Review
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“Real and very relatable….There is great pleasure
here in not looking away from the train wreck situations that
Isabel creates.”--VOYA
“Vibrant….Convincing writing….Teens will undoubtedly race through
this compelling and moving novel.” --SLJ
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About the Author
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Amy Reed is the author of the contemporary young
adult novels Beautiful, Clean, Crazy, Over
You, Damaged, Invincible, Unforgivable, and The Nowhere Girls.
She is also the editor of Our Stories, Our Voices. She is a
feminist, mother, and quadruple Virgo who enjoys running, making
lists, and wandering around the ains of western North
Carolina where she lives. You can find her online at
AmyReedFiction.com.
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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From: condorboy
To: yikes!izzy
Date: Wednesday, August 31—10:42 AM
Subject: Hello stranger
Dear Isabel,
Sometimes my dog looks like Robert De Niro. She’s got a mole on
her cheek right about where he does, and she gets this serious
look like “Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me?” with
her forehead all wrinkly and her eyebrows raised and a defiant
glint in her eyes. I don’t really know what this means, except
that I probably spend way too much time with my dog. Her name is
Señor Cuddles, by the way. Señor for short. I think I told
you about her already. And I’m pretty sure it was boring then,
too.
Speaking of boring, that has been the definition of my sad little
life since I got home. What about you? I’m sure you probably have
all kinds of exciting things to do, living in the big city with
your boyfriend who’s in a band and your fake ID and everything.
Me, I’m stuck on this quaint little island, where the most
exciting thing happening before school starts is the wooden boat
festival, when everybody hangs around the docks and—you guessed
it—looks at wooden boats. We do it every year. If I’m lucky, I’ll
get an , free-range, no-sulfite hot dog out of it. This is
exactly the kind of small-progressive-town activity my mom loves.
She practically had a seizure about the heirloom vegetable seed
fair a few days ago.
So what are you doing? It’s weird to think about you existing
outside of camp. You were this larger-than-life presence for me
in those couple of months. It’s funny, but I think I spent more
time with you than I’ve ever really spent with anyone. In a row,
I mean. Except for maybe my mom when I was a baby. But I’m pretty
sure I was ing most of that time. And now you’re just gone,
just like that—poof—out of my life. I know you’re only really
just a ferry boat ride away, but it seems like a huge distance.
I guess I’m just having a hard time adjusting back to real life.
Part of me doesn’t want to admit everything has to go back to
normal and I have to start school next week. I’m just so bored,
you know? It’s like I’ve been hearing this rumor my whole life
that there’s this big, exciting world out there somewhere, but
that’s all it is and all it’ll ever be—only a rumor. I’ve never
actually seen it. Maybe I caught a glimpse this summer, but now
that’s gone. All I have are memories, and they’re already fading
fast. I know I’m being sappy, but that’s part of my charm, right?
Didn’t you say you loved how earnest I am? Sometimes I feel like
I’m an old man trapped in a seventeen-year old’s body, like I
should be wearing a top hat and suspenders and have s
instead of zits, and hobble around with a cane and call Facebook
“FaceSpace” or “MyFace.” Instead I’m this little stringy mess of
nerves and hormones with all these big ideas and no one to tell
them to except a fascinating girl I met this summer who exists
only via email.
Is it okay that I called you fascinating? My kindergarten teacher
once sent a note home complaining that I was too affectionate
with the girls in my class. My mom says I’m just open about my
emotions, which is apparently a good thing in her world. I did
grow rather attached to you over the summer, which I hope you
don’t find reason to send your man-friend across Puget Sound to
kick my ass. He should know I pose absolutely no threat to his
masculinity. He’d get here and look at me and be like, “What,
this shrimp? Are you kidding?” then get on his skateboard or
whatever and fly back to you in Seattle and wrap you in his big,
manly, tattooed arms.
I’m not in love with you, if that’s what you’re thinking. We
already went over this. I’m just weird and bored and trapped on
this little island, and I’m dying for some excitement, and you’re
the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in a long time.
