Read an Excerpt
Flirtin' with the Monster
Life was good
before I
met
the monster.
After,
life
was great.
At
least
for a little while.
Text copyright © 2004 by Ellen Hopkins
Introduction
So you want to know all
about me. Who
I am.
What chance meeting of
brush and canvas painted
the face
you see? What made
me despise the girl
in the mirror
enough to transform her,
turn her into a stranger,
only not.
So you want to hear
the whole story. Why
I swerved
off the high road,
hard left to nowhere,
recklessly
indifferent to those
coughing my dust,
picked up speed
no limits, no top end,
just a high velocity rush
to madness.
Text copyright © 2004 by Ellen Hopkins
Alone
everything changes.
Some might call it distorted reality,
but it's exactly the place I need to be:
no mom,
Marie, ever more distant,
in her midlife quest for fame
no stepfather,
Scott, stern and heavy-handed
with unattainable expectations
no big sister,
Leigh, caught up in a tempest
of uncertain sexuality
no little brother,
Jake, spoiled and shameless
in his thievery of my niche.
Alone,
there is only the person inside.
I've grown to like her better
than the stuck-up husk of me. She's
not quite silent,
shouts obscenities just because
they roll so well off the tongue
not quite straight-A,
but talented in oh-so-many
enviable ways
not quite sanitary,
farts with gusto, picks
her nose, spits like a guy
not quite sane,
sometimes, to tell you the truth,
even I wonder about her.
Alone,
there is no perfect daughter,
no gifted high-school junior,
no Kristina Georgia Snow.
There is only Bree.
Text copyright © 2004 by Ellen Hopkins
On Bree
I suppose
she's always been
there, vague as a soft
copper pulse of moonlight
through blossoming seacoast
fog.
I wonder
when I first noticed
her, slipping in and out
of my pores, hide-and-seek
spider in fieldstone, red-bellied
phantom.
I summon
Bree when dreams
no longer satisfy, when
gentle clouds of monotony
smother thunder, when Kristina
cries.
I remember
the night I first
let her go, opened the
smeared glass, one thin pane,
cellophane between rules and sin,
freed.
Text copyright © 2004 by Ellen Hopkins
