By which I mean, this trailer is fancy:
And lush and moody and perfect!
And reminds me that The Space Between comes out one week from today.
Which is kind of terrifying.
I did not mean this to be the shortest post ever. But it is. However, if you’re in the mood for something longer, I did just write a brand new Merry Fates story. It’s about vampires. Yes, really.
There’s this boy in my drawing class.
I mean, there are lots of boys in my drawing class. But I’m talking about one particular boy. He’s younger than me, a sophomore with long floppy George-McFly bangs and a black trench coat. I know him from our bus-route, mostly because he’s incredibly loud in the mornings, when everyone else is being quiet.
He’s dramatic, frantic, kinetic, profane—all knees and elbows and shoulder blades. He drops F-bombs like they are a type of exotic punctuation mark. He talks in class constantly, blurting out wild, impossible proclamations and then clapping his hands over his mouth like that will force the words back in where they belong.
Every day in drawing, our teacher stands over his desk, sighing, looking down at his various projects. She says things like:
“Wit, this is unacceptable. I thought we agreed that if I let you take it home, you’d have it done by today. What happened?”
“My stepbrother poured milk all over it.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t leave your projects out where accidents can happen.”
“Did I say he knocked something over? I said, he poured milk on it. Why does no one ever believe me? God!”
Right now, I’m going to just skip the narrative mess and tell you the last part first, because sometimes it’s the endpoint that matters most. So I’ll come right out and say it: in the months that follow, Wit will become the best friend I’ve ever had. He will be the person I didn’t know I needed—funnier than Jane, more outspoken than Catherine, more honest than almost anyone. He will be the first person I actually enjoy talking to on the phone. He will be that friend you have no idea how you ever got along without.
On the afternoon I actually meet him, Catherine and I are sitting in the cafeteria, reading her copy of Julius Caesar to each other. It’s my off-hour, and she’s skipped her social studies class to hang out with me, so I’m helping her with her English homework.
On the other side of the cafeteria,Wit is flapping around in his trench coat. He’s alone, climbing up onto one of the chairs and jumping off again.
Catherine grins. “Hey, let’s go talk to him. You want to?”
“But we don’t know him.”
“So? It’s not like he’s scary. I mean yeah, he’s weird, but it’s cute.”
“Cute?”
“No, not like that. I just mean, you know, cute. Come on.”
I’ll be honest—I kind of expect that Catherine will do most of the talking. But Wit seems to have a weirdly silencing effect on her. He immediately makes it his business to entertain us, pacing in a circle, periodically raking a hand through his hair. He’s erratic, floppy like a puppet, jerking to life suddenly, waving his arms and tripping over his own feet. He tells us a very bizarre story involving Marilyn Manson, a gas station attendant, and an electric train.
As you may or may not have noticed (I won’t be sad if you didn’t notice—I promise), I have not been on the internet at all since Thursday. So, wow.
The reason for this is, I just spent the weekend in Minneapolis. Which is not to imply that they don’t have internet in Minneapolis, because they do.
I just didn’t avail myself of it, because some of the trip meant being busy with AASL, and the rest of it meant being holed up in a hotel room with Tess and Maggie, working feverishly on our upcoming Merry Sisters of Fate anthology. It was a lengthy and manic process, involving caffeine, sticky notes, stupid drawings, smart drawings, and lots and lots of markers. It was excellent.
But now I’m home, and trundling around trying to get everything in my life back where it belongs.
First, here are the things you need to know:
And the rules are fun, too—all you have to do is go over there and tell us in the comments what made-up title you’d give to a Merry Fates story of your choosing, if you could give it any title at all.*
Next, here are the things I just want to tell you because I want to:
The Space Between is also an ALAN pick for the month of October, and I’m sharing the link here because I absolutely love what they have to say about it.
This book is my favorite thing I’ve written, and it makes me stupid-happy when people read it and want to talk about the parts that matter most to me. (Scroll down to see the ALAN take on it.)
So, thank you.
*Only, probably not a dirty title. Not that.
