Find Me I'm Yours

by Hillary Carlip

  Find Me I’m Yours

  by

  Hillary Carlip

  Find Me I’m Yours

  Copyright © 2014 by Hillary Carlip

  Published 2014 by RosettaBooks

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  The quotation from “Music Masters,” by Jalal al-Din Rumi, is reprinted by the courtesy of the translator, Coleman Barks.

  The quotation from On the Road by Jack Kerouac, published by Penguin Group (USA), is reprinted by the courtesy of John Sampas.

  Cover design by Carly Schnur. Cover photo by Barbara Green.

  ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795343278

  For our angel Ellen Weiss Kander, who has been watching over our bizayness since the beginning, and the rest of her clan whom we love and adore as our own: Gregg, Ben, Jake, and Kate Kander.

  Contents

  How to Read This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Epilogue

  Websites in the FMIY Storyverse

  Acknowledgments

  Credits

  About the Author

  How to Read This Book

  Welcome!

  Find Me I’m Yours is a CLICK LIT® entertainment experience.

  It begins as a novel, which you can read straight through, with loads to get lost in right here on the pages, including:

  Original artwork

  Handwritten lists

  Graphics

  Photographs

  Memes

  And more!

  You can go even deeper by clicking on embedded links that take you to:

  33 custom designed websites: While some have clues to the treasure hunt at the crux of the story, and others invite you to share, interact, connect, and engage, all of the sites are there for you to have a dynamic, expansive, fun, and fresh experience while reading Find Me I’m Yours that continues on well after you finish the book!

  Original videos: Many feature clues, and all bring the story to life.

  Polls & Other Fun-Filled Schtuff: The main character, Mags Marclay, sometimes asks for your advice—you’ll be able to click through and respond to her. There are also phone numbers you can call to hear from other characters, and additional interactive elements.

  Keep in mind—some older eReaders may not click through to the videos and websites, or could show everything in black and white. So if you’re reading on one of them, be sure to have another device nearby!

  Find Me I’m Yours—the book and its entire “storyverse”—is there for you to experience whenever you want, however you choose. So dive on in!

  Hope you enjoy!

  XO Hillary Carlip

  The minute I heard my first love story

  I started looking for you, not knowing

  how blind that was.

  Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.

  They’re in each other all along.

  —Rumi

  Chapter 1

  I’m pretty sure I spotted him at the 99¢ store, buying a can of deviled ham. Ya gotta love a boy who eats deviled ham AND appreciates a bargain.

  Or that could have been him at the ATM carrying a tuba. Who frickin’ takes a tuba to the bank?! I could easily fall in love with that.

  Or he might have been at Intelligentsia, ordering a Dirty Chai and sporting a killer tattoo.

  I think I see him everywhere. At the Laundromat with headphones on, not realizing he’s singing along way loud; walking his one-eared dog.

  But what am I gonna do? I’m too shy to go up to any one of these random strangers. And what would I say? “Hey, Random Stranger, I have reason to believe you just might be my soul mate”?

  And, really, I can’t even say the word SOUL. Back in the day it meant something. Like sweaty Gospel churches, or tortured love poems:

  “If you were here, if you were only here,

  My blood cries out to you all night in vain

  As sleepless as the rain.”

  —Sara Teasdale

  Soulful, right?! But now SOUL has been so diluted, misused, and abused. Case in point:

  (What, are there so many Horse Lovers they had to publish a second volume?)

  But I’m certain he’s out there. Well, most likely. Possibly. Maybe? I fucking hope so.

  I’ve believed in true love since I was five years old and fell for a boy named Boo who took off all of his clothes while we were at the top of the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island, and threw them into the Atlantic below. His mom bought a sequined cape off the back of a fire eater to place over Boo’s naked body, and we rode the subway home, my first love covered in stardust.

  There’ve been several boys since Boo (none with such a cool mom!) and every time I think, THIS IS IT! But then each Mr. HIM clearly does not see me as Mrs. HER since they: 1. Lied. 2. Cheated. 3. Said they just wanted to be friends. 4. Slept with my next-door neighbor (yeah, that was my most recent ex, Jason, who I was with for a year and a half). Good times.

  It’s been one month, one week, and four days since I broke up with Jason. It’s a big improvement that I stopped counting hours and minutes. And at least I’m not so far gone that I ever counted seconds! I’ve been quite mature around this breakup. Here’s proof:

  Anyways (or is it singular ANWAY? I always mess that up—and TOWARDS or TOWARD? Same.) So anywho… I’m sure if I went up to any of these guys, it would be an epic fail. Most boys are looking for someone taller, bustier, and hot pantsier. I’m always the pretty girl’s best friend. The one who in her senior year of high school shaved her legs in stripes. The one who can’t see the E on the eye chart without her glasses (sure, I find the cutest vintage frames poss, but still…). And my style? I’m known to cut up and sew halves of two different cardigan sweaters together as one (yeah, you ain’t the only fashionEEKsta, Tavi Gevinson!).

