughing in beds. They shouted names of medicines and doctors that they wanted. Now I wonder what the hell they thought they were doing, since they never figured out how to fix anyone.
I'm not sure why Micah and I never got sick. Good luck. Not good genes.
At the hospital, Mom got attention, a cast for Roo, and her dose of whatever medicine they thought was working this week. She got a sterile pat on the back from Dr. Jacoby, who told her, again, how impressed he was with my mother, what a good job she was doing, how she shouldn't feel bad. How he couldn't imagine trying to raise one child with CIPA, let alone two. Before we knew anything was wrong with Micah and Roo, everyone used to tell Mom how they couldn't imagine trying to raise triplets. After their bloody lips and dry eyes and high fevers had an explanation, I was suddenly easy.
I've always hated the hospital.
When we got home, Roo toddled around on his cast, his smiling mouth stained green, four more lolipops clutched in his fat fist. He held one out to Micah, who shook his head.
“You should go next time,” Roo said.
Micah shook his head.
“Why are you so scared all the time?” Roo asked.
“What if it hurts?”
“Hurting isn't even that bad,” Roo said. “Gwen does it all the time.”
Two days later, Roo woke me up in the middle of the night and said he was dizzy. I knew he had a fever, but when I went to wake up Mom, she was in the bathroom, throwing up blood.
I wasn't very scared. It wasn't anything very new.
I lay down with Roo in his bed and held him. He was as hot and dry as a gun.
He started crying, but he couldn't make tears. He coughed blood onto my pillow and shook. He'd probably been sick for days, but he couldn't have known. The main symptom of the plague, after all, was pain. They couldn't know. Micah's organs could have been turning to soup in the bunk below of us, and he would have no idea. But they weren't.
Just Roo's.
“It'll be okay tomorrow,” I whispered to him. I kissed him. I liked playing mom, sometimes.
Anyway, he was dead by morning. He went quickly, unlike Mom, who didn't die until a few weeks later. Everything happened very close together. They died, and somewhere in there Micah and I were whisked away and pushed into our uncle's house. I don't remember Micah saying anything the whole time. Even our ultrasound pictures, Micah and Roo didn't hug. It was like the second the egg split, they happily scooted apart, or wedged me between.
I don't know that I've stopped watching Micah since the night Roo died.
Somewhere in there the plague ended. Roo and Mom were some of the last ones, and Micah and I, now our rich uncle's children, were two of the first on the exam table in the now near-empty hospital, rolling up our sleeves for the vaccination hardly anyone else could afford.
Micah cried, writhed, begged, curled up inside his shirt. “It'll hurt,” he sobbed. “It'll hurt. What if it hurts this time?”
“It won't,” I whispered to him, while the doctors crossed their arms and didn't want to wait.
“What if it does? This could be the time.”
“It's just a shot. It doesn't hurt much at all.”
It didn't. It didn't hurt enough. They gave me my shot, and I barely felt it, and Micah still squirmed away from the needles, still pleaded and hid behind my shoulder.
“Give it to me,” I said. “Give me his.”
“It doesn't work that way,” the doctor told me.
“Why not? Give it to me again. It didn't hurt enough.”
Eventually, Micah got his shot. We were marked on a list, checked off as safe, sent back to our uncle's house. On our way out the door, I saw Micah's reflection against a wall, and I jumped.
Not my reflection, just his, and I didn't know why. I knew it was the first time I thought about the implications of having just one identical twin around. That was the first of a million reflections that would always make me wonder, maybe, maybe, maybe...
A lot has changed since then. We're no longer afraid of our uncle's creaky mansion. I've stopped wondering if I maybe saw Roo that day, or if I see him every time I catch Micah in the bathroom mirror or in a shop window. I've stopped listening when someone mentions that they were at the children's hospital the other night and they heard screaming of children they couldn't find. I've stopped believing the whispered word haunted means anything more than two triplets who still have nightmares.
The plague is gone. Micah doesn't cry, and we don't talk. Now both of us act like he's made of glass.
Two things have stuck around: my hunger to feel absolutely everything, and Micah's desperate, pathological need to feel nothing.
