Falling for Shakespeare by Erin Butler
Published by: Swoon Romance
Publication date: September 8th 2015
Genres: Contemporary, Romance,
Synopsis:
Katie thought she knew where her life was going. She was dating the captain of the football team, had a BFF for life, and everyone at school wanted to be her. But then her pregnant teen sister’s pregnancy changes all that. Everyone dumps her, including her friends and boyfriend.
Hey, Katie, welcome to life at the bottom of the high school food chain. This is how the other half lives.
Then there’s Nick. He’s a straight-A student and self-professed geek who’s had a thing for her since middle school. He needs a date for the winter formal, and Katie needs something to keep her busy. Nick’s plight becomes her personal pet project. She will help him get over his insecurities and get a date. Besides, she was popular once. She knows how to get dates.
But Nick has other plans. He’s going to use these “dating” lessons as a way to win Katie’s heart.
EXCERPT
Chapter
One
Katie
A cry pierced the
five-second silence that could’ve raised the hackles on a cute baby seal. If
cute baby seals had hackles … I didn’t know. Pulling the worthless, spongy ear
plugs from my ears, I jotted down a note on an empty page in the notebook I’d
left open the night before. To Google: Do
baby seals have hackles? What exactly are hackles anyways?
The lined notebook paper was hard to see in the dim
light of my room, let alone the soft pencil marks I was scribbling. Hoping I’d
be able to read the quick, exhausted lines in the morning when the world
stopped punishing me, I pushed it aside and sat up.
Fluorescent teeth glared at me like a lighthouse
beam from the corner of the room. As the peacefulness of sleep retreated
further, a ghost of a face appeared around the mouth along with the rest of the
lanky but fit, and relaxed yet somehow staged form. More bodies came into focus
next to him with equally radiant, ten-minute, glow-in-the-dark smiles.
It was a poster of a boy-band I couldn’t even
remember the name of anymore. Pretty sure I was in love with the boy in the
middle once upon a time, but that had to have been at least two years ago. His
name started with an H. Henry, maybe? No. Harry. No. Horny? Yes. That was it.
Had to have been Horny.
The poster was a pre-niece poster. Pre-sixteen-and-pregnant
episode going on right in my own house. The only thing I’d never have to write
down in my musings notebook: Should I have
a kid?
Second of all, my mom would probably disown me, but first
of all—the biggest first ever—I would never find out if my mom was that
heartless because I’d never let it get that far. I was never getting pregnant.
Like never. Because what came from a pregnancy?
Babies. Or hell spawn. Or schizoid minions, if you wanted to be exact about it.
Sure, babies could be cute at times. However, I was
convinced my niece had horns that slid out of her blond curls in the middle of
the night. Hanna had this thing where she liked to scream her head off at the
most inappropriate times. Mostly sleeping times. Like right now. The clock
confirmed it was only four thirty in the morning. Four thirty! Alicia wasn’t
even home from work yet, which meant Mom was most likely trying to calm the
baby down in the baby/Alicia’s room. My sister gave up all rights to her own
room when she allowed herself to get knocked up.
I picked up a rolled sock at my feet and threw it at
Horny’s happy-go-lucky face. I’d be happy too if I was rich and hung up in
every adolescents’ bedroom for them to fawn over … and didn’t have a sister who
couldn’t keep her legs closed … and could ace school without the necessary
hours of sleep.
A shrill scream from the other room punctuated my
thoughts with a gigantic exclamation point. My own house was a sideshow. No
need to travel to Nowhere, Ohio to see oddities like the Biggest Ball of Yarn.
A quick drive down Clamberry Lane would do.
Untangling my legs from the sheets, I stood and
tiptoe-ran from the room. The soles of my bare feet allowed the cold from the
hardwood floors to seep through my skin and ice its way from my chipped toe
nail polish all the way to my mousy brown hair. There was no time to put
slippers on even if I could remember where my puppy ones were, or remember
where anything was lately. If Mom and I wanted any more sleep tonight, we had
to put Hanna back to bed. Immediately.
The door to Alicia/Hanna’s room was slightly ajar.
Before pushing it open, I took a huge breath. What was supposed to calm me did
the exact opposite. The smell of baby powder only served as a reminder that I
wouldn’t get a full night’s sleep until I left for college in another year and
a half. Distracted, and now thoroughly annoyed, I pushed the bedroom door open.
Mom stood in the middle of the room doing this
bopping up and down swinging thing she thought Hanna liked, never once
realizing it hadn’t ever put her to sleep since day one. She turned, her wild,
snaky hair knotted around her face, her eyes a mix between sadness, exhaustion,
and relief. It was always the relief that bothered me.
“I got her,” I said.
She plopped the devil-crier into my arms. Hanna
looked up for a brief second and I thought her wails might subside, but no, she
was just gearing up for another ear-piercer. Why was it she always looked so
good, even when she was ensuring I’d need hearing aids when I was sixty? Sure,
she was red from screaming and snot was dripping from her nose, but it was
always Mom and me who looked like we were dragged through thorny bushes and
tossed into a manure patch to wilt. Hanna always looked adorable. Angelic. Her
tousled curls perfectly framing her face.
