My Year Zero
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Table of Contents
Cover
Synopsis
Title Page
Copyright Page
About the Author
Other Books by Rachel Gold
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Resources
Additional Resources
Bella Books
Synopsis
Lauren thinks she has a pretty good life—so why is it that she feels crazy most of the time? She figures it’s nothing she can’t fix by getting her first girlfriend and doing better at school. But how is she ever going to find a girlfriend in Duluth, Minnesota?
When she meets a group of kids who are telling a science fiction story online and gets invited down to the Twin Cities, she gets more attention than she ever expected, from two very different girls: charming Sierra and troublesome Blake.
Blake helps Lauren understand that she’s not the crazy one in her life. But Blake’s attention—and insights into life and living with bipolar disorder—threaten to destroy everything Lauren has created for herself, including her relationship with Sierra.
Copyright © 2016 by Rachel Gold
Bella Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 10543
Tallahassee, FL 32302
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, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
First Bella Books Edition 2016
eBook released 2016
Editor: Julia Watts
Cover Designer: Kristin Smith
Cover Illustration: Alexis Cooke
ISBN: 978-1-59493-482-7
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
About the Author
Raised on world mythology, fantasy novels, comic books and magic, Rachel is well suited for her careers in marketing and writing. She has an MFA in Writing from Hamline University and has spent the last 14 years working in marketing and publicity—but if that makes her sound too corporate and stuffy, you should know that Rachel is an all around geek and avid gamer. For more information visit: www.rachelgold.com
Other Bella Books by Rachel Gold
Being Emily
Just Girls
For Alice
Love, always.
Acknowledgments
Infinite thanks to Alice, to whom this book is dedicated, for loving me, for your sense of humor, for being further down some paths than I was and grinning back at me so I knew it was okay.
Immense gratitude to the many wonderful readers who improved the story and the prose. My alpha reader Alia Whipple and my apex reader Stephanie Burt—I can’t express how much your input and edits helped this book. My beta readers: Melissa Trost, Virginia McCoy, Ha’Londra Welch, Wendy Nemitz, Kim Nguyen, Laina Villeneuve and Sara Bracewell.
Special thanks to my team of experts: My dad, Bob Gold, for explaining the mathematics of infinities to me more than once; Heather Anastasiu for fixing the ending; Lin Distel for nearly-incomprehensible handwritten notes that deepened the characters and themes; Cyn Reuss for the bi-squared joke (awesome!); Mara Burr for letting me steal her cool job; Carrie Mesrobian for many conversations about sex in YA novels; therapists Tina Kohfield and Brian W. Brooks for their help on the topic of bipolar disorder; Natasha Tracy for vetting Blake’s scenes; and Gidget Houle for everything you did then and now.
Thanks to Linda Hill at Bella Books who told me to write this one next, to Katherine Forrest who ensures that my secondary characters are all wearing clothing, and to editor Julia Watts. Also thank you to my cover designer Kristin Smith, the cover illustrator Alexis Cooke and her partner in crime Mandie Brasington who helped with manga recommendations.
Thanks also to my fantastic writers’ group: The Agents of Pantyliner (a pantser vs. outliner joke): Juliann Rich, Aren Sabers, Heather Anastasiu, Eva Indigo and Dawn Klehr.
Great love and gratitude to the members of my household, four-legged and two-legged: you make me better.
“There was no year zero… At first glance this style of numbering might not seem so bad, but it guaranteed trouble.”
—From Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
Chapter One
When I met Blake, I had no idea that she would destroy my life. She was this small person, darkly incandescent, vibrating with nervous energy. Eyes blue-gray like a kingfisher’s wing (moving as fast). I should have known by the way she went on about infinities and zero. Who falls in love with zero?
But I’m ahead of myself. The story doesn’t start with Blake. As with most great stories, it starts with sex.
A few months after I’d turned sixteen, I figured it was time to have sex. Almost half of American teens have had sex before they turn seventeen, so if I could get laid this year I’d be a little ahead of the curve. And I’m talking about girl-girl sex here, so it wasn’t like I had to worry about getting her pregnant.
I didn’t want to just get laid. I’d settle for it, but I wanted the whole deal. I wanted holding hands and making out and gifts and movie dates. I wanted to fall in love.
This was a hundred times harder than I wanted it to be because I lived in a town of eighty-six thousand that felt like a town of eight thousand.