So! National Novel Writing Month is coming up. I'm sure most of you know the gist already: 30 days, 1 book, 50,000 words. Details are here, and if you decide you're interested, you should hurry up and sign up! We're starting in 5 days!
This will be my 3rd year doing NaNo. For me, the challenge isn't writing quickly; it's getting a 50,000 word first draft. This is really, really long for me. A lot of my finished books clock it at around 50,000, and my first drafts are usually significantly shorter, somewhere in the 25-30,000 range. So even though people assume NaNo is easy for me because I'm a fast writer, it's actually a significant challenge for me as well. I won in both 2008 and 2009 (though in 2009 I cheated by adding 50K to an existing project. shhhh. But 2008 was legit).
If you're interested in NaNo but nervous about the idea of 50K in 30 days, here are some tips that you can take or leave as they suit you.
--Take a risk. I like to do something weird for NaNo. My planned project for this year is a ghost story, and hopefully (hopefully!) the first of a trilogy I have mapped out.
This is so astronomically far from anything I've ever done, but the good news is, I can't give up. I am absolutely positive that I'm going to start panicking and trying to jump ship 10,000 words in. And any other time, I probably would. But not for NaNo. For NaNo, you have to keep going. Or you LOSE. I don't like losing.
--Nail down the beginning. Choose your first line NOW. You don't want to be staring at a blank page. You can change it later, whatever, but give yourself a springboard. I have my first chapter all written up in my head. Then God knows what happens.
--Don't pace yourself. It doesn't work that way, at least not for me. Start strong. Write as many words a day as you can. Aim for 5K a day. Power through for as long as you can.
There will come a day where this gets absolutely impossible. You'll be lucky to get 1K out. And that's okay. Because you have a few days of writing 5K behind you, and you're already ahead of the game.
It will get harder to write as you get to the middle of your book. You will start doubting yourself and pulling out your hair, and the lack of sleep will catch up with you. Keep pushing as hard as you can, but give yourself permission to have some days when you're barely trickling out words. It happens. But don't try to slow down the part where you're buzzing and exciting because your book is shiny and new in hopes of saving your energy for later. It doesn't work.
--Get a support group. Physical ones work really well for some people; ask around and see if there are meetups in your area. You might be surprised!
If you're a hermit like me, there's always, thank God, the internet. You can find friends on the NaNo forums, or you can bully some of your existing friends into participating with you.
It's very, very helpful to have people to bitch to. If the Musers didn't do NaNo, I can't imagine I would. Most of the fun of this month comes from suffering together. It breaks up the loneliness we all feel sometimes, when it's just us and our laptops and our boyfriends complaining they never see us.
--Welcome help. Once you sign up, you'll get pep talk emails. Read them! Love them! They really DO help, if you let them. (And you might just find a quote from someone you know in there. I mean, maybe. You know a lot of people, right? I'm just saying it's possible. Stop looking at me like that. I don't know anything...)
People will reassure you. People who haven't read a word of your novel will tell you that it's brilliant and you can finish and you can do it. Believe them! Don't be a sourpuss. Sourpusses don't finish novels. I won't say what they do. This is a family-friendly blog. (Stop looking at me like that.)
So. If you decide to sign up, make sure to look me up. I'm right here. You can read a description of what I'll be working on, if you like. I'll put up an excerpt once the month has started. Add me as a buddy if you want to see how I'm doing, and leave links to your profiles in the comments so I can friend you back! And good luck!
So right now I'm on vacation at my beach house, where Invincible Summer is set. In my head, same beach, same house. So I thought I'd do an illustrated version of the first chapter, with pictures of the places I mean.
I'm no photographer, and you'll have to imagine these places not so empty, but...I hope you like it.
On an unrelated note, I've decided that, in the tradition of many great bloggers before me, I'm going to have to disable anonymous comments. I'm sorry to do this. I really do want to respect your privacy. But I need you all to respect each other and to respect this space, and if I have to insist that everyone has names and accountability in order to make sure everyone treats each other kindly, that's what I'm going to do. Disagreeing is fine. Disrespecting is not.
