My new novel, 17 & Gone, is now out in stores (!!!), and to mark the release of this story about a 17-year-old girl haunted by the missing, I’ve asked some authors I know to join me in answering this question… What haunted YOU at 17? Here’s Andrea Cremer revealing what haunted her at 17 years old and what she worries haunts teenagers today even more…
Guest post by Andrea Cremer
I turned seventeen the summer before my senior year of high school. What felt like infinite questions and possibilities shaped my world: What would senior year be like? What colleges would I get into? Where would I decide to go? Is this when everything changes and my life really begins?
All in all my final year of high school was a great one, full of fantastic memories that I treasure, but hovering over it all remained this cloud of questions that shaded every experience with a gray of uncertainty. Questions and doubts like these are completely reasonable if treated that way, but allowed to run amok they can become obstacles to the joys of the present. Too often my questions became about who I thought I ‘should’ be rather than looking at my life, my experiences, my dream to better understand who I truly wanted to become as I stepped out into the world on my own.
So many years later, I was lucky to teach remarkable students at Macalester College. Each year meeting new freshmen, I was startled by how much more competitive the race to college admission had become and how overscheduled my students had been. Many of my students expressed relief because once they arrived at college they only had to focus on their classes instead of constantly trying to become the ideal candidate for admission at their college of choice.
Thinking about my seventeenth year, I often feel like I was haunted by the future, constantly chased by ghosts of what was yet to come. Those pesky spirits sometimes impeded on my happiness and my ability to feel confident in who I was, and even more so, brave enough to take the risks to become the person I truly wanted to be.
Between conversations I’ve had with my students and with teen readers I worry that now teens are even more haunted by their futures than I was. I hope that young men and women on the cusp of independence will exorcise those spirits and instead of fearing the future, to embrace the singular beauty of the present.
Andrea Cremer is the internationally bestselling author of the Nightshade series. She taught for years at Macalester College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and now lives in New York City.
Don’t miss the other posts in the series. Throughout the week, more YA authors will reveal what haunted them at 17. Here are the Haunted at 17 posts so far…
Feel inspired and want to share what haunted you at 17? If you write a post on your blog, leave a link or tweet it to me. I’ll send you some 17 & Gone swag if you’d like it, and I’ll be featuring all the posts in a round-up when the week is over, on Monday!
You don’t have to be a writer to take part in this. All you have to be is someone who was once 17.
GIVEAWAY!
Want to win a signed hardcover of 17 & Gone, some swag, and a signed hardcover of Imaginary Girls to keep it company? Every commenter on this Haunted at 17 post will be entered to win. You can also enter by filling out this entry form.
The giveaway is international. Closes 11:59 p.m. EST on Thursday, March 28. Two winners will be chosen.
17 & GONE NEWS:
If you’ll be in New York City for the NYC Teen Author Festival, come see me and get a signed copy of the book! Full schedule here—look out for me TONIGHT, Saturday, March 23 at McNally Jackson or Sunday, March 24 at Books of Wonder!
If you’ve pre-ordered 17 & Gone or plan to buy it this week (thank you so much for your support! it means the world to me!) and can’t be in New York City to get it signed, I have a way to sign your book from afar. Leave a comment on this photo on my Facebook author page and I may just mail you a signed and personalized bookplate.
My new novel, 17 & Gone, is now out in stores (!!!), and to mark the release of this story about a 17-year-old girl haunted by the missing, I’ve asked some authors I know to join me in answering this question… What haunted YOU at 17? Here’s Nina LaCour revealing the paralyzing fear she faced the year she was 17 years old…
Guest post by Nina LaCour
(Nina LaCour at 17. Photo taken in her old bedroom in her parents’ old apartment.)
When I was seventeen, I was haunted by two versions of myself: the one I had been throughout high school and the one I wanted to be. Even though I had lived in the same town all my life and had known most of the kids since kindergarten, I never felt like I fit in. The people in the town belonged to the country club; they drove expensive cars; they lived either in sprawling ranch houses or in multi-story, newly built ones with high ceilings and swimming pools. The adults were tight-knit and gregarious. The kids were athletic and studious.
My parents and I did, and were, none of these things.
My mom and dad had plenty of friends, but they all lived other places. When I was a little kid their car was so old that my mom had to drive on the shoulder of the road when going up the hill that led to the public transit parking lot. We lived in an apartment on the main street. I had a paralyzing fear of team sports, never tried too hard in school, and, though I genuinely liked many of the kids I grew up with, often felt like a slightly different species among them.
I was lucky in many respects growing up, and perhaps the greatest respect was this: every day when I got home from school, I felt like I belonged. In the apartment, we listened to loud music, we danced around the living room, we sang as we cooked dinner. At the table every evening we had good conversations and every night when I went to sleep, I felt safe and I felt loved. We may not have had a nice, big house, but it was the best home.
