No matter. I’m here now.
I pull myself away from my face and turn to Tess. “Girl, as we say in Texas, let’s start crackin’ eggs.”
An hour later, the cakes are in the oven and the warm scents of butter and eggs fill the kitchen. Tess and I are working on the fondant. I want to check my phone, but it’s stowed behind the register and I need to set a good example for my apprentice.
“The clients are just talking design today,” I tell her.
“They already decided you’re the one?”
“They have.” This is my first. Not making my first wedding cake, but using it for an actual wedding. It’s two months from now, the first week of June.
The bell on the door jangles. We head toward the front of the shop, but Tess uses my apron to hold me back.
“Are those the clients?” she whispers.
“What do you think?” I whisper back.
“They’re holding hands,” she says. “It’s them.”
“Why are we whispering?”
“They look like they’re in love,” she says. At first I think she might be saying it in an eye-rolling way, but her sincerity comes through. “They’re early. I’d show up early, too, if it was my wedding.” “Don’t go all dreamy on me now.” I link my arm in hers and lead her toward the front. “We’re on the clock.” But I’m smiling anyway.
I unwind my apron and greet our customers. “Howdy.”
“Hey,” they say in unison.
I introduce Tess as my “whip-smart apprentice,” which makes her beam. I lead the couple to the long table tucked in a corner. The table started out as a door I found leaning against a Dumpster behind Lone Star Restaurant Supply. I stripped, sanded, and painted it and propped it on sawhorses I stenciled with bluebonnets. I urge them to dig in to the snacks Tess and I laid out. Mexican wedding cookies, apricot tarts, mini lemon Bundt cakes. They say no to coffee or tea so I bring a pitcher of lemonade to the table and Tess follows me with a tray of glasses. Everyone’s sitting but me. I rarely sit when I’m working.
“First of all,” Tess says to the couple, “congratulations, you guys!” “Oh,” Maxine says. “Uh … thanks?” She shoots me a searching look. I shrug.
“Where are you having it?” Tess asks them.
It’s Ezra’s turn to shrug. “Somewhere on campus, I guess.”
Max turns to him, rests her forearm on his knee and leans. “Wouldn’t it feel too sterile there? Institutional?”
“Well, it is relevant.” He reaches up, moves a lock of hair over her shoulder.
“I was thinking we’d have it in our backyard,” she says. “Will and Race don’t want to go anywhere without that puppy.”
“Wait,” Tess says, like she just witnessed a crime and is burning to report it. “It’s only two months away?”
Ezra thinks, nods. Max says, “Just about.”
Tess goes on. “So you’re designing the cake before you figure out where you’re getting married?”
“Whoa!” Ezra jumps up from his seat as if sitting obligates him to matrimony.
Max turns the pink of frosting roses.
“Apprentices are so much fun,” I say.
“Linnea!” Tess shouts. “You said they were engaged!”
“Actually, I didn’t.”
Max mouths you’re evil, but her eyes are soft.
“Max, Ezra, why don’t you tell my enthusiastic young protégé what brings you here today?”
Ezra takes his seat again, reaches for Max’s hand. “So our families have set up the Harper Tretheway scholarship fund for a music student who’s been accepted to UT.”
“It’s mostly funded by his family,” Max whispers, as if he can’t hear. “And by my friend Shelby’s family, too.”
“Hey, your mom’s added a bunch to it ever since she started back to work,” he says. “But more importantly, she chose the student. She’s changed someone’s life.”
Max explains to Tess. “So we’re throwing a little party for the pianist who’s getting the scholarship. She’s moving here from Nebraska in June.”
“Ah,” Tess says. “And you need a cake.”
“Yep.” Ezra finishes off a cookie and, ignoring the cloth napkins I’d set out, uses his shirt to wipe the powdered sugar off his fingers. “And we want something creative. Thoughtful.”
“That’s nice,” Tess says. “Not as fun as a wedding, but nice.” Max is finishing up architecture school and Ezra’s wrapping up elementary ed student teaching. If they do have a wedding cake in their future, they probably want to get their careers off the ground first.
