When we were invited to join the Authors Are Rock Stars blog event, I was elated to see Gayle Forman on the list as possible choices. Grant it, I selected her name as my top pick thinking I’d never get chosen to spotlight her because let’s face it… she’s the epitome of a ROCKSTAR! Well, when we were notified that we were chosen to host a stop AND have the opportunity to suggest a guest post, I was ecstatic!! It was like winning front row seats and back stage passes to your favorite band. I’m fangirling here if you can’t tell, so one moment please while I compose myself. :D
Gayle Forman has been one of my favorite YA contemporary authors for years. I’ve read every book she’s published including Sisters Insanity, If I Stay, Where She Went, Just One Day and even the not yet published book Just One Year. Her writing is powerful and raw, and her characters feel so real that they always seem to leave an impact on me for quite some time. Whenever she comes out with a new book, everything else seems to take a momentary backseat… that’s how serious I am about her stories. Truly!
I couldn’t quite narrow down what I wanted the theme for the guest post to be, but as you can tell I’m a huge fan of Adam and Willem. I hope you enjoy the post and please leave me a comment on your thoughts. Enjoy!
Ms.Gayle Forman
Here is a deleted scene from Where She Went. It's not just a deleted scene, it's deleted direction, showing a version of Adam that was even more self-destructive, more bitter, and more rock-star cliched, too. Also, in an earlier version of the book, he was together with Brook Vega, not Brynn.
This was a flashback scene, and I replaced it with a lighter scene, one that became one of my all-time favorites: the scene where Adam and Mia go camping and whisper their fears to each other in the dark.
Deleted Scene *SQUEEEEE*!!!!
It was the Grammy’s, so the band was down in L.A., all together for the first
time in months. Liz and Sarah had just announced that they were getting married. Mike
was moving in with some graphic designer he’d been dating back in Portland for years.
Brooke was starting to lobby for a kid. The night before the awards, Brooke had set up
a dinner with everyone at this great restaurant right on the beach. It was supposed to be
this wonderful reunion, all of us together, but on Brooke’s and my turf. Looking out at
the band and Brooke, I imagining myself just slipping out, running down the beach and
not looking back. If I disappeared, no one would even notice. I looked at Liz and Sarah
holding hands and laughing at something Fitzy was saying about someone from Portland
as he waved around his empty Margarita glass. Every so often Liz would glance over
at me and half-smile, a little invitation, I guess, but I had nothing to say to these guys. I
didn’t know their stories anymore. Really, I could just disappear.
Except I couldn’t. If I disappeared, all of this, this good fortune for the band, this
wild ride, it would end. We all knew that, and I think we all hated me a little for it.
The next night, the Grammy’s was the usual bullshit, airkissing, outfit-casing
night. At least we weren’t up for anything or playing. Collateral Damage had been
nominated—and lost, but it’s the Grammy’s so WTF—the year before—and we were
getting ready to go into the studio for BloodSuckerSunshine. After, Brooke’s fledgling
record label was hosting a bash at the Chateau Marmont that I’d begged out of by telling
Brooke that I needed to hang with my people. But then I’d just as quickly ditched Liz,
Fitzy and Mike, who were probably happy to be without their cement block of a fourth wheel.
Instead, I followed some groupies and industry people to an after party in a suite
in The Sunset Tower. I was slumped on one of the couches when this couple I knew from
a million years ago in Oregon, Jeff and Nicole, came in. They’d been junkies when I’d
known them back then and from the looks of them, not much had changed. When they
entered the suite, they were antsy, almost like they had jumping beans bouncing between
their skeleton and skin. Their eyes, big and bloodshot, darted back and forth and they
scratched at their skin, which was a ghostly pallor, green and perspiring, even though it
was a cold night outside. After saying their quick hellos, they made a beeline for one of
the bathrooms.
When they emerged, were they not wearing the same clothes, you might have
mistaken them for different people. Their complexions were now flushed and rosy. Their
movements slow and graceful. Their conversation hushed, peaceful. They locked hands
and sat down on the couch, slumping into one another with such utter comfort. “How’s it
going, Wilde Man?” Nicole asked with a beatific smile.
“Apparently not as good as it’s going with you two,” I replied
Jeff attempted to sit up a little straighter. “This is some very nice shit. Very
smooth ride.”
“I can see that.”
“You want some?” Jeff asked, a look of surprise in his eyes. After Brooke cleaned
me up, it somehow became known that people were not supposed to offer me drugs.
Please don’t feed the animals. I was pretty sure Brooke was behind this dictate, and most
of the time, I didn’t mind. Easier to avoid temptation if it avoided you.
But this time I did want some. And when I said that I did, Nicole smiled, a look
of victory in her eyes. “Wilde man finally lives up to his name,” she intoned. “And lucky
you, we even have clean gear.”
I followed Jeff and Nic into the bathroom. Jeff pulled out a little black case
and unzipped it. Inside was a spoon, a lighter, a dropper, a lighter, a vial, and several
hypodermic needles. “This one’s brand new, never used,” he said as he poured out a
black rock and put it in the spoon and it did not even occur to me to confirm that this
was true. Using the lighter he cooked up the rock with a dropper full of water, dropped a
cotton ball from the hotel toiletry kit to sop up the goopy mixture and then sucked it into
the syringe.
“Go easy on him,” Nicole warned.
“I will,” Jeff promised. “I don’t want to be the one to tame the Wilde Man.” He
put the needle in his mouth and motioned for me to roll up my arms.
It was only after I’d done that, after Jeff had tied the tourniquet so tightly across
my bicep that I could see the throb of my heartbeat in the vein that had popped up in the
crook of my elbow that I seemed to wake up.
What the fuck are you doing? I asked myself. Is this who you want to become? Is
this the man you want to be? For the briefest of moments, I saw myself, crouched on a
bathroom floor with the pathetic likes of Jeff and Nicole, through her eyes. Not Brooke’s,
though Brooke would probably be disgusted enough with this scene to dump me, or at
the very least, to drop her baby-talk. I saw myself through Mia’s eyes, and though by all
rights I should’ve been ashamed—Mia would’ve had no patience for this kind of self-destructive self indulgent bullshit—what I felt was something altogether different. I felt
compassion. I felt my pain and I felt Mia’s understanding and a whisper that things could
be okay, but not this way.
I ripped off the tourniquet and threw a hundred dollar bill on the floor—“for your
trouble,” I told Jeff—and bolted the fuck out of that hotel room, disgusted, ashamed, but
mostly, and hugely, relieved.