Without further ado:
--
Gideon keeps falling down.
He and Claudia slipped outside to the beach and were out there for at least ten minutes before my parents or Noah or I noticed they were gone. They’re greasy and gritty now with sand and sea water, so there’s no point in dragging them back inside and getting everything dirty our first night here. Plus none of us feels like putting in the effort to chase them. My mother, who’s a little too old and way too pregnant to run around outside and parent them hands-on like she used to, drifts to the porch off the first floor to watch them and make sure they don‘t kill themselves, one hand on her stomach, one on the railing.
Noah and I linger by the windows on the other side of the family room, our foreheads pressed against the glass.
We’re moaning every time we see a particularly good wave roll by and looking at each other—maybe we should go out? Maybe we can? No.
Outside, Claudia is laughing loudly enough for us to hear. She always says she’s way too old to play with Gideon, and she’s not going to, no way, and if we want a babysitter, we can pay her. But she always ends up playing with him anyway, at least when we’re here. Here no one is too old. Except Mom and Dad. And Claudia and Gideon are the two youngest, so they get shoved together and there is no way to avoid it, even though Claudia’s eleven and Gideon’s barely six.
Dad says, “Aren’t you two going out?”
We can’t. Even though there’s sand stuck to our feet from the walk from the car, up the stairs, inside, and back, and back, and back, while we hauled in suitcases. Even though the carpet smells like old sunscreen. Noah and I know that it isn’t quite summer. Not yet. Summer can’t start at night, first of all, and it definitely can’t start before we see the SUV roll up outside the Hathaways' beach house. And until it comes, we’ll wait here. That’s tradition, and Noah and I do not kill tradition. If we get here before the Hathaways, we wait.
Dad says, “You boys are sticks in the mud.”
“Heathen,” Noah mutters.
Dad’s not pregnant, but he acts like he is, complaining that he’s so tired from the drive, that he needs to put his feet up. He sits on the scratchy couch—the one with years of our sand embedded between the cushions—and complains, like every year, that the renters have moved the furniture.
We’re totally not listening.
“Boys,” he says. “They’re probably not coming until tomorrow.”
“They always come the same day we do,” I say.
Dad says, “You’d be able to hear the car from the beach. Go outside and make sure Gideon doesn’t get dizzy.”
Making sure Gideon doesn’t get dizzy is one of our family duties, along with getting Mom’s slippers, thinking of a name for Chase’s song, washing the makeup off your sister’s face are you kidding me she is not leaving the house like that, and finding out where the hell Noah is.
Mom laughs from the balcony and reports, “He’s tipping over every which way.”
"Claudia will catch him,” Noah mumbles.
"Claudia’s catching him,” Mom calls in.
I can just barely see Claudia and Gideon if I crane my neck and press my cheek around the window. Noah laughs because I look silly with my face all squished , but I like seeing my little siblings, pushing each other over, spinning in circles, always getting up. I can see Claudia’s hands moving, but she’s too far away for me to know what she’s signing.
God, I can taste the ocean. I’m weak. “Let’s go out, Noah.”
He shakes his head and says, “We’ve got to wait for Melinda and the twins.” This is so weird, because usually it’s Noah trying to go somewhere—the movies, out for a run, college—and me begging him to stay, to wait, though I never have a specific thing for him to wait for.
Noah, Chase, come sit with me,” my father says. “You’ll be able to see the headlights, still, I promise.”
This is enough of an excuse for me to abandon our stakeout. I give Noah a little headjerk, but he frowns and, instead of staying where he is, shows how disappointing he is by heavyfooting into the kitchen to put away groceries. He could not act more put-upon if it were his job.
Whatever. I join my father on the couch and tuck under his arm while he strokes my hair.
I’ve just barely closed my eyes—the grain of the couch against my cheek, Noah’s malcontented grumblings in my ear—when I see the headlight glare through the windows and through my eyelids.
“Noah, they’re here!”
We run barefoot across the street to the Hathaways' and maul Melinda, Bella, and Shannon as soon as they step out of the SUV.
