No Such Thing as the Real World: A Book is Born, a Possibility (i.e., Teen Writing Competition) Sounds

Today is April 21, which is another way of saying that today is the birthday of No Such Thing as the Real World, a HarperTeen anthology that bears the subtitle: Stories about growing up and getting a life. "What's the line that separates childhood from the 'real world'? the back jacket asks. "And what happens when it's nothing you imagined it would be?"

There are six of us telling stories here—An Na, M.T. Anderson, K.L. Going, Chris Lynch, Jacqueline Woodson, and myself—and it is a very happy thing for me to be nested in with such a crowd. But wait, there's more: This anthology is designed to celebrate teen writers, too, by encouraging them (to quote the back jacket again) "to write their own stories about experiencing the real world for the first time. The winning story will be published in the paperback edition of the book." For details, go here.

I repeat: This book is an open invitation to you teens out there, you most exquisite writers. You know who you are, too, because I'm often on your blogs, awed and admiring.

Here are a few words from the middle of my story, which is titled "The Longest Distance."

Annie and Marne will never have what Joelle and I surely did. They may be laughing behind their hands, but their laughs are little kaput laughs, over before they get started. They’re practically flirty with each other, silly, the oh-my-God kind of girls, and they were always like that—on the bus, in the cafeteria, at football games—always making a show of themselves, like they were posing for reality TV. Except they weren’t like that the day I climbed back on the bus, a week after Joelle disappeared. They just stared at me then, with their hazel and brown eyes. “Hannah,” they said, both of them turned around, both of them staring open-mouthed at me. “Why did she do it?”

“Because she did,” is what I said. And closed my arms across my chest and stared out the window. All the regular things in the neighborhood went by. They looked blurry to me, underwater. I’ve worn sunglasses to school every day ever since. No one needs to know how I am feeling.