Review
“Bjorkman sets her debut amid the high school theater crowd, peppering Roz’s internal narration with imagined scenarios and Shakespearean humor, evoking all the drama inherent in putting on a play. Roz’s voice is witty and genuine as she moves through the ups and downs of coming out (and eventually coming clean). Evocative of Boy Meets Boy and Dramarama, this makes for fun, thought-provoking reading.” —Publishers Weekly
“Narrator Roz is funny, well intentioned, and likable despite her cluelessness, and she is surrounded by a realistic cast of adult and teen characters representing a wide variety of viewpoints and sexual preferences. This is an enjoyable read that will be especially appealing to theater aficionados.”—School Library Journal
“This debut is a supportive, enjoyable read.”—Booklist
Book Description
With Roz and Eva everything becomes a contest—who can snag the best role in the school play, have the cutest boyfriend, pull off the craziest prank. Still, they’re as close as sisters can be. Until Eva deletes Roz from her life like so much junk e-mail for no reason that Roz understands. Now Eva hangs out with the annoyingly petite cheerleaders, and Roz fantasizes about slipping bovine growth hormone into their Gatorade. Roz has a suspicion about Eva. In turn, Eva taunts Roz with a dare, which leads to an act of total insanity. Drama geeks clamor for attention, Shakespearean insults fly, and Roz steals the show in Lauren Bjorkman’s hilarious debut novel.
About the Author
LAUREN BJORKMAN grew up on a sailboat, sharing the tiny forecastle with her sister and the sail bags. She now lives in Taos, New Mexico, with her husband and two young sons. This is her first book.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter
1
Jraise my mini golf club and try to focus on the clown’s chomping mouth. Other lips are on my mind, though—Bryan’s, to be honest. As my eyes wander in his direction, Eva leans in to kiss those lips. Bryan belongs to my sister, a circumstance I’d rather forget. My ball sails over the polka-dotted clown hat and disappears deep into Nowheresville, where the gum wrappers live. Mom bribed us into coming tonight by inviting our boyfriends. Except I don’t have one.
If life were one big stage (and it is), this would be the scene where the heroine (me) seethes with jealousy and the desire for revenge. The thick folds of her wool cloak conceal a weapon. She unveils the silvery blade to gasps from the audience and advances toward the doomed couple. O happy dagger!
But the pint-sized windmill in the background is all wrong. It creates a trashy-teen-movie sort of ambience when the scene calls for romantic boudoir. Think Othello taking the life of his beloved Desdemona.
Eva and Bryan’s kiss goes on for an eternity. When they finally come up for air, he looks over her shoulder right at me. I choose feigned disinterest over murder and saunter off in the direction of my lost ball. My so-called search leads me to a hidden bench that’s perfect for an intermission. I stretch out and close my eyes. Here’s what I should’ve said to Mom this afternoon: “Alas, no miniature golf for me tonight. My allergy to Astroturf, you know. Have your people call my people to reschedule.”
A sweet smell hovers over my bench. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Bryan says, brushing my cheek with a half-opened rose.
I am so lying.
There are no flowers for miles around. Actually, the smell bears an unfortunate resemblance to cigarette smoke. When I open my eyes, I see Bryan leaning against a chain-link fence a few feet away. He inhales.
“Are you okay?” he asks through a toxic cloud. The glow of his platinum blond hair in the artificial light haloes his face. A girl needs sunglasses to look at him without hurting her eyes.
“I’m tired, that’s all,” I mumble.
After his parents divorced three years ago, Bryan broke my heart by moving away from Yolo Bluffs. Last September he came back with his dad, and my romantic dreams were rekindled. Sadly, before he could fall madly in love with me, he succumbed to Eva’s perky cheerleader routine. And who can blame him? She is amazing in every way. Half the boys at school swoon in her presence. Still, here’s my chance to make him notice my less-obvious charms, to make him change his mind.
“You seem out of it,” he says, dropping down next to me. I sit up.
“I stayed up too late on New Year’s Eve. Mom’s grad student party,” I say. Inside my head I scream at him, Are you blind? You picked the wrong sister.
His smile reveals even teeth, not too big and not too small. The song “Sweet Cheater” runs through my head. My heart pounds out a few extra beats.
“Where’s your ball?” he asks.
“I don’t believe in balls,” I say.
Smoke pours from his mouth when he laughs. I cough. He immediately drops his cigarette and rubs it out with the heel of his white sneaker. “Eva says I should quit.”
“You should do what you want.”
Personally, I believe smoking compares unfavorably to eating raw banana slugs, and I’m one of the few who’s tried both. At least when he kisses Eva tonight his mouth will be tainted by eau d’ashtray. I take comfort in this.
