Nickel

by Robert Wilder

Overview

A BOOKLIST Best Young Adult Book of 2016 and a Top 10 Romance for Youth

BEING A TEENAGER is hard enough without your mother in rehab and your slightly inept stepfather doing his best not to screw things up. But at least, Coy has Monroe. Coy is a quirky teenage boy and his best friend Monroe is a girl who is just as odd and funny and obsessed with 80’s culture as he is. So when Monroe comes down with a mysterious illness, his inner turmoil only grows. As Monroe gets sicker and Coy gets a girlfriend from another social crowd, the balance tips and Coy has to figure out how not to give up on his friend, his family, or himself. Nickel is a hilarious, heartbreaking and honest portrayal of the complicated world of being a teenager today.

“No one has ever written about the pains of being a teenager–physically and psychologically, inside and out–quite like Robert Wilder in his startling debut novel. He has created indelible characters in Monroe and Coy–funny and sad and strong and broken–and NICKEL is about as real as it gets.
–AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS, New York Times best-selling author of Running With Scissors

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780997020700
Publisher:	Leaf Storm Press
Publication date:	09/13/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Robert Wilder is the author of two critically acclaimed essay collections, Tales From The Teachers’ Lounge and Daddy Needs A Drink, both published by Delacorte Press.

A teacher for more than twenty-five years, he has earned numerous awards and fellowships, including the inaugural Innovations in Reading Prize by the National Book Foundation. He has published essays in Newsweek, Details, Salon, Parenting, Creative Nonfiction, plus numerous anthologies and has been a commentator for NPR’s Morning Edition. Wilder lives in Santa Fe, NM.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 12

I finally made it back to school on Agua Fria with crazy cars honking at me and tagged signs, Stop (It), Stop (War), Yield (To My Power), Speed Hump (Me). Stupid crap like that. When I reached campus, end of last lunch had just begun. The cafetorium waited empty except for a few kids sitting around trays piled high with milk containers, burrito wrappers, napkins, to-go cups, and a few plastic silverware sculptures. Near the long-ago-bailed-upon concession stand, a student band was playing “Message in a Bottle.” Believe that? I had forgotten that this was the week Pornstache was “trying out” having student entertainment during lunch. He’d made this huge deal at assemblage about how this was just a test (everything at school’s always a test), and if any of the groups used profanity or crude gestures or incited inappropriate conduct, he’d shut it all down. Nothing the school did was ever out of fun or niceness or, as the teachers always say, “The right thing to do.” Everything from the principal or vice came with a warning, strings attached, assessments, surveys, or a series of things that had to occur to make this happen or that happen. Stipulations, I think he called them. Nothing was free or easy or, um, I hate to say it (makes me think of The Outsiders), pure. And what Pornstache never realized was that the more complicated it got, the less people gave a tit.

But “Message in a Bottle?” Bitch, puh-lease. I was drenched with sweat from all that walking, and that’s what greeted me? I bought a microwave burger from the vending machine, nuked it in the nasty hot box. My burger: wet. Me: wet. And these four retro hippie dudes were playing the Worst. Police. Song. Ever. The bass player was a dead ringer for John Lennon, with his greasy curtains of hair and round glasses. The drummer was Hispanic, with lip pubes, and the singer thought he was Billy Idol or something, with bleached hair and sawed-off driving gloves, hopping around like there was an adoring crowd. He didn’t look baked, but the act wasn’t a goof either. Idol scrunched his face up like a balled dishtowel while Lennon looked blankly at the bulletin board with the monthly menu stained with dots of gravy. The drummer pounded his kit, and I thought how out of hundreds of kids, from the wall huggers to the pale-skinned cutters to these retro hippies to the AP ulcer kids, Monroe was my only friend at this entire school, and how if she got really sick, I’d be on my own, and as she would say, I didn’t even know karate.