I made soothing noises and leaned down to sniff her
head. She smelled awesome too. Not fair. I wanted to be mad at her but it was
just so dang hard when she was so perfect.
Mom put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“Thanks—”
I flinched away. “Just go to bed, Mom. Get some
sleep.”
She dropped her head to the side. A flicker of
wanting to say more shone in her eyes. I’d noticed the look more often lately.
Thoughts were rising to the surface and threatening to spew out. They were practically
on her lips, but I didn’t want to get into it. Not right now. Not ever.
“Go to bed.” I said, patting Hanna’s back. “You’re
going to make her start crying again.”
Her eyes widened, more from hurt than surprise. Slowly,
she turned and I watched numbly as she walked away, her plaid pajama pants
twisted oddly around her waist. She must have been too tired to balk at my
attitude. Though we did kind of have this unspoken agreement that when we were
woken up in the wee hours of the morning, we were allowed to be moody.
Alicia and Hanna’s room matched the décor of the
rest of the house, which could only be described as baby dump. It was like a
parenting magazine threw up in every room. Except mine. Never mine. I barred
anything baby from being in my room except the actual baby.
Several Sippy cups sat on the dresser and toys dotted
every available horizontal surface, and some vertical ones too. They were
everywhere. Just everywhere. Unbelievable places I wasn’t even sure Hanna could
get at. A pink-tongued snake half slithered its way from behind the dresser
mirror. Hanna was too small to put that there, she couldn’t even reach the top
of the dresser let alone the dresser mirror.
The cooing noised I’d been making seemed to work. Her
lungs stopped expelling bloody murder and turned to soft cries. But her tiny
little fists? They still gripped my tank top and wouldn’t let go.
There was a time when I wanted to be just like my
sister. Up until she got pregnant, I tried to follow in her high school footsteps.
That seemed like eons ago now. Plush snake heads and baby alarm clocks were not
my idea of a good time.
Apparently, the
baby in my hands never got the message. When Alicia started working nights, I
was the only one who could calm Hanna down. I basically took over all Mommy
functions when my sister wasn’t around, which was at opposites with still
trying to have a normal life and bringing my grades up.
Good grades and a decent SAT score were essential to
me getting into college. Unfortunately, my pre-niece self had been more interested
in boys and parties and best friends than thinking about college. I needed good
grades so I could get out of here. This lack of sleep thing wasn’t helping,
though.
I lifted Hanna from my shoulder to stare at her. Her
eyelashes were wet and spiky. They fluttered and then, bam, she was out again.
Just call me the baby whisperer.
I laid her down, zombie-walked back to my room, and
threw myself in bed again. A half hour later, Alicia came home. Her car
thrummed in the driveway, her key clicked in the lock, and her exhausted feet stomped
to her now-cohabitated bedroom. With her arrival, a heavy, acrid, black cloud
fell over our house.
I was a miniscule white dot in a sea of dark, and,
not for the first time, wished my sister would take her poor decisions and
wasted dreams and leave.
***
The alarm clock clicked
on at six a.m. and belted out the tune to that new soul-revolting pop song, I’ll love you for the rest of my life. It’s
you or die, baby.
Gag. Me. Now. That wasn’t real life. Real life was
the fact that my eyes were stinging and tired from being painted wide open,
staring at the ceiling, and listening to Hanna get fussier and fussier in the
room on the other side of Horny’s smile. Alicia would have a fit if neither one
of us got Hannah from the room so she could sleep her night shift away.
When she’d first got the job, she’d tried to lobby
for Hanna and I to share a room because we were on the same sleep schedule.
Yeah. Nope. Hanna, okay, but Hanna sleeping in my room would require her bed,
her bottles, her toys, and pretty soon my room would look like Alicia’s and
that sure as hell wasn’t happening.
The baby powder smell hit me again when I walked into
Alicia’s room. It used to smell like Tommy Girl perfume and nail polish remover.
Hanna stood in her crib, her little fists outstretched, opening and closing
toward me. I swung her onto my hip and didn’t bother being quiet as I shut the door.
I was pretty sure Alicia mumbled something that sounded like “itch,” but I didn’t
care. My being crabby toward her was yet another side effect of her being a
teenage mother.
I changed Hanna out of her nighttime diaper, then
watched as she clumsily walked around the living room looking for something to
do. Finally, she pointed at the television and said, “Tee?”
I turned cartoons on and watched along with her as
the writers and illustrators of today turned the perfectly awesome cartoons I’d
grown up on into travesties of nature. No wonder why the youth of today were
screwed up. What Hanna needed was a good old-fashioned cartoon, not this crap.
She needed the antics of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, not this
metaphorical nonsense.