But I was seventeen and high school was over and I craved a bigger space in which to belong. My parents’ apartment just wasn’t enough. My best friend moved away for school, but I was staying in the Bay Area to go to San Francisco State University, a commuter school with dorms for only a tiny percentage of the student body. Throughout the summer months between high school and college, I dreamed of the way I would belong in San Francisco. I had fantasies of sitting in crowded dorm rooms, talking and laughing late into the night with interesting people who were glad to have me as a friend. All of the self-consciousness I felt growing up, all of the out-of-placeness, would simply slip away and there I would be: a part of something.
I was placed on the waiting list for the dorms. I ultimately got a spot, but I had to move in a couple weeks later than everyone else. I told myself that it was those couple of weeks that screwed me.
I missed all of the beginnings: move-in day, orientations, freshman breakfast, movie night. I missed the first night of eating in the dining hall and the first morning in the big communal bathroom. Who knows what else I missed? I wasn’t there; I’ll never know.
What I do know is that after my parents finished helping me unpack, and my mother made my bed for me and cried and cried before setting out on the thirty-mile drive back home, I sat in my dorm room and I felt, once again, out of place. It wasn’t better than high school at all, and I was so shy and so paralyzed by who I wanted to be and how badly I wanted to fit in, that after a few unsuccessful attempts at making friends with the girl across the hall with the Betty Page hair and the job at Urban Outfitters, I avoided the dining hall at all costs and slipped away over the weekends, back to the suburbs, back to the warm apartment with its carpeted floors and my singing, dancing, cooking parents and my cute little brother who was always thrilled to see me come home.
I got out of the dorms as soon as I could, and slowly, over the next two years, I found friends to laugh with late at night, an apartment with a roof view of the Golden Gate Bridge, a handful of roommates, a girlfriend I couldn’t stop kissing, places to hang out all over campus, favorite cafes all over the city.
But none of that happened while I was still seventeen. All of that would come later.
Nina LaCour is the award-winning author of Hold Still and The Disenchantments. Her third novel will be out in 2014. She lives with her wife in Oakland, CA.
Don’t miss the other posts in the series. Throughout the week, more YA authors will reveal what haunted them at 17. Here are the Haunted at 17 posts so far…
Feel inspired and want to share what haunted you at 17? If you write a post on your blog, leave a link or tweet it to me. I’ll send you some 17 & Gone swag if you’d like it, and I’ll be featuring all the posts in a round-up when the week is over, on Monday!
You don’t have to be a writer to take part in this. All you have to be is someone who was once 17.
GIVEAWAY!
Want to win a signed hardcover of 17 & Gone, some swag, and a signed hardcover of Imaginary Girls to keep it company? Every commenter on this Haunted at 17 post will be entered to win. You can also enter by filling out this entry form.
The giveaway is international. Closes 11:59 p.m. EST on Thursday, March 28. Two winners will be chosen.
17 & GONE NEWS:
If you’ll be in New York City for the NYC Teen Author Festival, come see me and get a signed copy of the book! Full schedule here—look out for me TONIGHT, Friday, March 22, at the Union Square Barnes & Noble or Saturday, March 23 at McNally Jackson or Sunday, March 24 at Books of Wonder!
The 17 & Gone Blog Tour is all about the images from my Pinterest inspiration board that I made while writing the book. The latest stop at the Mod Podge Bookshelf features an image that makes me think of an integral character in the story: Fiona Burke.
Kristina Perez has interviewed me for her Madeleine Project. Come find out my answers to some of the most important questions.
If you’re an artist or writer trying to piece together some kind of creative life, read my interview on Realizing Your Creative Life about growing as a writer and being vulnerable.
If you’ve pre-ordered 17 & Gone or plan to buy it this week (thank you so much for your support! it means the world to me!) and can’t be in New York City to get it signed, I have a way to sign your book from afar. Leave a comment on this photo on my Facebook author page and I may just mail you a signed and personalized bookplate.
My new novel, 17 & Gone, is now out in stores (!!!), and to mark the release of this story about a 17-year-old girl haunted by the missing, I’ve asked some authors I know to join me in answering this question… What haunted YOU at 17? Here’s a vlog from Adele Griffin in which she reveals an incident that happened to her at 17 years old and that still haunts her to this day…
Guest vlog from Adele Griffin
(Adele Griffin at 17, in blue! With her high school bff Holly.)
Adele Griffin reveals:
“I think it would be my worst nightmare to completely lose my sense of myself in this world.”
