Contest Winners, Part II

Posted on by

First, I just want to say that I LOVED reading all the entries! I gave you a really broad topic, and you guys had some amazing responses. I can’t tell you how much fun I have hearing about all of you, and I’m really grateful for the amount of thought you put into your answers.

And now for the part you really care about—the winners of the signed ARCs are:

Amber Couch

and

Meghan (@meghan805)

And the two signed dust-jackets go to:

Krystal Larson

and

Sara M

(I’ll be in touch for mailing addresses shortly)

Thanks so much for the great turn-out, you guys! And remember to check back later this month, because for the next contest, I’ll be breaking out the finished copies, not to mention making at least one of them an International-Only prize.

The Conversation

Posted on by

For the first semester of junior year, US History kind of dominates my journal-keeping.

This is mostly because it’s the one class where something at least semi-interesting happens almost every day, and also, I can scribble manically in my binder for the whole period and never get in trouble, since it looks like I’m just taking really good notes.

Obligingly, Mr. Tully has aced his audition for the role of Brenna’s Favorite Teacher. This has a lot to do with the fact that he’s one of the first ones I’ve ever had who actually likes his job. But also, he’s just pretty cool. He loves history, he loves teaching, and against all reasonable expectations, he really loves his students—yes, even the ones whose grades are below the Purple Failing Line. (Especially the kids below the purple line.)

He’s also the first teacher I’ve ever had who doesn’t seem particularly interested in me. At this point, I’m kind of used to being an impressive student, but Mr. Tully is barely even aware that I exist. At first, I think it must be because everyone else is really loud and I’m really quiet, but after a month or so, I begin to understand that’s not the reason. The truth is, the whole class is such a mess that it would be ridiculous to expect him to have time for the six people who are actually doing okay.

Anyway, it can’t be an issue of being quiet, because #4 is way quieter than I am and Mr. Tully totally loves him, although #4 would probably not see it that way.

In history, we never have written quizzes. Instead, Tully calls people’s names from a list, which he maintains is randomly-generated. I don’t actually believe this. Over the course of the semester, I will be called on exactly twice. Two times. Two.

If #4 only gets called on three days in a row, he’s having a pretty good week.

Almost every afternoon, Tully stands at the front of the room, waiting, while #4 looks down at his desk, going a bright, violent red.

“I don’t know,” he says, low and apologetic.

And Tully nods, looking sad-but-resigned. It’s a look he saves just for #4. Other people get a reproachful smile, an admonition to do better next time. When Mr. Tully looks at #4, it’s weary and imploring. He never bothers to hide his disappointment.

The way the game is played, if someone doesn’t know the answer, other people can raise their hands and take the points. I know the answers, but I don’t raise my hand.

I did once. #4 was staring down at his desk like always—flaming red and tragically mute. I put my hand up, and the look he gave me was so uncomprehending, so betrayed that I felt guilty. I answered the question, told myself I was just taking back my zero from the colonist assignment. Then felt worse.

Continue reading →

The Second Space Between Contest

Posted on by

It’s that time again—the time when you tell me something interesting about yourselves and in return, I drop your names into the randomizer and give you books!

This time around, I have two ARCs of The Space Between, plus two signed (and only slightly crumpled) dust jackets—so, four winners total. And yes, because this is an ARC contest, again it is US only.*

TSB dust jacket 2

(See the pretty dust jacket? Well, it looks even better in person.)

So, the contest:

Daphne, the main character in The Space Between has a deep fascination with earthly minutia. She loves fireworks and paper lanterns and costume jewelry. She collects all kinds of tiny useless artifacts, because to her, they represent a whole uncharted world—a world she wants to understand, even if it’s only a piece at a time.

Now, what I want you to do:

  1. On your blog/Facebook/Twitter, tell me about some item of YOURS—some trinket or souvenir that might seem minor, but that means a lot to you. Again, it can be anything—a cardboard crown or a ticket stub or a photograph or a seashell. It can be strange, or precious, or totally unremarkable to anyone but you. Tell me broadly, or tell me in detail. I like hearing about you, so as usual, this will be as easy or as complicated as you make it.
  2. When talking about your memento, include a link back to the contest so that other people can play too.
  3. Comment on this post and tell me where I can see your answer. Again, make it easy. Most of the entries I got last time were perfect, but a few defeated me. If you link to Facebook or Twitter and I can’t see it, what happens? All together now—your name doesn’t go in the randomizer!**
  4. Do this before midnight Eastern time on Sunday, October 2nd. (Six days is totally enough time, so spread the word!)

