Keep Holding On

by Susane Colasanti

  Keep

  Holding

  On

  Also by

  Susane Colasanti

  When It Happens

  Take Me There

  Waiting for You

  Something Like Fate

  So Much Closer

  Keep

  Holding

  On

  SUSANE

  COLASANTI

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  VIKING

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2012 by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Susane Colasanti, 2012

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Colasanti, Susane.

  Keep holding on / by Susane Colasanti.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Bullied at school and neglected by her poor, self-absorbed, single mother at home, high school junior Noelle finally reaches the breaking point after a classmate commits suicide.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-57205-4

  [1. Self-perception—Fiction. 2. Bullies—Fiction. 3. Poverty—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C6699Ke 2012

  [Fic]—dc23

  2011028232

  Printed in U.S.A. Set in Minion

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  For Tyler Clementi.

  For every other teen who felt like

  they couldn’t hold on anymore.

  And for everyone who’s been bullied,

  neglected, or left out.

  You are not alone.

  Be strong and never give up.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Resources for Readers

  About the Author

  one

  tuesday, april 5

  (53 days left)

  Julian Porter is blocking me.

  The blocking is probably unintentional. He sits two rows behind me in Spanish. We have to use the same aisle to get to our desks. I know he’s already been to his desk because his notebook and pen are sitting on it. Maybe he forgot something in his locker. Whatever the reason, he’s coming out of our aisle as I’m trying to go in.

  Julian moves over to let me pass. I can feel him smiling down at me, but I can’t really look up at him. Looking at him is beyond intense. It’s like looking at the sun. But I can see him without looking. Images of Julian are burned into my brain. Hazel-green eyes. Disheveled sandy-blond hair. All-American Boy build. Four inches taller than me. Even the intricacies of his glasses are permanently etched in my memory, with their rectangular black frames that glint electric blue when the light catches them a certain way.

  I press up against Julian as I brush past him. We’re talking serious sensory overload here. I’m overwhelmed with more attraction in this instant than I’ve ever felt with Matt Brennan. And I let Matt put his hands all over me.

  I want Julian Porter to put his hands all over me. I want him to take me to his room and kiss me all night.

  Does liking two boys at the same time make me a slut?

  Having Spanish with Julian is excruciating. I’m always wondering if he’s looking at me. Or at least thinking about me. When I’m supposed to be paying attention to imperfect verb conjugation, I’m sneaking looks at Julian instead. There are ways to sneak looks at him without being obvious. Usually, I pretend I’m looking at something to the side and then rely on my peripheral vision. Or I’ll turn around and pretend to be interested when someone in the back is answering a question. I don’t like watching people answer questions, though. I get so nervous when teachers call on me. And the way everyone stares at me when I’m answering makes me even more nervous.

  The bell rings for class to start. Julian comes back to our aisle. My heart pounds so hard I suspect it’s visible to anyone within a five-mile radius. On his way back to his desk, Julian slides two fingers over the fresh page in my notebook.

  Why did he touch my notebook like that?

  What does it mean?

  I have a sudden urge to rip out the page and save it. But if Julian saw me do that, it would be crazy obvious. I might be crazy obvious when I sneak looks at him, too. I should probably cut down on that.

  No one ever wants to sit with me at lunch.

  I never look around in the cafeteria. Being forced to sit here like some trapped zoo animal eating alone for the whole world to watch is embarrassing enough. I really don’t need to see them laughing at me.

  I wish I could be transported to another school in an alternate universe where required learning doesn’t have to involve this traumatic test of survival skills. No one would care if you’re different in the alternate universe. Or maybe everyone would be different. How cool would it be if differences were celebrated? And the more different you were, the better? Fitting in would be a totally foreign concept.

  But no. I’m stuck in this universe.

  Chew.

  Swallow.

  Chew.

  Swallow.

  Don’t look up.

  Tommy sits alone at the small table by the door. I sneak a glance at him. Our eyes lock.

  The Eye Lock says, We are both outsiders.

  We are outsiders for different reasons. Tommy doesn’t fit in due to extreme geekitude. With me, it’s a lot more complicated.

  I look back down at my lunch. Tommy and I have acknowledged that we are both rejects. But each of us will continue to pretend that we’re not the bigger reject.