Their parents laugh, pushing back their sweaty bangs, hauling duffel bags out of the car. Shannon pulls out of my hug and taps his fist against mine, sticks his hand in my hair. “Welcome back, soldier,” he says.
“Welcome home, Shannon.”
“Can we make s’mores, Mom?” Bella asks. She’s clinging to one of Noah’s arms, which is kind of weird. I wrap the hem of Noah’s shirt around my finger until I have a good enough hold on him to tug him away from her.
He’s not even paying attention, because Melinda is milling by the other arm. She’s nineteen, older than Noah, and so thin that she always looks like a part of her is missing and the rest of her might be about to go find it. Her long fingernails close he gap between her hand and Noah’s wrist. I’ve seen Claudia do the same grip, when she wants Noah to do something.
Melinda is his sister in a different way.
“Of course we can,” Mrs. Hathaway says, with a laugh like a string instrument. “You boys want to get your family here?”
Noah says, “Chase, run and get everybody.”
I sprint across the street and straight onto the beach. I’m in the sand for the first time this summer. I always forget how cold it feels on your feet.
“Claude!”
Claudia’s wearing her first two piece bathing suit. She bought it around February, when they put the first bathing suits on the racks, and she’s been clamoring to wear it ever since. I pretty much hate that some company thinks her preteen body is capable of being sexualized, and that this—this night, this beach—is the time and place to do it. She screams, “Chase!” and tackles me into the sand, and she’s a child no matter what she’s wearing.
“Melinda and the twins are here,” I say. “Get dressed and we’ll make s’mores.”
But Claudia’s already running across the street. “Gimme a shirt, Mom!” she yells, and Mom tosses down some old t-shirt of mine. Claudia doesn’t stop running as she catches it and pulls it over her sweaty hair.
“Gid!” I yell. He’s deaf as a board, but he’s still spent all six years of his life getting yelled at. He’s watching me, asking me with his eyes and his hands where Claudia went.
Across street I sign to him. Come here. Don’t fall down. My ASL sucks, but the light’s so bad right now it doesn’t matter. Gideon runs over to me and I sign hold my hand before we start across the street. Either he sees this or just holds out of habit.
At the Hathaways', we make s’mores on the grill, pushing down on them with the spatula until they hiss. I sit with Shannon at the Hathaways' picnic table and we try to fill each other in on our lives since last August. During the year, I always feel like there are a million things I need to remember to tell him, and now nothing seems important but our siblings and our summer and the smoke from the grill.
Shannon keeps asking about my family—mostly Claudia and the baby yet to come—and I'm trying to pay attention, but my eyes keep going back to Bella. Was she this tall last summer? Maybe that’s why she was hanging off of Noah. I’m still waiting to hit my growth spurt. But I’m the one who’s her age. I hope she keeps that in mind.
I respond to one of Shannon's questions about Claudia with a quick, “I always forget how old she is,” and then clear my throat. “So what's Bella been up to?”
Shannon looks over at his twin. She dances in circles in the spots of moonlight that break through the Hathaways' awning. Her bare feet glitter. They're white and pointed, like something off a fairy.
He smiles. “She got the lead in the Nutcracker this year.” It’s his turn to ask about someone. “So how’s Gideon?”
Gideon’s hugging on to Mom’s leg, watching Claudia, probably wishing she were talking to him because she’s the only of us who signs well. The rest of us really only pretend we can, but, then again, so does Gideon.
“Deaf,” I say. “Melinda?”
“Grumpy. And she dyes her hair a lot. She's always sighing and mumbling about the universe.”
But right now Melinda’s at the corner of the balcony, talking to the dogs. “Mom?” she says. “I'm taking the dogs out for a run.”
Her mother is by the grill with my parents, where they’re laughing over a few beers, throwing coals down to the sand, touching Mom’s huge stomach.
Shannon says. “Chase? How’s Noah?”
“I’ll come with you,” Noah says, with a glance Melinda’s way, and he has the dogs unclipped from their leashes and free in no time, and he’s gone, chasing them across the street and onto the beach. I listen for the sound of them splashing in the water, but they're too far away. I am getting a headache, listening this hard.
