by Ann Aguirre
#2—TALKING TO FORD
Ford Davidson is a character who appears mostly “offscreen” in book 1. He’s the son of Gemma’s family friend Bruce Davidson—whose house Gemma and her dad are staying in for the summer. Gemma’s always had a little bit of a crush on him—but nothing’s ever happened with this, mostly because he lives across the country from her, and she’d been dating Teddy (until he dumped her). But Gemma and Ford have a few scenes together, either through video chatting or talking on the phone.
This deleted scene was another Gemma-Ford video call, in which Ford starts to put together that maybe the things that keep happening with Gemma aren’t actually accidental at all. We decided to take it out, because my editor was worried that it made Gemma too suspicious too early, when that wasn’t part of her character arc yet. I loved it because Ford became one of my favorite characters in this book—even though we don’t see him a ton, he’s a much bigger presence in book 2—and I always wanted more Ford scenes. But I was overruled, so here’s the Ford-and-Gemma scene that didn’t quite make it in.
* * *
“Hey!” I said, as I propped up Bruce’s iPad against the stack of diet books he had decided he no longer needed, now that he was focused on the caveman diet. I straightened the top one—Do I Dare to Eat a Peach? Overcoming Your Fear of Carbs—and smiled at the familiar figure onscreen.
Ford was yawning, and his eyes still looked a little bleary, like maybe he’d just woken up. I tried to do the math to figure out what time it was in Hawaii, then gave up when I realized I wasn’t entirely sure if they were ahead or behind the Hamptons. Ford sleeping at strange hours also wasn’t that unusual, because when he was really on a coding streak, he’d work for hours at a time, then crash, and it never seemed to matter what time it actually was. Even though he’d clearly just woken up, Ford was, as usual, almost unfairly cute. I knew that I certainly didn’t look that good when I was just rolling out of bed. His black-black hair was sticking up in little spikes and there was a pillow crease across one side of his face. He looked even more tan and golden than he had when I’d last video chatted with him. It was also funny to see Ford without his glasses, which over the years had just become part of his identity. He looked younger without them, and it felt a little bit like I was seeing him with his defenses down.
“Hey there,” he said around a yawn, giving me a sleepy smile. “How’s it going?”
“Bruce is out of town,” I said, by way of answering that question. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go into how it was actually going here. My stomach still wasn’t entirely settled from the spoiled-lobster food-poisoning incident of the night before. “Want me to tell him you called?”
“And what if I was calling to talk to you?” Ford asked. “Did you ever think about that?” He shot me a faux-offended look and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Then I take it back,” I said. “How’s Hawaii?”
“Hawaii’s fine,” he said. “Working on a new project that’s taking up most of my time. But the waves are killer, so I’m not complaining.” I nodded, so used to Ford that none of this was surprising—he somehow managed to be both a tech geek and a surf champion. It made sense when you were around him, especially when he started talking about the mathematical properties of wave curves. “But seriously, what’s going on?” he asked, leaning forward a little more. “Are you okay? You look kinda pale. Don’t they have sun in the Hamptons? I know they don’t have surfable waves…”
“I’m fine,” I said, maybe a little too quickly. I didn’t want to take the bait to get into an argument about East Coast surfing, which Ford was a huge snob about. “And I had food poisoning last night, so…”
“What happened?” Ford asked, his brow furrowed.
I decided he didn’t want to know the gross details of the night—and I didn’t really want to go into them, especially now with food actually starting to sound appetizing again. I decided to keep it vague—not only because I felt weird telling Ford that I’d been on a kind-of date when it happened. And though nothing had happened between me and Josh, the fact we’d fallen asleep together on the couch was information I wasn’t sure I necessarily wanted to share with Ford. “I was at this seafood place, and the lobster must have gone bad. It was a lobster roll, so maybe the mayo had been sitting out? Anyway, the worst of it seems to be over now.” I smiled at him, even though just saying the word lobster had been enough to make my stomach clench.
Ford’s frown deepened. “Seriously?” he asked, and I could hear the skepticism in his voice.
