Mad Love

by Suzanne Selfors

  To my right stood Tony and his father, Mr. Lee. Tony looked handsome in his jeans and sport coat. And next to them stood Velvet, in a pink coat and pink hat, along with a few of her salon girls. It was a good thing we’d gathered outside because the combination of perfumes and hair products wafting off the girls was almost toxic.

  “Are you ready?” Tony asked me.

  “Yes,” I said, stepping forward. “Thank you, everyone, for coming here today,” I said, smiling at the crowd. “Some of you didn’t know Errol, and some of you only knew him for a short time, but I’m grateful that you joined me here. Errol was my friend and as you know, we wrote a book together before he died. The True Love Story of Cupid and Psyche will be published this summer, and our royalties will be donated to cancer research, in Errol’s name.” I nodded at two men in suits who represented a local nonprofit that helped people without insurance get cancer treatment.

  “This book was very important to Errol and it’s important to me. Writing it helped me realize that this is something I’m good at and I think I’ll keep doing it. Maybe I’ll even become a romance writer like my mom.”

  “Well, you’ve certainly got the right name for it,” Archibald said and everyone laughed. Mrs. Bobot took my mother’s hand.

  I loosened my scarf, my body warm with anticipation. “So, what I’m about to unveil today is just a small way to say thank you to Errol for granting me the honor to share his story.”

  And to thank him for changing my life.

  Here’s how a true romance writer would look at it—I’d been kind of like Psyche, stuck with these walls around me and feeling them pressing in. I’d come to believe that I was unlovable, which is the worst thing to feel in the whole world. Errol hadn’t been able to save Psyche, but he’d saved me. He’d made me believe in myself again.

  “I’d like to thank Mr. Lee and Tony Lee for helping me with this project. It took such a long time because we had to order it from Italy.” Then I grabbed the edge of the sheet and pulled.

  “Awesome,” Realm said.

  “That’s magnificent,” Archibald said.

  “It’s gorgeous,” Velvet said.

  Standing over Errol’s grave was a statue of a young, handsome man in a toga. The man held a bow and a quiver of arrows. Okay, so maybe I’d gone a bit overboard, because the Cupid statue was even taller than the statue that marked the oldest grave in the cemetery—a grave for one of the men who had founded Seattle. But who would argue that a mere pioneer was more important than the real Cupid, Servant of Love?

  “It’s a replica,” Mr. Lee explained. “The original statue is in Rome.”

  “I love it,” my mother said.

  “So do I,” Mrs. Bobot said. She handed out raisin cookies and everyone stood around talking for a long time. Then we started down the paved trail, back to the cars.

  “How about we all go out to that new Italian restaurant?” my mother suggested.

  “That sounds like a very nice way to celebrate Valentine’s Day,” Archibald said.

  I looked over my shoulder. Reverend Ruttles and Mrs. Bobot were still up the path, standing next to the Cupid statue. The reverend was holding Mrs. Bobot’s hand. Orange rays shot out of both their heads.

  “Alice,” Velvet said, her high heels clicking against the pavement as she hurried up to me. “I have something for you.” Peppermint perfume swirled around her. She handed me a metal key and a key card.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s for a safe deposit box. It belonged to Errol, and he told me that he wanted you to have it.” She smiled. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking. You think he left you some treasure.”

  That’s exactly what I was thinking.

  “Well, not quite.” She pulled a tube of gloss from her pocket and ran it over her lips. “It’s just a box of old notebooks. One time when he came in for a shave, he told me he’d written a bunch of stories, about all these things that had happened to him over the years. Now they belong to you.” She closed the tube, then gave me a hug. “I love the statue. It looks just like him.”

  I wrapped both hands around the key. More stories. For me. Amazing.

  Thank you, Errol.

  “I got you something for Valentine’s Day,” Tony said, opening the back of his Jeep. The box was big and tied with a ribbon. I tucked the key into my pocket, then, beaming, I opened the box. “These are for me?” I pulled out pairs of knee and elbow pads.

  “Well, you said you wanted me to teach you how to ride a skateboard.”

  “Yeah, I do. I really do.” I took a helmet out of the box. “But do you really think I need to wear all this stuff?”

  He laughed. “I think we both need to. We tend to fall a lot.”

  Then Tony Lee, cute boy with the freckles, leaned forward and kissed me and I knew, not from his aura, but from the way he smiled, that he felt the same way I felt. And it was real.

  “Praise the Lord,” Reverend Ruttles said, as he and Mrs. Bobot walked past. “What a glorious day!”

  My mother, Archibald, and I climbed into the backseat of Tony’s Jeep. Mr. Lee sat up front. As Tony drove us out of the cemetery, I looked back at the statue that stood at the top of the hill. I knew I’d visit it a lot. And maybe others would too.

  Then I looked at my mother who sat next to me, her warm shoulder pressed against mine. Maybe I wasn’t the one who had pulled her from the darkness. Maybe she’d been awakened that morning at Harmony Hospital by the promise of a new story. But that didn’t mean she loved me less. She was who she was. And if a story is what had called to her, then so be it. Perhaps that’s what calls to each of us, the promise of the next story, right on the horizon.