When Mom got out of the shower, we switched places
wordlessly. This had been our morning routine for about a year and it always
felt like a personal victory when I actually made it to the curb on time, with
clothes on the right way, my book bag in my hand, and a fake smile on my face to
see Nic pull up. The thing about Nic though, what always started out as me
faking a smile, turned into a real one when he was around.
Nic was a juxtaposition.
Hmm.
Note to self to make note in notebook: Am I using the word juxtaposition
correctly?
He dressed like he could never quite make out who he
wanted to be and therefore ended up making himself new every day. He wore punk
rock T-shirts under Einstein button-up sweaters. He wore loafers with jeans and
Nikes with khakis. The only constant about him was his glasses.
As the door swung open, Nic held out a white
Styrofoam cup. “Full many a glorious morning have I seen …”
I took it, smiling, and then after taking a long,
wonderful sip, I said, “And blessed is thee who brings me coffee made from
bean?”
His face screwed up and the glasses slipped a little
down his nose. He had on a red and black plaid collared shirt over a Call of
Duty T. He fixed his glasses, still squinting. “Made from bean?”
“…sss? Made from beanssss? Would that have made more
sense?”
He cracked a smile. “You never make sense. Did they
have coffee back in Shakespeare’s day?”
Of course I never made sense. He should try getting
interrupted sleep day in and day out. Wait … night in and night out?
See? Proved my case.
I leaned my book bag against my shins and took
another long sip of the steaming cup, squelching the need to say what I’d just thought
out loud. It upset Nic when I said things like that. He didn’t get mad, only
troubled, as if it made him sad to know I wasn’t happy.
I pointed to the cup in my hand. “Thank you. For
this.”
He shrugged. “I know you need it to function.”
The word “now” was carelessly left off the end of
his sentence. He knew I needed it to function now. I never needed it before. Didn’t even drink coffee pre-niece.
I was good with OJ, or milk, or any of the other breakfast drinks. Just not
now. I needed caffeine.
“I take it you did the Shakespeare reading we were
supposed to do?” I asked. Stupid question. He always did. We were taking the
same English lit course. Unfortunately for us though, we’d been put in
different classes. It sucked. Big time. “What sonnet is that from?”
“One of the thirties I think. Did you read them?”
Shaking my head, I said, “No. Not yet. I’ve got
study hall today first period, though. It’s on my agenda. Do you remember it?
The sonnet?”
“The beginning,” he said. He paused and rubbed his
chin. “It reminded me of you.”
It didn’t surprise me he’d remembered it. Nic had
one of those carbon copy memories when it came to literature. Words just stuck
inside him like fly paper. As he recited the poem, I pictured the words
catching to the paper and hanging on for dear life. I wished the inside of me
looked like the inside of Nic.
I brought out the notebook I’d slipped in the front
pocket of my book bag earlier that morning and jotted down: Juxtaposition. Then, I wrote: 30’s. Poem with glorious morning.
I wanted to see what poem Nic thought was like me. Did
he see me like I saw me? If he did, the sonnet would be written in a tornado of
words and I doubted Shakespeare would have written something so hideous and
disorganized.
Nic’s laughter penetrated my thoughts. “Are you even
listening?”
I didn’t even have the decency to get embarrassed. He
knew me too well.
“Sorry. Say it again?”
He took another breath and, like usual, the words
flowed from him like a trickling stream. Though Nic was considered a science
geek at our school, his true calling was something artistic. He could be an
actor or a writer or something where emotions ruled and not the brain. He felt
things more than normal people. At least, the way he said things was as if
feelings were pouring from every crevice.
“Full many
a glorious morning have I seen, flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, kissing
with golden face the meadows green, gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
anon permit the basest clouds to ride.”
Right after glorious
morning in my notebook, I wrote down: Anon permit the basest clouds to ride???
What the hell did that
even mean? Mentally shrugging, I decided it didn’t really matter. It sounded
beautiful coming from Nic.
GIVEAWAY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Erin Butler is lucky enough to have two jobs she truly loves. As a librarian, she gets to work with books all day long, and as an author, Erin uses her active imagination to write the kinds of books she loves to read. Young Adult and New Adult books are her favorites, but she especially fangirls over a sigh-worthy romance.
She lives in Central New York with her very understanding husband, a stepson, and doggie BFF, Maxie. Preferring to spend her time indoors reading or writing, she'll only willingly go outside for chocolate and sunshine--in that order.
Erin is the author of BLOOD HEX, a YA paranormal novel, HOW WE LIVED, a contemporary NA novel, and the forthcoming YA contemporary romance title, FINDING MR. DARCY: HIGH SCHOOL EDITION. Find out more about her at www.erinbutlerbooks.com or @ErinButler on Twitter!
Author Links:
Thanks so much for having FALLING FOR SHAKESPEARE on your blog today!! I so appreciate it!
ReplyDeleteim so looking forward in reading this!! <3
ReplyDeleteGreat excerpt! Sounds like a great book, I'm looking forward to checking it out :)
ReplyDeleteLove the excerpt! Interesting story!
ReplyDelete