Watch the full video here:
Adele Griffin is the author of a number of books for young adults, including LOUD AWAKE AND LOST (Knopf). She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.
Don’t miss the other posts in the series. Throughout the week, more YA authors will reveal what haunted them at 17. Here are the Haunted at 17 posts so far…
Feel inspired and want to share what haunted you at 17? If you write a post on your blog, leave a link or tweet it to me. I’ll send you some 17 & Gone swag if you’d like it, and I’ll be featuring all the posts in a round-up when the week is over, on Monday!
You don’t have to be a writer to take part in this. All you have to be is someone who was once 17.
GIVEAWAY!
Want to win a signed hardcover of 17 & Gone, some swag, and a signed hardcover of Imaginary Girls to keep it company? Every commenter on this Haunted at 17 post will be entered to win. You can also enter by filling out this entry form.
The giveaway is international. Closes 11:59 p.m. EST on Thursday, March 28. Two winners will be chosen.
17 & GONE NEWS:
If you’ll be in New York City for the NYC Teen Author Festival, come see me and get a signed copy of the book! Full schedule here—look out for me TONIGHT, Friday, March 22, at the Union Square Barnes & Noble or Saturday, March 23 at McNally Jackson or Sunday, March 24 at Books of Wonder!
The 17 & Gone Blog Tour is all about the images from my Pinterest inspiration board that I made while writing the book. The latest stop at the Mod Podge Bookshelf features an image that makes me think of an integral character in the story: Fiona Burke.
Kristina Perez has interviewed me for her Madeleine Project. Come find out my answers to some of the most important questions.
If you’re an artist or writer trying to piece together some kind of creative life, read my interview on Realizing Your Creative Life about growing as a writer and being vulnerable.
If you’ve pre-ordered 17 & Gone or plan to buy it this week (thank you so much for your support! it means the world to me!) and can’t be in New York City to get it signed, I have a way to sign your book from afar. Leave a comment on this photo on my Facebook author page and I may just mail you a signed and personalized bookplate.
My new novel, 17 & Gone, is now out in stores (!!!), and to mark the release of this story about a 17-year-old girl haunted by the missing, I’ve asked some authors I know to join me in answering this question… What haunted YOU at 17? Here’s Robin Wasserman revealing some shocking photos that will show the world what haunted her when she was 17 years old…
Guest post by Robin Wasserman
I’ve never been the kind of person who believes in ghosts, and by the time I hit seventeen, I’d conquered or outgrown (or, in the case of the junior-high-school bully who mercifully dropped out after ninth grade, outlasted) most of the things that used to keep me awake at night: fear of fire, fear of kidnapping, fear of food fights (don’t ask)—I’d even managed to put the fear of loneliness at bay, after finally making a few for-real, for-life friends.
So most of what haunted my nightmares (and frequent schooltime naps) that year was the fear—okay, call it abject terror—that I wouldn’t get into the college I wanted, or wouldn’t get into any college at all, or would be a failure at life and end up living out my days in my parents’ basement…you get the idea. A lot of time was spent studying for the SATs and pouring through “How to get into college” books and scribbling “Brown” and “Yale” in my notebooks the way other people scribbled the names of their beloved. There may have been little pink hearts involved, and a lot of creative visualization involving fat envelopes and mailboxes. None of it’s that interesting and I’ve already written more about it than anyone could ever want to read (including a whole vaguely autobiographical novel, if you find yourself that curious). So I’m not going to write about that today.
I’m going to write about the other thing that haunted me, if by haunted you mean occupied my ever waking thoughts and tormented me with thoughts of what-might-have-been and terrors of what-could-become.
That thing is: My hair.
Anyone who talks to me for more than, say, twenty minutes, will notice that I’m extremely, some might say exceedingly, vain about my hair. Which is embarrassing. Not to mention weird, since I’m the kind of person who’s usually too lazy to wear makeup and has been known to occasionally forget she’s wearing pajamas when she leaves the apartment.
What you wouldn’t know, if you’ve only known me for twenty minutes (although give me the slightest opening and another couple hours and you’ll soon learn more than you ever wanted to know on the subject), is that my obsession with my hair has spanned thirty years and most of those were spent in such cringe-worthy, camera-breaking, Cousin-It-resembling hair hell that I don’t think you could blame me if I spent all my time now gazing in the mirror thanking the universe that I finally conquered my demons.
(You think I’m exaggerating. But wait, there will be pictures. )
I was blissfully unaware of the problem until age five, when, blithely wandering through an apartment building with my traditional summer bowl cut, I got the well-meaning compliment no girl wants to hear: “What an adorable little boy!”
So much for the bowl cut.
