Read an Excerpt

Chapter One
California

    Beginning is the hardest part, don’t you think? Or maybe I just have trouble with commitment. Some books make it so easy. You leap on, tangle your fingers in the mane and gallop off into the sunset. The story drags you to the end. You can’t let go. And too soon it’s over. Others hang back, aloof, like unfriendly guests at a party, pushing you away with too many details about the colors of the grass and sky, the texture of this and that, histories of what came before and premonitions of what’s to come. No one talks to you or even notices you are there. You either dig in your heels and stick with it until you find a way in, or you turn away and head back home, chapter closed.
     I’ll try not to do that. Instead, I’ll tell you up front, and you can decide whether or not to come along.

This story is about the year I found out I was not who I thought I was, and also about how I learned to be okay being myself. If those things sound like they are opposites, they are and they’re not. You’ll see.
     It begins in September, back at school. It’s about three weeks into my sophomore year, but it feels like the end of something instead of the beginning somehow, despite the brand-new pens and notebooks.
     I’m balancing my biology homework in the basket of my bike, and I loop around the parking lot once before turning up Ocean and onto the bike path along the beach. That Aimee Mann song runs through my head:

     So I’m bailing this town
     Or tearing it down
     Or probably more like hanging around

     I see girls lined up along the beach like static, mellow cheerleaders, watching their boyfriends surf after school. Or instead of school. Hanging around. None of the girls is surfing. They never do, and I always wonder about that. It seems so boring just to sit there and watch.
     Welcome to Ventura, California, beach town in decay.
It made its last big splash in the ’60s (you know that song?) before becoming a just-too-distant suburb of L.A. Rincon Beach, which is nearby, is still a big deal in the surf world, but besides that? Not much. There’s mini golf. One big hotel on the beach that attracts conventions rather than vacationers. Some outlying strawberry fields. Nice weather. And me, Wren Verlaine, tenth-grade student at Ventura High School. Resident of South Ash Street. Daughter of Hannah Verlaine, journalist. Owner of twin black cats, Spite and Malice.
     My mom is what they call a stringer for the Los Angeles Times. That means she basically covers the local stuff that happens, writes for other places when she can and hopes for a big story to break near home. When you’re a reporter, that puts you in the strange position of essentially hoping for disaster to strike. Unless a movie star or the next president happens to come from Ventura, my mom’s pretty much stuck with high school football in terms of reporting on good news. An earthquake, forest fire or gruesome enough murder, on the other hand, and she’s in business.
     A few years ago, there was a big mudslide up the 101 freeway. A whole hillside collapsed and buried tons of houses, some of them with people still inside. You might remember it. It was truly, truly horrible. My mom practically camped out up there for a week. I’d see her only late at night or early in the morning, hollow-eyed and pale, strung out on coffee, grabbing a change of clothes. It’s a strange way to live, if you ask me. But that’s what makes Hannah Verlaine happy.
     There’s just the two of us, not counting the cats, but I feel lucky, because compared to a lot of kids I know, we have a pretty good relationship. I can tell her things, and she’ll help instead of grounding me or screaming at me. Some of my friends even talk to her instead of their own moms when they have a problem. We don’t have many secrets from each other.
     Except for one. One really big secret.
     My mom moved here from the East Coast when I was born. Her parents died when she was about thirty, not at the same time, but within a year or two. They were pretty old when they had her, especially for that era, when everyone married so young. They were old-fashioned. “Dyed-in-the wool Yankees” is how Hannah describes them if I ask.
     I was only six or seven when my grandfather died, and I don’t remember him much. I went on his boat once. It was moored in the harbor of a windblown Atlantic island. It was May, but the day was freezing. My grandfather tried to teach me some sailing knots, and Hannah got mad at him, saying he was pushing me and being impatient.
     That part about him being impatient I don’t remember, but the part about her getting mad I do. She was like a lion in a nature show, how you see them getting in between the cub and whatever’s threatening it, her back up, teeth bared. My impression now is that she and her father never quite saw life the same way. Her mother was reserved, Hannah says, always letting my grandfather make the decisions, never complaining. Proper. Tasteful. Quiet. By the time Hannah went to boarding school, she was over it and ready to get away and figure out her own life.
     My mom doesn’t keep in close touch with her extended family, so I don’t have much in the way of relatives, though I’m named after her great-aunt Cornelia Wren, a suffragette back in 1919. When Hannah first moved to Ventura, she found this little Craftsman bungalow on South Ash Street near the beach, and we’ve lived there ever since. The neighborhood is called Midtown, which my mom thinks is hilarious, because she went to college in New York City, and it’s nothing like the midtown there. I always get the feeling she thinks Ventura kind of sucks, but at the same time, she’s turned down every chance to go somewhere else.
     I’ve always lived in Southern California, but I’m not very Southern Californian. I’m average height, on the scrawny side, with super straight, dark hair chopped just below my chin and blue eyes—the only thing I inherited from my mom. People sometimes say I look like a cat. And I have been a cat for Halloween, more than once.
     Most of the girls at my school are blonde and have long hair. They hang out with surfers or date guys on the football team, play volleyball. They giggle nonstop because they think it’s uncool to seem smart . . . You’ve seen it all before on TV. Or, at the other extreme, they’re Mexican. Their parents live on the Oxnard side of town. Most of them work in agriculture or for landscape companies. Or in laundromats or supermarkets. Some are migrant-crop pickers and go back and forth to Mexico, sometimes right in the middle of the school year. They work hard, for the most part, in and out of school and don’t have a lot of time for cheerleading and partying, even if they were welcome.
     I don’t fit in with either group. I have friends, but not a best friend. I think people pretty much like me, but I’m never at the center of what’s going on. I’m a good student, but not a star. My scene is no scene. I’m just Wren. Hanging around.