“Okay, everybody,” I say. “Can I suggest a toast?”
We lift our lemonade glasses. Tess starts to sip prematurely, corrects her mistake.
I clear my throat. “Here’s to our future, y’all. May it have more sun than rain, more forgiveness than grudges, more sweetness than bitterness.”
“God, that’s beautiful,” Tess whispers. Ezra bites his lip, I’m guessing so he doesn’t laugh at her.
We clink glasses, the little clear notes like music floating down from an icy plane, melting into us and turning round and warm.
“And guys,” Max says as she looks around the table, “I think the future’s already here.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe heaps of gratitude to the people who have helped this book find a place in the world—and to the people who have helped me find mine.
For everyone at Elephant Rock Books, especially Amanda Hurley and Christopher Morris (who wears many hats, and wears them well), and an extra-special thanks to Jotham Burrello for working so closely with me to shape the draft into a book. Rewinding a little more, for the Helen Sheehan Book Prize contest readers Kathryn Fitzpatrick and Chloe Spinnanger, and judges Jennie Kendrick, Mark Pumphrey, and Suzy Takacs. And a big shout-out to Elephant Rock alum Kristin Bartley Lenz.
For readers (and encouragers) of early drafts: Susan Carlton, Jan Czech, Angela Reilly, Kate Simpson, Tess Faraci, Marianne Knowles, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, and Shannon Parker. And Larry Hayes, for connecting the book with its first official reader.
For the kidlit community in Austin, Texas—you have welcomed this newcomer so warmly and have made me feel part of that big Texas y’all: Jessica Lee Anderson, Cate Berry, Donna Janell Bowman, Lorraine Elkins, Alisha Gabriel, Bethany Hegedus, Tricia Hoover, Kat Kronenberg, Cynthia Levinson, Eileen Manes, Susan Pope, Gayleen Rabakukk, and Cynthia Leitich Smith. An extra helping of thanks to the Regional Advisor of the Austin chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, the generous and tireless Samantha Clark.
And speaking of Austin, thank you to Abby Fennewald, Meghan Dietsche Goel, Eugenia Vela, and everyone at my spectacular local bookstore BookPeople, for the way you champion words in general, and local authors in particular.
Katya de Becerra, you are a shining example of all that is good in cyberspace. Thank you for your writerly friendship and for sending so much cheer and good will into the world.
I feel grateful to have more people to thank than space allows; my original draft included a note for each of the following and what I’m thanking them for, but alas, it had to be whittled down to a mere list. (The most excruciating book cuts I’ve made to date!) Y’all have supported me in various ways and have made my life richer and warmer and brighter. (Long version sent on request.) Mary Harlan, Barry Ilioff, Joel Rathfon, Kathi Barit, Julie McCammon, Alexis McCammon, Annette Montgomery, Katherine Souza, Faith Souza, Jenny Kimball, Qing Liu, Cathryn Colgrove, Glenn Williams, Tanya Dawson, Lily Vincenzo, Rebecca Zambrano, Paige Britt, and Kristy Scullion.
Jen Cervantes, Marcie Ferreri, and Cindy House are writers whose talent, perseverance, and integrity I deeply admire, and whose support, feedback, and guidance I am lucky enough to rely upon.
Jen, thank you for your unshakable faith in me and for using it to lift me up when I needed it most.
Marcie, thank you for being your radiant self, for sharing that radiance with those
you love, and for opening your compassionate heart to me in such a powerful way.
Cindy, thank you for so often and so strikingly intuiting what I needed long before I did, and thank you for following me into the difficult places, and then for holding on and never letting go.
For unwavering, boundless love and support, I will never have enough words to thank my brother Sal, my sister Sergina, and my daughter Sandra.
And to Rich, for everything, everything.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
Elephant Rock’s Christopher Morris discusses the writing of Borrowed with author Lucia DiStefano. Learn more about Lucia at www.LuciaDiStefano.com.
Christopher Morris: Borrowed is certainly an unusual brand of YA novel, drawing from multiple genres and keeping readers on their toes with an ever-twisting plot. How did Borrowed, in all its nuanced complexity, come to be? What was it that inspired you to tell this story?
