by Laura McNeal
Q: You both really seem to get into the mind frame of today’s teens. How do you do that? Do you spend time with teenagers or just remember your own teenage years?
A: Tom: Those teenage years are painful enough to stay with you until death or dementia. The funny thing is, even though adolescence was a horrible place to live, I now find it a really interesting place to visit.
Laura: I think adolescence is always the same. You always think you are ugly. You always worry that you will ruin your life. You always hope that the next person you meet, or the next place you go, will change everything.
Q: Is the character of Audrey Reed based upon anyone from your own life?
A: Laura: Audrey Reed is not based on an actual person, though I was glad to give her the laundry room from the apartment building where I once lived in Syracuse, New York. The book is fiction, but the laundry room is real.
Tom: Well, the fact of the matter is that the first rough model for Audrey is Laura herself, at least the adolescent I imagined Laura to be: tall, thin, long-haired, witty, self-deprecating, and a demon student. Also, fetching. That should have been the first modifier actually. Fetching.
Laura: I have to repeat my first answer here—Audrey is not based on a real person.
Q: Why do you think Wickham Hill is attracted to Audrey?
A: Tom: Wickham is very sensitive to class distinctions. He has come from a region of the country—the South—where there is still a faint whiff of class hierarchy, and where his status was shaky. In a way that’s both innocent and selfish, he seeks a person who can make him feel secure. Audrey initially seems to live in the secure realm of wealth.
Q: Did you have an experience in your own life with a Theo Driggs–like character?
A: Laura: Not to the degree that Audrey does. My mother was always telling me to take a dime with me on dates in case the boy said, “Give in or walk.” I guess she thought the boy would also give me the option of getting out of the car and making a convenient phone call. Theo is the dark incarnation of those dimes, I suppose.
Tom: I never knew a Theo Driggs, but what I notice is that most of the thugs in our books are compact, muscular, and tightly wound—exactly the type of guy that I as a tall, skinny, recessive type feared most in high school. So Theo Driggs may well be those teenage fears come to life. What’s funny about this is how much pleasure I take in writing this kind of character.
Q: What were your favorite books as children, and do you have favorite children’s books or authors that you read now?
A: Laura: I have a deep attachment to certain children’s books, including The Meanest Squirrel I Ever Met by Gene Zion, Mouse Tales by Arnold Lobel, and Corduroy by Don Freeman. In my childhood, books served the role of security blanket and pet.
Tom: I had pets myself, but that didn’t steer me clear of the literary animal kingdom. I remember the Babar books fondly, and later Freddy the Pig. When I was ready for humans, Great Expectations was a big event for me, the first book that, as an adolescent, I could completely immerse myself in.
Q: What advice can you give to teens who aspire to become writers?
A: Tom: To adults, I usually say, Don’t quit the day job. So for teens, I’d probably say, Keep prepping for the SAT. But the truth is, there are some things you can do to move the process along. For example, you don’t find many published writers who didn’t start as demon readers. So I’d say read everything decent you can get your hands on. And for a lot of writers, both beginning and not, keeping a journal is good both for getting the juices flowing and for storing ideas that might one day prove useful. The idea for our next book (The Decoding of Lana Morris) is one I’d jotted down years ago, and when Laura recently figured out a new way to use it, we were off and running. And lastly, I’d say, Go into it for the right reasons, which have nothing at all to do with fame and glory.
Laura: It may sound obvious, but for me an important turning point was to look at a seven-page story I’d spent weeks writing and rewriting, agonizing over every word and how well or inadequately it expressed my complex and deep emotions, and I thought, “Why would someone want to read this?” Sometimes you’re thinking so much about your feelings (which are admittedly intense, so intense that they drive you to write) that you forget the reasons people read. They read for escape, resolution, epiphany, and to feel affection for the world you put them in. So I think it helps, when you’re writing, to practice making that fictional world, and to look at the real world around you, and to notice every little thing about it.
READERS CIRCLE BOOKS
Before We Were Free • Julia Alvarez • 978-0-440-23784-6
Under a dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in 1960, young Anita lives
through a fight for freedom that changes her world forever.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Ann Brashares • 978-0-385-73058-7
Over a few bags of cheese puffs, four girls decide to form a sisterhood and take the vow of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. The next morning, they say goodbye. And then the journey of the Pants, and the most memorable summer of their lives, begin.
The Chocolate War • Robert Cormier • 978-0-375-82987-1
Jerry Renault dares to disturb the universe in this groundbreaking and now classic novel, an unflinching portrait of corruption and cruelty in a boys’ prep school.
The Rag and Bone Shop • Robert Cormier • 978-0-440-22971-1
A seven-year-old girl is brutally murdered. A twelve-year-old boy named Jason was the last person to see her alive—except, of course, for the killer. Unless Jason is the killer.
The Parallel Universe of Liars
Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson • 978-0-440-23852-2
Surrounded by superficiality, infidelity, and lies, Robin, a self-described chunk, isn’t sure what to make of her hunky neighbor’s sexual advances, or of the attention paid her by a new boy in town who seems to notice more than her body.
Girl, 15, Charming but Insane • Sue Limb • 978-0-385-73215-4
With her hilariously active imagination, Jess Jordan has a tendency to complicate her life, but now, as she’s finally getting closer to her crush, she’s determined to keep things under control. Readers will fall in love with Sue Limb’s insanely optimistic heroine.