I met Monroe on the first day of seventh grade. We had about an hour of orientation, and I’d just moved to the district with my mom and Dan. We were on the football field, broken up by elementary-school mascots—Wranglers, Criminals, Sand Devils, Sultans. I was in the “other” category: homeschoolers, transfers, kids from special ed, Montessori, Waldorf, little hippie communes, and last-ditch learning centers. I can’t say we would’ve won any beauty pageants. Have you ever talked to someone who’s been homeschooled for seven years? They’re like the Amish, only even less deodorant. All the other elementaries had developed their own fashion and style. You could spot the handshakes, chest bumping, jump hugs, air kisses, haircuts, sunglasses, cell phones, movie clips, theme songs. Each group had its own microcosm except for us: Zah zah loozahs! I’d been through this kind of shite before, and I knew you just wait it out, wait until classes start. Then everyone funnels through the same maze, rats follow rats into different compartments. I tried to walk away from the field toward Red Rock so I wouldn’t feel so pathetic, and no one from any of the other groups would remember that I was in the tard one. These types of labels stick if you don’t watch out—forever. And with a name like Coy, the meatheads don’t need any more fuel.

So. “Dig the shoes,” someone said behind me. I was wearing this pair of checkered Vans that Dan had given me. I turned. Pre-Monroe, before she was sick. She could have been in a magazine, with her blond hair that flipped up at the ends. Mom said she looked like a punk-rock Mary Tyler Moore or Bettie Page, whoever that is or was. Her black dress had all these white pockets crawling on it, and her black Docs were so polished they gave off mad glare.

Her eyes shot to the ground. “So Breakfast Club cool.”

“Okay.” I wasn’t sure it wasn’t an insult. “You like eighties stuff?”

“Best decade ever,” she said, tapping a finger to her temple. She had drawn elaborate rings on her digits with a Sharpie. She shot my Vans the eye again. “Maybe Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

“Thanks very little,” I mumbled to be funny.

“You a Waldork?”

“Nope. Too much knitting.”

She scanned me up and down. “Montesorry for you?”

I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Strike two.”

“Homo-schooled?”

“Do I look that way?”

She turned to eyeball a bunch of girls in prairie dresses with wheat-colored hair tied back in thick ponytails, playing patty-cake.

“Just moved here too,” I said, trying to keep the talk going.

“Son,” she said, spitting a bit, “I’ve lived in this asstown my entire life.”

“Why are you over here, then?”

“I was stuck over in that wasteland for seven years, including kindergarten.” She jerked her thumb back to a pack of kids across the field, girls with fake tans, oversize glasses, and "JUICY" written across their buttocks, bobbing their heads and flipping cell phones with one hand. Once every few minutes one would toss her head back and laugh, mouth open like she was trying to catch invisible rain from the sky.

“I finally escaped. Monroe,” she said, nodding.

“Coy.”

Editorial Reviews

10/24/2016
In this solidly entertaining debut, a teenage outsider juggles his best friend's mysterious illness and his own screwed-up family while navigating typical high school pitfalls. Ninth-grader Coy is used to being on the outskirts of things—his only real friend is the acerbic Monroe, who shares his love for 1980s pop culture. But as Monroe gets progressively sicker, in what turns out to be nickel poisoning, all Coy can do is provide moral support, which doesn't work as well as he'd like. Meanwhile, Coy's mother is in rehab, his stepfather means well but isn't exactly clued in, and—much to his surprise—one of the popular girls at school wants to date him. As he swerves between hope and heartbreak, Coy tries to find meaning in an increasingly confusing world. Wilder skillfully uses humor and a complex blend of emotions to chronicle this tragicomic slice-of-life story. Although the main characters have a tendency to sling insensitive insults around ("What exactly are you learning, lezbo?"), their hearts mostly seem to be in the right place, making for a satisfying, sometimes thought-provoking narrative. Ages 14–up. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Wilder powers his classic coming-of-age narrative with a ferocious storytelling voice . . . A humorous, poignant, and formidable debut."
–BOOKLIST, starred

