Adriann Ranta Zurhellen first read this book in 2011, and has believed in it and championed it tirelessly ever since. Adriann, thank you for always holding this book in your heart and seeing it into the world after all these years.
I’m grateful to my wonderful editor, Kendra Levin, for her work on this book—for caring so deeply about these characters and for always pushing them to deeper and more interesting places, and especially for making room for female anger.
Thanks to Lizzy Bromley and Akiko Stehrenberger for such a lovely face for this book. Thank you also to Katrina Groover, Amanda Ramirez, and the whole team at Simon & Schuster BFYR for their efforts to turn this story into a real book, a process that seems magical to me still.
I’m indebted to the mentors who worked with me on early drafts of this book—Nona Caspers, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Maxine Chernoff and Peter Orner—and to the MFA community at SF State and the friends—Toshio Mori, Patti Wang Cross, Mary Taugher, Cindy Slates, Ami Sheth, Traci Chee, Jean Znidarsic, Diane Glazman—who read and offered feedback. Thanks to others who read early and encouraged me—Colleen Dischiave, Jen Ireland, Andrea Heggem, and Reneé Euchner.
Thank you also to my grandmothers, Marjorie Gilbert and Helen Loy, and my great-aunt, Mary (Junnie) Young, for sharing so many of your stories with me, so many of which have shaped our family history and also my own life and my imagination.
If this book had been published when I first started working on it, it would’ve been one of extremely few YA novels by and about Asian Americans, but today it’ll join a rich literary tradition. I’m grateful for the work of authors who paved the way, such as Malinda Lo and Cindy Pon, and for the efforts of We Need Diverse Books and the writers, agents, editors, librarians, booksellers, scholars, and readers who work toward a literary landscape that greater reflects our diverse reality. I feel privileged every day to be part of the YA community and I’m especially thankful for the friends I’ve made in it and for the Bay Area crew.
I have been working on this story since 2006—it’s seen me through most major transitions in my life and has been around long enough that the original manuscript had landlines and no cell phones—and it’s been many different versions of itself, but at its heart it has always been a story about friendship and was written in tribute to some of the most important friendships of my life. Thanks to the incredible friends I’ve been blessed with, and especially REA, for all those ways we’ve tried to figure out the world together. Also, Tim, thank you for resurrecting all our old group emails and reminding me of the core of our friendship at a crucial time in the writing when I’d forgotten entirely what I ever wanted this story to be about.
Thanks always to my parents, BreTT and my constellation of extended family for their support and encouragement. Thanks to my beautiful children, who make me laugh and give me hope for the future and let me witness the magic of storytelling in all its many forms, who steel me for our collective responsibility to write better stories for the next generation.
And thanks always to Jesse—you are the reason I get to live so many of my dreams.