Mom and Dad exchange glances, then Mom looks at me with a sense of urgency. “Summer, you’re going to be fine,” she says decisively. “You’re going to go to school Monday and have a wonderful day. Then you’re going to have a wonderful year. Then you’re going to get on with the rest of your life.”
I nod. “I know. I’m not superstitious or anything. I know it’ll be just another day. But … I’ve been thinking about Shannon a lot lately.” I look at Mom steadily. “Tell me about the last weekend of her life,” I say gently. “Right where we are today: the weekend before the senior year of high school. What was her last weekend like?”
Mom’s jaw drops slightly. The pendulum on the mahogany grandfather clock ticks dully.
“Please tell me,” I plead. “If I know, I won’t wonder.”
Mom bright-blue eyes widen. They’re suddenly moist. Dad intertwines his fingers.
“There was nothing remarkable about that weekend,” Mom says, staring out the window. “Shannon was a little down. She’d had a crush over the summer on some boy …” Her lip curls. “I think, by the end of the summer, she realized it was just infatuation. But still … it was hard for her.”
“Did she talk to you about it?” I prod.
“Do you talk to me about those sorts of things?” Mom asks defensively. “Teenagers don’t talk to their mothers.”
“She talked to me.”
Dad’s voice is so small, we barely hear the words. But our eyes fall on him immediately. “She talked to me about him,” he repeats.
I lean in closer. “What did she say?”
He opens his mouth, but closes it. Then he opens it again … and a sob rushes out.
I lean in to hug him. He grips me so hard, I wonder if my ribs will break.
“Randall,” Mom says, but her voice is kind.
“She was in love with him,” Dad says through his tears, still holding me close.
“She wasn’t in love …” Mom protests.
“She was in love,” Dad repeats. “I tried to warn her, but she was … she was a kid. He broke her heart, of course. She cried her eyes out to me, right before she died.”
“What did you tell her?” I ask.
“I told her I was sorry, that she deserved better. That he was nothing, that she’d have a million more boyfriends.”
He sobs openly now. Mom’s face crinkles like a leaf. The mail drops from her fingers and her hands shake.
“It was nothing,” she insists, weeping. “It was just a silly little crush.”
“It wasn’t nothing,” Dad says firmly, pulling away from me and rubbing his fists roughly against his cheeks. “It wasn’t nothing.”
A long moment hangs in the air.
“Still,” Dad finally says, his voice steadier now, “she was okay. She was getting through it. I told her she should go shopping with her mother. Shopping always cheered her up.”
Mom walks toward us. “She bought four pairs of shoes,” she says, smiling through her tears. “It was ridiculously extravagant, but we decided we could both wear the shoes, so what the heck. We had the same shoe size.”
Mom stoops at the foot of my chair. Dad looks at her tenderly. “Those shoes are still in the boxes in my closet,” she says.
“Shannon and your mother were very close,” Dad tells me.
Mom smiles wanly through her tears. “She was tough on me,” she says. “Like you are, Summer. She kept me on my toes. She hadn’t always been that way—just toward the end. She was suddenly questioning everything, making me justify everything I said or did. It was exhausting.”
She laughs lightly, and Dad and I smile at her.
“My girls have really managed to put me in my place,” she says, reaching over and placing a cool palm against my cheek.
“We love you,” I say, then blush self-consciously. “I love you. I know Shannon did, too.”
Mom’s face crinkles again. “She did,” she says emphatically. “She did love me. Both of my babies love me.”
I nod. “How could we not? You’re so damn lovable.”
Laughter sputters through Mom’s lips, then Dad and I join in, all of us laughing through our tears.
“Hey, guess what,” I say after a few moments, gazing at their rosy cheeks and bright, moist eyes. “Gibs and I are … let’s see, what lame term did Aunt Nic use? We’re an item.”
Mom’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, so we’re confiding in Mommy now, are we!”
I love the sparkle in her eyes. “I guess we are. But don’t start picking out china patterns or anything. Play it cool, Mom. Please.”
She swats me playfully on the leg. “I’ve been playing it cool all summer! You think a mother doesn’t know these things?”
I pause and glance at Shannon’s watercolor portrait on the wall. Her hair is windblown in the image, her white cotton dress blowing, her feet bare on a sandy shore as waves lap at her ankles.
“I don’t want to keep secrets,” I say softly, then swallow hard and continue. “There’s something I’d like you guys to see …”
A Conversation with
Christine Hurley Deriso
Where did the idea for Then I Met My Sister come from?
I wanted to explore the idea of connectivity … that we’re all linked to both the past and the future in ways that defy time or space. I never knew my ancestors, but I’m intrigued about how the seeds they cast long ago are influencing my life today. Likewise, I wonder how the choices I’m making will affect my descendants. I was intrigued by the concept of Summer reaching into her past to shape her future.
I also wanted to explore relationships that resonate strongly with me. I’m a mother, a daughter, and a sister, and I love the complexities and nuances of those roles. I like trying to see behind the façade of people’s personalities and understanding the insecurities and vulnerabilities that lie beneath the surface. For instance, perfectionist control-freak Susanne seems so easy to dislike until you peel away the layers. I loved the challenge of trying to make her lovable, or at least understandable. I think books can do that better than any other art form: remind us of our shared humanity, our shared frailties, and inspire a bit of insight and compassion.