Love,
Connor
From: yikes!izzy
To: condorboy
Date: Thursday, September 1—4:38 PM
Subject: Re: Hello stranger
Dear Connor, you adorable little freak,
Yes, yes, I miss you too, blah blah blah. You are so funny. Why
do you have to be so serious? Do you expect Trevor to challenge
you to a duel or something? Do you think he’s threatened by my
having male friends? What kind of world do you live in? I thought
you said Bainbridge Island was a “nuclear-free zone topped with
eco-friendly buildings and a bunch of Crocs-wearing, overeducated
liberals.” That’s a direct quote, by the way. Did I mention I
have a photographic memory? Just one more thing to add to the
long list of Amazing Things About Isabel. Ha! That, and I’m
double-jointed. Wow, huh?
I’m bored too, so don’t think your boredom is anything special. I
think that’s the natural state of teenagers, you know—to be bored
and yearning and pissed off at everything. I don’t know if it’s
any better for me, living in the city. I guess there’s more to
do, but you’re lucky because you can walk off into the woods or
on the beach and just lose yourself. I’d love to be able to do
that, just wander off and get lost and have everything just quiet
down for a while. Here, there’s always somebody watching, some
car honking at you, some man whistling, somebody rushing
somewhere and deciding you’re in their way. We should trade
places for a while. You can be a city kid and I’ll go ride horses
or catch frogs or whatever it is you do in your free time.
Things have been weird since I got home. My mom’s been running
around frantic because of some Very Important Client, and my
dad’s been hiding in the basement watching his sports and eating
his Cheese Doodles and drinking his non–diet soda even though my
mom finds the time in her busy schedule to remind him how
he’s been getting since he’s been unemployed. I’m not quite sure
that qualifies as domestic abuse, but I wouldn’t be surprised if
my dad could benefit from a trip to some kind of halfway house
for battered husbands. It’s just that everything she does has to
be so damn IMPORTANT, like nothing he could ever possibly do
could even come close. And me, well I don’t even factor into the
equation because I’m just a kid and have no monetary value. Maybe
I should start stripping or something to make some income—then
I’d be worth something in this family. Instead, I’m just a drain
on the resources of the all-powerful matriarch, my face nothing
but a reminder that they once spent enough time naked in each
other’s company for their genes to mingle.
Teen angst is so boring, isn’t it? I try so hard not to be a
cliché, but it’s like it’s written into my to hate my parents
and be totally unsatisfied with everything. I wonder if there’s
anybody our age who actually likes their life. Maybe those
purity-ring girls who are too drunk on Jesus to know any better.
Maybe I should be a drug addict and run away from everything like
my brother.
Let’s run away together, Connor. Just you and me and our
unmarketable skills. You can write haikus and do video
installations, and I’ll make collages and construct life-sized
urinals symbolizing the plight of modern teenagers. Trevor might
want to come along, though. I hope you don’t mind. He’s not that
bad of a guy, and he’s really good in bed. Ha! I wrote that just
for you. I am picturing you flopping around trying to regain your
composure. You’re such a prude, Connor, and I mean that in the
most loving way possible. You’d think with such an “enlightened”
mother, you’d be a little less uptight. But I guess that’s part
of your charm.
What about your girlfriend? You didn’t even mention her.
You want to hear something lame? Since I got home, whenever I get
pissed off (which is often) I pretend I’m back at camp and it’s
just after the Craft Shack closes for the day and all the kids
and other counselors are in their cabins getting ready for
dinner, and it’s just you and me and the kitchen staff and other
random, kidless employees left to roam the deserted property, and
everything’s so quiet, and the sun is glistening off the water in
just that way, and the San Juan Islands are all green and fuzzy
in the distance, and the breeze, and the smell, and everything
feels perfect. I close my eyes and pretend I’m there, that my
life is as simple as teaching crafts to a bunch of kids all day,
that I have all this leftover time to myself and I can just do
nothing if I want. The strange thing is, sometimes you’re here
with me, in my fantasy, being your adorable, serious self and not
demanding anything from me. And it makes me calm. I bet you never
thought you were that important to me, did you? I bet you’re
blushing again.
Well, I guess it’s time to go now. Trevor’s picking me up in half
an hour and I need to shave my pubes. Ha! Making you blush, even
if it’s just over email, will never get old.
Like,
Isabel
From: condorboy
To: yikes!izzy
Date: Friday, September 2—7:12 PM
Subject: Re: Hello stranger
Dear Isabel,
Try to shock me all you want, I’m not going anywhere. For your
information, I’m not the prude you think I am. Trust me, I have
plenty of dark thoughts late at night, alone in bed with only
myself with whom to communicate. So there. Who’s blushing now?