I spent the fourteen years after that growing out my hair into an indescribably hideous nest of curls, desperately trying to turn my hair into the kind of hair I saw on TV and, as far as I could tell, on the head of every single popular girl in the history of popular girls: long, silky, and (with a few impossibly un-frizzy exceptions) straight. I brought in magazine clippings for a long series of beleaguered hairdressers; I tried every anti-frizz product on the shelf. I poured over Sassy and Seventeen and YM, desperate for hair-straightening techniques, none of which worked. I sat for innumerable bad pictures and cringed every time I saw myself on the home video screen.
Then there was the hat phase.
The less said about that, the better.
I got the obligatory junior high nickname (“afro girl”); I got jealous at every sleepover party while the other girls combed and crimped and French braided and I sat against a wall reading a book. I got knots. Lots of knots, and occasionally, I got them cut out.
(This poor girl is about to face her first-ever game of Spin the Bottle. Pray for her.)
I got increasingly convinced that my hair was at the root of all my problems.
That if I could just make my hair better, make it right, everything else would follow. I’d get popular. I’d get a boyfriend. I’d get everything I wanted in life, everything that seemed to come so easily to everyone else.
I now think that everyone had something like this, some scapegoat for all their problems—If only I were skinnier, If only I were taller, If only I had bigger boobs or a smaller nose or clearer skin or straighter teeth—and we all conveniently ignore the fact that there are plenty of people with smaller boobs or bigger noses or more zits who are also making out with their boyfriends at every party in town. The only other girl in my school with hair precisely as crappy as mine had about a million friends and was a varsity athlete, but this is something I chose to ignore. Because I needed to believe there was something that would be an easy fix, even if—maybe especially if—it was something I couldn’t have. I needed to believe that all of the things I was miserable about made some logical sense.
If I was lonely and sad and bored and scared because I had terrible hair, then at least there was a reason. And at least there was a possibility that someday things would get better. That if I tried hard enough, I would eventually come up with a solution.
Which is maybe why, one spring day junior year, a couple days after I turned seventeen and ONE DAY before taking my official senior yearbook photo (the photo that would also end up in my college freshman facebook and thus follow me for BASICALLY THE REST OF MY LIFE), I made a drastic decision.
Yes, some girls would get a pixie cut.
I got a poodle cut.
This may be the only wild and crazy thing I did over the entire course of my teenage years. (And okay, I’m aware that it doesn’t even register on the wild and crazy scale, but it seemed pretty nuts at the time.)
It was a bad idea, and seventeen turned out to be a really bad hair year, but it was also the turning point. As if cutting it all off had managed to reboot the system, my hair grew back…different. Instead of the knotted, frizzy, dried-out mess that had been seventeen years in the making, I had a clean slate, untangled and for the most part, unbattered by the elements. (The elements being my incompetence and that of the fine folks at the Haircuttery.) Year by year, haircut by haircut (always, always a tiny, undramatic trim), it got better. Which I’m pretty sure would never have happened if I hadn’t made the stupidest, most reckless decision of my entire hair life.
There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere, but I’m not groping at some kind of existential life lesson here. I’m talking hair, pure and simple. It’s probably true that a good hair day won’t change your life.
But trust me, when you’ve been waiting as long as I waited, that first one you ever have feels like it will.
Robin Wasserman is the critically-acclaimed author of the Seven Deadly Sins series, Hacking Harvard, the Skinned trilogy, and The Book of Blood and Shadow.The Waking Dark is forthcoming in September 2013. She lives in Brooklyn.
Don’t miss the other posts in the series. Throughout the week, more YA authors will reveal what haunted them at 17. Here are the Haunted at 17 posts so far…
Feel inspired and want to share what haunted you at 17? If you write a post on your blog, leave a link or tweet it to me. I’ll send you some 17 & Gone swag if you’d like it, and I’ll be featuring all the posts in a round-up when the week is over, on Monday!
You don’t have to be a writer to take part in this. All you have to be is someone who was once 17.
GIVEAWAY!
Want to win a signed hardcover of 17 & Gone, some swag, and a signed hardcover of Imaginary Girls to keep it company? Every commenter on this Haunted at 17 post will be entered to win. You can also enter by filling out this entry form.
The giveaway is international. Closes 11:59 p.m. EST on Thursday, March 28. Two winners will be chosen.
17 & GONE NEWS:
If you’ll be in New York City for the NYC Teen Author Festival, come see me and get a signed copy of the book! Full schedule here—look out for me TONIGHT, Friday, March 22, at the Union Square Barnes & Noble or Saturday, March 23 at McNally Jackson or Sunday, March 24 at Books of Wonder!
The 17 & Gone Blog Tour is all about the images from my Pinterest inspiration board that I made while writing the book. The latest stop at the Mod Podge Bookshelf features an image that makes me think of an integral character in the story: Fiona Burke.