I’ll announce winners next Monday, but until then, I look forward to learning about you!

*Again to my international friends: ARCs are technically supposed to stay in their country of origin, but I’m currently waiting on my finished copies. They should be here imminently and then I can start giving them away. To anyone. And that means you!

**I’m really not this mean. Please don’t make me be mean.

The Bad Class

Posted on by

Last week, we kind-of/sort-of touched on the defining problem of my junior year, but in case it wasn’t clear, I’ll just come right out and say it. Public school has not only made me unshakably sure that I’m a Very Good Girl (a paragon of virtue, even), but also that goodness is quantifiable.

I have some theories as to how this happened.

Sad fact: most of my goodness is strictly relative at this point. Simply put, a large chunk of it comes from spending every afternoon in US History, surrounded by people who are much, much worse than me. And they are worse. The truth is, even though I picked the class—walked right up to the office lady and asked to stay—I don’t really belong there.

“Tully’s 4th hour?” I heard Oswald say to Thompson last week, because they couldn’t see me sitting there beside the potted plant, waiting for the guidance counselor. “I wouldn’t teach that crowd for anything. Honestly, look at the attendance sheet. I think they must’ve just Xeroxed the probation roster from [nearby boys’ detention center]!”

And in a way, that might not be unfair. I know that a lot of the kids, especially the boys, have been in trouble, and some have even been in corrections before.

Our class has more D’s and F’s than all the other History sections combined, Tully says, looking sad. He takes his purple marker and draws a line on the rank sheet. Above the purple failing line are my student number and five others. Everyone else is underneath.

The way Oswald talks about Tully’s class is snide and kind of vicious, which doesn’t really surprise me because it’s Oswald. He’s not a nice guy.

Later in the year, this will be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt when my regular counselor goes on vacation. Everyone will be assigned temporary guidance, and I’ll luck into Oswald and then watch in horror as he throws out my proposed schedule and presents me with an academic monstrosity of his own design.* It will include Business Administration and Interior Decorating, because, he says, that way I’ll have something to fall back on if college doesn’t work out. If our school still offered shorthand, I’m sure he would have signed me up for that too.

He won’t take into account my GPA or my test scores, or ask about my extracurriculars. In fact, he won’t even look at my transcript. All those things that defined me so clearly at the beginning of the year—grades and sports and irreproachable deportment? None of them will matter. He’ll study me blandly, and I will be reduced to nothing but torn jeans and battered green shoes. Of no consequence. Hopeless.

Continue reading →

Six

Posted on by

Is how many years D and I have been married. (Although we’ve known each other much longer.*)

lily

I think six is very romantic (assuming that numbers can be romantic), but not quite as romantic as this song.

Happy Anniversary, D!

*Picture of us back in the day, courtesy of Rye.

The Good Girl

Posted on by

Junior year is something flashy and fascinating and altogether new. Worlds better than I could have expected.

By now, it’s solidly autumn, and even though I don’t like November, and school is confusing and Dill has effectively deserted me for Jane, I’m having a surprisingly good time.

My schedule is a mix of easy subjects and hard ones, and I have at least one art class every quarter. Each morning, I shuffle sleepily into the art wing to sit across from TS and draw charcoal still-lifes or make sculptures out of clay.

TS is wry and clever and easy-going. She’s the girl I wish I could be. She never gets mad or takes anything too seriously, and she’s kind and funny and sarcastic. She has this hilarious, hardboiled way of talking, like nothing matters and at the same time, like everything matters. She makes even the simplest things seem grim and monumental. She lives life like a noir detective.

At the beginning of sophomore year, we were sort-of/kind-of friends, but I haven’t had a class with her since then and I’ve missed her. Last fall, she was soft-spoken and shy—almost as shy as me—but now she talks easily, reaching across the table to smear glitter on my eyelids or providing a running commentary on X-acto knife safety, and her hair is a bright, outrageous color called “Enchanted Forest.” She hangs out at her older brother’s house parties and smokes behind the school during passing periods.

We laugh a lot and talk about art and music and sociology. She shares her headphones with me and quotes Clerks and Mallrats and My So-Called Life.

She’ll peer into my face sometimes, with a false, doe-eyed earnestness and say, “Why are you like this?”

I always look back at her, shaking my head. “Like what?”