I try to think about Bella again, and I don’t answer Shannon, but his father asks me the same question when I go over to the grill to collect my s’more. He claps me on the shoulder and says, “Noah excited for college?”
I want to tell him Noah doesn’t really get excited, but I don’t know how to describe my brother to someone who’s known him just as long as I have but doesn’t understand him any better. So I smile. It’s so dark, now, but the coals and the stars illuminate my siblings and Shannon’s siblings and our parents and make us all look permanent and important.
I say, “He’s kind of quiet about how he feels.”
“Yeah. Did he run off with Melinda?”
“I guess so.”
My parents exchange looks, like they were expecting Noah and Melinda’s flighty romance to take a hiatus this year, or something.
Noah does not ruin tradition. I could have told them that. And Melinda is his summer. More and more every single year.
So I just say, “He runs off a lot.”
Mr. Hathaway laughs and says, “Man, your brother’s a flight risk, isn’t he?” He serves me a s’more and says, “Still playing guitar, Chase?”
I grin and look down.
They drag their old guitar out so I don’t have to run home, and I make up chord progressions while Bella sings along in this ghost voice that makes me hyper-aware, like my whole body is made of fingertips. They smile at me in that way adults do when they’re drunk that makes you feel not so much younger.
We carry the plates into the kitchen, where the lights dazzle us into submission until someone has the sense to dim them. Once all the dishes are cleaned and stacked, the adults convince us to run down to the beach and try to find Noah.
He’s up to his waist in the ocean, the Hathaways' two dogs swirling around him like they’re trying to create a whirlpool. My brother is the eye of his manufactured hurricane.
“Get in!” he yells, and none of us need to be told twice.
The six of us splash in after him, screaming at the cold water, screaming at each other, screaming at every single foot of empty where the sky is and we aren’t. Bella’s on my shoulders and I’m twirling her around, Melinda’s holding her breath for as long as she can, everyone’s always yelling, “Where’s Gideon?” and pulling him out from underneath a breaking wave, yelling, “Where’s Noah?” and realizing he’s swum halfway out to sea.
Whenever there’s a split second of silence, we can hear our parents across the street, strumming the old guitar, laughing, clinking their beer bottles together.
Eventually my brother the flight risk comes and holds my head underwater until everything swirls, and, when I come up and sputter and blink, everyone’s skin is shiny and spotted from the stars. Bella and Claudia are running around on the sand, throwing handfuls at each other, shrieking, and Melinda’s squeezing the ocean out of her over processed, somehow colorless hair, her legs absolutely sparkling.
I want to be exactly this old forever.
“Y’all right, soldier?” Shannon asks me, his voice raspy from the salt.
I nod and count heads. There’s Claudia, Gideon, Melinda, Bella, Shannon. . . there’s everyone but Noah, who somehow managed to disappear in that split second I wasn't watching him.
So I look at Shannon and smile, and I try not to care, I try not to worry that my brother will leave me for good, because nothing is as permanent or important as the first summer night. Bella’s voice puts mine to shame, but I sing anyway, until Shannon dunks me underwater. When I come up, I hear everyone’s laugh—Shannon and Bella’s, as identical as they aren’t, Claudia’s, trying to be a woman, Gideon—that haunted sound that he doesn’t know he’s making—and Melinda’s. Twinkling into Noah's ear as he swims back, back to her and not to me.
--
NOW. Two other things. Both visual. Both very important.
Chase and that chick from the cover, Melinda Hathaway.
EDIT: because it isn't really clear in context, the bolded words are in sign language, between Chase and his little brother Gideon.
--
Cake.
I sign tomorrow, not that time means anything to a six-year old.
Cake now.
Birthday tomorrow.
I try to distract Gideon with the sunset over the ocean, but he’s not having any of that. Then Shannon and Noah run past with the dogs at their heels, and his hands scream at me to let him down so he can chase them.
“Be careful!” I yell after him.
From behind me, Melinda laughs. “All these years and you still shout at him.”
