Stuck in Neutral

by Terry Trueman

  A tie between cello and tenor saxophone, unless you want to count electric guitar in the hands of a GREAT rock and roller.

  Greatest food ever invented:

  Deluxe bacon double cheeseburgers. I remember every bite of each one my brother has ever slipped me. This food is so delicious that the worst tasting bite I ever had was still wonderful and too good for mere mortals.

  Greatest person in American History:

  Probably Abraham Lincoln because without him there wouldn’t be a U.S.A. and therefore not much American history.

  Shawn’s iPod Playlist and Movie Queue

  My playlist would definitely include my top five songs—some of these you’ve probably never even heard of! I have to listen to whatever my family puts on, and they’ve always been old school rock and roll or classical music fans more than anything else (except for Paul, whose tastes include rap and hip-hop stuff, too). So if I had any dexterity in my hands to make a playlist or press an iPod, I would include my top five favorite songs:

  5. “Dream Lover” by Bobby Darin

  A great romantic song about being in love, but only in your dreams.

  4. “Lose Yourself” by Eminem

  A song about desperation and going totally, 100%, all-out to somehow be seen and known.

  3. Anything by Mozart

  I know, it’s not a single pick, but I rarely get the names of the Mozart I hear, and I always love all of it.

  2. “In My Life” by the Beatles

  A song about loving life and loving love in particular—a great, brilliant tune.

  1. “Bright Side of the Road” by Van Morrison

  An older rock-and-roll song. When it’s playing, it’s impossible to feel depressed!

  I’ve also been positioned in front of the TV a lot, so I see a ton of movies. Same deal, from my fifth fave to my number one:

  5. Rain Man

  Why do I love it? Raymond, the autistic guy, reminds me of myself a lot.

  4. Dust to Glory

  Don’t even ask me why I like this movie so much, all I know is that every time Paul puts it on, I like it even more!

  3. The Godfather (parts I and II … NOT III)

  Cheating again, I know, but just pretend that it’s one kinda long (six hours or so) movie.

  2. Seabiscuit

  Corny, sentimental, over-the-top movie about a bunch of losers who triumph over all!

  1. Murderball

  Quadriplegic guys playing wheelchair rugby—come on, what’s not to love?

  Q&A with Terry Trueman

  Terry, you are the author of six other books. We have questions about all of them!

  Cruise Control is a companion to Stuck in Neutral, telling Paul’s story. Why did you feel it was important to give readers more insight into Paul’s perspective?

  Well truthfully, I always wanted to write more about Shawn but, for a while, I worried about ruining that annoying ending of Stuck in Neutral, where the reader doesn’t know what happens to Shawn next. Antonia Markiet, my editor for Stuck in Neutral, suggested I write a companion novel, one told in the same time frame but from a different character’s point of view; I knew instantly I wanted to tell Paul’s story. When my son Sheehan was born I felt a lot of emotions and a major one was anger. Paul’s character is based on that anger, and I kind of needed to get it out, so I wrote Cruise Control. All my life I’ve had a terrible temper that’s only gotten a little better with age.

  Inside Out brings us inside the head of a boy with schizophrenia. Why did you write a novel about a character with this mental illness?

  Both Inside Out and No Right Turn are about devastating illnesses. I have a Master’s Degree in Applied Psychology and had worked in mental health and counseling facilities for a number of years. Then I lost a much-beloved stepson to schizophrenia: he killed himself at our home in October 1997. So both professionally and personally I have a big interest in stories about mental illness. Anybody can wake up one day and realize that they are not normal anymore—anyone! So I wrote these books to help readers understand how mental illness is a tragedy and a challenge, not a curse or some kind of punishment for anything.

  No Right Turn is about a boy who is struggling in the wake of his father’s suicide. Is it hard for you to write about such heavy subjects? Oftentimes you hear that actors really take on the weight of their characters. Do you feel this way when you write yours?

  My stories are based on things that have happened to me in real life. Living through the losses and heartbreak associated with difficult and challenging moments is way harder than later using the material of those experiences to try and create understanding and compassion in readers. Usually by the time I’m writing a novel about something painful and hard, I’ve gained enough distance and perspective to approach the material with honesty and, hopefully, a certain level of fearlessness. You can’t write realistic fiction if you’re a chicken-butt. You have to take risks.

  7 Days at the Hot Corner is a book about baseball and friendship, as well as the discovery of homosexuality and all of the emotions that come with being different as a teen. Why did you put these themes together in the same novel?

