And this flawed, exquisite existence—
“Should we go back in?” Mia whispered.
It—
“Nah. This is probably the best place on the planet to wait.”
Is—
“For the world to end?”
Reason—
“Or not. You never know.”
Enough.
There was nothing else Homer could say, so he rested his head on top of Mia’s and wrapped his arms around her for as long as the universe would give him.
THE PARABLE OF THE END OF THE WORLD
ONCE UPON A TIME, in a solar system in a galaxy known as the Milky Way on a planet called Earth, a boy and a girl sat side by side on a picnic table at the bottom of a snow-covered hill, holding each other as the world held its breath.
Somewhere else, somewhere warm and breezy where the air smelled like suntan lotion and sand, a father paused from folding shirts into a suitcase he would carry on a plane the next morning and padded into the family room so he could circle his arms around his husband, rest his chin on the taller man’s shoulder, and deliver assurances into his ear.
It will be all right.
It will be better than okay.
It will be amazing.
Near a trailer home parked just outside of a Nowhere Town, a girl who had sought stardom elsewhere but had to return home to find it sat on a rock with a view of the foggy South Carolina woods. If her fans had seen her in that lonely moment, they might have assumed she was praying, seeking a divine spirit to guide her in the taxing work of guiding souls on Earth. With her head tilted back to the sky, pressed palms raised to her pressed lips, she was indeed praying—just not to the heavens. She was praying to her strength, to whatever resources she had within, to help her walk away. The cost she was paying for fame was too great, and she had so much living left to do.
Somewhere, a woman in a sequined dress as tight as her own skin and heels so tall they made her feel like a supermodel warrior delivered a punch line in a candle-lit cabaret. Even as laughter rolled toward her from an audience she could not see, even with the heat of the stage lights pressing down on her like that of a lassoed sun, she didn’t blink. She didn’t falter.
Somewhere, two dreamers made the most of their failed utopia, while a single mother held her sleeping baby to her chest and whispered promises into his ear. “I will love you always. I will always be here.” At the same time, a rock star pulled the brim of his hat down low, slid dark sunglasses on his face, and stepped off an airplane in a city two hours from the place he had worked so hard to escape but was now choosing to return to.
Somewhere, a guy who had never been anywhere before told a group of physicists about the time he sang in the shower and then learned how to dance, and a thirteen-year-old prodigy forgot that he was a genius because he was at a party standing next to his new best friend and a girl he hadn’t met yet was smiling at him from across the room.
Somewhere, in a barn in a field north of everywhere else, a scientist—who was neither a wizard nor a god, just a person who wanted to save the world—waited for the clock above his desk to chime. And when it did, another scientist in a deserted corner of a vast continent flipped a switch.
It
Was
Spectacular.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This story would not have become exactly what it is without Second Book Syndrome, self-help podcasts, Rumi’s poetry, too much time alone, NPR, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jack Kerouac, self-doubt, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, a suitcase filled with mixed tapes, a Jeep Cherokee named “Little Tank,” The Canterbury Tales, Don Quixote, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Homer’s The Odyssey, John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, Bill Bryson, Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysics, theology, the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Siddhartha, National Geographic coffee-table photography books, three-a.m. insomnia, a defective GPS, the original Dr. Az (Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi), a cross-country train ride with a long layover in the Mojave Desert, Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Maria Mitchell, a fantastic road trip that included the length of Oklahoma and the worst Thai food I will ever eat, heartbreak, luck, delayed planes, Greek mythology, people who use religion to justify atrocities as well as believers whose convictions offer a giving and healing light, existential angst, absolute love, and the realization that faith manifests itself in so very many forms.
Thank you to my agent, Stephen Barbara, who coaches me through the spots where I can’t tell my left from my right and does so graciously.
Thank you, Sarah Dotts Barley, my editor for Even in Paradise, for giving my first novel a home and believing in me so much. I’m still amazed that Erica Sussman, an editor as diligent as she is thoughtful, wanted to work with me. Be Good Be Real Be Crazy is an exponentially better book because of her.
If I could melt my gratitude to liquid form, it would flood the offices of the many HarperCollins folks who helped usher BGBRBC into the universe. Thank you, Renée Cafiero, Alison Donalty, Erin Fitzsimmons, Stephanie Hoover, Joey Jachowski, Jenna Stempel, and Elizabeth Ward.
I am grateful to have access to smart people who know what I don’t and have experienced what I have not. Thank you to Coleman Barks for giving me permission to quote his translations of Rumi’s poetry. Thank you, Laura and Brian Rossbert, for helping me untangle physics and theology and then jumble them back up again. Thank you to Chuda Niroula and his family. I was only a friend of a friend, and yet you opened your home and shared your stories about day-to-day existence in refugee camps and what it means to leave a place forever behind. Thank you to Eamon Aghdasi for correcting my Farsi and to every librarian who, over the past two years, has turned me in the right direction.
My “kidney friends,” please know that I am amazed to have you in my life. I am blessed by your support. If you asked me to, I’d swim to Pluto and back. I’d catch the feeling of a summer evening in a jar and discover new constellations to name after each of you. I’d attempt so many impossible things because you deserve nothing less than incredible.
Thank you to my family (my parents, Karen and Bill Philpot, and my siblings, Natalie, Saeger, and Harris) for being my gravity. Thank you with sprinkles on top to my little sister, Saeger, and my brother-in-law Chris for giving me space and time to think and write. I am inspired by the depth of your generosity and the strength of your accepting hearts.
Levi, I met you and the universe did pause. You are extraordinary. If I haven’t made that clear already, then over the years I will. Promise.
I have lived three lifetimes in the past two years. At the most confusing parts, I’ve felt like my orbit was off. That I was spinning too fast and getting stuck in corners that shouldn’t exist. However, time and time again, readers pulled me back to earth by reminding me why I love what I do.
Dear readers, please know that I am honored and awed by you. If something in my words spoke to you, I’m glad. If you’ve made me think about my own work in a new way, I’m thankful. So, so thankful.
This all, this everything, is, indeed, spectacular.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Alan MacRae
CHELSEY PHILPOT is the author of Even in Paradise. She’s written for the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Slate, Buzzfeed, and School Library Journal. Chelsey studied English and philosophy at Vassar College and earned her master’s degree in journalism at Boston University. After years of living “elsewhere,” she once again calls New England home. You can visit her online at www.chelseyphilpot.com.
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BOOKS BY CHELSEY PHILPOT
Even in Paradise
Be Good Be Real Be Crazy
CREDITS
Cover photograph © 2016 by Ashraful Arefin
Cover design by Jenna Stempel
COPYRIGHT
Lines from the Rumi poem “A Moment of Happiness” used courtesy of the translator, Coleman Barks.
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
BE GOOD BE REAL BE CRAZY. Copyright © 2016 by Chelsey Philpot. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.epicreads.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Philpot, Chelsey, author.
Title: Be good be real be crazy / Chelsey Philpot.
Description: First edition. | New York : HarperTeen, [2016] | Summary: “Homer, Mia, and Einstein are three aimless teenagers searching for meaning on an epic road trip up the East Coast—a journey that will take them to the most unexpected places”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016000194 | ISBN 9780062293725 (hardback)
EPub Edition © September 2016 ISBN 9780062293749
Subjects: | CYAC: Automobile travel—Fiction. | Self-realization—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Friendship. | JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Siblings.
Classification: LCC PZ7.P5496 Be 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000194
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FIRST EDITION
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