www.hollybourne.co.uk
Acknowledgements
I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve never found love very hard. For that, I can only thank my brilliant family – for loving me and supporting me no matter how hard I am to love. So Mum, Dad, Eryn, Willow – thank you as always for being the glue that binds me back together again. Through writing this book and being in Amber’s head I’ve understood how blessed I am. So, cheers.
Thank you to Connie, for letting me come and stay with you in California when I was a confused teenager who didn’t know who she wanted to be. It breaks my heart that you will never get to read this book.
Thank you to Peter Alsop, for shaping my childhood. I still cannot believe I’ve got your songs into my books. I cannot tell you how much that means. Thank you in particular for “Rachel and the Moon”, which played constantly in my head while I wrote this.
As always, I want to say thank you to my agent, Maddy, for continuing to be the best agent a gal could wish for. And Cara and Thérèse too. And Usborne – brilliant, wonderful Usborne – for letting me write this trilogy and getting it and making it so much better than it would be without you. Thank you, Rebecca, Anne, Becky, Sarah, Amy, Anna and Hannah especially. I will never stop hugging you all and gushing at you whenever we meet. Sorry about that. If you want me to stop, you’re going to have to stop being so wonderful. Thank you so much to Neil and Kath for my continually-amazing covers.
This was supposed to be a road-trip book, until Amber and Kyle kept refusing to get in the car. I’d like to thank Christi and Alexia a LOT, for a year of listening to me panic over cocktails, wailing “WHY WON’T THEY GET INTO THE CAR?”. You two have become such rocks and I am so grateful. In fact, there are infinite amounts of UKYA people that make me feel good about humans. Thanks to Mel, Holly S, Anna, Carina, Matt, Lara, Kelly, Lee, Lisa, Non, Lucy, Jim, Lucy P, Jess and SO MANY OTHERS for being such a supportive community full of goodness and prosecco.
Thank you to Rich, for driving from one side of America to another with me and not strangling me along the way.
Thanks as always to Owen, for holding my hand through this crazy year.
I’d like to thank my readers, who have taken such a shining to the Spinster Club since Am I Normal Yet? came out, especially to those of you who’ve started your own feminist rebellions. Honestly, I love you. Please keep sending me updates and photos. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me. We will kick this patriarchy – I have such faith in the future with brilliant feminists (male and female) like you out there.
Read on for a sneak preview of
by Holly Bourne
One
It started with a house party.
This wasn’t just any house party. It was also My First Date. Like first EVER date. In my entire life. Because, finally, following all the crap that had gone down, I was ready for boys.
His name was Ethan and he liked the Smashing Pumpkins (whatever that is) and he’d managed to grow real stubble already. And he liked me enough to ask me out after sociology. And he was funny. And he had really small, but cute, dark eyes, like a ferret or something. But a sexy ferret. And he played the drums and the violin. Both! Even though they’re, like, totally different instruments. And and…
…and – oh, Christ – what the HELL was I going to wear?
Okay, so I was stressing. And obsessing. “Obstressing” times a million. In an utterly deplorable way. But this was a big deal to me. I was doing something NORMAL for once. And I reckoned I could just about pull it off. And I did know what I was wearing. I’d run through every possible clothing combination in existence before opting for tight jeans, black top and a red necklace, i.e. what I reckoned to be the safest date outfit ever.
I was going to be normal again. But I was going to step back into it safely.
The outfit
JEANS = Cool, just-like-everyone-else, and I-won’t-sleep-with-you-right-away-so-don’t-even-think-about-it-mister.
BLACK TOP = Slimming – yes, I know…well it was a first date, and my drugs had made me a bit…puffy.
RED NECKLACE = Hints of sexiness underneath, for when you’ve been a good boy, and in six months’ time, when I’m ready, and you’ve said you love me, and lit some candles and all that stuff that probably doesn’t actually ever happen to anyone…
…Oh, and you’ve been deep-cleaned and put through ten STI tests.
Nice. Safe. Outfit.
Put it on, Evie. Just put the damn thing on.
So I did.
Before I get into how it went and how it was the beginning of something, but not the beginning of Ethan, I guess you’ll want to know how I met him so you have some emotional investment.
Bollocks. I just gave away that Ethan and I didn’t work out.
Oh well. Whoever had a great love affair with a guy who looked like a sexy ferret?
How Evie met Ethan
New college. I’d started a brand new college, where only a handful of people knew me as “that girl who went nuts”. Despite my tiny collection of mostly-home-educated GCSEs, the college let me in to do my A levels because I’m actually quite smart when I’m not being sectioned.
I noticed Ethan in my very first sociology lesson. Mainly because he was the only boy in there. Plus, the sexy stubble ferretness.
He sat across from me and our eyes met almost instantly.
I looked behind me to check who he was staring at. There wasn’t anyone behind me.
“Hi, I’m Ethan,” he said, giving me a half-wave.
I waved back with a flap of my hand. “Hi, I’m Evelyn…Evie. Always Evie.”
“Have you done sociology before, Evie?”
I looked at the crisp new textbook on my desk, its spine still utterly intact.
“Erm, no.”
“Me neither,” he said. “But I heard it was a Mickey Mouse subject. An easy A, right?” He did this big grin that caused all sorts of stuff to happen to my insides. So much so that I had to sit down in my chair – except I was already sitting in it, so I just sort of wiggled awkwardly, panicked, then giggled to cover it. “Why are you taking it?” he asked.
A question. You can answer questions, Evie. So I smiled and said, “I thought it was safer than psychology.”
Oops. Think. You think before you answer questions.
His face wrinkled underneath his mop of unruly hair. “Safer?” he repeated.
“Yeah, you know,” I tried to explain. “I…er…well…I didn’t want to get any extra ideas.”
“Ideas?”
“I’m very impressionable.”
“What sort of ideas?” he leaned over the desk with interest. Or confusion.
I shrugged and fiddled with my bag.
“Well in psychology you learn about all the different things that can go wrong in your brain,” I said.
“So?”
I fiddled with my bag some more. “Well, it’s more to worry about, isn’t it? Like, did you know there’s this thing called Body Integrity Identity Disorder?”
“Body Identi-what-now?” he asked, doing the smile again.
“Integrity Identity Disorder. It’s where you wake up one day, convinced you shouldn’t have two legs. You suddenly hate your spare leg, and you really want to be an amputee. In fact, some sufferers actually pretend to be amputees! And the only way to cure it is to get a limb hacked off illegally by this special leg-hacker doctor. People don’t usually get BIID, that’s what they call it, BIID, until their early twenties. Either of us could get it. We don’t know yet. We can only hope we stay emotionally attached to all our limbs. That’s why sociology is safer, I reckon.”