Crank

by Ellen Hopkins

Overview

Kristina Snow is the perfect daughter and an exemplary student, until one day, during a visit with her father, everything changes. She becomes emerged in a delusional world that awakens Bree, her alter ego. Bree is everything that Kristina will never be: strong, daring, seductive—and addicted to crystal meth. This drug proves to be more powerful than anything she could have imagined, and it takes her on a journey with unexpected consequences. This novel, based on a true story, forces us to take a careful look at an individual’s struggle with drugs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442471818
Publisher:	Margaret K. McElderry Books
Publication date:	08/06/2013
Edition description:	Reissue ed.
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	6,801
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.00(d)
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

Ellen Hopkins teaches at the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators and is a frequent contributor to newspapers and magazines. She is the author of more than 20 books, five of which are New York Times bestsellers.

Read an Excerpt

Flirtin' with the Monster

Life was good

before I

met

the monster.

After,

life

was great.

At

least

for a little while.

Text copyright © 2004 by Ellen Hopkins

Introduction

So you want to know all

about me. Who

I am.

What chance meeting of

brush and canvas painted

the face

you see? What made

me despise the girl

in the mirror

enough to transform her,

turn her into a stranger,

only not.

So you want to hear

the whole story. Why

I swerved

off the high road,

hard left to nowhere,

recklessly

indifferent to those

coughing my dust,

picked up speed

no limits, no top end,

just a high velocity rush

to madness.

Text copyright © 2004 by Ellen Hopkins

Alone

everything changes.

Some might call it distorted reality,

but it's exactly the place I need to be:

no mom,

Marie, ever more distant,

in her midlife quest for fame

no stepfather,

Scott, stern and heavy-handed

with unattainable expectations

no big sister,

Leigh, caught up in a tempest

of uncertain sexuality

no little brother,

Jake, spoiled and shameless

in his thievery of my niche.

Alone,

there is only the person inside.

I've grown to like her better

than the stuck-up husk of me. She's

not quite silent,

shouts obscenities just because

they roll so well off the tongue

not quite straight-A,

but talented in oh-so-many

enviable ways

not quite sanitary,

farts with gusto, picks

her nose, spits like a guy

not quite sane,

sometimes, to tell you the truth,

even I wonder about her.

Alone,

there is no perfect daughter,

no gifted high-school junior,

no Kristina Georgia Snow.

There is only Bree.

Text copyright © 2004 by Ellen Hopkins

On Bree

I suppose

she's always been

there, vague as a soft

copper pulse of moonlight

through blossoming seacoast

fog.

I wonder

when I first noticed

her, slipping in and out

of my pores, hide-and-seek

spider in fieldstone, red-bellied

phantom.

I summon

Bree when dreams

no longer satisfy, when

gentle clouds of monotony

smother thunder, when Kristina

cries.

I remember

the night I first

let her go, opened the

smeared glass, one thin pane,

cellophane between rules and sin,

freed.

Text copyright © 2004 by Ellen Hopkins