I turn around and watch her walk towards me, long arms swinging against the hem of her skirt. I look away. My siblings and her siblings are all running around barefoot together. “Habit, I guess. I have two other siblings to yell at.”
“And number three on her way. You excited?”
“Yeah, totally. Hoping it’ll. . . ” I drift off, my eyes following Bella as she collects seashells down by the shore.
“Was there a sentence to be completed there?”
I smile. “Put us back together. I’m hoping it’ll put us back together.”
She puts her hand in my hair. “Something got you down, Chasey?”
“I was just telling Claudia about how stuff used to be, and it’s just so. . . used to be.”
She nods and slips her hand back into the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie. “Noah used to be around more.” But she’s not with Noah now, even though he’s here. She’s standing here with me, and I don’t know why.
I say, “Noah used to be around a lot more. But that feels forever ago.” I rub my hair. It’s dry as dust. “Before we knew that Gid was deaf, I guess. Made stuff get complicated.”
She says, “You guys do okay, though. I mean, he’s happy. Playing with Bella and Shannon.”
“He can’t talk to them. We can barely talk to him.”
“What’s the point of talking?”
“We’re talking right now.”
“But we’re not saying anything.”
There’s a particularly loud wave, and I watch them all stay on their feet before I breathe. I wish Noah would get the dogs further away from the water, so I could relax for a minute, enjoy the smell of Melinda’s perfume.
“What you just said,” I say. “Was that Camus?”
“No, silly.” Her fingernails stroke my cheek, and then her lips press onto their tracks. “That was Hathaway,” she whispers.
I'm going to be doing a vlog about this in a few weeks with the Rebels, but this is something I wanted to say before the contest is over.
Let's get a picture of my cover. Nice and big. You can even click on it to make it bigger. Let's take a look at this thing.
Okay, so here we have a girl, presumably, or a boy with some very well done plastic surgery. She's lying on her back (if you originally saw stomach, don't worry, you're not alone, and more on that later.) She's wearing a green bikini and lying in the sand. My name is curled nicely around her ass. Her skin is pretty perfect.
This is a gorgeous, gorgeous cover, and I love it. But when I saw it for the first time, I was worried that some people would respond to it in a certain way. I told myself they wouldn't. I begged the universe that they wouldn't. But they have, and I've seen proof on several message boards and even in the comments of the ARC giveaway. There are women who are using my cover as a medium through which to hate their bodies.
Guys. Stop. Look.
As I'm typing this, I am on my back with my netbook on my stomach. I'm, completely coincidentally, wearing a green bikini. I am on the deck at the beach house where INVINCIBLE SUMMER is set, looking down at the sand where the girl in the cover is probably lying.
I don't look a damn thing like the girl in that cover. Even if I didn't have a laptop slung over me like the geek I am, I wouldn't look anything like her. I'm more thighs than tits and I'm whiter than fishbelly. And you know what? That's okay. Because the girl on my cover doesn't look like the girl on my cover either.
To be clear--I don't know the model they used for my cover. I am sure she is a beautiful, beautiful girl, and I applaud her balls tremendously--can you imagine having a picture of your torso sitting on shelves in major bookstores? But I *can* tell you one thing about this model. She doesn't really look like that.
And I know because, in the first draft of my cover, this girl looked a little different. Her bikini top wasn't stretched over big, perky breasts. Instead, it sat pretty near to her ribcage, with puckers near the bottom where she didn't quite fill up the fabric. I felt some kinship, I'll admit.
The fabulous art design team at Simon Pulse didn't change the cover to make you feel shitty about yourself. They changed it because it was impossible to tell which end was up. The cover was kind of confusing. It was hard to differentiate the boob end from the ass end, so they changed it to be more immediately clear. Some people are still a little confused by it, but I think unless we paint nipples on her, we've done about all we can at this point.
And even if they hadn't photoshopped this girl, can you imagine how many pictures they took to get that perfect one? And how they played with the light and pinned the bathing suit just right so she'd look her best, and spray-tanned her and artfully placed each grain of sand along her side? It's not a mistake that she looks this good. And you're not expected to put on a green bikini, flop down in the sand, and look like her. You can't look like her because she isn't real.