“No one has ever written about the pains of being a teenager–physically and psychologically, inside and out–quite like Robert Wilder in his startling debut novel. He has created indelible characters in Monroe and Coy–funny and sad and strong and broken–and NICKEL is about as real as it gets.
–AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS, New York Times best-selling author of Lust and Wonder (publishing March 2016), Dry, and Running With Scissors

"I totally got sucked into the world of Nickel and I couldn't put the book down . . . I'd recommend it to everyone, especially those of us who like stories about the struggle with the sometimes dramatic and sometimes not-so-dramatic obstacles in our lives."
–LISA LOEB, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter

"One of the best books about teenagers I've ever read. An incredible, engaging voice frames this brutal, beautiful, heartbreaking first novel."
–GARY SHTEYNGART, New York Times best-selling author of Little Failure: A Memoir, and Super Sad True Love Story

"The joy of Nickel is in watching a deep friendship between two outsiders land so squarely inside a reader's heart. Monroe and Coy's way of speaking is brilliantly sharp, fast and clever as if the wild curves of their private language are the very thing keeping them sane as the world goes crazy around them. For anyone who has ever felt weird. For anyone who has ever been a friend. Wilder's book belongs on the shelf beside that other great chronicler of teen friendships: S.E. Hinton. "
–SAMANTHA HUNT, award-winning author of Mr. Splitfoot, The Invention of Everything Else, and The Seas

“I loved this novel for its humor and pathos, for its honesty and accuracy about what it means to live in our world. Nickel features a heartbreaking set of circumstances, yet its narrator never loses his essential charm as a young man ready to find hilarity even in the direst of dark times. The first thing I wanted to do was recommend the book to everybody.”
–ANTONYA NELSON, award-winning author of Funny Once, Talking in Bed, and Bound

"I have never read anything that captures the teenage mind quite like Robert Wilder's funny and brilliantly honest book, or encountered a narrator more vivid and memorable. I advise you to buy two copies of Nickel; one to read over and over again and one to give away."
–NATALIE GOLDBERG, author of Writing Down the Bones, and The Great Spring

"Funny, suspenseful, and alive with the most vivid adolescent characters you’ll ever read, Nickel is a wonderful novel and Rob Wilder is a masterful writer."
–ROBERT BOSWELL, award-winning author of Tumbledown, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, Crooked Hearts, and Mystery Ride

"In Nickel, Robert Wilder captures the limbo that is ninth grade with irrepressible wit and insight and urgency. You couldn’t ask for a better narrator and guide than Coy -- a devotee of 80s music, a staunch and tender friend, and the kind of kid who notices all the things that everyone else misses, from his science teacher’s sweaty sandwich to a sun that looks like an aspirin in the sky. His observations can be hilarious, surprising, unvarnished, sometimes even devastating -- and thanks to Wilder’s infallible ear, they always ring true."
–SARAH SHUN-LIEN BYNUM, award-winning author of Ms. Hempel Chronicles and National Book Award finalist for Madeleine is Sleeping

“Compassionate, frightening and funny, this is a terrific book. With seeming ease Wilder gets precisely the ironic detachment and surface sophistication of today’s youth culture while delving straight into the heart of adolescence, its fragile emotions, its awkwardness, uncertainty and ancient fears. Despite my initial hesitations about diving back into the isolating terrors of high school and of serious illness, I was immediately won over by this author’s keen insight, his rare ability with language, his leavening humor and-- using all of these in tandem-- his power to convince.”
–DAVID SMALL, author/illustrator and Caldecott Award winner for So You Want To Be President?, and The Gardener, plus two-time National Book Award Finalist for Stitches, and The Underneath

"Robert Wilder’s Nickel is a feisty, fantastically gripping story. The novel is a funny, frank, heartbreaking portrait of adolescence, which the author knows all too well as the most emotionally intense period of anyone’s life. This is doubly true for Wilder’s Coy, a smartass but deeply bruised nonconformist grappling with illness and threat all around him. I haven’t read a teenage narrator this well-drawn, this vexingly captivating since Salinger!"
–CLAIRE VAYE WATKINS, award-winning author of Gold Fame Citrus, and Battleborn

