Interviews
Author Note Marni Bates, author of INVISIBLE and NOTABLE
Every high school has its own version of the Notables.
Those popular girls who can flick back their hair and smile coyly at whomever catches their interest? Yeah, I was not one of them. Not even close. I was the geek in the back of the classroom whose idea of a great weekend involved burying her nose in the pages of a romance novel.
Who am I kidding? That's still my idea of a perfect weekend.
So at first writing a book from the perspective of the most popular girl at Smith High School sounded like yet another less-than-brilliant plan to add to my list. Right up there with giving myself a haircut at the three in the morning during a fit of pique. Oh, and then there was the time I thought pulling an April Fools prank on my literary agent would be downright hilarious...
I kept trying to convince myself that this book wasn't an option; Chelsea Halloway and I were just too diametrically opposed to ever put our differences aside.
I've never been skinny, blonde, fashionable, flirty, or even slightly skilled when it comes to most athletic activities. I'm fairly certain my ballet instructor breathed a huge sigh of relief when the chubby one-girl wrecking crew (who couldn't tell her left from her right) called it quits after less than two months of lessons.
I couldn't relate to the Notables.
That's what I told myself. Repeatedly. It was appallingly easy to convince myself of that lie. Then again, graduating from high school didn't come with any obligation to reexamine my own set of irrational prejudices. I didn't fit in with the popular kids therefore they were secretly pod people who had found some way to rig the system.
That's honestly how I thought of them at the time.
It wasn't until I started listening to Chelsea's fears and insecurities that I discovered how much we had in common. This girl I had instantly dismissed as the anti-Marni faked her way through social situations too. She just had a very different set of techniques.
But both of us shared one particularly crippling fear; that we would never be enough.
Smart enough. Pretty enough. Lovable enough.
I would be lying if I said that my burgeoning friendship with a fictional character instantly silenced those voices of self-doubt. But Chelsea did change my perspective on a whole lot of things, including what makes a compelling villain.
And I will forever be grateful that she allowed me to go where this particular geek had never gone before...