And now you're saying oh, hannah, but just because the model isn't real doesn't mean you're not writing bikini-clad hot girls and, yeah, you're right, but I have two points on this also. First of all, there are three girls in INVINCIBLE SUMMER that could logically be on the cover, but I think most people will agree with my guess about which one this model represents (although one of the other ones is the one described in the book as wearing a green bikini, so there's a nice little puzzle there, I think).
The girl who I'm pretty sure is meant to be on the cover is, and trust me on this one, no one you want to be.
Not to mention, point two, that this book is told from a male POV, and you're clearly supposed to look at this girl on my cover in a sexual way, let's not kid ourselves, so what you're really seeing is the idealized version of this girl the way my main character sees her.
And that's what makes this such a successful cover, that it so clearly shows the setting and one of the major characters through my main character's eyes, I could not be happier to have it. But it makes me sick, as someone who has struggled so much with body image, to hear women, even jokingly, say that my cover makes them feel bad about their bodies.
Don't feel bad. Seriously. Feel happy that you're not the bitch from my book. And that your tits aren't photoshopped.
First, some quick stats, just so you know where I'm coming from.
--Of my recent (read: decent) books, two use more than one point of view (hereafter POV.) These two are THE ANIMALS WERE GONE and ALL TOGETHER WITH FEELING, both of which you will have heard of if you are a regular reader of this blog, but the latter only if you are a REALLY regular reader. Because it has been in hiding for a little while. If you're curious about either of these, they're tagged at the end of the post. Click on the link and you'll see all the posts about 'em. --THE ANIMALS WERE GONE is my favorite of all my manuscripts, and I love ALL TOGETHER WITH FEELING, too (though I like INVINCIBLE SUMMER more. In fact, if I ranked my top three of my YAs, it would probably be 1. ANIMALS, 2. INVINCIBLE SUMMER, 3. ALL TOGETHER WITH FEELING. Am I allowed to say this shit?) --Here are some of my favorite books written with multiple POV, some of which are epistolatory, which may or may not be the word I'm looking for: Will Grayson, Will Grayson, The Realm of Possibility, Love Is The Higher Law, Are We There Yet, (can you tell I love David Levithan?) The Kings Are Already Here, The Year of Secret Assignments, Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, Caddy Ever After, P.S. Longer Letter Later, 33 Snowfish. --Despite that long list, the VAST majority of my favorite books are written in one POV.
So. It is fair to say that I am far more experienced, both in reading and writing, in single POV than in multiple.
However.
I love writing multiple.
I don't know. I just love it.
I wasn't planning to write THE ANIMALS WERE GONE in two POVs. In fact, I'd already considered and dismissed the idea. It was all going to be in Craig's POV. And then I finished the first chapter, hit enter a few times, and typed LIO at the top of the page. Because apparently it was Lio's turn.
Listen, I don't pull all that shit about how I'm controlled by my characters or my books have a mind of their own or something like that, because frankly, I think that stuff is stupid. I'm sorry if I offend anyone (but seriously, if you're reading this blog and you choose THAT to be offended by...)
I love the roles my characters play in my stories. I love writing them. I smile when I write good lines for them. I don't ever forget that they aren't real people. They are words on a page. I'm happy you like them. I like them too. But they're here to tell a story--my story--and, even though I'm a romantic (I am, damn it, don't laugh) I don't like to get stuck in that sensitive writer mode of thinking your characters are real people with real minds of their own. It sounds cold-hearted, but characters are tools. And point of view is a tool. And words are tools. All of these are tools to tell your story. Characters are not beautiful and unique snowflakes, etc.
So. Lio did not jump off the page and insist I write his viewpoint or anything like that. I just knew, in that second, that Craig's part was closed for now, and it was Lio's turn, or we were only going to get half of the story. But it was a revelation that came after I'd started writing.
ALL TOGETHER WITH FEELING, on the other hand, came into my head as four different points of view, because it's a story about four kids in a high school chorus--one soprano, one alto, one tenor, and one bass. (Yes, yes, girls, I'm writing girls.) The point of views, in this case, are a bigger toll for the story than the are in ANIMALS. They form the premise of the story, while, in ANIMALS, they're just making sure that you hear from both the quiet character and the loud character.