Kristina Perez has interviewed me for her Madeleine Project. Come find out my answers to some of the most important questions.
If you’re an artist or writer trying to piece together some kind of creative life, read my interview on Realizing Your Creative Life about growing as a writer and being vulnerable.
If you’ve pre-ordered 17 & Gone or plan to buy it this week (thank you so much for your support! it means the world to me!) and can’t be in New York City to get it signed, I have a way to sign your book from afar. Leave a comment on this photo on my Facebook author page and I may just mail you a signed and personalized bookplate.
If you’ve been reading my blog this week, surely you’ll have noticed all the stories about what consumed and obsessed us when we were 17, all to celebrate the release of my new novel 17 & GONE, now on sale today! Thank you to the generous authors taking part in the Haunted at 17 blog series! There will be more posts in the series coming, more YA authors revealing their 17-year-old selves, tomorrow and Saturday, so please stay tuned.
Keep an eye on this space tomorrow and Saturday—more Haunted at 17 stories from YA authors are coming…
But there’s more!
I said if you felt inspired and wanted to write a Haunted at 17 post, I love to read it and share it here—and send you some 17 & GONE swag if you want some. (And I’ll be contacting everyone who wrote a post!)
I will be sharing a final round-up of all the Haunted at 17 links after the week is over, on Monday, but until then, I had to link to the stories that have been sent to me so far. These are moving, beautiful, deeply honest, and so very true.
So many of us were haunted at 17 in so many different ways.
Here are some more Haunted at 17 stories…
YOUR HAUNTINGS
Will Ludwigsen: “What haunted me was the possibility of inheriting my father’s glib charisma, his zeal for seizing opportunity, his anxious aggression and temper in a full-tilt battle with the world. What haunted me was the possibility — the probability — that I had sociopathic blood in my veins.” The full Haunted at 17 post here.
Samantha Mabry: “What plagued me was a narrow-minded, irresponsible determination that prevented me from seeing the joy of the present—the journey, as they say—and always had me hurtling towards the future.” The full Haunted at 17 post here.
Vanessa Barger: “I was haunted by my inability to look at them and say, ‘If you don’t want to be seen with me all the time, then why bother being friends with me at all?’” The full Haunted at 17 post here.
Kelly Jensen: “What haunted me at 17 … is the very thing that now I can finally and truthfully own. I guess this is the first time most of the people in my life, if they read this, will learn.” The full Haunted at 17 post here.
Natalie Whipple: “By the time I was 17, I was desperate for recognition and wanted so badly to scream, ‘Look at me! SEE ME! I’m right here!’” The full Haunted at 17 post here.
Singularly Em: “At 17, what haunted me, consumed my every waking hour… was my obsessiveness, my self-destructive love for my abusive girlfriend, my depression, and most of all… distance.” The full Haunted at 17 post here.
Madeline Claire Franklin: “The past haunted me. A moment in time haunted me. Being silenced haunted me. … Being silenced still haunts me.” The full Haunted at 17 post here.
Beth Fred: “I really didn’t know the one word answer to what haunted me, but I’ve found it. The fear of being unlovable. The fear that the adults in my life were right about my lack of worth.” The full Haunted at 17 post here.
Susan Adrian: “I had no belief that I could do it. I didn’t have a lot of self-confidence, and what I did was fragile, and false.” The full Haunted at 17 post here.
Marisa Reichardt: “By 17, I was afraid of falling asleep at night and not waking up in the morning. I was afraid of dying without having left something worthy in my wake.” The full Haunted at 17 post here.
Rebecca Barrow: “So what haunted me through 17, that year of parties and older boys and getting far too drunk in the warm safety of my friends’ homes? What haunted me was the idea that it would all go back to before.” The full Haunted at 17 post here.
Sarah Wedgbrow: “I don’t remember being haunted at seventeen, but I am often haunted today by my seventeen year-old self. And I’ve been systematically trying to destroy her.” The full Haunted at 17 post here.
Wow.
I am honored by these stories—and humbled.
I’ll keep collecting Haunted at 17 stories through the weekend and put up a list of all the links on Monday, and again, if you write one, share the link with me or tweet it to me! I would be thrilled, and can’t wait to devour every word.
You are all wonderful. And I love seeing who you were at 17.
I’m unabashedly excited to tell you that my new novel, 17 & Gone, is out in stores TODAY RIGHT NOW IT’S REALLY HAPPENED*, and to celebrate its release you may have noticed that this blog has been taken over by memories. Some very honest memories from some of my fellow YA authors, revealing what haunted them when they were 17, just as my 17-year-old narrator in the book is haunted herself by missing girls who push her to uncover their stories. It’s only fair, since I’ve asked so much of everyone else, if I tell you what haunted me when I was 17.