My plan was to get myself down to the Twin Cities for the Pride festival that summer. This meant six mo
nths to get into pickupable shape. My best getting-picked-up asset is my body, which resembles a department store mannequin, except alive, stretched out longer than it should be, and with a bit of muscle. My face is cubist art: long, blocky nose that would look okay if I had well-defined cheekbones, but I don’t. My cheeks are shapeless and prone to blotchiness.
If I had any chance at getting hit on, it was going to be in a tank top.
Which is why I was in the weight room of the gym during fourth period while everyone else was playing volleyball. Also I hate team sports. First off, I hate sports. And I hate groups, so team sports are double the hate.
I told the gym teacher I was getting over an ear infection brought on by Duluth’s teeth-freezingly cold wind. I shouldn’t run around a bunch—could I go to the weight room instead?
I liked lifting weights. (I mean hand weights, not some massive deadlift Miss Universe thing—wait, Miss Universe is a beauty pageant. But Mr. Universe is a muscle guy? That’s messed up.) The thing about weights is that it’s me against myself and frankly, I’m pretty easy to beat, so I get to win a lot.
The weight room smelled like dirty socks that had been ground into a manure pile by an asphalt truck, but I had it to myself. That was more than I could say for any other part of my school day. I was sitting on the end of a weight bench doing bicep curls and humming along with my iPod. Okay, I was singing. Not loud and certainly not on key.
The song blasting through my headphones was Halestorm’s “Break In.” I switched from the well of self-pity (I’d never have anyone to make me feel defenseless and known like Lzzy Hale was singing about), to feeling like it had to happen eventually. The last few lines might have come out of my mouth at an audible volume.
I finished the set and glanced at the clock over the door. A woman was leaning against the frame, grinning at me—not mean-grinning—amused, eye-crinkly grinning. She had purple-streaked hair and a short, curvy body, emphasized by the charcoal and pomegranate sundress that clung to her hips. Over the dress was a worn leather jacket and below it heavy black motorcycle boots; very much like no one I had ever seen before.
It’s not like I’m prone to hallucinations, but I have a vivid imagination and I figured it’d finally gone over the edge. It made sense, school was that dull this year and my possible sex life was that arid.
She jerked her chin at me and said, “Hey, I’m the Queen of Rogues.”
“Oh,” I said. “I am hallucinating.”
She laughed. “Nah, this is my hair’s natural color.”
I realized I was holding the (five pound—totally not impressive) weights up by my shoulders and put them down.
“I’m Lauren,” I said, still not sure she was real, but it’s never a bad idea to be polite. “Are you lost?”
“I came to meet a friend for lunch,” she said.
“And decided to wander into the weight room?”
“I heard singing,” she replied with a smirk.
I blushed and looked away, which is when my brain started to kick in. This might be a real human being and I was missing my opportunity to say something clever like: I always thought the rogues were a democracy.
“Where’s the cafeteria?” she asked.
“It’s across the hall from the big gym,” I told her.
Instead of leaving to find said cafeteria, she sat on the weight bench across from me. I didn’t think she was that much older, but she seemed elegant and cute and edgy, compared to my lanky, awkward and moist. Her hair was a honeycomb brown with thick streaks of dark purple that made her alabaster cheeks seem even whiter. Shoulder-length messy curls, plus the round shape of her face, gave her a mischievous fallen angel look.
“How did you get to be queen?” I asked, uncomfortably aware of my damp T-shirt and sports bra, all gangles and sweat. I added, “I mean, I thought the rogues were democratic.”
The words sounded much stupider coming out of my mouth than they had in my head.
She laughed, a lips-mostly-closed chuckle, like someone took a bigger laugh and compressed it into her mouth. Or like she’d learned to laugh in a way that didn’t mess with her candy apple lip gloss.
“I’m Sierra,” she said. And in a somber tone she added, “It’s not a democracy.”
“Yeah, of course not. Do you want me to walk you over to the cafeteria? Give me a sec to change.”
“Sure.”
I intended to walk sedately into the locker room, but it was more like drunken weaving since I was so thrown off-balance from this conversation. Girls with orchid-streaked hair didn’t just show up in my life. Had I conjured her? Certainly not with my singing (that was more appropriate to banishing), but with my wishing for someone to be in my life.