Since you asked, Alice and I are still an item, although she’s
been more distant of late. She says she’s “figuring some things
out” and I’ve barely seen her since I got back. I’m trying to
think what she could be figuring out and why it involves not
talking to me, but I’m at a loss. Her parrot, Gerard, died over
the summer, so that might have something to do with it. They grew
up together and, honestly, theirs was probably Alice’s closest
relationship. And what does that make me? Less than a bird? Oh,
the plight of the horny, marooned poet.
Since you mentioned the “S word,” I must mention that I’m dying,
perhaps just figuratively speaking, but if it were possible to
expire from sexual frustration, I’d most definitely be a goner.
Alice was kind enough to bless me with some oral compassion on my
return from camp, but then rescinded her kindness at the last
minute, just moments before my—shall I say it?—ultimate
Thank-You. I was left there in the back of her mom’s Prius,
writhing in unreleased tension, and she just dabbed at the sides
of her mouth with a Kleenex and informed me that oral strikes her
as inherently misogynist because the girl receives nothing in
return and is effectively silenced in the process. I said I was
more than happy to return the favor, or perhaps find a
configuration more conducive to tandem pleasure, but she would
have none of it.
Honestly, I don’t know what I did wrong. I can’t imagine a more
attentive and sensitive boyfriend than me. My sensitivity to the
feminine condition borders on pathology. So why does it sometimes
feel like she considers me a kind of danger to her? Was she
traumatized in some past life? Does she see me as nothing more
than a stand-in for a former abuser? Or is she just a cold fish?
Isabel, help me figure her out. You’re my only hope.
Hypothermic from cold showers,
Connor
From: yikes!izzy
To: condorboy
Date: Saturday, September 3—4:47 PM
Subject: Re: Hello stranger
Connor,
What kind of disturbed woman doesn’t like oral?! On what planet
does a wet tongue lapping at one’s girlie parts feel like
anything less than God’s breath? What is wrong with this Alice of
yours? I suggest you trade her in for a newer model. She is
defective, my friend.
I don’t know how to help you, except to remind you that the most
important sexual organ for the woman is in fact the mind. Guys
can get turned on by a cantaloupe, but girls need a little more
inspiration. At least, this is what I hear. I, on the other hand,
seem to be more like a guy in this respect. Not that I get turned
on by cantaloupes, but bananas or zucchinis, sure. Ha! I think I
must have more testosterone than most girls or something. It’s
like I’m on edge and anxious and I just need my body to feel
something else, something different, and sex is the only thing
strong enough that works to relieve it. I guess I could cut
myself or something, but I’m already enough of a cliché. I don’t
want to go down that road.
I told Trevor about it once because, all kidding aside, it kind
of worries me, this feeling I get sometimes. I’m full of all this
energy, way more than is supposed to fit in one person, you know?
And I poured my heart out to Trevor about it and it’s like he
didn’t even hear me. He was just all sexy face and saying how
lucky he is to have a girlfriend who wants it so much, hubba,
hubba. But I was being serious, and it kind of pissed me off. I
know most of the time I’m kidding, so maybe it’s hard to tell
when I’m not, but it’d be nice if someone took me seriously once
in a while. That’s what I like about you. As much as I kid you
about it, it’s nice that you take everything I do so seriously.
You’re the only one who really does.
Your favorite sex fiend,
Isabel
From: condorboy
To: yikes!izzy
Date: Sunday, September 4—1:33 PM
Subject: Popsicle sticks
Dear Isabel,
Remember that rainstorm when everyone crammed into the Craft
Shack during free time because it was too wet to do anything
outside? It was just you and me and about sixty soggy,
hyperactive kids trying to stab each other with scissors. And I
was all trying to hand out construction paper and popsicle sticks
and asking everyone to please calm down, but it was like I wasn’t
even there and they didn’t even see me. Then you climbed on top
of the table in the middle of the room and started tap dancing
and singing about surrealism and Dalí and Magritte, and everybody
shut up and sat down. This room full of little kids just watched
you, transfixed, like you were telling them the secret to life,
like you were revealing something really important. Remember? You
said, “I dare you to make me a picture of your dreams,” and they
all got to work, just like that, like you were the president and
just told them their drawings would save the country from certain
annihilation. You inspired them, Isabel. They listened to you
when nothing else would shut them up. They took you seriously.