When I get home from school, Hannah’s not there. She must still be at the fairgrounds. Right now she’s doing a story on the horse show or rodeo or something.
     I toss my books on my bed before flopping down next to them, then reach for my guitar. We have a good flea market in Ventura; that’s where I got it. It’s a beater cowboy guitar, but it does what I need it to. That same song is running though my head, so I try pick out the melody.

     All that I need now
     Is someone with the brains and the know-how
     To tell me what I want . . . anyhow

     The cats weave around my ankles. The screen door bangs closed, and I hear my mom in the kitchen, unpacking groceries. Usually she comes straight in to see me. After a while, I get up and go out there to see what she’s doing. A few boxes and cans are still sitting out, and her palms are pressed on the counter. She looks up and smiles tightly. Not her usual greeting.
     “Hey, Mom,” I say, waiting for an explanation.
     Her expression is usually open and easy. She’s sort of a quiet person herself, but a relaxed and calm quiet, not straining to hold it all in the way her mom was. “Hi, Wrendle,” she says at last.
     I pick up a can of tomatoes for something to do. I must look expectant because finally she spits it out.
     “Okay, sweetie, here it is. It’s good. I don’t want you to worry. It’s a good thing.”
     “What’s a good thing?” Now I am worried.
     “It’s an assignment. The LA Times is sending me toGreenland to do a story on the melting ice sheet.”
     “Amazing!” I yell. This is just the kind of story Hannah’s been chasing for years.
     “For six months,” she adds.
     “Oh. That sounds, I don’t know, like a long time.”
      “It’s a long time,” she agrees.
     “So what about school?”
     “I wish.” She reaches over to smooth my hair. She must really be dreading whatever’s coming next. “I wish . . .”
     “Spit it out, Hannah. Enough with the suspense.”
     “Well, it’s lucky, really. I made some calls, and it turns out they can take you at Hardwick. A spot opened up in your year, and the timing works out. It’s the best possible solution, really. I’m excited for you.”
     “Hardwick as in Hardwick Hall?”
     Hardwick Hall is an ultra-fancy, super-intense boarding school in Connecticut. It’s been around for hundreds of years, and the list of famous people who’ve gone there is a mile long.
     Hannah, as it happens, also went there, but she rarely talks about it. She certainly doesn’t keep in touch with many old roommates or go to class reunions or anything.
     “It’s a great school, Wren. It’s a great opportunity for you. I know it’ll be hard jumping in when the year’s already started.” She’s in all-business mom mode, convincing herself as well as me.
     “But I’m already in school. Why can’t I stay here?”
     “By yourself?”
     I guess that isn’t such a great idea. I can’t even cook spaghetti.
     “Wren, Hardwick was great for me in a lot of ways. I think you can get a lot out of it too. Try it for this year. You don’t have to commit beyond that.”
     “What about Spite and Malice? What are they going to do?”
     “They can stay with Jonesy. I’ve already talked to him.” Jonesy is a friend of my mom’s who writes for the Santa Barbara paper and runs a used bookstore on Main Street. I think he’s kind of a weird guy, but I can picture the cats as happy bookstore cats, lounging in the window to attract customers, creeping between the bookshelves in search of a patch of sun to nap in, catching the occasional mouse. Okay.
     “I could stay with Jonesy.” Hannah gives me a look. Of course I can’t. I know that. “When is this happening?”
     “Monday,” she says, this time looking right at me. “I got a flight for you Monday. I can fly to New York with you and put you on the train. I’ll leave for Greenland from there.”
     “Monday? And you just found this out?” I feel betrayed having this sprung on me.
     She looks guilty. “Wren, it’s going to be a good thing. You’ll see.”
     And just like that, it’s done. I’m going to boarding school.