"This funny, sad, and tender novel sweeps us effortlessly into the land of sectarian cliques and conspiracies—high school. We learn, as if for the first time, that some of us get acquainted with incalculably dark knowledge too soon. Like Lorrie Moore’s Who Will Run the Frog Hospital, Rob Wilder’s novel reminds us that adolescent best friendships are the purest form of love. And the site of purest heartbreak too."
–DEBRA MONROE, award-winning author of My Unsentimental Education, On the Outskirts of Normal, and The Source of Trouble

“Start with a couple of teenage underdogs, throw them each a mean curveball, stir in a heavy dose of irreverence, and you’ve got the bones of Wilder’s captivating novel-- a story that doesn’t always go down easy, but draws you in with its keen eye for detail, its intricately drawn characters, and a narrator who's voice you’d follow anywhere.”
–STEWART LEWIS, author of YOU HAVE SEVEN MESSAGES

“Robert Wilder renders a particularly complicated teenager-hood with tremendous heart. His Nickel is funny, gritty and poignant.”
–AMY FUSSELMAN, author of Savage Park, and The Pharmacist’s Mate/8.

From the Publisher

07/01/2016
Gr 9 Up—This novel featuring Coy, a quirky ninth grader in Red Rock, AZ, might find wider interest among adults rather than teens. The protagonist's partner in crime has always been Monroe, the irreverent outsider with whom he joined forces at the start of middle school. Roe's goth-emo standoffishness has helped to make the two of them a social island. When Monroe's braces or maybe some allergy to nickel or mold—or the world itself—causes disfiguring redness and peeling all around her mouth, face, and hands, she becomes even more of a pariah, missing enough school that Coy even starts to talk to popular "Trees," people from the top of the social strata, like Avree. He likes feeling a bit less adversarial with his classmates, even while he feels guilty for Monroe's ordeal. To make Coy's life even more complicated, his mother has been in mental health treatment for months, and his stepfather, Dan, does all that he can to fill the parental void. Coy's first-person voice is a combination of a witty, world-weary adult and nervous, quirky teen, making him perhaps more engaging and relatable for readers who can appreciate youth and the perspective that comes from surviving it. His interest in many things from the 1980s will put some references out of the comfortable range of typical teens, but those who share his love for the decade will enjoy his enthusiasm. VERDICT A good fit for young adults—and adults—who identify as misfits and can appreciate a character-driven story.—Suzanne Gordon, Lanier High School, Sugar Hill, GA

School Library Journal

2016-06-01
Ninth-grader Coy doesn't feel comfortable in his own skin. Neither does his best friend, Monroe. Drawn together by their shared outsider status and a mutual love of 1980s pop culture, the two white teens help each other through the day-to-day craziness of middle school. Coy's father died years ago, and his mother has been institutionalized for six months, leaving Coy to live somewhat awkwardly with his stepfather. The nickel in Monroe's braces have given her a rash around her mouth, which spreads to become a life-threatening medical condition, throwing narrator Coy for a loop. Coy's insecurities compel him to ridicule others, and it's easy to trip over the slurs that come so easily to him, mostly variations on gay jokes: "It sounded so ghey I wanted to die," "Fifty Shades of Ghey," among dozens. Coy himself is a stereotype of a nerdy white boy who mindlessly disrespects others, from an Asian receptionist ("whatever the hell brand of Chinese or Vulcan she was speaking") to the home-schooled ("They're like the Amish, only even less deodorant"). While the story contains a lot of humor, it comes at a cost, as the hefty amount of teen slang threatens to overwhelm the plot. Still, Coy is a likable narrator who wears his vulnerability on his sleeve for readers to see. A witty, angst-filled drama that succeeds in spite of its flaws. (Fiction. 13-17)

Kirkus Reviews