Dear Teen Me Read online

  You take a wad of napkins and begin to blot the orange grease off of your slice. Then you look at the wad of napkins and say out loud (but mostly to yourself), “I should just rub this on my face and cut out the middleman.”

  Everyone looks at you like the dog just talked.

  And then they laugh. It’s your first real laugh at college. You probably don’t think much about it, but trust me, this is HUGE.

  Because for the first time in your college career, you didn’t open your yap to complain about how nobody understands you, or how everyone is so phony, or to brag about how many pairs of sunglasses you own.

  You observed something that was funny to you, and you said it. Not because you thought it would be the coolest thing to say, not because you thought it would make people think you were brilliant, but just because you were being yourself.

  And as it turned out, you being yourself made people like you. It still does.

  In other words, you finally found your “thing.”

  Thank heavens. That hat was ridiculous.

  Josh A. Cagan @joshacagan co-wrote 2009’s Bandslam, which received a 90% Fresh rating from Top Critics on RottenTomatoes.com. He also developed and co-wrote the 2001 animated series Undergrads. Recently, CBS Films optioned his adaptation of Kody Keplinger’s The Duff, with McG producing. He is paid to write jokes and stories with his friends, so in other words, he lived happily ever after. He lives in Hollywood with his wife, Kayla, and their stuffed animals.

  THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS IMPOSSIBLE

  Riley Carney

  Dear Teen Me,

  You know that dream you’ve always had? The one about becoming an author? I’ll let you in on a secret: It does happen. You make it happen.

  But it’s not going to be easy. You’re still stuck in high school right now. I remember what it was like, and I know exactly how you feel—it seems like the whole thing is one big game; that you’ll never find your place; that you’ll never get away from the drama.

  Like with your “best” friend. You helped her with her homework, you were nice to her, and you provided an easy boost to her self-esteem. She never really cared about you, though. Once, she even handed out Christmas presents in front of you and conveniently forgot to give you one. And I also remember what it was like on that school trip where you had to sleep in the top bunk above feuding friends who were crying hysterically. The drama is everywhere, and no matter how hard you try to avoid it, you can’t seem to get away.

  You’re getting tired of eating lunch alone in the library just so you don’t have to wander through the rows of tables at the cafeteria until you find a place to sit. You’re tired of people who just want to use you for homework help. You’re tired of the box that has been built up around you, tired of the walls that keep you trapped, that keep you from becoming the person who you really are inside, rather than the person who everyone thinks you are.

  But in less than a year, everything will change. You’ll find a way to break free of that box by doing something you’ve always loved. Writing will be your outlet. You’re going to write a book—a book that you’ve been dreaming about for years. You are going to pour your heart and soul into that book, and it’s going to be published. Over the next three years, you’ll speak at schools all over the country, something you never thought you would have the courage to do.

  But there’s something you have to realize before you can break free: The box that you’re in is only as strong and only as real as you believe it to be.

  For so many years your peers have tried to label you, to tell you what you can and cannot do. And you believed them. You accepted what they said. You stopped believing in yourself.

  You stopped believing in your dreams.

  But little by little, you’ll realize that the box doesn’t have to exist. Once you start writing seriously, you’ll discover yourself, and you’ll realize that no one else has the power to dictate your own choices and your dreams.

  You’re the only one who can decide your future. You’re the only one who can choose the person you want to be.

  So, Teen Me, it’s up to you. It only takes a little confidence, a little daring, and a willingness to risk failure to tear down those walls. Don’t be afraid to reach for that impossible goal. Embrace it instead.

  You never know where the impossible might take you.

  Riley Carney is, at the time of printing, eighteen years old. She is the author of the fantasy adventure series, The Reign of the Elements. She wrote all five books when she was fifteen and sixteen. At fourteen, Riley founded a nonprofit children’s literacy organization, Breaking the Chain, because she believes that the way to break the cycle of poverty and exploitation is through education. You can learn more at RileyCarney.com and LinkByLink.org.