She leans in across the table, so serious. Close to tragic. “Like how you are.”*

I know she’s only saying it to be ironic, but sometimes I think about it anyway. Why am I like this?

But maybe the more pertinent question is, what am I like?

When I picture myself in my head, I’m still the awkward, antisocial girl of last year. The one with hunched shoulders and shaggy bangs, pathologically incapable of having a conversation with anyone she doesn’t already know.

I keep forgetting that’s not me anymore. Intellectually, I understand that I’ve changed, but I don’t know exactly what I’ve changed into.

Continue reading →

An Embarrassing Admission and a Video

Posted on by

As much as it pains me to say it, I’m very bad with time.

Which is not the same as being irresponsible or late for appointments. No, I’m quite punctual and at least marginally capable of sticking to a schedule. However, despite all that, I have an appallingly bad sense of how much time is actually passing. I mean, it is shocking.

For instance, if you ask me about some bygone event (nothing fancy—it can be just about anything), I will almost certainly tell you that it happened “last week.” Even if the event in question happened yesterday or last month or a year ago.

And this phenomenon is not limited to the past. I never know how soon anything is, so everything is always sneaking up on me and taking me by surprise. Sometimes quite aggressively.

Which is why, even though I had tons of lead time and advance notice and I knew it was going to happen, I completely failed to tell you that the paperback edition of The Replacement came out last Tuesday. Because I totally thought it didn’t come out for another month.

But also.

Also—and this is where things get bad—in addition to the other forgetting, I also forgot to tell you that Penguin included the first two chapters of The Space Between as a teaser at the back.

Which means that people could technically be reading those first two chapters right now. Had I alerted people to their availability.

So, in light of this pretty egregious oversight, I made you a video. Because I’m excited and celebratory and deeply sorry for my lack of planning and I want you to at least hear the first page, and I don’t even care that my webcam makes me look like a ghost.*

*And also, I appear to be missing selective portions of my eyebrows.

Jane

Posted on by

Jane shows up one day, with no explanation and no warning.

I’m scribbling in my notebook, waiting for US History to start. The late bell hasn’t rung yet, so the class is mostly empty, and then Jane walks in. She crosses the room without looking right or left, and sits down next to me in the desk that normally belongs to Trung Ly.

I’ve seen her around before, noticed her a few times in the halls, but it’s a big school and I don’t know anything about her. In fact, pretty much the only thing I’m sure of is that she wasn’t here last year.

Jane is beautiful in a stark, alarming way, with long dark hair and pale eyes and a hard jaw. She clasps her hands demurely on the desktop, then turns and smiles at me. It’s a ferocious smile, an intense smile. Not entirely comfortable.

She doesn’t say anything, just holds my gaze until I look away. I stare down at my desk and pretend very hard to be busy with my notebook.

When Trung comes in and finds Jane sitting at his desk, he is understandably confused. “That’s my seat,” he says, standing over her.

Jane says nothing. She re-clasps her hands and stares up at him. This time, she doesn’t smile at all.

The whole production is so unexpected and she is so striking that I spend the rest of history class in a frantic state of observation, trying to think how I would describe her if this were a book. She is too imaginary, too fantastic to be real, and yet . . . here she is.

The shape of her face is hard, but delicate. All the edges are clearly defined. She’s not much of a blinker. In fact, in the coming months I’ll decide that blinking is something she only does when she’s feeling bored or vicious or being sarcastic. Otherwise, her eyes are steady. Challenging.

No matter how I try, I can’t come up with the perfect sentence to convey the strangeness of her. Her beauty is unsettling. Witchy. But even that isn’t right. Close, but not entirely accurate, and the description I want is on the tip of my tongue.

I’m on my way home when the right word finally pops into my head and I almost rip the zipper off my backpack trying to get to my notebook so I can write it down.

Puritanical. Her beauty is puritanical.

Jane likes me. Or at least, she finds me interesting.

Continue reading →

Brenna Gets a New Blog and Makes a Thank-You Pie

Posted on by

Today is the day—that day where I have officially moved blogs!

Thanks to my trusty web wrangler/husband, the new blog is up, running, and looks almost exactly like my old blog. It took a lot of work and some mental gymnastics (him) and some cursing (me), but all my old entries live here now, and I’ve even been able to import the Livejournal comments, although some of them are strangely out of order.

In light of the time and effort D spent helping* me move everything, I felt that at the very least, I owed him baked goods. And I also owed this blog an inaugural entry. And then I thought, why don’t I kill two birds with one post? So, in a flurry of efficient metaphorical bird-killing . . . here we are.

