Authors Brittany Cavallaro and Alex Kahler Dish About Being Boarding School Buddies

Brittany: I was a really romantic teenager—capital-R, nineteenth-century poet, crying by the lake because it was so beautiful romantic—but also a pragmatic one. I had a lot of feelings and a lot of ambition. It made me pretty intense to be friends with, as you can imagine. I didn’t really know how to have a casual friendship; I never wanted anything halfway. This resulted in a lot of really amazing relationships with people like you, Alex, and that I put a lot of work into chasing down my dreams. I expected a lot out of everything. But it also meant that I was constantly disappointed that the world wasn’t as magical or strange as I wanted it to be. I had this online journal that I wrote in obsessively, trying to reshape the world into a place more mythological and interesting and beautiful, and if I could do back, I’d tell myself that reality can be just as compelling.
Alex: It’s probably unfair to say “Was,” because honestly, I still am a really romantic teenager inside. So perhaps I should still try to convince myself that reality is just as inspiring as the worlds in my head. We were pretty much the same in that regard. But I think I’d also go back and tell myself to be a little kinder to myself. And to remember that mistakes—dating, dreaming, planning—weren’t the end of the world, and damn it, be a teenager every once in a while.
What moment or memory epitomizes your art school experience, and did that translate into your book? 
Brittany: Thinking about the previous question, what I’d say to my 17-year-old self—it’s so funny that the memories from Interlochen that are the clearest are the ones that were more mundane. Like, I remember ordering 14-inch cheeseless pineapple pizzas on a Thursday night, and walking down the lane at twilight when it was just starting to warm up in northern Michigan (which meant, like, late April), and that sense of heady anticipation I used to have in the evenings, that things were happening all over campus, in the dorms and the art studios, and all I had to do was walk outside to experience it. That feeling made it into A Study in Charlotte, I think, but I translated it into that cagey restlessness when the things you want and the things you’re afraid of are right outside your door. I also put in some lengthy scenes in the basement kitchen of our dorm, where I made a lot of really mediocre meals with the dented pots and pans and the old stove they kept in there. Some of those, I think, were with you!

Alex: One of my strongest memories is standing on the fire escape of your dorm, Brittany (it is so weird calling you that, I’m just going to shorthand back to Bri), in the cold night air. We’d just had a night talking about something really heavy and existential, and I remember standing on that icy iron staircase and staring at the woods and the stars and thinking This is it—life is unfolding. Which is a scene that definitely made it into Shades of Darkness. Everything about art school felt intense, and I’ve tried to incorporate that into the book. The relationships, the creative acts, the discussions. Looking back, we were probably pretty pretentious to observers. But at the time, it really did feel like life and death, creation or decay.
How did the experience shape you as a writer? 
Brittany: In so many ways. I really don’t know where I’d be today as a writer without Interlochen. So many amazing writing classes, surrounded by other young passionate writers…and everyone there took you seriously as a writer. Like, that was what you were. You didn’t have to explain yourself. I actually remember getting teased a bit my first year of college for the confidence that Interlochen had given me, that i would tell people, well, yes, I’m a poet, I’m a fiction writer, and they would look at me a little dubiously.
Interlochen also made me define what I wasn’t. There was a focus on nature writing while I was there that I never quite jibed with. I’m a suburban girl who’s blind in one eye and unsteady on her feet. I don’t know the names of trees or birds or flowers, and I’m not particularly interested in hiking, and even if I was, I can’t do it. To quote Buffy, me and nature are unmixy things. But I got to try that whole aesthetic out. I took it really seriously, because I loved my teachers, even if I didn’t love the work I was reading—and then this amazing thing happened. I was terrible at it. Terrible! It was so freeing to realize that it wasn’t for me, and that I had to make my way doing something else. (The faculty there, and the focus on nature, has shifted since we left.)
Alex: Everything Brittany said. I came to Interlochen because I loved fantasy. When I got there, I was told we wouldn’t study fantasy, and we couldn’t write fantasy. (Save for one class on fantasy/sci-fi, which saved my sanity.) But, being forced to write and read poetry and nature writing and literary fiction and nonfiction all helped me hone my voice, and I found a love of the written word that I might not have discovered if I’d been focusing solely on plot-heavy works. Maybe.