“I can’t help it. I’m bad,” he says.
“That’s your best quality,” I say.
In the third grade, I would stare at him for the entire lunch period, spending many dreamy minutes on each dimple. Once Eva helped me write him a love survey: Do you like me? Will you kiss me? Will you marry me?
Bryan filled it out yes, no, and yes. Nothing ever came of it, but my crush lived on.
“Great shot, Eva,” shouts the member of the Eva Fan Club known as Dad.
I savor the last moments of our intimate silence until Mom ruins it by yelling, “Roz, where are you?”
“Coming,” I yell back.
“Something’s up with you,” Bryan breathes into my ear. “Call me.”
Okay, so he’s not totally blind. We stand up and join the others. The moment we appear, Eva grabs on to him, circling her arm around his waist like a noose. Her face gives nothing away. Then again, she’s a better actress than I am, and I’m the best.
I poke around Eva the Diva’s room the next morning after she leaves for her ballet lesson. I haven’t come in here since she got mad at me before Christmas. More than mad. She took the folder on her computer desktop titled Roz: sister and best friend and moved it to trash.
The first thing I see is her journal. I’m not tempted. It rests seductively at the center of her night table, and the latch appears to be broken. Still I don’t touch it. Even though she’ll never find out. And even though it might reveal why she deleted me from her life.
Okay, then, one little peek.
December 20—Last day of practice before Christmas break. Finally got chorus line routine together. Skipped the cheerleaders’ party. Went for walk with Bryan.
The rest reads the same. Maybe TV Land hired her to write a script for America’s Boringest Home Videos. To be honest, I’d hoped for a confession, a green light to go after Bryan. Something like, “Roz wants that loser Bryan. I’m going to hook up with him to get back at her.” But back at me for what? I’m innocent. And I’m not looking for a new nickname—boyfriend-stealing lowlife—either. Still, there are extenuating circumstances to consider. For one, I liked him first. For another, all’s fair in love and sibling rivalry.
So that my morning won’t be entirely wasted, I close her journal and move on to pillaging her closet. We used to trade clothes constantly, without bothering to ask each other first. When my growth spurt made that impractical, we still shared accessories all the time—BD (Before Deletion), that is. Her new ivory scarf feels soft. I wind it around my neck, lie on her bed so my cheek rests on the angora, and hope for a miracle.
The blue pom-poms hanging on her door look like a pair of punk trolls in need of a haircut. I hate them. Since Eva deserted me for her petite cheerleader friends, I fantasize about slipping bovine growth hormone into their Gatorade. My fave internet advice line says it’s normal for sisters to grow apart during high school. True, we live in the same house, go to the same school, and hang with the same theater-geek crowd. The 24/7 thing can wear on a person. Except we didn’t grow apart. She dumped me, and it hurts.
Eva is one grade ahead of me, a senior in high school. Even BD we pretty much ignored each other in public by mutual consent. When we were alone, though, she used to tell me everything about everything—who kissed with too much saliva, how she had to wear a hoodie around her waist when her tampon leaked, things like that. She stopped spending time with me around Halloween to hang with Bryan. That always happens with a new boyfriend, so I didn’t freak. After Thanksgiving she started acting odd, and then she dissolved and recrystallized into a stranger.
Her door swings open. “Did you forget where your room is?” She tosses her gym bag into the closet. “Oh. Your GPS broke down.”
A National Enquirer headline flashes before my eyes. LITTLE SISTER TURNS INTO A GIANT ZIT ON BIG SISTER’S FOREHEAD. PICTURES INSIDE. She glares at the scarf. I remove it from my neck and set it on the bed. At least she noticed me.
“What do you want?” she asks.
Bryan. A rare bout of self-restraint shuts me up. My big mouth and my conniving side make a sorry twosome.
“I traveled far from a distant land to wait upon your gentle personage,” I say.
She sits on the edge of the bed. “What do you want to talk about, Chub?” The parents mistake her nickname for me as cute, not seeing the jab at my weight. I did plump out in fifth grade before shooting up in seventh, but I lost most of those pounds.
I roll onto my stomach to cover the lingering flab. “Anything. How’s cheerleading?”
“Great.”
A conversation cannot happen through a glass wall. She sees me fine but can’t hear what I’m saying. Maybe louder will work. “Isn’t there something in the whole freaking universe we can talk about?” I shout.
“Cheerleading sucks, actually.”
This unexpected opening knocks me off balance. My silver tongue and I soon recover. “Did something happen?” I ask.
“It’s gotten so competitive.”
“You like competition.” My elbow grazes a hard lump under her down comforter. Is she hiding something in her bed?