  THE FUTURE ISN’T EVERYTHING

  Tera Lynn Childs

  Dear Teen Me,

  You’ve always been a planner. From the time you first broke out the box of crayons to design an elaborate rabbit house—despite the fact that you didn’t even have a rabbit yet—to all the hours you spent in high school plotting out your college years, designing your dream house, and even just figuring out how you could get to college early so you’d be able to meet your favorite basketball player, you’ve kept the future squarely in your sights.

  You’re always thinking ahead to the next step—and that’s great—but good planning also means planning in moderation. The future isn’t everything. Sometimes you sacrifice today by thinking about tomorrow. You need to slow down and spend some time in the moment, because there are a lot of things that you can’t plan for, and lots of problems that planning can’t solve….

  Planning can’t keep you young. You’ll only be a teenager once, and you should enjoy the fun and freedom of those years while you can. As you get older your body will start to miss those days. So enjoy them to the fullest, and make lots of great memories.

  Planning won’t determine your career. You will spend countless hours planning for potential careers. Among the many career paths you’ll consider are architect, lawyer, environmental biologist, marine biologist, teacher, actress, professional tennis player, theater designer, historic preservationist, veterinarian, and dozens of other ideas you won’t even remember twenty years from now. In the end, you’ll find your passion in something you never ever considered as a potential career plan. I won’t spoil the discovery by telling you what it is, but you’ll love it.

  Planning can’t replace people or experiences. Sometimes you get frustrated by your situation, and at other times you take the things in your life for granted. This is normal teenage angst, but on the great big scale of things, your life is pretty great. You have parents and an extended family who love you. You have great friends, a roof over your head, food on your table, and a car—embarrassing or not—to drive to school and wherever else you need to go. It’s so easy to be dissatisfied with your life, to wish for and plan for better things, but take a moment to look at the things you already have. They’re pretty awesome.

  So the next time you sit down to map your path out of town or to design your dream house, stop and look around. There are fun times to be had, friends and family to enjoy, and in the end your path in life will come as a complete surprise anyway. Think about the future as it comes up—when you’re applying to college or picking your class schedule for the school year—and then put it aside again. Take time to enjoy the present, because it will be gone before you know it.

  Tera Lynn Childs is the award-winning author of the mythology-based Oh. My. Gods. (2008) and Goddess Boot Camp (2009), the mermaid tales Forgive My Fins (2010), Fins Are Forever (2011), and Just for Fins (2012), and a new trilogy about monster-hunting descendants of Medusa, starting with Sweet Venom (2011) and Sweet Shadows (2012). She has also e-published two fun chick-lit romances, Eye Candy and Straight Stalk. Tera lives nowhere in particular. She spends her time writing wherever she can find a comfy chair and a steady stream of caffeinated beverages.

  THE PRIN
CIPAL’S OFFICE

  Jessica Corra

  Dear Teen Me,

  She may have saved your life.

  Big Bern—excuse me, Sister Bernard Agnes—isn’t the chatty type. Remember when she yelled at the entire football team? Seriously, she’s not to be messed with. The vice principal may be the school disciplinarian, but Big Bern is the one to fear.

  She’s tall and broad and imposing and no one wants to get called to her office. You never thought you had any reason to worry, really, but all of a sudden at the end of your sophomore year, they call your name on the loudspeaker. And you have no idea why. You tremble a little as you sit down. You’ve talked with this woman before, because you’re a goody-two-shoes and she’s asked you to help with projects from time to time, so maybe that’s the reason. You don’t know of anything you could have made a mess of, but maybe you’ve forgotten something.

  She lays it out for you: She heard you wanted to transfer to the public school, and she wants to ask you why. Shifting on the hard plastic chair to avoid the full force of her attention, you have to admit that you’re miserable at this tiny private school. High school was supposed to be a new leaf, but it never turned over. You’ve never felt like you fit in, and you sure don’t have any friends. In fact, outside of your time spent at the community theater with the public school kids, you’re pretty depressed. And even the theater isn’t going so well right now. You’re horrified to say this, and you’re not even sure why you do. But you tell her the truth.