  My lunch is:

  sandwich consisting of white bread, lettuce, and mayo


  some store-brand potato chips

  water

  I qualify for free lunch, but there’s no way I’d subject myself to that kind of humiliation. You have to show a special card that everyone would see. The free-lunch cards are orange. The normal cards are blue. I’d rather scavenge in our empty refrigerator than have everyone know how poor I am.

  Not that I’d ever buy lunch anyway. Back when I had friends, I might have gone up to get a pack of cookies or something. But now I’d have to walk all the way from the front of the cafeteria to my table in the back with everyone watching. Which would draw even more attention to the fact that I sit alone.

  There’s a snort of laughter from the next table. My shoulders clench.

  Warner Talbot is pointing at my sandwich. I try to avoid sitting near him. But when you’re the person no one wants to sit with, you don’t always have a choice about where you end up.

  “Dude,” Warner says. “Her sandwich is only lettuce!”

  “That’s messed up,” someone at his table says.

  My face burns.

  Their sandwiches are fat with meat and cheese and lettuce and tomato. I bet those cold cuts are the expensive ones from the deli section at the gourmet grocery store. I bet their sandwiches have two kinds of cheese. I try to imagine what it feels like to bite into a sandwich packed with all those things. Crunching through the lettuce. The juicy tomato bursting with flavor. The soft succulence of the meat and cheese.

  Rich-kid sandwiches must taste incredible.

  I try to hide my sad sandwich under the table. That just makes them laugh harder.

  Making fun of me apparently never gets old for Warner Talbot. He’s been exposing my lunches for two years, ever since the first day of ninth grade. All I could find in the refrigerator that day was mayonnaise, mustard, and the end slice of some bread. So I made a mayonnaise and mustard sandwich. Well, half a sandwich—I had to fold the slice of bread over. And somehow, Warner was right there laughing at me. It was like his radar for unfortunate people went ballistic when it detected me, all flashing red lights and wailing sirens.

  Warner says, “Someone throw this girl a biscuit.”

  Everyone at his table laughs.

  They know I can hear them.

  They just don’t care.

  My last class is precalc. The anticipation of freedom in forty-six minutes almost makes me like math.

  I dart to my desk in the second row. I’d much rather sit in the back. But I had to move up this year. Some of the things teachers were writing on the board were starting to look blurry.

  These two rowdy boys who sit in the back bust in right as the bell rings. They’re wearing almost identical polo shirts. Everyone dresses the same around here. Everything is The Same. All of the big suburban houses are practically identical, with their saccharine front yards and indistinguishable driveways and uninspired architectural designs. People in this town hate anything different. No one is allowed to diverge from conformity. Original thoughts, interests, and style choices are strictly prohibited. And if you disobey these rules? There are consequences.

  My town is like thousands of other American towns. You might have heard of it: Middle of Nowhere, USA.

  Welcome to suburban wasteland.

  As if subsisting in a town that’s ultra conventional and entirely devoid of culture weren’t enough fun times, this is the kind of suburbia that borders on the country. So it’s remote enough not to be close to anything interesting. The city is an hour away. Which might as well be twenty hours away without a car. If I had a car, I could escape this hateful town whenever I wanted. I’d drive to the city every day after school and stay until it got late.

  I don’t know why we live here. We don’t even remotely fit in. We rent the second floor of a little, dilapidated house from an old lady who’s lived here forever. The carpet, kitchen appliances, and wallpaper didn’t get the memo that 1964 is ancient history. Newer, bigger houses have gone up all around this one.

  I cannot wait to leave this place and never look back. Maybe I’ll live in the city. Or in another city even farther away. I don’t want to see any of these people ever again. Except Sherae. I’m lucky to have a good friend. She hates how cookie-cutter everything is around here, too.

  Every day is a countdown to graduation. That day I’m set free will be the Best Day Ever. The calendar on my wall has a countdown to the end of the year. I did the same thing last year. Next year will be the last one.

  I want to help make the world a better place when I am far away from here. Because if we’re not improving the world in some way, then what’s the point?

  Things will get better after this.

  They have to.

  two

  thursday, april 7

  (51 days left)

  Sherae is still having nightmares.

  “I’ve been up since four,” she says. She looks even more exhausted than she sounds.

  “I wish there was something I could do,” I tell her. I’d do anything to take her pain away. But I wouldn’t even know how to begin saying the right things to her.