“No I don’t. I like to do things well.”
“Like thieving boys, you mean.”
She loads an angsty CD into her stereo and lowers herself into a plié using her ballet barre next to the supersized mirror. “You mean Bryan?” she says after a few dips. “From whom did I thieve him?”
Like she doesn’t know. “Nobody.”
I run my fingers along the edge of the mysterious object under the blanket. A book. Before I can read the title, Eva pounces. She’s the mountain lion to my jogger, pinning me and wrenching the book out of my hands. The back cover rips off in the struggle. I manage to stand up and hold it out of her reach. She gives up and goes back to the barre.
Expecting smut, I read the blurb aloud for maximum embarrassment factor. “‘A beautiful coming-of-age story about a girl who falls in love with another girl and their journey of self discove...
1
Jraise my mini golf club and try to focus on the clown’s chomping mouth. Other lips are on my mind, though—Bryan’s, to be honest. As my eyes wander in his direction, Eva leans in to kiss those lips. Bryan belongs to my sister, a circumstance I’d rather forget. My ball sails over the polka-dotted clown hat and disappears deep into Nowheresville, where the gum wrappers live. Mom bribed us into coming tonight by inviting our boyfriends. Except I don’t have one.
If life were one big stage (and it is), this would be the scene where the heroine (me) seethes with jealousy and the desire for revenge. The thick folds of her wool cloak conceal a weapon. She unveils the silvery blade to gasps from the audience and advances toward the doomed couple. O happy dagger!
But the pint-sized windmill in the background is all wrong. It creates a trashy-teen-movie sort of ambience when the scene calls for romantic boudoir. Think Othello taking the life of his beloved Desdemona.
Eva and Bryan’s kiss goes on for an eternity. When they finally come up for air, he looks over her shoulder right at me. I choose feigned disinterest over murder and saunter off in the direction of my lost ball. My so-called search leads me to a hidden bench that’s perfect for an intermission. I stretch out and close my eyes. Here’s what I should’ve said to Mom this afternoon: “Alas, no miniature golf for me tonight. My allergy to Astroturf, you know. Have your people call my people to reschedule.”
A sweet smell hovers over my bench. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Bryan says, brushing my cheek with a half-opened rose.
I am so lying.
There are no flowers for miles around. Actually, the smell bears an unfortunate resemblance to cigarette smoke. When I open my eyes, I see Bryan leaning against a chain-link fence a few feet away. He inhales.
“Are you okay?” he asks through a toxic cloud. The glow of his platinum blond hair in the artificial light haloes his face. A girl needs sunglasses to look at him without hurting her eyes.
“I’m tired, that’s all,” I mumble.
After his parents divorced three years ago, Bryan broke my heart by moving away from Yolo Bluffs. Last September he came back with his dad, and my romantic dreams were rekindled. Sadly, before he could fall madly in love with me, he succumbed to Eva’s perky cheerleader routine. And who can blame him? She is amazing in every way. Half the boys at school swoon in her presence. Still, here’s my chance to make him notice my less-obvious charms, to make him change his mind.
“You seem out of it,” he says, dropping down next to me. I sit up.
“I stayed up too late on New Year’s Eve. Mom’s grad student party,” I say. Inside my head I scream at him, Are you blind? You picked the wrong sister.
His smile reveals even teeth, not too big and not too small. The song “Sweet Cheater” runs through my head. My heart pounds out a few extra beats.
“Where’s your ball?” he asks.
“I don’t believe in balls,” I say.
Smoke pours from his mouth when he laughs. I cough. He immediately drops his cigarette and rubs it out with the heel of his white sneaker. “Eva says I should quit.”
“You should do what you want.”
Personally, I believe smoking compares unfavorably to eating raw banana slugs, and I’m one of the few who’s tried both. At least when he kisses Eva tonight his mouth will be tainted by eau d’ashtray. I take comfort in this.
“I can’t help it. I’m bad,” he says.
“That’s your best quality,” I say.
In the third grade, I would stare at him for the entire lunch period, spending many dreamy minutes on each dimple. Once Eva helped me write him a love survey: Do you like me? Will you kiss me? Will you marry me?
Bryan filled it out yes, no, and yes. Nothing ever came of it, but my crush lived on.
“Great shot, Eva,” shouts the member of the Eva Fan Club known as Dad.
I savor the last moments of our intimate silence until Mom ruins it by yelling, “Roz, where are you?”
“Coming,” I yell back.
“Something’s up with you,” Bryan breathes into my ear. “Call me.”
