Girl Mans Up
Page 30
“So stay.”
“You won’t try to send me back? Say you try to bring a girl to your place or something, and I’m sitting there eating chips on the couch—you’re not gonna try to send me back?”
Johnny slows the truck and pulls over to the curb. “I got that second room for you, all right? Listen up, Pen—I swear to god you can relax and stop worrying, because I’m not gonna send you back. Even if you act like a little douche, I won’t send you back. Got it?”
“Even if I don’t sweep?”
“Unless you start stealing from me, or you do heroin, or hurt animals, you’re good.”
I nod, and Johnny puts the truck in drive.
While we head home, I think about how when I grow up, I want to be just like my brother. That’s the kind of girl I want to be.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THANKS TO . . .
I shall begin my thanks with Linda Epstein, my agent. Linda—you picked Pen and me out of the pile, whipped us into shape, and guided us through the whole book publishing thing. I owe you many, many thanks for being a badass agent. To my editor, Jill Davis—I am so thankful for the awesome experience of working with you. You knew exactly where this story needed to go. It would not have grown into what it is without your expert input and guidance. Mega-thanks to the folks at Harper. First, the Katherine Tegen Books people, including Katherine Tegen and Katie Bignell. Then to the HarperTeen group, including Ro Romanello, Stephanie Hoover in publicity, and Nellie Kurtzman’s marketing team, including Bess Braswell, Elizabeth Ward, Julie Yeater, and Sabrina Aballe. I’m insanely proud to be sending this book out into the world through Harper and its badass team of professionals. I am so grateful for HarperCollins Canada and the stellar opportunity to be co-pubbed in my kickass country. Melissa Zilberberg, Cory Beatty, Shamin Alli, Suzanne Sutherland, and Hadley Dyer—plus all the people I met during my visits at the offices: You guys are so welcoming, professional, and enthusiastic, it blew me away. Special thank you to my Canadian editor, Suzanne. I’m so glad the timing of all this brought us together! Thank you to Alexei Esikoff, Mark Rifkin, and Veronica Ambrose: Your thorough copyediting and proofreading skills left me feeling like you’ve got some kind of superhero powers. Jacket artist Adams Carvalho and designer Katie Fitch: You guys made my book cover kick some serious ass, and I thank you both a million times for that. Malinda Lo, you chose me to be one of your Lambda workshop participants, and then you went above and beyond. I am beyond grateful for all the support you’ve given me. Thank you for all of your advice and many discussions about Pen and her story. I didn’t have to explain—you just got who she is! To Michael Cart, I. W. Gregorio, Lauren Myracle, Sarah Ryan, and Ariel Schrag: It is an honor—and a mind-blowing fangirl experience—to count you amongst my first readers. Thanks for the words! I must thank Julie Anne Peters for writing the book that sparked my love of contemporary queer YA. It’s no coincidence that Pen’s high school is named St. Peter’s. Thanks to my friend Laura Chandra—who I met at the 2013 Lambda retreat—for being the fastest and most thorough beta reader ever. Your feedback was invaluable when it came to rewriting the crap out of this story. I want to thank Lambda Literary and the YA/Genre workshop crew for giving me the opportunity to live amongst queer people for a week (twice!), for the many friends I’ve made, and for opening my eyes in a million different ways. Thank you to all the writers I’ve met along the way for the support, the tips, the opportunities to rant, and the many examples of what being a writer can look like. I also have to mention the stellar coffeehouses that allowed me to sit for hours while I wrote, revised, and rewrote—Coffee Culture, Williams Coffee, Starbucks, and the few indie spots I tried out in between. Combined, you were the best office this working writer could ask for. To my family for not laughing at me when I started going around saying I was suddenly a writer, and thanks in advance for buying multiple copies of my book. For real, though, I have the kind of parents who brought me up to believe I literally could go as far as I felt like taking myself—no limits. Maman et Papa, je le sais que vous êtes fiers de moi pour cette idée folle de devenir écrivaine, pis c’est pas mal encourageant, donc . . . merci! And finally, thank you to Melissa Silva for the inspiration, the insider look at all the Portuguese goodness, for reading almost every draft of this story, and for dragging me deeper into gaming, toys, and horror. I <3 you. There would be no Pen if it wasn’t for you.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo courtesy of M-E Girard
M-E GIRARD lives just outside Toronto, Canada, where she splits her time between writing YA fiction about badass teen girls and working nights as a pediatric nurse. A 2013 and 2015 Lambda Literary Fellow, M-E is a proud feminist who is endlessly fascinated by the good, the bad, and the ugly regarding the concept of gender. You can find her online at www.megirard.com and all over social media.
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CREDITS
Cover art © 2016 by Adams Carvalho
Cover design by Katie Fitch
COPYRIGHT
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
GIRL MANS UP. Copyright © 2016 by M-E Girard. 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 hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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ISBN 978-0-06-240417-6
EPub Edition © August 2016 ISBN 9780062404190
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