They actually listened to you lecture about art history, and they
were like, nine years old. Apparently they knew something your
beloved Trevor hasn’t figured out. And, by the way, I know it
too.
Your biggest fan,
Connor
From: yikes!izzy
To: condorboy
Date: Sunday, September 4—11:28 PM
Subject: Re: Popsicle sticks
Dear Connor,
I don’t know how to react to Nice. It makes me uncomfortable.
Remember how I’d always pretend-strangle you this summer every
time you complimented my drawings or told me my hair looked nice?
Well, I kind of want to punch you in the face right now.
In response, I’d like to point out that it doesn’t take a whole
lot to impress little kids. I mean, why do you think they’re
always wandering off with molesters? All I had to do was wave my
arms around and try to be more interesting than stabbing a kid
with scissors. It’s not rocket science.
But thank you, I guess. Is that what I’m supposed to say to a
compliment? I wouldn’t know, since I receive them so
infrequently. Not that I’m fishing right now. I’m not, so don’t
try any of your little tricks to boost my self-confidence. You
have an unfair advantage, being raised by a therapist. You know
all these secret ways to get people to tell you things and bare
their souls. Me, I learned nothing of substance from my
Neanderthal her and Executive mother. But I guess my family’s
not completely useless—I did learn how to argue from my sister
and how to lie from my brother. I should probably send them
thank-you cards.
Trevor’s band is playing at Chop Suey tonight, so I must be off
to make myself beautiful. It’s hard work being such a jet-setter.
My dear sister, Gennifer-with-a-G, the self-procled Queen of
the Aging Lesbian Hipsters, always tells me our generation is
doing it all wrong, that we’re all about manufactured style and
lack any real originality or substance, like she’s automatically
superior because she was old enough to remember the day Kurt
Cobain killed himself. So I say, “What, like it’s cool to still
be driving Mom’s old hand-me-down Volvo and shopping at thrift
stores when you’re almost forty?” Then she’s like, “I’m
thirty-six!” and I have to remind her that’s twice as old as me,
and then she stomps away with her shitty nonprofit job and two
useless masters degrees to go home and listen to her records and
read her comic books and reminisce about the days when being poor
and overeducated was cool. Except she’s not poor anymore, because
her wife, Karen, makes a ton of money and they live in a fancy
condo downtown. So now I guess she’s just a hypocrite like
everyone else I know.
I should try to be nicer, shouldn’t I?
Yours in eternal bitchitude,
Isabel
From: condorboy
To: yikes!izzy
Date: Monday, September 5—9:43 PM
Subject: Death and dismemberment
Dear Isabel,
School starts tomorrow and I feel like I should feel something.
But I don’t. I feel nothing. I am dead inside. Do you want to
know why?
BECAUSE ALICE BROKE UP WITH ME!
Do you want to know why she broke up with me?
BECAUSE SHE SAYS SHE’S A FUCKING LESBIAN!
Did you hear me? Do you need me to repeat myself?
MY GIRLFRIEND WAS A FUCKING LESBIAN!!!!!!!!
The whole time I was exhausting myself trying to perform
acrobatics with my tongue, she was not only not interested, but
DISGUSTED with my whole gender. Every time I clenched my teeth
and forced myself to act like a gentleman, trusting that someday
it would all be worth it, someday I would be rewarded for being
so damn NICE and RESPECTFUL, someday God would shine on me and
send a lightning bolt of passion surging through Alice, inspiring
her to run toward me while tearing her clothes off, eyes wild and
mouth foaming, rabid with her desire for me. I kept hoping that
all those ed, lackluster nights in the back of her mom’s car
were just working toward the moment she’d finally break through
to her hibernating nymphomaniac core and go wild. But it was all
a lie. All that patience and frustration and talking and
hand-holding was for nothing. Because the whole time I was trying
to be the sensitive boyfriend I thought she wanted, the whole
time I thought maybe I was someone she could love, the truth of
the matter was that I was wasting my time. Do you have any idea
how that feels? To realize you’ve been wasting your love on
someone for whom it’s mentally and physically and spiritually
impossible to love you back?
She said I was her last hope. She had been suspecting she was gay
for a long time, but she wanted to try dating me because—and I
quote—“If I couldn’t like you, I probably couldn’t like any guy.”