I happen to know, because I went digging around in my closet over the weekend and found this:
(I always wanted to be a writer. I wasn’t always very good.)
That is a folder containing my typewritten poems and short stories, many of which were written when I was 17 years old. And there’s something you should know about me: Before my published novels, before I had an editor to contain me and my own experience as a writer to pre-edit myself, pretty much everything I wrote, no matter if I called it fiction, was purely, unapologetically, and undeniably though I did try to deny it, one single thing:
Autobiographical.
So I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt what haunted me back then…
(An outtake from my senior photo session, taken when I was still 17. That was the year I found red-wine lipstick. My best friend, Esme, put my hair up for this photo, and it stayed put only a few minutes after the shutter clicked.)
Danger.
I sensed it coming for me. And if it didn’t hit me, maybe it would veer off and take someone else, but it was coming. I felt it. It’s infused in every line I wrote back then, the threat that had something to do with the body I was made to live in. The girl I was, and what men in the world did to girls. All I knew was that no boy—no male I’d ever known—could be trusted.
Is that honest enough for you? That’s the raw truth of who I was at 17, and speaks to what haunted me.
Other things I knew: That no one understood.
That out there, somewhere, would be understanding and an adult life I’d make for myself.
When I was 17, it felt so far away—my future, my real life—and the months, weeks, days, day after day after day, I’d have to exist in that place before I graduated high school were the longest months, weeks, days I’ve ever lived.
Sometimes I fantasizing about vanishing.
I knew these two girls who were planning to run. The two of them in a used car, whatever cash they could scrape together, and all the clothes they could fit in the trunk and on the backseat. They’d head to New Orleans, maybe. They’d head south, stop somewhere once it turned warm. They were 17, as I was, and they’d had enough of this shit. They didn’t even think it was worth staying to finish high school.
I heard them talk of their big, romantic plans for running away, and I wondered if I’d ever see them again.
I pictured it in my mind: the car on a highway at night, the windows down, the music up, the parents back at home pasting Missing flyers to telephone poles, and the two runaways down in New Orleans hanging curtains in their new apartment and studying for the GED. I went home, to our latest rental where my stepfather raged, locked myself in my room, and fantasized about saving enough money to break my mom and siblings out of there and be able to talk and laugh in the dining room, to open our doors, to live like other families lived. Simple things that sound silly to type now. I’d forgotten.
But I also imagined running.
Imagined leaving and never looking back. I only went so far as to imagine.
I was a coward, see. I was chicken. This is what I told myself.
I would never actually consider running away.
I couldn’t abandon my mother. I couldn’t leave my baby sister, who I adored like she was my own. I couldn’t even keep a secret from my mom, let alone worry her by staying out without telling her where I was for a single right. And how would I get out of town, anyway? It’s not like I had my own used car to stuff full of my belongings and point south. All the money I made at my job at the day-care center went toward saving for college, because that to me would be my escape. Besides, knowing I couldn’t afford a car, I’d never bothered to learn to drive.
And what was out there, in the world beyond the Hudson Valley? What would happen to a 17-year-old girl who just went running?
If people couldn’t be trusted here, imagine what it was like out there. Imagine.
As I remember, the two girls I knew stuck around. Maybe they ran away for a whole weekend, maybe longer, but it wasn’t for forever, let alone long enough to be alarming. Because the next time I saw them, they were there as always. They were home. Safe. I don’t even know if they made it to New Orleans for sightseeing.
But the idea stuck with me. A girl who just goes, disappears. It’s something I’ve been writing about for twenty years.
I think it was the only way I thought I could control anything.
(Shared for hilarity. A friend had me “model” for her for her photo class. She dressed me in her clothes, even her rings and earrings—and those are her shoes, at least three sizes too big for me. I’m not sure what I was channeling with this expression.)
What haunted me at 17 is all there, in 17 & Gone. I mean, you can see it even in the title, can’t you? Every piece of me from back then is in that book. I wanted to run, but I never did. I wanted to be strong, but I wasn’t. I wanted to fight for myself and for the girls I saw falling around me, but I didn’t know how to speak up.
At the same time I was digging around in my closet this weekend discovering that old folder of poems tied with ribbons, I was also watching and reading the news. The Steubenville verdict and the media feeling sorry for rapists’ futures without thought for the girl, and the disgusting victim-blaming comments about how the girl shouldn’t have been drinking, as if she’d wanted it, as if even if she hadn’t it was her fault… all this, it sent me spiraling back to 17.