  Sherae is staring into her locker like she forgot what she was looking for.

  “Maybe I should have told someone,” she says.

  I definitely think she should have told someone. I really wanted her to. But Sherae just wanted to forget about it and move on.

  I’m still hoping she’ll change her mind.

  Graffiti in the second-floor girls’ bathroom, written in black marker on the wall above the first sink:

  Noelle Wexler Is Corroded

  There’s this thing I do with Matt Brennan. It’s a secret thing. Something Matt said I can never tell anyone. I really want to tell Sherae. But I promised him I wouldn’t.

  Matt Brennan and I make out.

  We sneak away when we’re supposed to be in study hall. Not every day. Just a few times a week. It’s not like we’re missing anything. And the monitor is so spotty about taking attendance that we usually aren’t even marked absent. We meet behind the stone wall across from the tennis courts. No one ever goes back there. It’s not a nice place to hang out. It’s just a scraggly patch in the middle of some trees. There’s nowhere to sit. It gets muddy when it rains. But it’s good for making out. And when I’m kissing Matt, I can block out everything else.

  Matt has a bad-boy reputation. But just because someone always wears a black motorcycle jacket and looks angry most of the time doesn’t mean he’s trouble. I heard he was into some hardcore stuff like dealing drugs, but he told me those are just rumors. Only, Matt also told me that his parents suspended his allowance, and that’s why he’s working at the gas station. He wouldn’t tell me why he got in trouble. Even though we’re close physically, there’s this distance between us that never seems to go away.

  We don’t say much when we get together at our place. We just start kissing. We haven’t started kissing today, though. I’m still mad about what happened last week.

  “I said I was sorry,” Matt reminds me. “What else do you want?”

  “Um, I don’t know. Not to be your dirty little secret anymore?”

  Matt puts his arms around me. He hugs me close.

  “You know it’s not like that,” he whispers.

  I want to believe him. I really, really do. But he didn’t even tell me it was his birthday last week. I had to find out from overhearing his friends talk about his party. Which I wasn’t invited to.

  “Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?” I ask.

  “No!”

  “Then why can’t we go out and do things like normal people?” I push away from him. This isn’t how a boyfriend is supposed to act after you’ve been together for a whole month. Matt should want us to hang out with his friends. He should want to take me places. But I can’t give up on him. I’m lucky to have him. And I know he can change.

  “You want to go somewhere?” Matt says.

  “Yes.”

  “Fine, we’ll go somewhere.”

 
“When?”

  “Next Friday. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Then Matt starts kissing me. I forget all about the birthday present for him in my bag.

  I have Spanish right before lunch. My stomach always growls in class. When I feel a growl coming on, I’ll do something like cough or flip pages loudly to hide it. It’s so obvious what I’m doing, though. The worst is when we’re taking a test and we have to be quiet for the whole period. I get so nervous that my stomach’s going to growl. Which of course makes it start growling.

  The fact that Julian can hear my stomach growling makes me want to run away and never come back.

  Luckily, it’s a very noisy day in Spanish. Mrs. Yuknis started the class by playing some music. Then she pointed to where the music came from on the South America/Spain combo map. George asked if the music was going to be on the test.

  At the beginning of the year, everyone was assigned a Spanish name. Noelle doesn’t translate to anything, so I got Belén. Julian is Julio. Anything’s better than what George got. He has to be Jorge. Which sucks for him because it’s pronounced “whore-hey.”

  “Entonces,” Mrs. Yuknis says. Then she says a bunch of other stuff in Spanish. I’m totally lost. I know I should know what she’s saying by now. But I’m still clueless most of the time.

  Mrs. Yuknis is wearing the same pants she wore on Monday. She’s done this Monday/Thursday wearing-of-the-same-pants thing before. When the pants make their second appearance of the week, they are considerably more wrinkled. Does she not know we know? Doesn’t it bother her not to have more pants? I think her limited wardrobe is ridiculous. She can buy more clothes any time she wants.

  I know this sounds weird coming from someone who hates school, but I want to be a teacher. I want to reach out to kids who need help. How cool would it be if my class were a place where students could be themselves? I mean we’d still do work and everything, but there wouldn’t be all this stress and nervousness involved. I could connect with kids who feel like outsiders. They’d be able to trust me because I’d know what I’m talking about. Maybe showing them I care will make them feel less alone.