Dear Teen Me: Authors Write Letters to Their Teen Selves (True Stories) by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page A

again, she leaves.
    You feel powerless to say, “You have no right to me.” You feel helpless to tell her to leave you the hell alone. That she is a stranger now.
    Over time, her appearances confuse your understanding of what it means to love and be loved. You begin to accept that words don’t have to match actions. That sometimes love is a thing bargained for with silence. You start to crave that kind of love, which is a devaluing and insidious one. This craving will stick with you for years. It’s something you’ll have to learn to overcome.
    Keep doing your best. Right now, your little sisters need you. And, I promise you, even if it’s many years from now, someday you will know real love. The kind where words match actions. The kind that doesn’t leave you hanging. The kind that never lets you go.

    Heather Davis is the author of the novels Never Cry Werewolf (2009) , The Clearing (2010), and Wherever You Go (2011). Growing up in Seattle, Heather knew she’d be a storyteller. But after majoring in film at college, she abandoned a scholarship to a master’s program in film in order to marry the first boy who said he loved her. Eight years later, she started writing novels and they saved her life.

GETTING STOOD UP
    Daniel Ehrenhaft
    Dear Teen Me,
    Picture the scene: Your boarding school crush (we’ll just leave it at that in order to protect her identity here) has asked you to see a movie in New York City. This is a big deal for all sorts of reasons. Even though they’re arranged by your boarding school, shuttle bus trips to New York City suggest the possibility of something exciting and dangerous. So yeah, of course you’re going to go. When you get into the city, you sign out to an exact location—a movie theater or a gallery or something like that…but the truth is that you only have two goals for the day: (1) find a hash pipe (even though you’ll overpay for one and never use it), and (2) hook up with your Crush.
    Your Crush is already in New York City visiting her family, so she’s not on the shuttle bus. But you’ve arranged a meeting spot: a bodega off of Union Square, near the theater.
    When you arrive, she’s not there.
    You circle the block, hoping there was some misunderstanding. You’re a boarding school kid, after all; New York City is full of secrets that only the locals know—so perhaps there’s another bodega? Since ninth grade, you’ve always secretly imagined and identified yourself as a New York City kid precisely because you go to boarding school . All your new friends live in New York City. You might as well be a local…right? You’ve long since severed most ties you have with your hometown, except for one close friend and your immediate family. But now you feel terribly alone. There is no other bodega; there was no misunderstanding.
    But there is a used bookstore. So you wander in—knowing you have hours to kill (there’s no way you’re going to see a movie alone), and knowing you’ll have to come up with a fabulous lie to convince your friends she didn’t blow you off (there’s no way they’ll believe you). Instead, you find a dog-eared copy of Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. You loved Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five , so you dive in. You get lost in it until it’s time to board the shuttle bus home.
    Years later, you’ll try to justify this crushing disappointment as a “turning point.” You’ll try to attach cosmic significance to it. Ha! Pure BS. I can tell you so because I ran into your Crush recently. She claims that she had a huge crush on you, too. She claims she blew you off that day because she was worried you wouldn’t show. She claims all sorts of things. Weak excuses, but you let them slide. You both laugh. Either way, your kids are the same age, just toddlers, so you arrange a playdate, knowing it will never happen. Neither of you can remember the movie you went to. You think it was Sid & Nancy . She thinks it was A Fish Called Wanda .
    Doesn’t