It’s all there in what I wrote: What men yelled out car windows. What men said I wasn’t smart enough, or talented enough, or worthy enough to do. What boys lied about in the dark. What boys acted like under light of day. What guys wanted me to do when they had me alone. What people thought I did even when I didn’t. And pieces too. Like the night I got so fall-down, blackout drunk at a friend’s house that I can’t even tell you now all of what happened except in uncomfortable flashes. And that I had a boyfriend the next morning, and it took me six months to break up with him.
(An untitled poem I wrote when I was 17 about a boy who didn’t deserve a poem.)
17-year-old me saw threats everywhere, and they all centered in on who and what I was: a girl. A girl in a world that wasn’t always kind to girls.
And yet she flirted with the idea of danger. Things she did. Things she almost-did. Things that could have killed her.
What’s all the more frightening now is looking back and seeing how close I came to so many bad things. I was standing with my toes over the edge of the cliff—just my toes dangling—and any little rush of a breeze could have knocked me over into the gorge. (The cliff metaphor is less a metaphor and more a connection to the physical landscape where I lived when I was 17, in Woodstock, in the Catskill Mountains you’ll find in 17 & Gone and in my previous book Imaginary Girls, there where we spent nights at actual cliffs and where I have stood, quite literally, with my toes on the edge and a push away from falling.)
I’ve written about this before—my urgent need to escape. But I didn’t remember my fears until now, until I saw those typewritten pages spelling it all out.
(I look happy in this photo, but I can’t tell you who is with me. I don’t know his name. He was a random boy I barely spoke to who decided to pinch my cheek.)
The girl I was at 17 was obsessed with the vivid fears that run through 17 & Gone. It’s as if I wrote the book for her, decades too late.
Or maybe it’s not too late. Maybe all my fears from back then needed to be channeled into something for right now, today.
Still, I wish I could tell her: She wasn’t a coward. She wasn’t chicken. She was right not to trust them—and one day, sooner than she’d guess, she’d find someone she could trust, in her real life, that did begin once she left that town.
And to assure her, somehow, if I could have, that she’d make it out when the time was right. I—and this book I wrote—are living proof she did.
There. That was as deep as I could go with my haunting without revealing too much and scaring you away. Now that I confessed what haunted me at 17, I hope you’ll look out for the book, on sale today! And keep an eye on this blog, too—there are more “Haunted at 17” posts coming from my fellow YA authors in the next couple of days to help me celebrate release week!
* Also, please pardon my all-caps excitement at the head of this post. It’s never easy, this writing-an-idea-into-a-book-that-makes-it-to-being-published thing, and I don’t think I ever believe it will actually come to fruition until the day arrives and the book is out and no one can grab it back from me and tell me I was only dreaming.
(Am I dreaming?)
(If I’m dreaming, please don’t pinch me yet because I’d like it to last all day.)
MORE HAUNTINGS
Don’t miss the other posts in the series. Throughout the week, more YA authors will reveal what haunted them at 17. Here are the Haunted at 17 posts so far…
Feel inspired and want to share what haunted you at 17? If you write a post on your blog, leave a link or tweet it to me. I’ll send you some 17 & Gone swag if you’d like it, and I’ll be featuring all the posts in a round-up on Monday!
You don’t have to be a writer to take part in this. All you have to be is someone who was once 17.
GIVEAWAY!
Want to win a signed hardcover of 17 & Gone, some swag, and a signed hardcover of Imaginary Girls to keep it company? Every commenter on this Haunted at 17 post will be entered to win. You can also enter by filling out this entry form.
The giveaway is international. Closes 11:59 p.m. EST on Thursday, March 28. Two winners will be chosen.
17 & GONE NEWS:
If you’ll be in New York City for the NYC Teen Author Festival, come see me and get a signed copy of the book! Full schedule here—look out for me on Friday, March 22 at the Union Square Barnes & Noble or Saturday, March 23 at McNally Jackson or Sunday, March 24 at Books of Wonder!
The 17 & Gone Blog Tour is all about the images from my Pinterest inspiration board that I made while writing the book. The latest stop at The Compulsive Reader features an image about waking nightmares.
Kristina Perez has interviewed me for her Madeleine Project. Come find out my answers to some of the most important questions.
If you’ve pre-ordered 17 & Gone or plan to buy it this week (thank you so much for your support! it means the world to me!) and can’t be in New York City to get it signed, I have a way to sign your book from afar. Leave a comment on this photo on my Facebook author page and I may just mail you a signed and personalized bookplate.