She was probably straight I told myself as I threw on jeans, a non-damp bra, an undershirt and a flannel. I patted my hair down with wet hands so it wasn’t so frizzelated. Statistically, most people were straight.
I jammed my feet into my Doc Martens and, while I tied them, went over her appearance like I could puzzle her out: the sundress was pure straight girl, but not the boots. They were heavily scuffed in the toe, like she’d had them forever. The leather jacket was worn too, that had to be a good sign. Her hair—what did that mean?
When I came back into the weight room, Sierra was still there, existing. She followed me into the hall.
“Where did you come from?” I asked, and it sounded all blunt and weird so I added, “I mean, you don’t go here.”
“I’m really from another galaxy,” she said. “But that’s a long story. I’m up from the Cities with my family. A friend of mine goes here and we told the office I’m a senior considering a transfer so I could come hang out.”
“You’re not?”
“First year of college. I figured it’d be fun to hop on a bus and come out for lunch and maybe sit in on a class of hers to remind me why college is a thousand times better.”
“Fun to hop on a bus in the snow? In December? In a sundress?”
“Wool stockings,” she said, the smirk back on her lips. “There’s my friend. You want to eat with us?”
“Uh, I have to…I’m in the next lunch period.”
“Maybe I’ll see you later,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She was already walking away, waving to her friend, some senior-looking girl I didn’t know. I wandered back into the hall trying to remember what class I was supposed to go to and wondering if all that had actually happened.
Chapter Two
When I got to lunch, I expected Sierra to have vanished back into my overactive imagination. Not only was she there, but she was holding court at the end of a table, leaning against the wall, talking with a group of girls that included my not best friend Jenny.
Jenny was golden: blond, cheerleadery, all that. Sierra’s effortless loose curls made Jenny’s pristine golden ringlets look like they were trying too hard. (Jenny always looked like she was trying too hard, but no one seemed to care.)
I met Jenny in fifth grade but we grew apart in junior high. Everyone grew apart in junior high. Last year she started hanging out with me again. By some miracle—or by the power of Jenny’s evil mastermind leadership—instead of kids turning on her for hanging out with the school’s one out lesbian, they left me alone because the queen bee found me useful.
I was supposed to get my tray and walk over and say hi, like it was nothing. But I froze. I shuffled out of the doorway and away from the serving line. Sierra’s glistening red lips moved, Jenny and the other girls laughed. They hadn’t seen me yet, I could still run.
An arctic blast of air hit the side of my face and I turned toward it. So did everyone else in the cafeteria.
A tall, skinny kid had one of the windows open and was climbing in. From the outside. With no coat on, despite the fact that it was ten degrees out, too cold even for snow to fall.
Everything weird that happens at my school happens in the winter. This is because winter in Duluth is fourteen months long. In
the depth of that winter, with only eight hours of daylight, everyone loses their mind eventually.
Winter holiday break was three days away and already in December we’d had a kid eating bugs throughout my entire English class, two guys caught jerking each other off in the bathroom, and a fistfight over chess. There was a rumor that one of the seniors had run away from home with an older girl, and four pregnancy scares. Oh and a prank involving a bucket of urine that backfired spectacularly.
When I saw this kid shove the window open, I figured it was more of the same.
He had waxy, buff-colored skin with too prominent bones, short, greasy mud-colored hair and amber eyes. I recognized him but I couldn’t think of where I’d seen him. Sure he was a senior at this high school, but I’d seen his photo someplace specific, if I could remember it.
He put one long leg in through the window, bent low and pushed himself over the sill. He was talking, muttering at first, but when his head came into the room his words got louder. Maybe this wasn’t a prank. I put a few more feet between us.
He was saying, “Drones. Drones! Micro-drones, spies, in everything, need a microscope, you can feel them watching, recording.” He pulled his other leg over the sill and stood up.
He held something in his hand, rectangular and compact, with metal and wiring, and he started waving it over his head.
“It’s a bomb!” someone behind me screamed.
A hundred students moved at once, knocking over chairs, dropping books, running for the doors and getting stuck with the other students trying to shove their way out.
A few of us didn’t move. Most of the stoner kids’ table stayed seated, watching the guy with half-lidded eyes. A couple of guys who seemed like they might know him stood in the middle of the room looking nervously from him to the nearest door. The kids at the back of the line for the doors had turned to watch. Sierra was among them. She was composed, patiently waiting to exit, watching me.