Do you know what that really means? It means I’m the closest
thing to a girl she could find that still had a penis.
It’s official: I’m the Last Chance for Lesbians.
What does this say about me?
Your tattered rag,
Connor
From: yikes!izzy
To: condorboy
Date: Monday, September 5—11:48 PM
Subject: Re: Death and dismemberment
Dear Connor,
The good thing is, you don’t really have to take it personally.
She didn’t reject you, she rejected your entire sex, which is
something you don’t have any control over. And really, if you
look at it a different way, you could take this as the best
compliment ever. What if this just means you’re the very best of
your gender? Did you ever think of that? Maybe you are such an
amazing specimen of a man that if a woman doesn’t want to throw
herself at you and kiss your feet and have your babies, then no
man will do. Because you’re the best of the best, the cream of
the crop, the greatest penis-endowed human this world has ever
seen. Alice was putting a lot of confidence in you if she thought
there was even a chance you could sway what she knew deep down in
her woman-loving loins. Really, you should be proud of yourself.
I’m sorry if I can’t spend more time stroking your wounded ego,
but I’m a little preoccupied at the moment. You should know by
now that I am a very selfish friend, which probably explains why
I don’t have many. I blame it on the influence of my mother and
her type-A personality. I keep trying to focus on you, but my own
desires and obsessions keep crowding you out with flashing lights
saying “Pay attention to me!” and I have no choice but to obey. I
hope you’re not offended.
What I’m thinking about is how tomorrow morning I, too, am going
to wake up to the first day of senior year. I’m going to put on
my clothes and get in my car and drive to that big old yellow
mansion full of the rich and smart and superficially interesting.
I’ve told you about my school, right? We’re the black sheep of
the private schools in Seattle, the indie-rock to their pop
music. They’re the machines pumping out the future robots of
Harvard, Princeton, and Yale while we’re the little
garden sprouting the brains of Reed, Oberlin, and Sarah Lawrence.
I know you love it when I complain, but to be honest, I really
like my school. The kids in it aren’t much to write home about,
but at least they’re pretending to be authentic, which is more
than I can say for the rest of the clueless assholes in our age
bracket (present company excluded, of course).
We’re located in the heart of the Capitol Hill district, down the
street from a women’s sex-toy shop and a Wiccan “magick” supply
store. A couple blocks away is the community college and a few
blocks beyond that is the art school, and everywhere in between
are coffee shops and gay bars and ethnic restaurants and
beautiful people with big sunglasses and small dogs and reusable
canvas shopping bags, and everywhere you turn are these pretty
brick apartment buildings full of the twenty-something hipsters
that make this little ecosystem so vibrant. It’s quite
impressive, really, and I’d like to think I’m a part of it even
though of course I’m only eighteen and technically not allowed to
be cool yet, but I have my sister’s old ID that usually works
(I’m thirty-six!), and of course I have Trevor when he’s in town.
So you’d think I’d be excited about starting school, but I’m not.
I’m only telling you this because, well, you’re you, and for some
reason I always feel this compulsion to tell you things. The
truth is, I don’t really have any friends, and that’s a pretty
sucky thing in a school where your whole class is only
thirty-four people and everyone refers to each other as their
“educational family.” I know this must come as a huge surprise,
and you’re probably catatonic from the shock because you know me
as such a charming and likeable person, but if you must know, I
have a little bit of a problem getting close to people. It’s not
like I’m a total pariah. I mean, I’m friendly enough with people
and they’re civil with me. But while they’re all planning their
weekend activities and eating the school’s homemade vegetarian
lunch in the cozy cafeteria together, I’m wandering around
Broadway Avenue or sitting in coffee shops by myself and reading.
It’s like everyone’s part of this big happy family, and I’m the
weird foster kid that everyone is very polite to, but the truth
is no one really considers me a part of the family.
I’m pretty lonely, Connor. Trevor’s in Portland and only comes to
town a couple times a month. My sister hardly ever stops by
anymore, and who knows where my brother is, and don’t even get me
started on my parents. The only one I really have is you, and you
only live inside this computer and in my Craft Shack memories.
Shit, where did that come from? This little bout of pre-school
depression is making me sappy.
I’m sorry about Alice. I really am. You deserve someone as
amazing as you are, and I know you will find her. Some girl is
going to love you like crazy.
Yours in lonely solidarity,
Isabel
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