  Or the story skating by the front window.

  Or the one beating inside our hearts, waiting to be set free.

  From Heartstrings Publishers’ sister company,

  FIRESTORM PUBLISHING,

  comes a refreshing new voice in the horror genre.

  by Realm

  They put the cat into a cage and took her to the cat show.

  It was a small cage, two feet by two feet, and made of metal bars. The woman had worked for many days decorating the cage. She’d added a white shag carpet. She’d sewn a red velvet pillow and had hung red velvet curtains. The man had made a cardboard crown and then tied it to the cat’s head with ribbon. When the cat pushed the hat off, the man told her that she was a bad kitty and that she needed to wear her crown. He pointed to a sign on the front of the cage. PRINCESS’S PALACE, the sign said in glittery letters.

  All day long, kids stuck their sticky fingers into the cage. “Look, Mom, she’s a princess kitty,” they said.

  The cat narrowed her yellow eyes and crawled under the red pillow. The woman scolded her for hiding and pulled her out from under the pillow. But the cat crawled under the pillow again.

  “What’s the matter with you?” the woman asked. “Why don’t you want to be a princess?”

  “She doesn’t appreciate anything we’ve done for her,” the man said.

  An extralong, extrasticky finger poked the cat’s leg and the cat growled. It was there, under the pillow, where she began to formulate her plan. An evil but necessary plan. She wasn’t sure if she could pull it off, but she knew one thing. They’d be sorry.

  They’d all be sorry.

  A DISCLAIMER

  from the manufacturer

  of Craig’s Clam Juice

  We here at the Craig’s Clam Juice Company would like our customers to know that we do not, in any way, claim that our product can cure lovesickness. There is no evidence supporting or disproving such a claim.

  However, clam juice does contain many nutritional benefits and we highly recommend that it be added to a well-balanced diet.

  We appreciate your support.

  Please drink responsibly.

  Craig

  WARNING: Do not drink Craig’s Clam Juice if you have shellfish allergies.

  Some Notes from the Author

 
; Bipolar disorder has been in the news a lot lately, but that’s not why I wrote about it. It has long interested me because I suspect that my father suffered from it. Though he went undiagnosed and though he didn’t have the extreme bouts of depression, his mania was obvious and often uncomfortable. He self-medicated with alcohol. Knowing what I know now, I wish I could go back in time and help him. Like Alice, I wish I could fix things.

  Sometimes life and story collide in an odd way. I wrote the first draft of Mad Love in the depths of a Pacific Northwest winter, which tends to be cloudy and dark. I placed my story in mid-July, in the neighborhood of Capitol Hill, during the worst heat wave to ever hit Seattle. I chose a heat wave because I wanted to put my characters into an uncomfortable environment. The only way to make Seattle, a mild and friendly city, uncomfortable was to raise the temperature.

  And as it just so happened, when I went to revise the novel five months later, my daughter was registered for a writing class in Capitol Hill, Alice’s neighborhood. So I found myself revising the story while sitting at the Capitol Hill library, in the middle of July, during the worst heat wave to hit Seattle. No kidding. In my story it reached 105 degrees and in reality it reached 106. I like to think I influenced the heavens. I’m not making this up.

  Every writer has a story that drives her to the edge. This was mine. It took me a long time to figure out Alice and her world. At times I nearly gave up. I threw away entire chapters. I killed off characters. I changed the voice. But finally it came together and I’d like to thank the people who helped me with the first draft—my writing group members, Sheila Roberts, Susan Wiggs, Anjali Banerjee, and Elsa Watson; my literary agent, Michael Bourret; and my husband, Bob Ranson.

  I’d also like to thank LeAnne and David, the owners of Hot Shots Java in Poulsbo, Washington, and their wonderful staff, because that’s where I do a lot of my writing. They are always so nice to me. They fuel my creativity.

  I’d like to especially thank the two people who went through the subsequent drafts, listened to my worries, and saw the story when I couldn’t—my editor, Emily Easton, and my daughter, Isabelle. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  Also by Suzanne Selfors

  Saving Juliet

  Coffeehouse Angel

  Copyright © 2011 by Suzanne Selfors

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  First published in the United States of America in January 2011

  by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.

  E-book edition published in January 2011

  www.bloomsburyteens.com

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to

  Permissions, Walker BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

  Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Selfors, Suzanne.

  Mad love / Suzanne Selfors.

  p. cm.

  Summary: With her famous romance novelist mother secretly hospitalized in an expensive mental facility, sixteen-year-old Alice tries to fulfill her publisher’s contract by writing a love story—with the help of Cupid.

  ISBN 978-0-8027-8450-6 (hardcover)

  [1. Love—Fiction. 2. Authorship—Fiction. 3. Cupid (Roman deity)—Fiction. 4. Manic-depressive illness—Fiction. 5. Mental illness—Fiction. 6. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 7. Seattle (Wash.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S456922Mad 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2010023261

  ISBN 978-0-8027-2257-7 (e-book)