Fragile Like Us
Page 28
“Like a promise,” I added.
“Between you and me?”
I nodded, holding out the necklace toward her. After a moment, Suzanne opened her palm to me and I dropped the chain into it.
“And if anyone asks where you got it,” I said, watching her unclip the catch and reach up behind her neck, “you don’t even have to mention your mother.”
“I won’t,” Suzanne said. She glanced down at the necklace then back at me, a grin breaking out across her face, brief but wide and so familiar. “I’ll say my best friend gave it to me.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
WHEN I SET OUT TO write what would, many years down the line, become Fragile Like Us, all I had in my head was a girl. I knew she had a dazzling smile and sad eyes. I knew she’d been hurt, but that for all her wild spirit and fury she was full of warmth and love. I wanted to tell her story, because it felt like a story that needed to be told.
Many stories about abuse end with the rescue or escape of the victim (a loaded term in itself), because that is the best thing about stories: they end when we want them to end. But in real life a child who escapes a violent home carries that experience with them. With Fragile Like Us I wanted to talk about what happens next. Who do you become after trauma, when you are still learning about yourself? How do you tell the people you meet in your new, safe life about your past, or do you not tell them at all?
This is Caddy’s story because trauma is not just something that happens to one person; it touches the lives of everyone they love and are close to. Being a friend to someone in pain can be difficult and upsetting, but it is invaluable. We all have opportunities to be darkness and light in the lives of those we love, and in the truest friendships there will always be both.
Friendship is at the heart of this book. It is a love story without a romance, because there’s no love quite like that shared between teenage girls. When I think back to my teenage years, I can barely remember the names of the boys I had crushes on, the faces of early boyfriends gone blurry. But I can tell you about the time my best friend and I carved peppers instead of pumpkins at a “fake Halloween” sleepover when we were thirteen. I can remember entire conversations we had while we sat on a wall down the road from our school.
I wanted to honor this kind of relationship—because it is a relationship—with the story of Caddy, Rosie, and Suzanne. I really do believe that, for all the arguments and misunderstandings and fallouts and tears, the best thing you can be to someone is a friend.
To anyone who is suffering, whether this is due to experiences similar to Suzanne’s or to something entirely different, hold on. Better days will come. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who are waiting to love you.
Don’t be afraid to talk to someone that you trust, whomever that may be. Know that asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness. If the thought of speaking to someone you know feels like too great an obstacle, there are many wonderful organizations that exist purely to help those who are struggling, even if that is just to offer a friendly word. If and when you are ready, here are some people you can reach out to, but until then, their websites have a lot of very useful information.
childhelp.org/hotline
teenlineonline.org/talk-now
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SARA BARNARD lives in Brighton, England, and does all her best writing on trains. She loves books, book people, and book things. She gets her love of words from her dad, who made sure she always had books to read and introduced her to the wonders of secondhand bookshops at a young age.
Sara has lived in Canada, worked in India, and once spent a night in an ice hotel. She studied American literature with creative writing in college and never stopped reading YA.
Sara is inspired by what-ifs and people. She thinks sad books are good for the soul and happy books lift the heart. She hopes to write lots of books that do both. Fragile Like Us is her first book and a dream come true.
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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.
SIMON PULSE
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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition July 2017
Text copyright © 2015 by Sara Barnard
Originally published in Great Britain in 2015 by Macmillan Children’s Books
as Beautiful Broken Things.
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Library of Congress Control Number 2016939293
ISBN 978-1-4814-8610-1 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4814-8612-5 (eBook)