It might sound crazy, considering I don’t actually know her, but I must start this long list of thank-yous by sending an enormous shout out to Lady Gaga, whose song “Hair” is the reason this book exists. Thank you, Gaga, for inspiring me in such a profound way, and for giving a voice to all the teens in the world who just want to be loved for who they are.
Thank you to Leah Hultenschmidt, my wonderful editor, for being so smart, insightful, patient, enthusiastic, and all around cool. Major props and thanks to my publicist Derry Wilkens for working tirelessly to bring The Summer I Wasn’t Me and My Life After Now to the world. And thank you to Aubrey Poole, Jillian Bergsma, Cat Clyne, Abbie Digel, the Sourcebooks cover design team, the sales and marketing team, the copyeditors and proofreaders, and every single person at Sourcebooks who worked on this book.
In case you didn’t know, Kate McKean is the best agent ever, and I am so lucky to have her on my side, from Lucy to Lexi and beyond.
This book was my creative thesis for my MFA, and I absolutely won the thesis advisor lottery with Sarah Ketchersid. Thank you, Sarah, for your unparalleled wisdom, and for making me rewrite the first fifty pages more times than I can count. You were always right.
Thank you to David Levithan for not only being an incredible professor and inspiration, but for doing all you do to help little guys like me find a real place in the NYC YA author scene.
The Lucky 13s—including Alison Cherry, Mindy Raf, and Lindsay Ribar—is just the coolest group of kid lit authors ever, and I’m proud to be one of you.
To my creative writing instructor Sarah Weeks and my New School peeps Amber, Jane, Kevin, and Molly, thank you so much for your encouragement as I was drafting the early chapters of this book.
To my beta readers, critique group, and kickass thesis group—Caela Carter, Sona Charaipotra, Dhonielle Clayton, Alyson Gerber, Corey Ann Haydu, Riddhi Parekh, and Mary G. Thompson—you’re all a bunch of geniuses. You were more integral to the creation of Lexi’s world than you probably realize, and I love you for it.
Thanks to the fam—Susan and John Miller, Jim Verdi, and Robert and Alyssa Verdi—for being so excited about my books. Thank you to my sister-in-law Emily Chiles for writing me a letter of recommendation for my grad school application! Thank you to the Petrie family at large—and Cynthia Farina and Rachel Leigh Smith in particular—for being so supportive and so cool with the topics I choose to write about. I would have written the books anyway, but, you know, it’s really nice to know you’ve got my back.
Paul Bausch, thank you for being such an awesome guy and for putting up with me all those times I couldn’t go out on the weekends because I had to work. Love you, homie.
Amy Ewing, this book was dedicated to you basically before it was even written. Thank you for reading and re-reading, for talking it all through, for squealing with me in South Africa when I got the happy news email from my agent, for loving this quirky little band of four like they’re real people, and for reassuring me that Carolyn is, in fact, super hot. You are my champion!