by Kat Zhang
“Planning again,” he said. “We’re going to need our own plans.”
Addie glanced down at her incomplete sketch. “Or we could work with them.”
“You think they’d listen to us?” Hally asked.
“We have to try.”
Because in the end, we all wanted the same thing. To be safe. To be free. To stop the pain, and the suffering, and the fear.
To keep hope, not just for our own sakes, but for those who relied on us to help them when they could not help themselves.
“Come on.” Addie set the legal pad on the table. “I’ll finish it later. There’s a meeting going on.”
We all moved to the living room, even Kitty. Peter was the one speaking. He paused when he saw us approaching. His eyes met ours. I didn’t look away.
Finally, he nodded.
“All right,” he said. “Here’s what needs to be done.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to say an enormous thank you to all the book bloggers and reviewers who have taken the time to read and promote What’s Left of Me. You guys do so much. Every happy email, “Waiting on Wednesday,” “cover love,” or even just plain tweet of excitement really makes an author’s day. I never knew about this enormous community before entering the book-blogging world myself as an aspiring author, and I’m so glad to have discovered it.
Again, I have to shout out to the fabulous ladies of Pub(lishing) Crawl. All of you are incredibly dear to me. A great big thank you, too, to the creative writing department at Vanderbilt University. I had the best four years I could hope for learning under you guys.
A few special notes for the people who critiqued drafts of Once We Were: Savannah Foley, you’ve always been there for me, and I appreciate that so very much. Jodi Meadows, thank you for cute ferret pictures and for calming me down when the publishing craziness takes over my brain. Amie Kaufman, your notes make me feel like I’m a better writer than I actually am, and I love you for it. Cindy Wang, I can count on you to tell it like it is, and writing is no different—thank heavens for that! Biljana Likic, you are my three a.m. Skype buddy, my snarker-in-arms, and I swear your life is a YA novel sometimes, so that’s always cool. ;)
Kari Sutherland, editor extraordinaire, much of the time I spent writing and revising Once We Were was spent in a state of terror that this book was too big for me—that I was tackling something beyond my abilities. You helped me take the enormity of the story in my mind and get it pinned down on paper. Endless thanks.
Emmanuelle Morgen, I’m obviously not your only client, but you often make me feel like I am. I’m trying to come up with some metaphor about publishing being like a river and you being like my skipper, but I think that would make me a boat, so let’s not go in that direction. Thank you for being such a champion of the Hybrid Chronicles!
Huge thanks to everyone at HarperTeen who helped Once We Were make it onto shelves. Also to the Epic Reads girls—who are even more epic than their names might suggest: my publicist, Alison Lisnow, Whitney Lee, and all my other foreign agents.
Dechan, this book is dedicated to you. Thank you for fifteen years of friendship and many of the best parts of my childhood. You once referenced Anne of Green Gables to describe us, even though neither of us have actually read Anne of Green Gables (we need to get on that!). I looked up the quote. Here it is: “A bosom friend—an intimate friend, you know—a really kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul.” I think that nails it, don’t you?
And finally, hi, Mom and Dad. There isn’t much I can say in words. Thank you. Love you!
About the Author
KAT ZHANG is an avid traveler, and after a childhood spent living in one book after another, she now builds stories for other people to visit, including What’s Left of Me, her first novel, and its sequel, Once We Were. You can read about her travels, literary and otherwise, online at www.katzhangwriter.com.
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