Excerpt:

People are always talking of beginnings like they’re the greatest thing since Wonderbread (which incidentally I don’t like). But really, what makes beginnings any better than endings? At the beginning of something it’s all crazy with possibilities and you can’t even see straight for the newness and amazingness of it, so you do things you later come to regret because you were so wrapped up in the feeling of the beginning that you accidentally forgot to think.

Endings are so much nicer, I think. You always get to choose how something ends, whether it will end happily or not. For instance, let’s look at the summer job. What kind of job should I get this summer, you may ask yourself. Now, see, this is clearly a beginning because there are so many various possibilities and not a definite chance of making you happy. But here cometh the ending. Let’s say you picked a really crappy job at your beginning. Well, now you can just quit it now that you’ve wasted your summer, look back on the experience thoughtfully and cash your check, not to mention add it to your resumé. See how painless that was, how happily you made it? No need for sadness unless you don’t like happy endings, in which case you can choose to make it as unhappy as you like. How you react to your bad beginning is everything. How you react to this beginning is everything. To me, to my story. It can only live if you read it. If you don’t, I’ll just have written a dead book, one never given the chance to live.

So yes, what of my beginning? I’ll admit I’ve been avoiding the question, but that’s only because I don’t like always looking back because the things I tend to look back on generally hurt. But I will do you a small favor and try because I’m a reader, too, so I know the security it brings to know the main character better, to identify with them, always looking for something that ties the two of you together.

So why would you want to read about me? I like a different question better, so I’m not going to answer the first one. Why would I want you to read about me? I’m into that question because it has an answer that I’m sure of and that answer is that I’m a storyteller. In fact, we’re all storytellers, but seeing as how at this minute you are not out writing ‘the next great American novel’ as I am, there’s nothing better for you to do than read my story.

My story is an interesting one, at least I think so, and if it isn’t necessarily as interesting as it needs to be to keep your attention, then I might change the facts a little, add a totally unnecessary romantic scene or two, remove the utter boredom that is my current job and replace it with something better. You won’t mind, though, I hope? Besides, we writers are allowed something called ‘poetic license,’ and if you try to pin me down for any of the lies I happen to write in here, I’m going to pull that one out of my sleeve and brandish it before me like the cross.

Is everything straight now? Are we ready to begin? I can just imagine how nervous it makes you when I ask questions of you like this. Who does that? I know that’s what you’re thinking, and you’re debating putting down this book, silencing my voice, shutting the cover on the story of my life, but I can’t let you do that. Just because you don’t like having me in your head is no reason to act so cruelly. You can’t do it. It would be caving into a human weakness, and we both know that you’re better than that. Read on. Bravely soldier through it. There’s no need to worry because I’ll be beside you, a faithful narrator to my life. I know, really! How many times do you get an audio guided tour of someone’s life, the audio provided by them and the visuals provided by your own imagination? Not that often, right? So here, I won’t be the attractive blond hair tightly pulled back in a bun flight attendant lady telling you to fasten your seat belts, but I will ask you to do this. Take my hand. Here it is, right here. Now hold on to it tightly, for we are about to begin by stepping off a cliff.

***

Aahhh!! Okay, we’re fine. Just kidding, no cliff. That was just a test of your readerly loyalty and use of a brand of lying know as ‘poetic license.’ We are now, though, figuratively over a hill, one that I was a little leery of at first: the hill of horrid beginnings that lucky for everyone involved led to trust. You trust me enough to go over a cliff with me, which means I am now honor bound to provide you with the background to my life. I believe all of this to be boring to the ten-thousandth degree, but since you readers are always so damn interested, I’ll provide you with the mere necessities--the rest you’ll just have to wait to find out later.

Disclaimer: most everything in here is in actuality much more complicated than I make it appear, but because I have the need of your understanding at heart, I have simplified it all a tad. I’m not trying to sound stuck-up, like I don’t think you’d be able to understand my life, it’s just that it’s a certifiable fact that life is complicated. Your life is way more complicated than what everyone sees on the surface and the few things you deign to tell them, so you know what I’m talking about.

Okay, so the delaying can continue no longer. Here it is. I am nineteen and live in Portland. I have decided to take a year off before college and no longer am living with my parents but in a crappy apartment, which we incidentally will be spending a good amount of time in throughout the course of the novel. I have a boyfriend who isn’t here right now because he’s off in med school and by the way, my name is Lyddie.
That is all you need to know, so let’s together prepare to plunge into a world of lies, commas and intellectual discourse.