“Yeah,” I said, trying not to be offended—and failing—as I settled into one of the bar stools and crossed my arms over my chest. “Why would I make that up?”
“No, I believe you,” Ford said as he ran his fingers through his hair. He leaned out of frame for a moment, and when he popped back onscreen again, he was wearing his glasses, hipster-cool black square frames that were miles away from the deeply dorky thick lenses he’d worn when he was a kid. “I’m just surprised it happened, that’s all.”
“We were, too,” I assured him.
One of Ford’s eyebrows quirked up. “We?”
“Me,” I said immediately. “I meant it in the general sense.” Ford continued to look skeptical, and I added quickly, “What do you mean by surprised?”
Ford looked away, and let out a long breath. “Okay, I might be going all math geek on you for a minute here.”
“I can’t wait,” I assured him and was rewarded when he shot me one of his rare, wide smiles.
“So,” he said, and from the way I could see his hands reaching out for nothing, I could tell just how much he wanted to either be figuring this out with a pencil or typing on his laptop. “It’s a numbers game. It’s a seafood place, right?” I nodded. “So seafood is what they do. And the law of averages states that the more you do something, the more the possibility for error reduces as long as none of the elements change.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding, pleasantly surprised I was able to follow this.
“If you’d ordered a lobster roll at a diner and you got sick, not surprising,” he said, and I could tell he was warming to his theme. “Or if you got a bad hamburger at a seafood place. Not weird, right?”
“Right,” I agreed. “Because…”
“Because it’s not what they do,” Ford said, leaning forward. “It’s not what they’re making a hundred of, every day. So the margin for error is vastly increased. But a place where they only do fish? To randomly get sick?” Ford shook his head. “It’s unlikely. Mathematically, at any rate.”
I straightened Bruce’s pile of cookbooks while I let this sink in. I’d been so focused on getting home without throwing up all over Josh—and then so focused on just doing things like walking upright and trying to keep down liquids—that the how of the food poisoning had never occurred to me. But now that Ford was pointing it out, with his unassailable logic, I was beginning to question the whole situation. How had it happened, exactly? “So what are you saying?”
“I’m not saying anything,” Ford said. “I don’t have enough data to make any conjectures. But unless all the diners around you were getting sick simultaneously, there’s something fishy—so to speak—going on.”
“Fishy?” I echoed, rolling my eyes, smiling despite myself. “So what does that mean? That someone … sabotaged my food?” Even saying it out loud sounded ridiculous. Who would want to do that?
“Maybe,” Ford said, completely serious. “Is there anyone out there who would want to cause you pain?”
I just blinked. There was one person, of course … but she didn’t know I was actually me. It couldn’t be …
Could it?
#3—PIZZA WITH JOSH
(KF = Katie Finn. ED = her editor.)
KF So this was one of my favorite sections of the book. It was just a little scene, but I really liked it.
ED This was understood by the fact you kept inserting it back into every draft.
KF I just love the
se little scenes that really don’t have to move the plot forward much—
ED (or at all)
KF —and are just about the characters getting to know one another better.
ED Did you really think I wouldn’t NOTICE that you kept putting this scene back in? Did you think I wasn’t reading these drafts or something?
KF This scene is Gemma and Josh, sharing a pizza in the back of the SUV.
ED As I pointed out, there is another scene where Gemma and Hallie share a pizza in the back of the SUV. I also encouraged you to work on this after eating dinner, not before.
KF The Gemma-Josh relationship is so fun to write and I loved this scene. I also liked Gemma getting so caught up in Josh that she forgets about the double life she’s living.
ED Me too. But still—we didn’t need another pizza/SUV scene.
KF I still think this scene is great—
ED (sigh)
KF —but can maybe see my editor’s point of view here.
ED Thank you.
KF So here is the Gemma-Josh pizza scene that I loved—
ED (we know)
KF —but ultimately had to go.
