Olivia’s snide comments burn a hole in my heart all morning. But at lunch, when I tell Kylee what Olivia said about my review, she says, “Oh, come on. It wouldn’t be funny if it was all nicey-nice.”
After school Kylee and I get a ride from my mom to the public library. We’re supposed to be finding books on the Cherokee Trail of Tears (Kylee) and the Iroquois Confederacy (me) for reports due next week for multicultural history. But first we’re looking at the fiction in the YA nook to see if there are any new Creekside Clique books for Kylee or Princess of Paragonia books for me. Even though Kylee is the nicest person at Southern Peaks Middle School, she adores books about mean girls. Even though I’m the daughter of an orthodontist and a homemaker living in suburban sprawl, I devour books about heroic quests and tragic love. Maybe that’s not surprising. Readers love to read not only about themselves but also about characters who are as different from them as anyone could be.
Half an hour later we’re checking out our books when Kylee says, “Autumn, look.”
She points to a poster on the bulletin board by the circulation desk, which publicizes upcoming library events. I scan past flyers for a harpsichord concert, a Russian film festival, and a new lap-sit storytime for babies six to twelve months, and then I see it.
CALLING ALL AUTHORS!
Do you have a novel in progress?
Are you interested in finding out how to get published?
Literary agents Nannerl Keith and Marcy Duhota will share their combined eighteen years of experience: what they are dying to see in a submission, what will make them say “Thanks but no thanks.” Come learn how to draw in—or turn off—an agent or editor on your very first page.
The event is on Saturday, November 12 (two and a half weeks away), from one to four in the afternoon. It’s free and open to the public. And—this is the part that makes me clutch Kylee’s hand—you can bring the first page of your novel for their review. They’ll review as many “as time permits.” Manuscript pages should be in 12-point Times New Roman type; they should contain no author’s names or other identifying information.
“You can bring Tatiana and Ingvar,” Kylee says. She knows that’s exactly what I’m thinking. “You’ll be discovered! They’ll read your first page and faint! They’ll be like, everyone else go home, we don’t want to read your pages now, we just want to read more from this amazing new author!”
“Oh, Kylee, they’re not going to say that,” I say, even though my fantasy is similar to Kylee’s in just about every detail.
“Well, maybe they won’t say those exact words,” Kylee concedes. “It would be rude to send everybody else away. But I bet they’ll say they want to read the rest. Why would they be doing this if they’re not trying to find the next New York Times bestselling author?”
I study the pictures of the two agents on the flyer. Nannerl Keith has funky glasses and short spiky hair; Marcy Duhota has shoulder-length waves held back with a barrette that makes her look too young to be a literary agent. Maybe the combined eighteen years of experience is seventeen years for Nannerl and one year for Marcy. But they both look smart and bookish, like people who would stay up all night reading the first volume of a trilogy about a princess (Tatiana) who is trying to break the curse put on her people by a wizard (Ingvar).
What if they did want my novel? I know they’re agents, not editors, so they wouldn’t actually be the ones publishing it; they’d be the ones sending it out to the editors who might want to publish it. I checked out a “how-to-get-published book” once from the library, so that’s how I know. But finding an agent is definitely step one. Of course, the book’s not even written yet; all I have is seven chapters so far and a tiny bit of the eighth. But if they like it, I could write the rest fast so they could rush it off to some big important editor.
There have been lots of—well, some—mega-popular books that were written and published by kids. S. E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders when she was in high school. Christopher Paolini wrote Eragon when he was fifteen. Fifteen isn’t that much older than twelve. And Christopher Paolini probably didn’t have a horrible older brother and a fabulous boy in his journalism class that he needed to impress, or maybe he would have published his book even sooner.
“You’re going to go, right?” Kylee presses.
I nod.
It’s as if the universe posted this flyer right where I—well, Kylee—had no choice but to see it, just the way the universe put the contest flyer in Ms. Archer’s mailbox the very day our personal essays were due in class. It feels so perfect that I found an announcement of a huge knitting opportunity for my best friend and she found an announcement of a huge writing opportunity for me.
* * *
Since October 31 falls on a Monday this year, the whole weekend feels like Halloween. On Saturday I spend the morning writing away frantically on Tatiana and Ingvar, now that I have a reason to finish my novel as soon as possible. But then I spend the afternoon working on costumes for Sunday-night trick-or-treating with Kylee, Brianna, and Isabelle. I don’t know who decided that Halloween was going to be “observed” on Sunday this year, but apparently it is.
We’re over at Isabelle’s house. It’s a rambling Victorian that I used to think was haunted before I became friends with Isabelle. She’s my most scientific, sensible friend, short and a tiny bit squat with big glasses. Brianna is probably the prettiest one of our group, with a halo of golden curls that look fake but are actually real.