Okay, so he’s not totally blind. We stand up and join the others. The moment we appear, Eva grabs on to him, circling her arm around his waist like a noose. Her face gives nothing away. Then again, she’s a better actress than I am, and I’m the best.
I poke around Eva the Diva’s room the next morning after she leaves for her ballet lesson. I haven’t come in here since she got mad at me before Christmas. More than mad. She took the folder on her computer desktop titled Roz: sister and best friend and moved it to trash.
The first thing I see is her journal. I’m not tempted. It rests seductively at the center of her night table, and the latch appears to be broken. Still I don’t touch it. Even though she’ll never find out. And even though it might reveal why she deleted me from her life.
Okay, then, one little peek.
December 20—Last day of practice before Christmas break. Finally got chorus line routine together. Skipped the cheerleaders’ party. Went for walk with Bryan.
The rest reads the same. Maybe TV Land hired her to write a script for America’s Boringest Home Videos. To be honest, I’d hoped for a confession, a green light to go after Bryan. Something like, “Roz wants that loser Bryan. I’m going to hook up with him to get back at her.” But back at me for what? I’m innocent. And I’m not looking for a new nickname—boyfriend-stealing lowlife—either. Still, there are extenuating circumstances to consider. For one, I liked him first. For another, all’s fair in love and sibling rivalry.
So that my morning won’t be entirely wasted, I close her journal and move on to pillaging her closet. We used to trade clothes constantly, without bothering to ask each other first. When my growth spurt made that impractical, we still shared accessories all the time—BD (Before Deletion), that is. Her new ivory scarf feels soft. I wind it around my neck, lie on her bed so my cheek rests on the angora, and hope for a miracle.
The blue pom-poms hanging on her door look like a pair of punk trolls in need of a haircut. I hate them. Since Eva deserted me for her petite cheerleader friends, I fantasize about slipping bovine growth hormone into their Gatorade. My fave internet advice line says it’s normal for sisters to grow apart during high school. True, we live in the same house, go to the same school, and hang with the same theater-geek crowd. The 24/7 thing can wear on a person. Except we didn’t grow apart. She dumped me, and it hurts.
Eva is one grade ahead of me, a senior in high school. Even BD we pretty much ignored each other in public by mutual consent. When we were alone, though, she used to tell me everything about everything—who kissed with too much saliva, how she had to wear a hoodie around her waist when her tampon leaked, things like that. She stopped spending time with me around Halloween to hang with Bryan. That always happens with a new boyfriend, so I didn’t freak. After Thanksgiving she started acting odd, and then she dissolved and recrystallized into a stranger.
Her door swings open. “Did you forget where your room is?” She tosses her gym bag into the closet. “Oh. Your GPS broke down.”
A National Enquirer headline flashes before my eyes. LITTLE SISTER TURNS INTO A GIANT ZIT ON BIG SISTER’S FOREHEAD. PICTURES INSIDE. She glares at the scarf. I remove it from my neck and set it on the bed. At least she noticed me.
“What do you want?” she asks.
Bryan. A rare bout of self-restraint shuts me up. My big mouth and my conniving side make a sorry twosome.
“I traveled far from a distant land to wait upon your gentle personage,” I say.
She sits on the edge of the bed. “What do you want to talk about, Chub?” The parents mistake her nickname for me as cute, not seeing the jab at my weight. I did plump out in fifth grade before shooting up in seventh, but I lost most of those pounds.
I roll onto my stomach to cover the lingering flab. “Anything. How’s cheerleading?”
“Great.”
A conversation cannot happen through a glass wall. She sees me fine but can’t hear what I’m saying. Maybe louder will work. “Isn’t there something in the whole freaking universe we can talk about?” I shout.
“Cheerleading sucks, actually.”
This unexpected opening knocks me off balance. My silver tongue and I soon recover. “Did something happen?” I ask.
“It’s gotten so competitive.”
“You like competition.” My elbow grazes a hard lump under her down comforter. Is she hiding something in her bed?
“No I don’t. I like to do things well.”
“Like thieving boys, you mean.”
She loads an angsty CD into her stereo and lowers herself into a plié using her ballet barre next to the supersized mirror. “You mean Bryan?” she says after a few dips. “From whom did I thieve him?”
Like she doesn’t know. “Nobody.”
I run my fingers along the edge of the mysterious object under the blanket. A book. Before I can read the title, Eva pounces. She’s the mountain lion to my jogger, pinning me and wrenching the book out of my hands. The back cover rips off in the struggle. I manage to stand up and hold it out of her reach. She gives up and goes back to the barre.
Expecting smut, I read the blurb aloud for maximum embarrassment factor. “‘A beautiful coming-of-age story about a girl who falls in love with another girl and their journey of self discove...
