Flirtin' with the Monster Life was good before I met the monster. After, life was great. At least for a little while. Text copyright (c) 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 (c) 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 (c) 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 (c) 2004 by Ellen Hopkins Excerpted from Crank by Ellen Hopkins All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
