Read an Excerpt
Do you ever wish you could write your own story?
I don’t mean like an autobiography or a memoir—something you write when you’re old, when you’re looking back. I mean, what if you could write your life story before it happens, the way you want it to happen? Wouldn’t that be awesome? You could be whoever you wanted . . . the Chosen One, secret royalty, or even just a little famous or kind of cool.
I guess what I’m saying is, some creative control would be nice. Because despite all that stuff that teachers like to say about “charting your own course” and being the “captain of your destiny” and whatnot, most of the time I feel like my story is actually being written by someone else—someone who does not get me. At all. The voice is all wrong, for one. I think it needs to be bolder, more confident, and always ready with a snappy comeback at exactly the right moment. And the plot? It sucks. Nothing good is ever happening. It’s like my entire life has writer’s block.
Revisions are urgently needed. Because if I don’t take over this narrative soon, The Story of Gracie Byrne is going to flop—spectacularly—before I even make it out of high school.
Storytelling
September 5, 1987
I click my pen one, two, three, four, five times. It’s my ritual before I write. Click, click. Click, click, click. I run my hand over the blank page of my college-ruled spiral-bound notebook. All that white space. So many possibilities. It makes me feel like I’m on the edge of a diving board, about to launch myself off. Just go. Don’t think. Just write.
Everyone is curious about the new girl. She’s from LA—here only temporarily while her father works on location for a film project. He brought her along to get her out of the Hollywood bubble, where there were too many parties and too much blow . . .
Hmmm. Maybe the blow is a bit much.
The ice in my sweating glass of tea cracks and shifts. I take a sip, set the glass down on the coffee table, and position myself on the sofa so that I’m directly in the path of the box fan. I close my eyes and try to imagine an ocean breeze, but what I’m getting is more of a musty smell. Dust + Western-Pennsylvania-in-late-summer humidity = must. I click my pen and try again:
The whispers around school are that the new girl, along with her entire family, is in the Federal Witness Protection Program.
Now there’s an idea. I wonder what starting over with a new identity would be like. If I had to pick a Witness Protection name for myself, I would choose something more sophisticated and unusual. Like Dallas. Or Brooke. In real life, I guess I could go by Grace, which is at least somewhat grown-up, instead of Gracie, which is what everyone in my family calls me. Now’s my chance, since I won’t know a single soul when I walk into Morewood High on Tuesday, and not one single soul will know me. I’ll be a blank page. Almost like I’m in Witness Protection. Except not.
The new girl spoke multiple languages: English, of course, but also Spanish, Mandarin, and even French, from the years she and her family spent living in Burgundy, where they own a vineyard.
I roll my eyes at myself. Why would anyone move to Pittsburgh if they owned a vineyard in the South of France? I scribble over the Burgundy vineyard and glance at Hank, asleep on the scratched-up hardwood floor, his front paws moving in some kind of doggie dream. Even at rest, he’s chasing something.
I flip the page . . .
The new girl is pissed. Pissed to be starting over at the worst possible moment: right in the middle of high school. Pissed at her mom, who doesn’t understand why it’s not so easy for her to just “make friends.” Pissed at her brother, Jack, who, of course, excels so much at making friends that he has a surplus. Pissed at her dad, who left them three years ago for his new life with his new wife, which, as of two weeks ago, also includes a brand-spanking-new baby daughter. Pissed at the universe, for . . . everything.
Actually, she’s worse than pissed. “Pissed” makes her sound kind of tough, like a badass, like a girl who could hold her own in a fight or who plays drums in a punk band. Like a girl people are curious about. But she doesn’t feel like a badass. She feels lost. Lonely. Terrified at the prospect of facing a sea of new faces on Tuesday and not being able to do anything but freeze.
Nope! I cross out the entire passage with a giant X. Too much realism.
Hank’s explosive bark blasts me back into the present. The one where I’m not a cool / possibly troubled California party girl, the mysterious / possibly dangerous daughter of a mafia hit man, or . . . European. I’m just me. Sweaty, cranky, and still stressing over what I’m going to wear to school next week. Except for the shoes. I found a pair of shiny black oxfords on sale a few days ago, and I think they look sort of cool.
At the window with his paws up on the sill, Hank’s ears are perked and his fur is standing on end all across his back. I follow his stare to the moving truck that just pulled up across the street. It must be the new neighbors, the ones Mom won’t stop talking about in her chipper, hopeful voice. She heard there are three kids, the oldest in high school, like me, and twins around the same age as Jack. “See?” she’d said. “Now you won’t be the only new one at Morewood.”