I was also interested in exploring the life of an average teen. Teenage years have always been challenging, but life for today’s teens seems almost unbearably stressful. I know it’s important to plan for the future, but our society seems to give teens no room at all to live for the moment, to appreciate the present as a gift in its own right rather than as a stepping stone to the future. It’s stripped a lot of spontaneity and joy from teens’ lives, and I think that’s really sad.
I want teens to trust their wisdom, their bravery, their insight, and their instincts. I want them to explore what they want from life, rather than what others (like Summer’s momzilla mom) are thrusting on them. But mostly I want them to have a sense of humor … to be able to step back and laugh at the absurdities of life and know that this, too, shall pass. I want them to recognize the universality in the human condition and to have compassion for everyone they encounter. I want them to be joyful. I want them to lose themselves in a good book, and to learn about themselves in the process. That’s why I wrote this book.
Summer’s got a very … interesting relationship with her family. What was your family like as a teen?
I’m the fourth of five children, and like Summer, I was intimidated by the standard set by my older siblings. They were very high-achieving, and by the time I was in high school, I’d settled into academic mediocrity, masking my insecurity as non-conformity. Thank heaven my parents took it in stride, because I’m not sure I could have mastered calculus under the best of circumstances.
In fact, my mom was the anti-momzilla. She’s unconditionally loving, very open-minded, and whole-heartedly accepting of my choices. She never used guilt or manipulation to try to get her way. When I wrote the character of Summer’s control-freak mother, Susanne, I thought, “What would Mom do?” Then Susanne would do
the opposite.
My parents are also extremely bright, well-read, and creative, so my teenage years were filled with lots of music, books, and interesting dinner conversation. Mom wrote poetry, Dad wrote songs, and we all tended to follow their lead of creativity and self-expression.
Maybe it was because my family was such a tight unit that I was a pretty introverted teen. I spent a lot of time reading and playing my guitar. I had a few close friends, but I hated forced fun, like parties. I wish I’d nudged myself a little more out of my comfort zone than I did, but I always sensed my best days were ahead, and I just wasn’t very interested in typical teenage stuff. Proms? Whatever. I had the great American novel to write! (I hadn’t quite mastered the finer points of modesty at that point.)
In the book, Summer is raised with a very different idea of who her sister was than the one she comes to find in the diary. Have you ever found your perception of someone challenged and been forced to change your view?
Definitely, both for better and for worse. We’ve all been disillusioned by public figures who have fallen from grace, for instance, and I think every example is a cautionary tale that we shouldn’t put people on pedestals. We’re all human and we all have the potential for the full range of human behavior. The better we understand that, both about others and about ourselves, the more compassion and insight we can bring to our relationships.
Of course, one of the great joys in life is changing your view of someone else for the better. That’s happened in my life too many times to count. When I was younger, for instance, my own insecurities led me to equate popularity with superficiality, or self-confidence with snobbishness. I wonder how many relationships I cut off at the pass with these silly assumptions.
The older I get, the more I realize how unreliable impressions can be. The jerk who cuts you off in traffic, for instance, may have just come from a doctor’s appointment with a cancer diagnosis. You just never know what people are going through. I hope as I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown more understanding and compassionate.
If you had been in Summer’s shoes, would you have had the courage to read the diary?
I think I would have had the courage to read it, but I wouldn’t have had the courage to make the choice she makes at the end of the book. Like Summer, I tend to be pretty guarded, yet somehow assume people know what I’m thinking. My excellent and insightful Flux editor spotted that right away when he read the first draft of the novel. “Let us into Summer’s head more,” he’d tell me. “We need to know what she’s thinking.”
I thought, “What’s he talking about?” For instance, in my mind, Summer was clearly in love with Gibs; it went without saying … didn’t it? Uh … no, it didn’t. Forcing myself to reveal more of Summer was forcing myself to reveal more of myself to the reader. It felt like therapy … scary, but ultimately very liberating and cathartic.
In guiding Summer to strip away layers of secrecy and duplicity, leading to the denouement of sharing the journal with her parents, I became braver and more self-revelatory myself. I wish I’d learned Summer’s lessons earlier in my own life.
As a writer and as a reader, what types of stories interest you?
Authenticity is key. If a character’s voice doesn’t ring true, I’m not interested in reading further.
I also like witty dialogue. I love Scout’s irreverence and insouciance in To Kill a Mockingbird, the timeless charm of Mark Twain’s characters, and the sardonic edge of a writer like David Sedaris.
Imagination gets high marks from me as well. I’ve incorporated the supernatural into a couple of my novels because … well, in fiction, you can do whatever you want, so why not? I like being surprised and transported. For instance, I was gripped by the creepiness of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.
I also value bravery in books. Writing can be like therapy. The more honest it is, the more it will resonate with readers. What teen can’t identify with Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye ? What dysfunctional family can’t relate to Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club? The best writers never flinch.
Life lessons are fine in stories, but they should seduce the reader, not club him over the head. If a dose of nobility sneaks up on a reader, great, but it should never be at the expense of authentic writing or great storytelling. I hate preachiness and self-righteousness. We all have lessons to learn, and the more honest a writer is, the more evident that is. A writer’s agenda shouldn’t be to impart a lesson; it should be to let wisdom reveal itself naturally in the course of great storytelling.
Nicole Renee Photography
About the Author
Christine Hurley Deriso is the award-winning author of three middle grade novels. She has also contributed to Ladies’ Home Journal, Parents, and other national magazines. Visit her online at www.christinehurleyderiso.com.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
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39
Interview with the Author
About the Author
Then I Met My Sister Page 19