The Silent Boy • Lois Lowry • 978-0-440-41980-8
When tragedy strikes a small turn-of-the-century town, only Katy realizes what the gentle, silent boy did for his family. He meant to help, not harm.
It didn’t turn out that way.
Shades of Simon Gray • Joyce McDonald • 978-0-440-22804-2
Simon is the ideal teenager—smart, reliable, hardworking, trustworthy. Or is he? After Simon’s car crashes into a tree and he slips into a coma, another portrait of him begins to emerge.
Zipped • Laura and Tom McNeal • 978-0-375-83098-3
In a suspenseful novel of betrayal, forgiveness, and first love, fifteen-year-old Mick Nichols opens an e-mail he was never meant to see—and learns a terrible secret.
In My Hands
Irene Gut Opdyke with Jennifer Armstrong • 978-0-553-49411-2
Irene Gut was just seventeen when war broke out in her native Poland. Forced to work as a housekeeper for a Nazi major, she successfully hid twelve Jews in the basement of his home until the Germans’ defeat.
Milkweed • Jerry Spinelli • 978-0-440-42005-7
He’s a boy called Jew. Gypsy. Stopthief. Runt. He’s a boy who lives in the streets of Warsaw. He’s a boy who wants to be a Nazi someday, with tall, shiny jackboots of his own. Until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind—the day he realizes it’s safest of all to be nobody.
Stargirl • Jerry Spinelli • 978-0-440-41677-7
Stargirl. From the day she arrives at quiet Mica High in a burst of color and sound, the hallways hum with the murmur of “Stargirl, Stargirl.” The students are enchanted. Then they turn on her.
Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind
Suzanne Fisher Staples • 978-0-440-238
56-0
Life is both sweet and cruel to strong-willed young Shabanu, whose home is the windswept Cholistan Desert of Pakistan. She must reconcile her duty to her family and the stirrings of her own heart in this Newbery Honor–winning modern-day classic.
ALSO AVAILABLE: The Decoding of Lana Morris
BY LAURA AND TOM MCNEAL
Sixteen-year-old Lana Morris wishes her life were different. She wishes Veronica Winters, her Ice Queen of a foster mother, would leave her alone. She wishes K.C. and Trina and Spink—the only teens around, not counting the “special needs” kids in the Winters house— would let her into their creepy little club. She wishes she knew what to do about her feelings for Whit, her foster father.
Then Lana stumbles into Miss Hekkity’s mysterious antique shop and trades her most valued possession for a single box of paper: thirteen thick, pink-flecked sheets enclosed in a black leather case. Thirteen blank pages . . . like thirteen wishes waiting to be made. As soon as Lana’s charcoal pencil meets the paper, strange events begin to unfold—whatever she draws seems to happen, and whatever she erases comes undone. But just as Lana starts to think she might actually have the power to change things, a carefully drawn wish threatens to harm those she loves most.
Award-winning authors Laura and Tom McNeal weave a warm-hearted and suspenseful story about the power—and danger—of a wish.
ALSO AVAILABLE:
Crooked
BY LAURA AND TOM MCNEAL
“This book has everything: likable characters, a terrific plot, and plenty of suspense.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
“A pleasure. The McNeals have an uncanny ear for teen dialogue.” —Booklist
“Suspenseful. . . . This novel has the makings of a truly masterful juvenile thriller. The writing style is gripping.” —Children’s Literature
Winner of the California Book Award for Juvenile Literature
An ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults
A Booklist Top 10 Youth Romance
A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age
ALSO AVAILABLE:
Zipped
BY LAURA AND TOM MCNEAL
“The McNeals spin a wonderfully rich story.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Well-realized, sympathetic teen and adult characters populate this novel packed with family problems, romance, and wry humor.” —School Library Journal
“The McNeals skillfully weave together several story lines in their well-honed novel about young suburbanites who face adult complications. . . . Readers will be sucked in as Mick and Lisa begin to see ‘the face behind the face behind the face.’” —Publishers Weekly
Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award
for Children’s Literature
A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age
About the Authors
Laura Rhoton McNeal is a graduate of Brigham Young University with a master’s degree in fiction writing from Syracuse University. She taught middle school and high school English before becoming a novelist and journalist.
Tom McNeal graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University. His prize-winning stories have been widely anthologized, and his novel Goodnight, Nebraska won the James A. Michener Memorial Prize and the California Book Award for Fiction.
Together, Laura and Tom McNeal are the authors of two award-winning novels set in the same town as Crushed: Crooked, winner of the California Book Award for Juvenile Literature and an ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults, and Zipped, winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Children’s Literature. The McNeals live in Fallbrook, California, with their two sons, Sam and Hank.
Also by Laura and Tom McNeal
Crooked
Zipped
The Decoding of Lana Morris
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Laura McNeal and Tom McNeal
KNOPF, BORZOI BOOKS, and the colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com/teens
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McNeal, Laura.
Crushed / by Laura and Tom McNeal.
p. cm.
SUMMARY: Seventeen-year-old Audrey’s life is turned upside down when her father
loses his job, she falls in love with a mysterious newcomer, her best friend betrays
her, and a vicious gossip sheet exposes the secrets of both students and teachers
at her school.
[1. Gossip—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. Family problems—
Fiction. 4. Secrets—Fiction. 5. High schools—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction.]
I. McNeal, Tom. II. Title.
PZ7.M47879365Cru 2006
[Fic]—dc22
2005004320
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-43325-1
v3.0_r1