Hank continues to bark, bark, bark, and I tell him to shush, but instead of taking my advice, he emits a frustrated sound that’s half cry, half yelp before skidding across the floor and hurling all eighty pounds of his canine self at the flimsy screen door, knocking the entire thing off its hinges. He jumps back for a second, startled by the clatter of the screen as it falls onto the porch, barks once at it, and then he’s out the door.
Shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
No time to find shoes—Hank’s still not used to this house, let alone this neighborhood, and we’re on a busy street. When he’s in a protective frenzy, he doesn’t pay attention to cars or anything else. I bolt after him, jamming my bare toe on the corner of the fallen screen as I go.
Holy. Mother. Of. God. A wave of pain takes my breath away.
At the edges of my consciousness, which is currently 99 percent focused on my throbbing toe, there is barking and barking and more barking. Forget your toe, Gracie. Get the dog, before he’s roadkill.
I force myself to look up, and spot Hank on the sidewalk in front of our house, not on the street at least, tangled up with a guy and a girl, both about my age, and a small dog that looks kind of like Toto. The other dog is even more aggressive than Hank—baring its teeth, its wiry hair puffed out all over its body like a porcupine—but in this particular case, I can’t say I blame it. Hank is bigger by about seventy pounds. And he started it.
I run-hop up to them, repeating, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” while simultaneously doing this ridiculous dance with Hank where I lunge at him to try to catch him by the collar and he leaps back, just out of reach. The girl is also trying to reel in the terrier, now a full-on ball of blind rage as it tries to bite Hank, who, in response, yelps as if he has actually been bitten and runs into the street.
“HAAANK!” I yell as he darts directly in front of an oncoming Camaro.
It blares its horn and screeches to a stop. Hank pauses—perhaps his dog-life is momentarily flashing before his eyes—and then takes off again. The driver rolls down his window to shout at the three of us, “Control your goddamn dogs!” Nice.
I can’t see where Hank went, but I hear him, barking somewhere behind the moving truck that is parked across the street. Seconds later, I hear a crash.
“Hey,” a gravelly voice, close to me, speaks. For the first time, I get a good look at the guy on the sidewalk. He’s wearing a Ramones T-shirt and is ridiculously hot, with brown-green eyes and the kind of hair that could be categorized as tousled, in the best possible way.
My face heats up in an immediate blush, because of course it does. “Hey,” I reply, trying to sound like I’m not a sweaty, red-faced mess.
He points to my toe. “You’re, uh, bleeding.”
I glance down at my bare feet and oh my God. Total carnage.
“I don’t . . . feel so good,” says the girl, now clutching the terrier in her arms as it continues to thrash and bark. She’s straight from central casting as Hot Guy’s companion—ridiculously pretty, like a teenage Michelle Pfeiffer with smoky eyeliner and glossy, bright pink lips. Her face, however, is paler than pale, with some green undertones. “I think I need to sit down.”
“She has a thing about blood,” the guy tells me. “And, like, maybe you should get a Band-Aid or something . . . ?”
As if things couldn’t get any worse, right then my mom pulls the car into the driveway with Katherine in the passenger seat. I want to cry. Hank is somewhere across the street, on a nervous, freaked-out rampage, possibly about to get us sued.
Meanwhile I’m bleeding out in front of two complete strangers, one of whom is close to fainting on the sidewalk.
Mom gets out of the car and takes in the scene: me, Hot Guy, teenage Michelle Pfeiffer, one angry terrier, and a severely bleeding toe.
“Gracie, what’s going on?” She glances toward the house across the street. “Is that Hank barking?”
“He knocked down the screen door and took off,” I answer.
Nurse that she is, Mom begins to triage. Taking one look at Michelle Pfeiffer’s greenish pallor, she says, “Oh honey, we need to find you a spot to sit down.” To her hot boyfriend (he must be her boyfriend, right?), she says, “Here, you hold the dog, okay? Let’s get your friend up on the porch.” And then she looks at me. “Your toe is bleeding.”
“I KNOW!” I didn’t mean it to come out like that, but yeah, I know.
Mom leads the girl by the arm to one of the wicker chairs with the floral cushions on the front porch. “Put your head down, like this.” She demonstrates. “I’ll get you some water in a minute. I need to help my mother out of the car first.”
But Katherine has already unbuckled herself from the passenger seat and is standing in the driveway. I’m nearest, so I hop over to catch her by the hand. We can’t leave her alone this close to the street. She’ll walk right out without even looking.
Mom, still on the porch, takes a deep breath. “Gracie, can you get her to come in? I’ll find you a hand towel and some bandages, and then we can deal with Hank.”