The new semester brings low iron-gray skies, sub-zero weather, and all-new classes.
Although I’m generally twitchy, not to mention easily bored by routine, I don’t really want things to end. (History. I don’t want history to end.)
Now, I have Intermediate Drawing, Intermediate Ceramics, and American Literature. Never let it be said that I overexert myself.
Drawing is absolutely the best part of my day, because I share a drafting table with Dill and we spend most of the period giving each other goofy, sardonic looks and screwing around with the stencil set.
American Lit. is the worst, because Irish was supposed to have it with me, but he’s still not back from his administration-imposed exile, and it’s starting to look like he might be gone for good. Also, I really, really wish I had another class with #4. But I don’t.
So January is bleak, chilly, and generally disappointing—but survivable.
In the morning, Catherine and I are standing at her locker. We’re in the middle of this semi-amazing conversation of the sort I don’t usually have with Catherine, talking about God and Buddha and whether the absolute polarity of the Yin and the Yang is sexist.
“It is,” says Catherine, with surprising vehemence. “It totally is. Balance? It’s not balanced! If it was balanced, it wouldn’t be degrading to women. What, what is that? To take a list of good things and have them represent men, then put all the shit over here, on this side—here, this is the women!”
“A symbol by itself doesn’t degrade something,” I say, but not with much conviction. The point of the argument isn’t to figure out what I really think, it’s just to take the opposing side and support it effectively.
“Anyway, wet and cold and dark aren’t necessarily value judgments.” I’m fumbling around with mittened hands, closing them on thin air, trying to convey a delicate equilibrium. “Yeah, maybe we associate them with corruption or aberration, but they aren’t inherently negative.”
I’m being disingenuous though, because cold kind of is. In addition to the mittens, I’m wearing my coat, an extra pair of socks, a wool hat and a bright lumpy scarf. And I’m still freezing.
Catherine opens her mouth to disagree, already shaking her head, waving a finger in my face. Then her gaze shifts abruptly.
“Uh,” she says, looking past me.
When I turn around, Jane is standing uncomfortably close, almost touching my elbow.
“Dill broke up with me,” she says. “Can I eat lunch with you?”
Once again, you guys have come through with some fantastic answers to a complicated (and honestly very personal) question. I’m so impressed to see the range and depth of things that people in the world are doing to help others, and I really loved reading your stories, so thank you.
Our two US winners of the finished Space Between copies are:
Kat
and
Vivien
And our international winner is:
Otterkat
(I’ll be in touch for mailing addresses)
Also, I just looked at the calendar and The Space Between will officially be out in the US in 21 days.
Which is three weeks.
Which is so, so close.
I’m thinking that we still have time for one more contest before TSB is released into the wild, so be sure to check back. I’m going to be at AASL in Minneapolis all this weekend-plus-Monday, talking to librarians,* but I promisepromisepromise to come up with something, even if I don’t have a chance to post it until I get home, so keep your eyes open!
And you guys? We’re almost there. My red, red book is almost on shelves.
(Thanks for sticking with me.)
*Basically one of my favorite pastimes.
I am excellent at keeping secrets.
I keep every secret anyone ever tells me. I keep them like they are going out of style. I keep them so long that I forget them. I keep secrets even when they are not, strictly speaking, secrets at all.
But this post is not about that.
This post is about the one semi-excruciating time when I didn’t. Keep one.
First, about Greg. Greg is huge. He’s not the tallest boy in school—there’s a senior on the basketball team who’s close to seven feet. And he’s not the heaviest—there are still a few who outdo him when it comes to sheer poundage. However, taking height and weight into account simultaneously, he’s easily the biggest person I’ve ever encountered. He is patently tremendous and has no problem scooping me up with one arm and carrying me around on his shoulder like a doll.
We start hanging out together just before Thanksgiving break, because we have the same off-hour. Mostly, we go over to his house and eat Poptarts and he teaches me to play the bass. He makes up songs about me and I help him with his homework, and sometimes we hang out together at parties or go to movies on the weekends. With anyone else, I might be worried that spending so much time together would mean there was an expectation of it turning into Something Significant, but Greg also happens to be Dill’s best friend, so no matter what, it never, ever feels like a date.