Brianna googles “Halloween costumes to make at home” on her phone, since we don’t have a lot of money. We end up deciding to be different-colored Crayola crayons, but then we have to get Isabelle’s father to drive us to the crafts store to get huge pieces of felt to wrap around ourselves to make the crayon tubes plus the pointed crayon hats, and the felt ends up costing as much money as store-bought costumes would have. Still, we’ll look cute trick-or-treating all in a row.
“I hope we see Jack,” Isabelle says, once we’re back at her house trying to cut the felt without ruining it, given that we have no money to buy more. Jack Turner is the smartest boy in our science class.
I don’t expect to see Cameron. I try to imagine him in a costume, and fail.
“Do you think any boys are going to be asking girls to the dance?” Brianna asks.
Kylee and I exchange glances. The dance is on the Friday before Thanksgiving, so still three weeks away. She and I have been to only one dance, the spring dance at the end of sixth grade, which was completely awful. It was just for sixth graders, sort of a “get ready for seventh grade” dance. None of the boys asked any of the girls to dance, or at least no one asked Kylee or me. Candor compels me to report that I did notice Olivia dancing a slow dance with Ryan Metcalf, who is widely regarded as the cutest boy in our grade, though in my view vastly less cute than Cameron. What most of the boys did instead of dancing was get into a popcorn-throwing fight over by the refreshment table, where we were all standing because we had to be doing something so we were scarfing down snacks that weren’t even good. Then the popcorn-throwing fight turned into a punch-spilling brawl. Kylee got punch spilled on her best silky white top (the one we spent an hour together choosing), and the stain never came out.
“Maybe,” Isabelle says. “I heard that Ryan already asked Olivia.”
Why am I not surprised?
In sixth grade, I didn’t know Cameron yet because he was off on his family trip around the world. Now that I do know him, the thought of the dance is less hideous than it was before. Though I don’t think Cameron is the type to go to a school dance, just as I don’t think he’s the type to go trick-or-treating. He’s not the type to do anything that everybody else is doing.
“What if Henry Dubin invites you?” Brianna asks Kylee.
“I’ll say that … that … I have important knitting I need to do that night,” Kylee decides.
“I don’t think any boys in our grade are cute enough to go with,” Brianna announces, which means she doesn’t think Cameron is as cute as I do. Then again, nobody does.
We finish up the costumes in time to order pizza, and on Sunday night we do look pretty great as Scarlet (Brianna), Spring Green (Isabelle), Dandelion (Kylee), and Cerulean (me), all lined up in a row. As I expected, I don’t see Cameron out trick-or-treating; in fact, none of us see any boys we know. But we each get a huge, wonderfully disgusting pillowcase full of candy.
* * *
On Monday, some teachers and kids come to school in costumes because it’s actually Halloween. I’m not wearing a costume, though, and neither is Ms. Archer.
I feel even tenser than usual as I wait for her to hand back our graded reviews. I made some changes before I turned mine in last Friday. Writers have to be able to respond to criticism, even criticism from annoying people like Olivia. I thought up some things to justify the bottom-line conclusion of the band’s suckiness: the over-amped sound, the drummer’s distracting facial grimaces clearly done on purpose in a mistaken attempt to get attention.
But my heart wasn’t in it. Because here’s the worst part.
Olivia was right.
My review was mean. It was intended to be mean. I went to the gig already knowing the review would be mean before I even heard the band play, and when I heard them play my honest opinion was that I thought they were good. Mean, you might say, was the whole point. I know Ms. Archer thought it was mean, too, or at least I thought I saw a hint of approval in her eyes when Olivia said that funny sometimes comes out sounding mean.
She gives me an A−. This is what she writes on it: “Very funny, Autumn! Thanks for your good revisions from the peer-review comments. Perhaps you might be too close to your subject for a completely objective assessment?”
At least she didn’t come right out and say I was mean. And her last comment hits home in its absolute rightness. I can’t help but love Ms. Archer even more for seeing through me. Touché, Ms. Archer.
But I also can’t help wishing she had wanted to publish my review in the Peaks Post. Did she pick anybody else’s instead? She doesn’t say anything in class about how we should look forward to reading Olivia’s review of Cupcakes Galore! in the next issue, coming out a week from Thursday. (The paper comes out every other week, which is a lot for a middle school newspaper, but most middle schools don’t offer a journalism class or have a journalism teacher as amazing as Ms. Archer.)
So maybe she didn’t pick Olivia’s either.
But she definitely didn’t pick mine.