Lucia DiStefano: The germ of the story infected me many years ago when I watched a young woman ahead of me in the post office queue write something in pen on the palm of her hand. Of course I would have loved to know exactly what she wrote. We’ve all jotted “note-to-self” reminders on ourselves when we needed to remember something in the absence of paper or device (I trust I’m not alone in that?), so it wasn’t that it was strange, but rather, seeing it from the outside made it more memorable.
I started thinking about memory and how fickle and deceptive it can be, how we feel it’s important to hold on to certain memories and forget others, so I began a novel about a grieving girl who writes messages on her palms in her sleep and has no memory of putting them there. I wandered, aimlessly, within that story for awhile, and it wasn’t until I stumbled upon some anecdotal (but powerful) evidence for cellular memory in heart transplant patients that I landed on the missing element my protagonist needed.
CM: While I hesitate to try and define Borrowed as belonging to any one genre, your novel might best be described as spec lit—or speculative
fiction. Spec lit tends to draw from any number of other genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, dystopia … Which genres do you see yourself borrowing (get it?) the most heavily from, and how did this evolve in the writing?
LD: I wish I could answer this question in an impressive way. But for me, YA is the genre I’m working in, so I didn’t consciously think of sub-categories while I was writing. I thought more of where I wanted the book to fall on the light-to-dark spectrum. And because the story had a loss at its center, I knew it needed to have a darker tone. So it’s cool to hear other people define it in ways I wouldn’t. For instance, one of the judges called the novel a “thriller.” I read that and thought, “Wow. I wrote a thriller? If you say so!”
One thing I did consciously think about in the writing and in the revision was leaving space for different readers to draw different conclusions. Because scientists can only observe the phenomenon of cellular memory (they can’t exactly prove or disprove it), it lends itself to different interpretations and calls upon different sets of beliefs. I like that kind of ambiguity or elasticity. If you are a hard-core scientist, you might look at Linnea’s experience through that lens (and yes, I have taken full advantage of my “rights” as a fiction writer to dramatize cellular memory and ask the reader to consider an extreme or even improbable example). And if you’re thinking along more mystical lines, you might see what happens as belonging in the realm of the miraculous. Both mind-sets are equally valid. There’s lots that science can’t explain, but that doesn’t mean that those things won’t ever be explained by science … nor does it mean that they will.
CM: One of the most impressive things about Borrowed is how well it juggles three points of view—one of which is from a character who is technically, well … dead. Walk me through the process of developing the characters and voices of Linnea, Maxine, and Harper.
LD: Part of me believes there is no “process,” at least not one that can be distilled in a neat way. Norman Mailer called writing “the spooky art,” and in the sense of a writer imagining the inner workings of characters and then fixing it all on a blank page in the hopes that readers will emotionally connect, writing certainly is one of the spookier things we do as humans. I do hope the voices of the three narrators sound different to readers; I certainly aimed for that, but beyond trying to feel my way into the girls’ heads and stay there as long as they would let me, I don’t know exactly how I did it. And the fact that I just referred to them as hosts to my nosy writer’s brain shows you how I don’t really have a clue about the “process” … I just showed up at the desk day after day, even on the days when I knew my task was to cut all of what I’d written in the days or weeks before!
CM: You’re a pretty sunny person, and yet Borrowed goes to some very dark places—both thematically and in terms of the violence on display during the novel’s final act. How did you decide on what to include—and on how far to go—with those late-game scenes?
LD: I don’t necessarily think of myself as “sunny,” but you’re not the first person to have called me that. (I am so not always in a good mood—my husband can attest to that.) I’ve always been drawn to books and movies and pieces of art that push me to the edges of my emotional limits, both the difficult emotions as well as the joyful ones. So it makes sense I’d write the type of book I like to read. In terms of how far to go, though, I needed help with that. There’s an important moment in the story that I had not written but had only alluded to. Jotham, wise story visionary that he is, urged me to write it (and he knew it would be tough, so he apologized for asking). I wrote it, and I went too far.
CM: You mean the scene in part 3 between Chris and Harper in the cabin?