Which leads to another problem I'm having, now that I'm hardcore revising ALL TOGETHER WITH FEELING. Keeping voices distinct. This gets harder and harder the more POVs you have, and four is definitely in tricky territory for me. I'm concentrating a lot on speech patterns, rhythm, and word choice--my bass, if run through one of those scanner things, would result in a much higher reading difficulty than my tenor. But I'm still struggling with this. My alto and my tenor are still blending together a little, and sometimes my soprano starts to sound a little like them, too.
So. Let's wrap this up. What are your thoughts on multiple POV? Do you read it? Do you write it? If you do, how do you keep the voices distinct, and how do you approach revisions? (basically, HELP ME.)
My brother told me months ago that relationships are animals. You have to feed them and pet them and let them outside and give them a warm place to curl up at night, or they will turn on you while you're sleeping and gnaw you to pieces. I said he was full of shit.
The irony that Anthony was the one telling me this didn't escape me; Anthony and I haven't coddled our relationship in years. We are twins who pass the peas nicely and sit across the cafeteria, who forget we have the same math class until one of us mentions something Miss Jarible tripped over on her way to the chalkboard, and we look at each other with wide eyes and a little laugh in our throats. Still, on vacations, when we're shoved into a room together, we whisper secrets as easily as we did when we were five.
And he is still the better listener.
My relationship with Michael didn't take any more work. We kissed for the first time when we were twelve and started dating when we were fifteen. After that, we were MichaelandEmme, one breath.
He's tall, but has the smallest hands I've ever seen, fingers thin as spiderwebs. I always touched them when we watched movies, straight ahead, not talking, and pressed his nail beds against my lips, sometimes, because it made me feel like he was fragile.
He ordered breakfast with fruit so he would have something not to eat.
I know all these stupid things about him.
We're seventeen now, him barely so, me for so long it feels like years. We're in my basement where we watched all the movies, where we had sex for the first time, tried to have me on top but I fell off, got a rug burn from the moldy carpet.
My mom's walking around upstairs, talking to her sister on the phone, and she is oblivious.
I wonder if there's even anything she could do. When I think of my mom as a hero, there's one story that always comes to mind. I was playing with Caroline, my favorite friend, in the backyard, and we found a dead—
half dead?
--raccoon down by the creek. We pushed it with a stick and rolled it over—kicked?--and we shrieked our way up the path back to the house, breathless telling the story to my mom, fingers pressed against out mouths, we would never go back outside again, never again, it was so so big.
All mom did was call Animal Control, and everything was cleaned. We went back outside.
Everything my mom has done for me and Anthony, and this is the story that sticks in my mind.
I don't even know where Anthony is.
Michael sits in front of me, hands to himself, on his biceps, squeezing. He watches me like I've died in a car crash.
I want to reach out and touch his hand. Just
touch.
But I don't.
He says, “Are you...”
Am I what?
Sure?
Scared?
Fucked?
“I'm sorry,” I say.
So even if relationships aren't animals, dead relationships are dead animals. I always thought I could break up with Michael and I would feel as if my hands were washed, and I would get up and walk away. I would get a haircut and a chocolate bar and fix everything, just me. I would be just me.
But no, I am me and my dead relationship, or Michael and our dead relationship, cold frozen eyes staring up at me from the ground, glassy like Michael's, on its back, stinking and swelling with everything it was. And I just want some number to call to come take the carcass, because I don't know what to do with it. I don't know where it goes, or if one of us will have to drag it forever.
YA/MG author with Simon Pulse, Chronicle, and Roaring Brook Press. Out now are four YAs: BREAK, INVINCIBLE SUMMER, GONE GONE GONE, and TEETH, and two MGs: ZOMBIE TAG and MARCO IMPOSSIBLE. To come: NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED and SCRAPBOOK. Publishing makes me frustrated and confused and indignant and I love every minute of it. At least most of the time.
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