  You both sit in silence for a moment, but then Big Bern simply suggests that you go to the school library. That’s all she says: “Try the library.” She isn’t motherly, she isn’t sympathetic, but she is awfully insightful. You go to the library.

  The library aides are bookworms and they welcome you immediately. You find your tribe there, and you stay put. This turns out to be a good thing, since you’ll be bullied out of the theater in a couple of months for dating the guy everyone else had a crush on. But by then, you’ll have made lifelong friends—friends who are weird in a lot of the same ways that you are, who are into magic, and who have already discovered an essential lesson that you’ll soon learn: that life is what you make of it. And that goes for school, too (whichever school it may be).

  It turns out that, despite appearances, you really were in trouble when you got called into the principal’s office. You couldn’t see it, but Big Bern could.

  I don’t want to know what would’ve happened if she hadn’t pointed you in the right direction, if you’d ended up alone and lost in the public school when things tanked with your theatre friends. It’s not important. What is important is that you listened to someone and grabbed the lifeline you needed. Asking for help when you need it isn’t weakness; neither is accepting help when you don’t think you do. Don’t be afraid to do that, again and again.

  Jessica Corra is the author of After You (currently set to publish in the spring of 2013), a magical realism novel about sisters and sacrifices. Jessica believes in magic and chocolate cake, and is only nominally crazy. She goes on adventures in the Philadelphia area, and you can find her online at JessicaCorra.WordPress.com.

  RAISING ME

  Heather Davis

  Dear Teen Me,

  It’s not easy raising yourself and your sisters, and it’s not fair. Even all these years later, as I look back at all you’re going through, it still makes me mad. What kind of a mother bails out on her daughters?

  The day your parents told you they were getting divorced you were secretly happy that you and your sisters would be living with Dad, but you had no way of knowing that Mom was going to move out of town. And then out of state. And then out of your lives altogether.

  You had no way of knowing that your grandmother would be the one to take you to be fitted for your first bra. She would have to be the one to buy you that massive box of feminine pads (which would sit on your shelf, untouched, for what seemed like forever).

  You had no way of knowing that your dad would come to rely on you to take care of your younger sisters. That you would be the responsible one. The one who doesn’t want to let anyone down. The one who your sisters look up to and then later resent—after all, you’re more than a sister, but less than a parent.

  But you don’t blame Dad—how could you? He’s a single parent, coming into his own true identity away from Mom, trying his best to help you along the way. If anything, you should give him a hug and tell him that you understand. Years later, he’ll be one of your very best friends.

  You’re in the toughest part of it all right now. During these teen years, your mother will blow into town every once in a while to ask personal questions and observe you like you’re some kind of science experiment: Did you get your period yet? Are you shaving your legs now? Did you pluck your eyebrows?

  And even though it makes you uncomfortable, you answer, because she is your mother. You answer because you feel you should. You answer because you don’t want to disappoint her—which is so messed up, because all the while she’s the one who’s disappointing you.

  And she’ll take this personal information that she extracts from you and lord it over your father. She tells him about the private things she’s mined as if they prove she’s still involved, that she knows something personal—something you were clearly too embarrassed to share with Dad. During these drop-ins she usually takes you to the movies. She tells you she loves you. And then she leaves. Over and over 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 y
our 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 matter. Because you know what? You suddenly felt much lighter.

  Daniel Ehrenhaft is the author of far too many books for children and young adults. He has often written under the pseudonym Daniel Parker (his middle name, which is easier to spell and pronounce than his last), and occasionally Erin Haft. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Jessica; their son, Nate; their scruffy dog, Gibby; and their psychotic cat, Bootsy. When he isn’t writing, Mr. Ehrenhaft is the editorial director of Soho Teen, at Soho Press. As evidenced from the photo at right, he has been a musician since the late 1970s, and he is a member of Tiger Beat, the only YA author band on the planet. Other work experience includes a short term of employment at the Columbia University Library. He was fired.