  The truth is that when I saw how much crap gay teens were taking from their peers and classmates back at the time I wrote the book, it bugged me. I’m not gay myself but I know a lot of gay people, so I wrote this book to try and increase tolerance and understanding of homosexuality. Also, I’m a wannabe jock and if I could be great at any sport, I’d want it to be baseball! Why did I blend the two thoughts together? I have no idea. Even though 7 Days at the Hot Corner is my fifth novel, I actually started writing it the very same day I started writing Stuck in Neutral. But Stuck in Neutral bumped 7 Days out of the way on the second day of writing, and it took me all those years to get back to telling that story.

  Tell us about your inspiration for Hurricane, which is set in Honduras. Is it true that you once lived there?

  Yes, I lived in Honduras in the city of San Pedro Sula during the early 80s and loved the people and the lifestyle there. My Spanish is rough at best so the language barrier always got in my way. After returning to the United States, I lost contact with most of my Honduran friends so when Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras and Central America in October 1998, I decided to write a story that would show American teen readers how much more similar Honduran kids of the same age are to them, than they are different from them. It’s kind of an odd twist of fate or something like it that Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. gulf coast about the same year that this novel first came out, and the plight of people in New Orleans was very similar to that of the Honduran people during Hurricane Mitch.

  Shawn McDaniel’s body may not work the way most people’s do—he can’t walk, talk, or even wave hello. But his brain works perfectly, even though his family and friends don’t know it. Check out how he copes with his cerebral palsy in this excerpt from the sequel to Stuck in Neutral.

  Excerpt from Life Happens Next

  Here’s how I spin things in my head—some cool things about being me:

  1. I get a hot bath every day of my life and never have to lift a finger. The warm water gets squeezed over my body from the big sponge in my mom’s gentle, loving hands. And this bath is by far the most enjoyable physical sensation I ever feel.

  2. I have a perfect auditory memory, remembering everything I ever hear, which is totally cool. This ability has turned our TVs (and we have four of them!) into the greatest learning devices in the universe. I mean, who needs real life when you’ve got 110 cable stations? And I remember every show, from Cesar Millan’s The Dog Whisperer to Little League baseball to the love life of squids to “The bark beetle lays its eggs” to everything in between. In other words, I’m damned smart!

  3. Although I can’t tell anybody what kind of music I’d like to listen to, I love almost all the music that’s played around here (rap/hip-hop, R&B, Bach and Mozart, geezer R&R) so whatever’s on pretty much always makes me happy.

  4. My
brother, Paul, King Jock, Straight-A Student, Tough Guy Supreme, slips me bites of his deluxe bacon double cheeseburgers every chance he gets. Somehow Paul knows that I, too, think God invented this food to make up for the fact that all of us have to die someday.

  5. My sister, Cindy, is a saint. She taught me to read by playing school with me when I was little, and to this day she never treats me bad—plus she has great taste in best friends, wink-wink-hubba-hubba!

  6. Although Mom has a master’s degree in English and could be a college teacher or have some other higher-paying job, she works from home so she can take care of me. If Cindy is a saint, think about what that makes my mom.

  7. I’ll never have to get a lousy part-time job like carrying people’s groceries to their cars in a supermarket parking lot or cleaning out toilets and mopping floors in some crummy restaurant.

  8. In fact, I’ll never have to get any job, which I figure is a good thing since work is a four-letter word …

  9.... so I’ll never have anybody bossing me around—I know this is partly a bad thing as I’ll never get to boss anybody else either, but I don’t think I’d like doing that anyway.

  10. I have a kickass name. Shawn McDaniel is really cool sounding when compared to a name like Elmer Ulysses Fudpucker or Isaac P. Freeley.

  11. I’m living in the most interesting time in all of history: medical science–wise, it is a miracle that a guy like me, with my so-called handicaps, could still even be alive.

  Okay, let’s make this 12 items:

  12. I am in love with Ally Williamson, the girl of my dreams, and while I’d love to find some way to make her fall in love with me too, at least I get to imagine that she’s mine all mine.

  Ah, what the heck, just for good luck let’s make it 13. I didn’t even mention my dream life yet. Did I say dream life? Hey, Ally, here I come!

  Credits

  Cover art © 2000 by Cliff Nielsen

  Copyright

  HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  Stuck in Neutral

  Copyright © 2000 by Terry Trueman

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.epicreads.com

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Trueman, Terry.

  Stuck in neutral / by Terry Trueman

  p. cm.

  Summary: Fourteen-year-old Shawn McDaniel thinks his father may be planning to kill him.

  ISBN 978-0-06-447213-5 (pbk.)

  EPub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN 9780062216991

  [1. Cerebral palsy—Fiction. 2. Physically handicapped—Fiction. 3. Euthanasia—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.T7813St 2000

  99-37098

  [Fic]—dc21

  CIP

  AC

  * * *

  12 13 14 15 16

  CG/RRDH

  40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31

  Revised paperback edition, 2012

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