I jogged over to the plate and took the bat when Ty tossed it to me. Ty gave me a look of mute supplication, and I winked at him. When I turned, I saw more looks: Anna’s of challenge, and Kit’s of cheerful expectation, bouncing on his heels, ready to run.
Across the grounds at a window, I saw a shadow moving, and I grinned. I wasn’t going to lose with my best friend watching.
The sun was warm on my hair, my blood already racing. I swung the bat experimentally and couldn’t stop the smile splitting my face.
“I don’t need to know the score,” I said. “I like my team’s chances.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Team Human sprang out of our shared love of vampire stories and long discussions about what kinds of vampires we’d write about if we were ever to do so. We had many vampire questions we wanted to answer. Were vampires actually icy cold or were they room temperature and just felt cold to us non–room temperature types? Somehow it became a dare, and before we knew it we were writing a vampire book together. Best. Fun. Ever.
As we started writing, we gave each other reading lists to round out our vampire education. Both had read Carmilla, Varney the Vampire, and, of course, Dracula, not to mention Anne Rice. But Sarah had not read Suzy McKee Charnas’s The Vampire Tapestry or Tanith Lee’s Sabella, and Justine had never read L. J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries. That had to be corrected! The ensuing discussions shaped Team Human in a plethora of ways. Without those books and our youthful vampire obsession this book would not exist.
We’d like to thank our agents, Jill Grinberg and Kristin Nelson, and everyone at their agencies who found this book such a good home.
Our editors—Anne Hoppe at HarperCollins and Jodie Webster at Allen & Unwin—have been marvelous, and have improved the book in a thousand different ways. The gorgeousness that graces the front cover of our book is thanks to our art director, Amy Ryan, and to Joel Tippie, among many wonderful people—we love our cover and appreciate your work so much! And the final touches were added to our book by our lovely copyeditor, Renée Cafiero.
Our first reader, Scott Westerfeld, who knows a thing or two about vampires, had lots of wonderfully useful suggestions to make. He also gave us the fabulous title.
Ordinarily, we would thank all our writer friends. But we kept this book a secret, which made it even more fun. But thank you, wonderful YA writer friends. You know who you are.
Justine would like to thank Jan Larbalestier and John and Niki Bern for all their support. And, of course, Sarah Rees Brennan, without whom this would never have happened. It’s been a blast, SRB. Thank you. Let’s write another one!
Sarah would like to thank Pat Rees, for giving her Interview with the Vampire when she was nine (thanks, Mum!), and Genevieve Rees Brennan, for reminding her to go see New Moon by asking for a Team Jacob T-shirt. She’d also like to thank Natasha Walsh, for putting up with her making loud phone calls to Australia at one a.m., and most of all, Justine Larbalestier—for taking said loud phone calls, plotting out novels even though it’s traumatic, and single-handedly changing my mind about cowriting being a bad idea to cowriting being the most fantastic idea ever. And like all good ideas, it bears repeating. …
About the Author
Justine Larbalestier lives in Sydney and New York City, and Sarah Rees Brennan in Dublin, Ireland. Thus the writing of TEAM HUMAN involved a lot of chatting online while watching vampire movies, emailing each other, and making frantic phone calls at one a.m./ten a.m. (different time zones, remember). A mutual love of laughter, vampires, romance, and being very, very honest with each other (Sarah: “What have you done with our book, you harlot!” was in retrospect harsh …) (Justine: “Five similes on one page is FIVE TOO MANY!”) carried them through the big challenge: not cowriting, or creating funny vampires, both of which came naturally, but being an Australian and an Irishwoman writing a novel set in the USA!
Justine is also the author of the awardwinning LIAR and several other books. Sarah is the author of THE DEMON’S LEXICON, an ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults, and its sequels. Visit them at www.sarahreesbrennan.com and www.justinelarbalestier.com, where their discussions include writing the sequel to TEAM HUMAN.
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Praise
“No matter what team you’re on, there are characters here you’ll cheer for. Suspense, humor, and romance: TEAM HUMAN has it all!”
—Claudia Gray, New York Times bestselling author of EVERNIGHT
“Incredibly fresh and original—and absolutely charming.”
—Cory Doctorow, New York Times bestselling author of LITTLE BROTHER
“I could not be more a fan of this book than if I had a TEAM HUMAN cheerleader outfit—brilliant, funny, sharply emotional!”
—Rachel Caine, New York Times bestselling author of the Morganville Vampires books
“Funny, scary, touching, and thoughtful in ways you’d never expect: if you love vampire books, this is the book for you—if you hate vampire books, this is also the book for you.”
—Maureen Johnson, New York Times bestselling author of THE NAME OF THE STAR
Credits
Jacket photography © 2012 by Gustavo Marx/MergeLeft Reps, Inc.
Jacket design by Joel Tippie
Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Team Human
Copyright © 2012 by Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan
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 ebook 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 ebooks.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Larbalestier, Justine.
Team Human / Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Residing in New Whitby, Maine, a town founded by vampires trying to escape persecution, Mel finds her negative attitudes challenged when her best friend falls in love with a vampire, another friend’s father runs off with one, and she herself is attracted to someone who tries to pass himself off as one.
ISBN 978-0-06-208964-9 (trade bdg.)
Epub Edition © April 2012 ISBN: 9780062089663
[1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. High schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Maine—Fiction.] I. Brennan, Sarah Rees. II. Title.
PZ7.L32073Te 2012
2011026149
[Fic]—dc23
CIP
AC
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12 13 14 15 16 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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