My new novel, 17 & Gone, comes out tomorrow, March 21, and to mark the release of this story about a 17-year-old girl haunted by the missing, I’ve asked some authors I know to join me in answering this question… What haunted YOU at 17? Here’s Kat Rosenfield revealing what—in this case, who—haunted her when she was 17 years old…
Guest post by Kat Rosenfield
(Kat Rosenfield at 17. About the photo, she says, “I love how my little brother is trying to lick my ear while it was taken—obviously some things don’t change.”)
I was seventeen when it ended. On the phone, late at night, with me crying hard in spite of my resolve. I didn’t love him anymore—or I did, maybe, but not more than I loved the idea of flying solo, unencumbered, free to be and talk and dress whatever way I wanted, and with no one to tell me that what I wanted was wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve made up my mind.”
He said, “No.”
The phone rang every night, always at the same time; my answering “Hello?” would be met with the whistling sound of breathing, or sometimes crying. Notes scrawled with angry poetry or small drawings—of wilted flowers, of my own face—would appear in my locker, left by unseen hands. He rarely spoke to me, but he was always nearby, materializing in hallways and classrooms and in the parking lot after school. He was an inescapable shadow. Months after the breakup, in the damp first weeks of spring, my football-player crush kissed me for the first time in what had seemed like a deserted corridor; moments later, we jumped apart when a door down the hall slammed with a sharp, echoing report. He’d been watching. He was angry.
There’s probably another word for what I was, what I felt, something other than “haunted.” “Harassed,” maybe. Or “stalked.” But “haunted” feels right. The fact that my ghost wasn’t really a ghost at all, but a heartbroken and volatile teenage boy, made little difference; he was just as angry, just as empty, just as fixated on getting back what he thought would make him whole. People thought it was romantic, the way he wouldn’t move on. The advice they gave me was the classic sort you get from ghost stories: appease him. Give him closure. Finish the unfinished business that keeps him hanging on.
And if what he wants, what he needs, is you, then aren’t you lucky—to be wanted so much, so desperately? Isn’t it passionate? Isn’t it sweet, being loved like that, until you’re twisted and faded and there’s nothing left of you but the parts that he likes best?
I thought the answer was “yes,” of course, and that was a mistake.
But ghost stories seemed so romantic, and I was seventeen.
Kat Rosenfield was born and raised in Coxsackie, New York, and worked as a production assistant, publicist, and copywriter in New York City before finding her niche in writing for teenagers. Her first novel, AMELIA ANNE IS DEAD AND GONE, was released by Dutton in July 2012. When not writing fiction, she can be found contributing entertainment news and commentary to MTV’s Hollywood Crush blog and lecturing on proper flirting techniques on Barnes & Noble’s SparkLife.
Don’t miss the other posts in the series. Throughout the week, more YA authors will reveal what haunted them at 17. Here are the Haunted at 17 posts so far…
Feel inspired and want to share what haunted you at 17? If you write a post on your blog, leave a link or tweet it to me. I’ll send you some 17 & Gone swag if you’d like it, and I’ll be featuring all the posts in a round-up at the end of the week!
You don’t have to be a writer to take part in this. All you have to be is someone who was once 17.
GIVEAWAY!
Want to win a signed hardcover of 17 & Gone, some swag, and a signed hardcover of Imaginary Girls to keep it company? Every commenter on this Haunted at 17 post will be entered to win. You can also enter by filling out this entry form.
The giveaway is international. Closes 11:59 p.m. EST on Thursday, March 28. Two winners will be chosen.
17 & GONE NEWS:
If you’ll be in New York City for the NYC Teen Author Festival, come see me and get a signed copy of the book! Full schedule here—look out for me on Friday, March 22 at the Union Square Barnes & Noble or Saturday, March 23 at McNally Jackson or Sunday, March 24 at Books of Wonder!
The 17 & Gone Blog Tour is all about the images that spoke to me—and inspired and illuminated parts of the story—while I was writing the book. I collected them on my Pinterest inspiration board, and each stop on the blog tour reveals one of these images and a passage inspired by it. Here’s an image that made me think of Abby at this stop at Confessions of a Readaholic.
Kristina Perez has interviewed me for her Madeleine Project. Come find out my answers to some of the most important questions.
If you’ve pre-ordered 17 & Gone or plan to buy it this week (thank you so much for your support! it means the world to me!) and can’t be in New York City to get it signed, I have a way to sign your book from afar. Leave a comment on this photo on my Facebook author page and I may just mail you a signed and personalized bookplate.
Andrea Cremer is the internationally bestselling author of the Nightshade series. She taught for years at Macalester College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and now lives in New York City.
If you’ll be in New York City for the NYC Teen Author Festival, come see me and get a signed copy of the book! Full schedule here—look out for me TONIGHT, Saturday, March 23 at McNally Jackson or Sunday, March 24 at Books of Wonder!
distraction no.99 