  I’ve been called “arty,” “interesting,” and “quirky,”
which might work for me if I still lived in NYC. But in L.A.? Not so much.

  I’m terrified that finding the guy I want to spend my life with will be just like everything else I’ve started and never finished.

  Things I’ve Started and Never Finished

  By Mags Marclay

  1). College. Dropped out after a year of community college because I couldn’t see how “Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometries” would do me any good as an artist.

  2). Art school. Dropped out after a year cuz my financial aid ran out and my mother (who has been a single mom since my dad left when I was seven) couldn’t afford to send me, and I couldn’t pay cuz I got fired from my waitressing job for threatening a customer. Is someone saying, “Let go of my breast or I’ll shove this shish kabob skewer up your ass” really a threat to be taken seriously? It would be awfully difficult to carry out (and I wouldn’t waste a perfectly good shish kabob on some jerk’s ass).

  3). Being gay. I tried with Liza in high school, and although we had an awesome time together (and she’s still my oldest bestie), I just like boys more. (BTW, Liza DID finish this one and she’s been happy with Kelly for three years! Props to them!)

  4). Moving to L.A.—all my stuff is still at my mom’s apartment in the East Village cuz I thought, “Well, I’ll see how I like it before really moving.” That was two years ago. I guess I’m still seeing how I like it.

  5). My adolescence. You’re supposed to be done when you’re, what, eighteen? Twenty? I’m twenty-four now, and still wholly unprepared and unwilling to plunge into adulthood.

  6). Every art project I’ve started in an effort to keep me disciplined and creating work consistently, like my COLLAGE A WEEK website. Which turned into Collage a Month, then Collage Semiannually. Oh well… You can still go see the ten or so collages I managed to post.

  www.CollageAWeek.com

  Here’s a sample:

  7). And DIY in the USA, a collection of photos I’ve taken of weird, random patriotic displays (people are so BUSY in the USA!). I started posting the pics on a Tumblr, then found out I wasn’t the only one who spotted these questionable spectacles, so I let peeps submit their own and now I’m much more interested in their pics than mine! So if you’ve seen (or made?!) anything that looks a little somethin’ like this…

  …then go to www.DIYintheUSA.com and share your find.

  8). There are so many more things I’ve started, but why even bother finishing the list? AMIRIGHT?!

  I’d like to think that someday soon I’ll cross #5 off, grow up maybe a tiny, little bit, and do something really important. Or at least make a few jaws drop along the way.

  So as I was saying, probs finding the guy I want to spend my life with will end up on that list, too. Coco, my best friend in L.A., kicks my ass daily about how there’s no such thing as a soul mate. How there’s no MR. HIM, only MR. FIND SOMEONE YOU LOVE AND CONNECT WITH, AND FIGURE OUT A WAY TO MAKE IT FREAKIN’ WORK. She’s married to an awesome guy, Blake, so I suppose I have to listen to her, right?

  Wrong. I’m not gonna settle for anything less than a true love story.

  Sure, I’ll probably end up a lonely bachelorette, living with a chimpanzee. They’re good company, and they do speak in sign language. But then I’d have to learn sign language. And buy diapers. And bananas. On second thought, it would be cheaper to raise a sloth. They just eat flower petals and leaves. But then there’s the mani/pedi expense I’d incur. Hmmm.

  So yeah, I’m a believer trapped in a nonbeliever’s body. I’m pessimistically optimistic. I think a happy ending could happen to me, but every time I’ve tried, my dreams are dashed. It’s like a boxer getting up from the mat with arms wide open—“Come on beat the shit out of me again.” Maybe it’s better to stay down for the ten count, then go home and nurse my wounds. Or at least get up with gloves poised in protection. Either way does not make for an overly optimistic person. And why, you might (not) ask? THE NEWMAN CURSE. Yeah, for reals. My mom and grandma even gave it a name!! (Their maiden name, so maybe it wasn’t actually passed down to me, Mags Marclay?! Right…) My dad left my mom alone with two children to raise—he played keyboards in some well-known ’90s rock bands. Here’s something I put together of my father. Uh… that’s OF my father, not FOR my father. There’s a diff.

  Click the pic to watch the video:

  That’s the most I’ve seen of him in seventeen years.

  Since my dad split, Mom hasn’t found anyone else to share her life with. Her mother, my Grandma Dotty, had three failed marriages, and is also alone. They both get through each day thanks to psychotropic drugs, and together they decided that when it comes to relationships, the women in the Newman/Marclay clan are cursed. I’ve been warned my whole life to “watch out for the curse.”

