3. He drives. Drives past two or three houses. But can’t stop wanting to see her, to really look at her. So he pulls over. And there she is, sitting right next to him.
4. Zoey Lovell.
5. The piercings are all there. Her hair is shorter. Closer to some version of normal. And her face, it’s hers, but new as well. Different. Like it’s open now, like it’s opening up right now, just for him. Thankfully, the spot’s still there. She’s beautiful. But in a way that makes the word seem hopelessly inadequate.
6. “This is bad,” she says.
“No it’s not.”
“You don’t know.”
“What don’t I know?”
“Pretty much everything.”
“So tell me everything.”
“This is going to set me back. I don’t know how far back.”
“I’ll wait.”
She looks down. Considers something for a few seconds. Smiles.
7. He takes her hand. That still wears the ring. Thank God she kept the ring. He lifts her hand and kisses it. He actually does this, and somehow it doesn’t feel ridiculous at all.
8. They kiss, on the lips. Maybe for the first time ever.
9. “Drive,” she says. “Just drive.”
10. There are laws against sixteen-year-olds driving at night, against sixteen-year-olds driving with passengers under the age of twenty-one. And there are probably additional laws against sixteen-year-olds with passengers under the age of twenty-one crossing state lines at night. But she told him to drive, and he needs to get past the city and all its lights.
11. With one hand he drives, and with the other he holds her hand. His parents used to do that. He’d watch them from the backseat.
12. She talks. She talks a lot. She tells him things. All sorts of things. And that list, the one from the website, the one with nowhere to hide, she recalls a lot of it for him.
He just holds her hand. There are things from the nightmare list that make him want to pull away. Not want to, but almost have to. But somehow he doesn’t.
Maybe because her list, it somehow matters and doesn’t matter. It’s Zoey and not Zoey at the exact same time. Sure, now he knows for certain what he only sort of knew before, but he also realizes, he finally gets it, just listening to the sound of her voice, that there are a million other, better ways to know her. And those ways have nothing to do with an update or a confession or anything like that.
He tries telling her this with his hand and how he drives and the precise way he says almost nothing back to her. So she keeps talking, gradually making one thing incredibly clear to him: She’s trying to undo her list, to write another list. To not have a list. To be Zoey without a list.
13. Maybe everything would be better without all these horrible, endless lists. But maybe they’re unavoidable and the point is just to find someone to share yours with. Or someone to write some new and better ones with. Maybe that’s the point of the whole thing: Find the right person to write your lists with.
14. And assuming it is, here’s how he’d start:
6 Things to Do Right Now
1. Drive for hours with Zoey Lovell.
2. Get off the highway at a random exit somewhere in Wisconsin.
3. Make a few turns until you’re driving down a road no one’s ever even bothered to pave.
4. Get out of the car at the edge of a massive, silent field.
5. Stand under the stars with her.
6. Realize that this planet isn’t so bad after all.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wrote the first draft of this book in fifty-one wonderfully manic and optimistically impulsive days. Seven drafts and almost three years later it reached its final form. Many people helped along the way, and I’d like to thank them.
Dan Shere and David Levin offered useful notes, friendly encouragement, and reliable enthusiasm. Joel Grossman demonstrated, repeatedly, what unbridled excitement for this book might look like. Noam Hasak-Lowy was Noam Hasak-Lowy throughout, which is no small thing. James Mignogna let me know what needed to be known, at least by this book’s future readers. Josh Radnor inspired me to think twice about the words I use. Sara Levine, in addition to being a valuable local ally, encouraged me to reconsider the form of these very acknowledgments.
Stephen Barr agreed to tell me what it really was like. Robert McDonald provided crucial, insightful, and honest criticism on a late draft. Ezra Garfield, Emily Downie, Hannah Chonkan-Urow, and Ariel Hasak-Lowy agreed to take on additional homework and, after completing said homework, delivered smart, cogent, and vital feedback late in the game. Ariel Hasak-Lowy gets mentioned twice because she, in fact, read it twice.
Elizabeth Gerometta and Genevieve Buzo, whom I still haven’t met, unearthed the absurdly elusive title.
The team at Simon & Schuster did all manner of wonderful things to transform this from a messy file on my lonely laptop to an actual and rather snazzy-looking book that now lives out in the great big world. Jessica Handelman (cover genius); Hilary Zarycky (interior design virtuoso); Christina Pecorale, Victor Iannone, and the rest of the sales team; Carolyn Swerdloff, Teresa Ronquillo, and Lucille Rettino in marketing; Faye Bi, Michael Strother, Katherine Devendorf, Sara Berko, Mary Marotta, and Mara Anastas (commander in chief)—thanks to all of you for giving my writing such a warm home.
Simon Lipskar, my original and future agent, convinced me, however effortlessly, that “writing is writing,” thereby diffusing at least one stubborn source of self-doubt.
Dan Lazar, my present and future agent (I know, it’s complicated), helped this often-convoluted writer find his place within a readership he often assumed couldn’t possibly want to have anything to do with him. Dan also provided reliable wisdom and steady guidance. And I remain grateful to him for having a master plan, even if it hasn’t quite worked out yet.
Liesa Abrams—my genuinely brilliant, astoundingly diligent, and endlessly thoughtful editor—opened this door and explicitly invited me to walk through it. She more or less demanded that I write the way I wanted to write all along, at a time when I was beginning to wonder if that was even a remotely good idea. Though I wrote all the words, it was Liesa who figured out (again and again and again) how to make this peculiar book accessible at the same time. In about six distinct ways, this book wouldn’t have happened without her. Last and far from least, she found a way to bridge the personal and the professional without compromising either.
Taal Hasak-Lowy is my patron and my best friend. I would like to thank her for agreeing, all these years later, to be number one on my list.
TODD HASAK-LOWY has published several books for adults and children, including 33 Minutes, his first book for young readers. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Evanston, Illinois.
SIMON PULSE
Simon & Schuster, New York
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition March 2015
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sp; Text copyright © 2015 by Todd Hasak-Lowy
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Jacket designed by Jessica Handelman
Author photograph by Ariel Hasak-Lowy
Interior designed by Hilary Zarycky
The text of this book was set in New Caledonia.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hasak-Lowy, Todd, 1969–
Me being me is exactly as insane as you being you / Todd Hasak-Lowy. —
First Simon Pulse hardcover edition.
p. cm.
Summary: Through a series of lists, a narrator reveals how fifteen-year-old Darren’s world was rocked by his parents’ divorce just as his brother, Nate, was leaving for college, and a year later when his father comes out as gay, then how he begins to deal with it all after a stolen weekend with Nate and his crush, Zoey.
[1. Family problems—Fiction. 2. Divorce—Fiction. 3. Brothers—Fiction.
4. Gays—Fiction. 5. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H26865Me 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2014011035
ISBN 978-1-4424-9573-9 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4424-9569-2 (eBook)
Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You Page 31