LD: Correct. Robert Frost said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader,” so once I committed to trying what Jotham suggested, I suppose I was determined not to spare myself. However, we ended up scaling it back and landing somewhere in the middle: not glossing over the event, but not narrating every moment of it either. I couldn’t have gotten there on my own.
CM: Borrowed resonated with our judges in no small part because of how realistically it deals with grief, loss, and guilt. How did you go about portraying these powerful emotions from the points of view of teens?
LD: My mother died when I was a high school sophomore, and my father died before I turned 21. And because both succumbed to long illnesses, in a real way my teen years were shaped by grief and loss. Although Maxine’s grief is obviously very different, and although her guilt also has a different source than mine (perhaps mine was more survivor’s guilt), I can’t help but think that my own long season of loss somehow informed Max’s. Again, it wasn’t something conscious I set out to do as I wrote. As a teen dealing first with the fear of my mother’s death, and then struggling to cope with life without her, I took great comfort in books, especially those that had captured even a shadowy sense of what I was feeling. In that regard, fiction felt like a much more grounding, authentic part of life than “reality” did. And yet, I didn’t start out by deciding to write a book about grief. Rather, since I was so profoundly moved by the novels I read as a teen that did a good job of depicting grief and loss (and I’m still moved by them), I think subconsciously I was motivated to just generally join the literary conversation.
CM: Despite their roles as supporting characters, Shelby, Alma, and Julie all play key roles in the story and in the lives of Linnea, Maxine, and Harper. Tell me about how you developed characters who, despite their relatively short “screen time,” are still able to make such a profound impact.
LD: I love secondary characters—as a writer and as a reader. Unlike the main characters, who are burdened with carrying the story’s through line, minor characters can have more fun, and, therefore, can be more fun to write. I am thrilled to hear you say that these characters had a strong impact on the story. Of course, despite the fact that I felt freer to let them call the shots, and therefore I enjoyed sketching them, I also did want them to m
ove the story or assist (or foil) the characters along the way.
As far as “how” I achieved what you say I achieved, I think you’d need to ask the characters themselves, since mostly, I’m stumped. I do know that I absolutely love writing dialogue (even though my first attempts at writing fiction contained almost zero dialogue; I just meandered in my characters’ heads). Many times I discover the minor characters’ true “roles” when I get them talking to the protagonists. I end up having to cut lots of that explorative chatter, but for me, watching the characters interact helps me determine how they can all best add to the whole.
CM: It can be difficult to write teen characters that teen readers will find realistic and relatable. What motivated you to start writing for teens?
LD: Well, as I said, I was a serious reader as a teen, not only for the unique and lasting enjoyment that reading can bring, but to reassure myself that emotional pain didn’t mean a diminished life. After all, I spent time with characters who survived painful situations and ultimately connected with aspects of life—even the smallest—that made it worth living. And most importantly, they didn’t deny or overlook or turn away from their problems, but rather explored them—sometimes with trepidation, sometimes with courage. (John Dufresne calls fiction “the lie that tells a truth.” I think that’s exactly right.) So perhaps I’ve always subconsciously felt like I “owed” something to the books that buoyed my struggling teen self. And what better way to repay that than to add my voice to the conversation?
CM: And you’re a former teacher, you’ve spent hundreds of hours with teenagers.
LD: Right. Long before I ever tried my hand at writing for teens, I taught high school English. I was lucky enough to be a student of the YA lit pioneer Dr. Don Gallo at Central Connecticut State University when I was working toward my teaching degree, and his legendary course on the YA novel deepened my passion and respect for the genre. (I read over a hundred novels that semester, and that’s not hyperbole.) So when I started teaching and found out I was restricted to teaching whatever was in the book room (the most contemporary being Fahrenheit 451, and there was lots and lots of Charles Dickens), I decided to prove to teens that there was a rich and varied body of literature out there written with them in mind. I brought in dozens of YA novels from home and lined my classroom with them, encouraging my students to borrow them by jotting their names down on the checkout sheet I’d provided … but only if they’d like to. Needless to say, the books weren’t flying off the shelves.
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