[caption id="attachment_6521" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Clockwise from left: Brittany wearing a piano recital outfit and attempting to give face; Alex wearing a too-small leather jacket from a share box, a la James Dean, and he’s pretty certain they were coloring his hair; A young Brittany and Alex, ready for a night on the town. (That meant walking to the grocery store. Brittany did both of their makeup.)[/caption]
Honesty time: Will you admit to breaking the rules?
Brittany: I was such a goody two-shoes. I think I smoked a few cigarettes in the woods. I made out with boys in darkened classrooms at night. I snuck you and our other guy friends up into my room, but just to cuddle and watch movies. (Friend bed!) I totally ditched my food service requirement for an entire semester and then had to make it all up in the last week of May, like 15 hours’ worth, totally hallucinating from lack of sleep, doling out vegetables in the hot line…
Alex: I…might have broken the rules when it came to not having relationships with roommates. Twice. And that’s all I’m going to say about it.
Why do you think boarding school is such a compelling setting for YA?
Alex: THE DRAMA! Kids locked into a small area with strict rules and probably more homework? It’s like a cesspool of hormones and anxiety and self-doubt. Although adults control the parameters of your life, it’s basically like college—you’re always around people your own age, focusing on similar things, railing against certain things. You have a common bond, and I think that’s what teens (and adults, honestly) want—a community, a cause, and a place to discover and showcase your identity.
Brittany: Oh, I totally agree. Everything is heightened. You’re suddenly an adult, in that you’re going to sink or swim on your own watch—you control your time, you control your relationships, your friends become everything to you—and you’re suddenly less than a teenager, because you’re boxed in, with really specific rules. In bed by ten. Only leaving campus once a week. It makes you band together. Since we were at art school, we tended to band together with even more feelings than usual. 
Do the fictional portrayals of boarding school you’ve read match up at all with the reality?
Alex: Sometimes. But often, they downplay the depression of not being able to escape, of feeling like you aren’t really in control of your life. And feeling like maybe, on the outside, kids your age are having a much more exciting time than you are, when your Friday night involves late nights of homework and lights-out at ten. And no cars.
Brittany: The cars thing was such a big deal for me. There’s a scene in A Study in Charlotte where I did some hand-waving so that Charlotte and Jamie can borrow her roommate’s car…but we were so not allowed those on campus. That scene was total wish-fulfillment. The isolation is something that also can get to you. Your school can feel like your entire world, and that can amplify what are already some pretty intense feelings about your life. I also think the boarding school books I’ve read have downplayed the serendipity of your days. There’s a kind of gorgeous aimlessness to attending a school like Interlochen, a lot of chance meetings…when you aren’t furiously working at your craft, you’re wandering through the woods, and often, like magic, the person you most want to see will be sitting on a log by the lake, waiting for you.
What songs remind you of boarding school/what was your playlist?
Alex: Interlochen marked the start of digital music sharing, and oh, did we share our music (original hipsters, right here). The songs that bring me back?…
Basically anything off of the Garden State soundtrack (seriously, there was a full semester where you heard it everywhere on campus). “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl,” by Broken Social Scene. The whole of Sarah McLachlan’s “Surfacing.” “Roads,” by Portishead. “Hey, Jupiter: The Dakota Version,” by Tori Amos (because one of my fave dance instructors choreographed a 30-minute ballet performance to Tori, and this was the finale. I sobbed). “Everything,” by Lifehouse (ending track of the first mix a boy ever made me). Notice a theme? So much lovesick, so much angst, so much EVERYTHING.
Brittany: Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a 17 Year Old Girl” for every lonely, dreamy night; Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” for listening to, sharing a pair of earbuds, on the bus into town; most Bright Eyes and Brand New and Something Corporate; and Modest Mouse’s “Sleepwalkin (Couples Only)”, because I slow danced to it at our prom with my best friend Kit, as one can only do at art school.