* * *
“Cheese?” I leaned over to look at Josh’s slices in the pizza box. I had ordered, without thinking, my usual—pineapple-sausage-pepperoni. I was now just crossing my fingers that Hallie hadn’t told him about the pizza preference that would reveal me to be Gemma Tucker. But he hadn’t said anything, just looked a little surprised—like most people did. I’d been so worried about my order, and berating myself for slipping up on something so basic, that I hadn’t paid attention to what he’d gotten until now.
“What’s wrong with cheese?” Josh asked as he picked up a slice and leaned back against the car windows. We were in the back of the SUV, parked in Josh’s driveway. The rear door was up, and we were sitting on opposite sides, our legs stretched out in front of us. I could hear the ocean waves crashing, and the moon was bright enough that the back of the car was flooded with light.
“Nothing,” I said, as I reached for one of my own slices, then leaned back before taking a bite. “I guess I was just expecting some toppings or something.” It seemed like everyone I knew had complicated pizza orders, from Sophie, who liked so much extra cheese that the crust sometimes sagged under it, to Walter, who wanted every kind of fish topping available (which almost always meant I was striving to keep his anchovies from migrating onto my slice).
Josh gave me a smile and set down his slice. “It’s habit, I guess,” he said. “When I was growing up, we used to go to this pizza place in Brooklyn. It wasn’t even really a restaurant—there was only one table, it was more like a stand.”
“Brooklyn?” I asked, trying to sound surprised, like this was new information to me, like I wasn’t well aware of where Hallie and Josh used to live.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding, a tiny, nostalgic smile creeping over his face. “We lived there until I was like thirteen. Then … we moved to Manhattan.” He said this with a note of finality, like I wasn’t supposed to ask why he’d moved to Manhattan, even though I was really curious, and had been all summer. “But anyway,” he said, the natural warmth in his voice returning, “this pizza place was my favorite. Hallie didn’t like it as much as me, but I loved it. And the owner was this crazy old guy who’d been there forever. And he didn’t believe in toppings.”
“He didn’t believe in them?” I echoed, speaking around a bite of pizza. I hadn’t realized toppings were something, like Santa Claus, you could choose to buy into.
“Nope,” Josh said with a smile. “He was a pizza purist. He claimed if you needed anything else, it was because your pizza wasn’t good enough. I guess his influence stuck.”
“I guess so,” I said, smiling at him. Josh took a bite, and ended up with a glob of sauce just under his bottom lip. “You’ve got—” I said as I reached over with my napkin and swiped it off. It wasn’t until I had done this—still leaning across the car toward him—that I’d realized what I’d done. It was such an intimate gesture that I could feel my cheeks getting hot.
“Thanks,” Josh said. He didn’t look embarrassed, and when he looked back into my eyes, I realized just how close we were. My heart started to beat hard, and I realized that despite the fact there were two slices of pizza between us, we were close enough to kiss. This realization was enough to make me lean back, fast, returning to my side of the car. “You could try it, you know,” Josh said after a moment of silent pizza eating in which I tried to persuade my face to cool down.
“What?” I asked, finishing my slice and setting my crust back in the pizza box.
“The pizza that needs no toppings,” he said. “We could … go there together. When we’re back after the summer. You’re not that far from the city, right?”
I shook my head. That was the one answer to all of this that I did know—Putnam was a quick train ride from New York. But the rest of it … Josh was essentially asking me out on a date three months from now. I could feel myself start to smile, the kind of smile that takes over your face before you can stop it. “That sounds great,” I said, trying to get myself to stop smiling like an idiot. But I couldn’t believe this—we hadn’t even kissed yet and Josh was talking to me about going on a date in the fall.
“Well, I’ll put it down on the calendar, Sophie,” Josh said with a smile.
Just like that, I felt my smile fall off my face as reality brought me back down to earth. Josh didn’t know that he was talking to Gemma Tucker. In fact, Josh probably hated Gemma Tucker. He thought he was talking to Sophie Curtis, the nice girl with no baggage he’d met on the train. I blinked, and the vision of me and Josh, walking around Brooklyn with topping-free slices of pizza, suddenly disappeared.