  So why would I ever trust that finding my mate could even be the remotest possibility? Because of one moment. One life-changing, reality-altering, mind-blowing moment that occurred when I least expected it.

  After it happened I had to go gather all my scattered brain matter and mush it back together before I could make sense of what I saw in that moment, and even then, I still couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

  It started as a series of events that had to have been divinely choreographed. The kind so seemingly mundane and random, yet so perfectly planned—if you saw them in a movie you’d be all, “No fucking way.” But let me tell you, I’m here to say, “Oh yeah fucking way!”

  Rewind to two days ago. Here’s how it went down.

  Chapter 2

  Is it ironic that I’m the only single person working at Bridalville magazine? Ironic or just pathetic? I might as well work at Young Spinsters.

  I’ve been a graphic designer at Bridalville, an online humor mag start-up, for the past six months. And even though it’s an irreverent take on all things wedding, every day I’m still surrounded by killer ideas for alt ceremonies, hot grooms, and adorbs couples that make my 8–5 workdays spill into 24/7 of feeling utterly SOLO. At least I get to do cool graphics as opposed to if I worked at, say, Metal Welders Association magazine.

  Check it out: www.Bridalville.com

  Oh, if you go to the ABOUT section, you’ll see Coco. But she was wearing a wig when the photo was taken—because she didn’t want to wash her hair that day. Seriously. That’s exactly why she quickly became my best friend when I moved to L.A. Well, that and the fact she has lines tattooed down the back of her legs to look like she’s some ’50s bombshell wearing seamed nylons—we both feel like we were born in the wrong era. Coco’s twenty-eight and has been married for four years. MY IDOL! =)

  Coco’s the one who got me my job at Bridalville where we, along with Jeff, Maya, and Frannie, are the Art Department, and somehow because of that title, I’ve managed to convince myself that I’m actually making art. And that the job will somehow help my career. Right, like my first gallery show will feature graphics mocking overused wedding trends like mason jars.

  One of the reasons I took the job (aside from the fact that it was the only one I could get) is that the peeps who work in the Art Dept. get to go on location to take pics and gather arty scraps for our “Waaay Off the Beaten Path” section that features crazy, alternative wedding and honeymoon locales. Since I’ve worked here, the others have been sent to Jackson Hole, Maui, Napa, and Vermont. Me? South Pasadena. Yeah. To cover a wedding where the couple said their I Dos at a tiny church—on the ninth hole of a miniature golf course. I’ve asked, suggested, prodded, comically begged, and pleaded with my boss, Malcolm, but have I ever been sent to any far-off location? No. Nein. Nyet. And, I guess, why would I? I’ve never been lucky at anything—the only thing I’ve ever won in my life was a salami from Canter’s Deli. (I got the receipt with the red star.)

  So back to how it all went down. Two days ago, Coco and I were doing some layouts for the Bridalville web series #whitepeopleweddings when Jason texted me.

  Please can I see you, Mags? Much to talk about.

  Ever since we broke up, w
henever I get a text from Jason, I get a wave of nausea that’s a combo platter of dread and excitement. Fuck, I missed him. It never mattered that we were so different. He’s got a geek boy video game programmer’s mind, not an artist’s soul; he’s reserved and holds his emotions in while I’m wide-open raw. He doesn’t have much of a sense of humor, yet laughs at all of my jokes. But I always knew he loved me and would do anything for me, as I would for him. Oh… except stay faithful. Him, not me.

  I wanted to see him so damn badly. To fall into his arms and his bed. But every time I considered it, I’d picture him all up in my neighbor Amanda’s bizness, and I just couldn’t do it.

  “Who’s that?” Coco asked. Nothing is ever private as she practically sits in my lap in the tiny cubicle we share.

  I didn’t answer, which said it all.

  “What did he say this time?”

  “Nothing. He just really wants to see me.”

  “Don’t even….”

  “What if you and Blake split up? Are you saying you wouldn’t even talk to him?”

  “That’s different. We’re married.”

  “Well, it felt like Jason and I were married. A year and a half is a long time when you’re my age. That’s like more than 1/24th of my life!”

  “Your age? Like I’m all Granny since I’m four years older than you?” Coco took a chopstick out of her upswept ’do and threw it at me.

  “OW!” I yelled, though it barely grazed my arm.

  Then a wave of compassion seemed to come over her. “I know it’s hard, Mags, but you just have to stay strong.”

  I shrugged, “I seem to be better. I’m only crying every OTHER day. But you know how on CSI: Wherever, there’s a totally clean-looking room until they spray a chemical, and suddenly everything glows all over, showing the walls are completely covered in blood? That’s me. My heart is still bludgeoned.”