Greg is a classic extrovert and a big self-starter. He likes autonomy and discipline and taking the initiative. He’s a Seven Habits of Highly Effective People type of guy. Until I met Greg, I had never actually heard anyone use the word proactive in conversation.
I like hanging out with him because I can always just say whatever, do whatever, and he never acts like I’m strange. The fact is, he’s way more focused on manifesting a purpose-driven life than on whether or not I happen to be wearing matching socks.
The Afternoon of the Secret is hard to describe. It’s one of those cold, gray days when the sky is flat and low and the whole world seems not-quite-real. Everything is a little too pale and a little too glassy and a little too imaginary, which is probably why I accidentally say what I think in the first place—I just mistake the entire situation for a very vivid dream.
The conversation starts innocently enough.
It comes about because of a Student Council fundraising scheme in which we all fill out a survey in homeroom and get matched up with a handful of other students whose views and personalities complement our own. Then, if you pay a dollar, they’ll give you a printout of your algorithm-approved matches.
Seventeen-year-old Brenna is way too above this whole endeavor to even bother filling out the survey,* but Greg is enthusiastic. Since I generally make it my business to know as much as possible about Everyone Ever, I’m his go-to girl when it comes to evaluating his matches. He’s proactively on the hunt for a relationship and so I go down his list with him, describing the relative merits of each girl and offering my opinion on whether or not they’re appropriate girlfriend material.
We spend close to an hour sitting in his truck, talking about romance and dating and whether you can really measure a person’s character simply by looking at their smile.
I don’t remember a single name on his sheet. But I do remember this conversation, and not just because I wrote it down. At the time, it was actually kind of seared into my soul.
So far, we’ve been dabbling around in the shallows of the Giveaway Pool, but now it’s time to bring out the big guns. (And also time to mix our metaphors, apparently.)
I have three finished copies of The Space Between. They’re right here:
And I will be giving them to you!
Now, to make up for all the times I’ve limited my giveaways to the US, one of these copies will be International Only. I’ve never tried this before, so it’s going to be . . . an experiment. I’ll tell you more down in the rules section.
So, for the first contest, we started simple. I asked you to pick a personal theme song. The next time, I asked you to talk about some trinket or memento that seemed trivial, but which held personal significance for you.
Now, I’m going to ask you to do something harder.
One of the overarching themes of The Space Between centers around helping people who just aren’t in a position to help themselves. I know that might sound a little strange, considering that this is a book about demons, but bear with me. Daphne isn’t your typical demon—and we might even go so far as to consider the question, what is a typical demon, anyway? I’m not saying I have an answer, I’m just saying that I firmly believe everyone has the capacity to do some good if they choose to.
So, for this week’s contest, I’d like to hear about a time that someone helped you, and they didn’t have to. Or a time that you helped someone because you could just tell that they needed it. Basically, I want to know about good samaritans—people who’ve gone out of their way to make a difference simply by doing what they could.
I realize that this is more complicated than either of my previous assignments. Your answer might not fit conveniently on Twitter, but if you can wrangle it, more power to you!
What I want you to do:
I’ll announce winners next Monday, but until then, I look forward to hearing your stories!
*I’m not even going to apologize for being mean anymore. Please, just do the thing so it works . . . and stuff.
In the morning, I get ready for school.
I brush my hair and do my Spanish homework and put on my makeup, but the whole time, I’m thinking about what happened to Gatsby. I want to understand the situation (the circumstances), but I can’t seem to get it figured out, so I stop trying.
This is actually easier than you’d think. I have a lot of practice at ignoring anything about school that I find upsetting. All year, I’ve been entertaining myself by pretending things, like the door to the math wing is really a portal to Hell, or time has stopped and if I can draw three perfectly round circles, it will start again.