“You okay?” Josh asked, his brow furrowed.
“Fine,” I said quickly. “Just … hungry.” I picked up another slice, my thoughts spinning. If I was able to pull this off—if I was able to show Hallie that I was a good person and get her to forgive me—maybe Josh and I could have our September pizza date after all. I could practically see it, and I suddenly wanted it to happen more than I could say, because if Josh and I were eating pizza together in Brooklyn, it would mean that Hallie had forgiven me. That everything was okay. I looked up and smiled at him. “September,” I said with a nod. “It’s a plan.”
TORTURED
Caragh M. O’Brien
BY CARAGH M. O’BRIEN
~ The Birthmarked Trilogy ~
Birthmarked
Prized
Promised
~ The Vault of Dreamers Trilogy ~
The Vault of Dreamers
The Rule of Mirrors
Meet Caragh M. O’Brien
If I’m to elucidate the truth about my background and my writing career, I might as well start with the story I gave my Nona for Christmas back when I was in junior high. It was the tragedy of a wispy girl who took walks on the beach and didn’t realize she was dying of cancer. The story was bleak in every conceivable way, and when Nona loved it, I beamed.
From seventh grade on, I kept a journal, and later I took creative writing in college, so by the time I graduated from Williams with a BA in physics, I was ready to move into my parents’ attic and write a romance novel. Mirage, set in romantic Death Valley, California, was picked up by Silhouette, and I was ecstatic to be a published writer.
Off I went to Johns Hopkins University to earn my MA in the Writing Seminars, and then I spent a couple decades writing, raising my family, and teaching, until one day, on a leave of absence, I started writing Birthmarked.
I had the first ideas for Gaia’s story after driving through a drought in the southern US. The miles of dry landscape made me consider what sort of people would survive climate change, and how they might adapt. The social and political repercussions seemed huge, and I had the inklings of an isolated, walled city in a wasteland north of Unlake Superior. I wrote the first chapter, in which Gaia, a young midwife, has to bring a new
born baby to authorities inside the wall, and then I wrote the rest of the book to see what would happen.
Birthmarked was my first YA novel, and to my amazement, Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan offered me a three-book contract. That’s when I realized I was writing a trilogy, and two years later, I resigned from teaching high school English so I could meet my deadlines. I’ve been writing YA ever since.
These days, I’m deep into a new series. The Vault of Dreamers is a novel about a girl attending an arts school/reality TV show that hides a nefarious secret about dreams. It involves some psychological twists and a narrator who is not 100 percent reliable. I love it. I’m revising The Rule of Mirrors (book 2) at the moment, and I can say truthfully, it’s my biggest challenge yet. Nona would be proud.
What you’ll find here next is my short story entitled “Tortured.” It’s intense. I’ll say that much. It features a young captain on the night he leaves the Enclave, and as one might infer from the title, it’s a dark little tale of pain and determination.
This bridge story takes place chronologically between books 1 and 2 of the Birthmarked trilogy, which means it’s a spoiler for the first novel. In fairness, I should warn you not to read it if you want to be completely surprised by the ending of Birthmarked, but read it if you’re okay with knowing some pertinent facts or if you’re the sort of person who mentally ignores previously acquired info by the time you read through a whole book. I fall quite easily into the latter category, so I would read it, but it’s really up to you.
If, on the other hand, you’ve already read the Birthmarked trilogy, we have no spoiler problems whatsoever. Go ahead and read “Tortured” pronto.
As for quirky facts about writing “Tortured,” I have three.
First up, to be honest, the Birthmarked 1.5 story was an experiment that originated in marketing. Writing it was not my idea, but I was, as always, game to try something new, and I liked the idea of a free e-story for loyal readers to tide them over until Prized (book 2) was released. That, at least, was the plan, but tie-in stories were not common for Roaring Brook at the time, and we were inventing a wheel. As it happened, legalities slowed us up, and we had snags with the e-publishing lead times, so the story didn’t go live until several weeks after book 2 came out. It was a 1.5 that came out of order.