Over the years, I’ve talked a lot about pie pastry, and enough of you have emailed asking for tips that I’ve even included my particular recipe in the FAQ on my site.

Today, I’m going one step farther. Today, I’m providing a handy illustrated guide.

First, what you will need:

  • 2 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup shortening (I like the kind that comes pre-measured in stick-form, like butter—one stick = one cup.)
  • 6 tablespoons cold water

pie supplies brighter

Whisk the flour and salt together in a big bowl, then cut the shortening into the flour mixture using a pair of butter knives (you just drag them through the bowl in opposite directions, cutting the shortening into smaller and smaller pieces and letting it get caked with flour). Cutting the dough like this takes a little longer, but the finished texture is super-flaky because the flour doesn’t get over-mixed.

Continue reading →

Daisies

Posted on by

In the morning, Little Sister Yovanoff dawdles on the porch. Which isn’t surprising. Any time we’re supposed to be in a hurry (to catch the bus, for instance), she’s always a few steps behind.

When I turn to check her progress, she’s still poking around by the front door.

“Come back,” she says. “There’s a thing for you.”

The thing is a plastic freezer bag of Hershey’s Kisses with a note inside asking me to the Homecoming dance. The note is anonymous, and also written in Dill’s handwriting, with his red rollerball pen.

“Did you leave a ziplock bag of candy on my porch?” I say, catching him at his locker.

His eyes widen in surprise, but the truth is, he’s easy to read. “Someone left a bag of candy? Maybe there’s something inside.”

When we get home, Little Sister Yovanoff (ever the pragmatist) gets out a mixing bowl and plunks herself down on the living room floor. We sit across from each other and unwrap the candy piece by piece. We find Dill’s name in the second-to-last one. There are 87.

At his locker the next morning, I say, “Okay, I’ll go to Homecoming with you.”

I don’t say it this way because I’m mean or ungracious. At least, I am never ungracious on purpose. It’s just that I’ve thought about it, and I’ve decided that this is what I’m going to do.

Dill says, “That’s not how it’s supposed to go. You’re supposed to tell me yes.”

“I did tell you yes. Just now.”

“No,” he says, looking mildly aggrieved. “Like with—like I did, with a note. Or . . . balloons or something.”

I think about this. Then, I take a deep breath and say, without any irony or ill will, “That seems kind of complicated.”

Ever since I told him I would go to the homecoming dance, Dill has been bringing me flowers in the morning. A single cheerful daisy—simple, sweet. We are sort of (sort of) dating again.

The first time he brought me a daisy, I thanked him for it. I put it on my locker shelf and forgot. At lunch, Little Sister Yovanoff accidentally set her Spanish book on it.

“Oops,” she said. “Were you saving that for something?”

Later, when I showed up to History without my flower, Dill wanted to know where it had gone. I tried to explain that I couldn’t just carry it around with me all day.

He said, “It was for you to appreciate. You can’t appreciate it if you leave it in your locker.”

So I carried the second daisy with me, even though it got gross-looking and started to wilt. It made my fingers sticky, and left a weird metallic smell, like you get if you hold a handful of pennies. When I showed up to Tully’s class with it, Dill grinned.

“You have my flower!” he said. “That’s so cool.”

“Classy,” muttered Rooster, who still has stitch-marks on his forehead. “Giving your girlfriend dead flowers.”

Across from me, #4 sort of laughed and sort of didn’t. He was looking past me and then he put his head down on his arms. I set the flower on the edge of my desk and tried to forget that my hands smelled filthy and like metal.

I wrapped the third daisy in a paper towel and ran it under the faucet in the bathroom. I came into History with a wilted daisy and a handful of soggy paper. No one said anything.

It’s not that I want things. I don’t care about romance or dating or being given things. Daisies are Dill’s favorite flower. I like primroses and violets. When he brings me something that he likes and I don’t, it’s confusing.

We don’t have to like the same flowers or the same music or movies or gum or anything else. But it would be nice if he recognized that the things I like are different from what he likes. I just want someone who pays attention, who takes into account what other people are thinking and doing.

This whole business of daisies is unsettling. It’s like a really clunky metaphor for the business of relationships, and last year I was naive enough to think that maybe I could demystify romance if I just studied the equation long enough. Now, I’m forced to admit that I absolutely do not understand. Anything.

Continue reading →