Mostly though, I pretend to be someone else. Not like wittier or more confident or cooler, but someone else like Morticia Addams or Joan of Arc or Marilyn Monroe. I pretend to be Tinkerbell. I pretend to be Alice in Wonderland, because if this is Wonderland, then it doesn’t even matter that nothing makes sense.
I go to school as Queen Elizabeth I, because maybe her natural complexion is buried under an inch of foundation, but at least she knows how to run a country.
Later, things will sort-of/kind-of be okay. Gatsby will show up to US History—the scrapes on his face scabbing over, his bad arm strapped against his chest. He’ll smile around the room and joke about this being the only time he’s ever been arrested that resulted in him not being punished, either by the court system or his dad.
He’ll grin and say, “I guess that’s the big secret. I just have to stand there and get my ass beat.”
The morning is for worrying though, and wondering. It’s for impeccable deportment and Queen Elizabeth.
In art, I sit across from TS and Brody. The semester is almost over, and we’re working on our final sculpture assignment, chipping tiny pieces off blocks of plaster and sanding down the edges. Everything is dusty and the fact that my chisel is held together by duct tape is ruining my sense of monarchical dignity. I don’t like how the plaster dries out my hands.
I don’t like that something mysterious has taken place and I don’t have answers, but TS proves to be is an invaluable source of information. She was smoking in the back parking lot when it happened and saw the whole thing.
As many of you already know, I enjoy baking.
I also enjoy 80s horror movies, 90s horror movies, other horror movies that didn’t come out in those decades, and anything by George A. Romero.
So when Dawn and Stacey asked if I wanted to join their epic Halloween baking contest of deliciousness, creepiness, and prizes for you guys, there was nothing to say but Absolutely!
And now, I present to you—the culmination of my efforts!
The ladies have asked me to share a little bit about how I approached this endeavor. So, first you will need:
It had been raining all week, which was weird. It hardly rained at all that year, and never in winter.
When Gatsby came into history, his shirt was wet, and there was mud on his shoes and in his hair. He looked strange, and smaller than usual—pale except for a little scrape, raw and bright on the point of his chin. He was dragging his backpack by the strap, letting it hang down so that it bumped along the floor as he walked. When he dropped into his seat, it looked awkward.
“Sorry, Mister T. Unavoidable.” Which is what he always said when he was late, but his voice cracked a little. He kept opening his mouth like he wanted to say something else, but couldn’t make the sound come out.
When he saw me watching him, he stared back and raised his eyebrows. But when he saw that Valentine was watching too, he ducked his head, fumbling one-handed with his backpack. He looked sick, but sicker than normal.
Valentine leaned across the aisle. “What’s wrong—something’s wrong. What’s wrong with your arm?”
“Nothing.” When he took out a pen, he was shaking.
After roll, Tully told us to work on our final projects while he ran down to the library. He told us to behave ourselves, but not as though he expected that we wouldn’t.
After he was gone, Valentine turned to face Gatsby. “Something’s wrong.”
Gatsby looked away and said very carefully, “I kind of hurt my shoulder.”
Valentine was out of her desk now, standing over him, hands on her hips. “I want to see.”
He shook his head.
“God damn it, Gatsby. Let me see it.”
She grabbed him by the collar and yanked hard, and he shut his eyes, biting off a short, harsh cry.
She looked down inside the gaping neck of his shirt, then let him go, backing away stiffly, her arms at her sides, her voice high and quick and breathless.
“Ohmygod.” She said it in a rush, like it was all one word. “Jesus.”
He didn’t say anything, just nodded. He looked very tired.
“So, who did that? Who did that?”
He reached out with his right hand, his good hand. “V, I—”
She twisted away, skipping back. “Got in a fight. You got in a fight, Gatsby. What—was it over some petty drug bullshit? Did Shark-Boy tell you to ‘stand and recognize,’ some shit like that? You better $%&@ ing recognize this, Gatsby. You are on probation. You are not supposed to fight anymore.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it again.
“Take off your shirt,” she said, looking terrifying.
Brenna Yovanoff 