Extraordinary<li>
Authors: Adam Selzer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Adam Selzer
Jacket art copyright © 2011 by Mike Heath/Creative Magnus
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by
Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the
colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Selzer, Adam.
Extraordinary : the true story of my fairy godparent, who almost killed me, and certainly never made me a princess / Adam Selzer. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Fourteen-year-old Jennifer sets the record straight after a best-selling book, ostensibly written about her, declares that her life was improved by her fairy godparent, who is actually a creepy, unkempt drunk with greasy hair.
eISBN: 978-0-375-98358-0
[1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Fairy godmothers—Fiction. 3. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 4. Vampires—Fiction. 5. High schools—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction. 7. Family life—Iowa—Fiction. 8. Iowa—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S4652Ext 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010046308
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
To Ronni
,
WHO TOLD ME SHE WAS TIRED OF BOOKS ABOUT
GIRLS WHO THOUGHT THEY’D DIE IF THEY DIDN’T
GO TO THE DANCE. HOPE YOU LIKE THIS ONE!
Thanks to Stephanie and Krista, my fantastic editors.
Also, thanks to Jennifer Laughran, Taryn Fagerness,
Claudia Gray, Kitten McCreery, “The Emily” and the
Hamster Trainers, James Kennedy, Colleen Fellingham,
Stephanie Kuehnert, and the crews of Sip Coffee
and UPS Store #5428 on Grand Avenue.
“Production babies”: Maggie Rose and Lola Bel
“So all I have to do is get that boy to kiss me at the dance and I’ll be a princess?”
Jenny drew a sharp breath. The air was filled with the smell of daffodils, and the very stars in the sky seemed to be taking on a purple hue. First she’d found out that her naturally purple hair meant she was a fairy, and now she could become a princess, too?
“Just let me take out my wand,” said her fairy godmother.
“Jenny Van Den Berg, you were born to be extraordinary.…”
—from
Born to Be Extraordinary
, by
New York Times
bestselling author Eileen Codlin
Eileen Codlin sucks cheese.
And I should know. I’m Jennifer Van Den Berg. The real one.
While Eileen is sleeping on mattresses stuffed with money, I get to deal with all the idiots who think I’m
really
a fairy princess and that I can make
other
girls princesses, too, if they just bug me enough.
And with their moms.
Especially
their moms.
I’m not a princess. And I don’t really
want
to be one. I believe in democracy, and I think it’d be super-awkward to have a servant hanging around me all the time.
But that’s only one of a thousand things Eileen changed around for her book to make it more like “what readers want to read.” That was nice of her, huh?
When she showed me the first draft, I felt sick to my stomach before I finished the first page.
“So, I guess you’re not going to say it was a true story after all, huh?” I asked. “This girl isn’t anything like me.”
She just laughed. “I want this book to really connect with teens and tweens,” she said, “and they probably don’t want to be like the
real
you.”
Gee, thanks, Eileen. That just makes me feel super.
“If you want to connect with them, stop calling them ‘tweens,’ ” I said. “That’s the stupidest word ever.”
“But I know what they want,” she said, with that stupid fake smile of hers.
“What?” I asked. “Pure crap?”
She just kept on smiling.
But obviously she knew what she was talking about, seeing as how about eleven million people bought the book, and even more saw the movie.
Now, I’m not trying to be mean or spoil your fun or anything, but I feel like I need to clear a few things up.
Also, I need some money.
So this is the real story. Exactly as it happened. I’ve cleaned up the language in a few places, but that’s about it.
First of all, my parents want me to make it very clear that I’m not an orphan. Mom got really upset when she read that she got mowed down by a truck when I was four. Dad wasn’t too upset when he read that he was a billionaire playboy who didn’t even know I existed, but that’s way off, too.
My “fairy godmother” did not smell like daffodils, unless those daffodils were growing in a public restroom that hadn’t been cleaned since the early 1980s.
And I know I’ve been going around saying that Mutual Scrivener, the nerd who keeps trying to kiss me in the book, is a fictional character, but, well … you’ll see.
And here’s fair warning: if it’s crap you want, well, you’re gonna get it. The real story has a lot more unicorn poop in it than the version you’ve already read. Just, a
lot
more.
Born to Be Extraordinary
didn’t mention that stuff at all, which is probably just as well, but I can’t tell the real story without it.
To be fair, though, Eileen did get
some
things right.
When the story began, I really was a normal, smart, slightly chubby but totally lovable (most of the time) teenage girl from Iowa.
I do have purple hair (though I wasn’t born with it or anything—it’s dyed). I also have purple clothes, purple walls in my bedroom, and anything else purple that I can get. I’m purpliferous. And yes, that’s a real word (especially now that it’s in a book).
And I do have a friend named Amber. She’s really awesome, too.
The guy you’ve seen in pictures with me isn’t really Fred, but Fred was a real guy. He was really a vampire, too.
And the story of my fairy godmother really did start out on a lousy, crappy, soul-sucking, butt-sniffing, very bad day.
Jenny climbed out of her Prius and waved to Melinda Cranston’s mom, who was sitting on the porch with Melinda. Melinda was crying already. It was going to be another long piano lesson.
As Jenny walked up the driveway, Melinda’s little brother threw a pair of dirty underpants out his window, narrowly missing Jenny’s head.
If only I were a princess
, she thought,
I wouldn’t have to teach piano to these brats just to make my car payments!
I think “Jenny” must have had a second job holding up convenience stores. Take it from me, you do
not
earn enough money teaching piano to buy a Prius.
It’s true that I taught piano, but my real car, the Jenmobile, was an old powder-blue thing that looked like it couldn’t decide whether it was a sedan or a station wagon. I bought it at an auction for two hundred fifty dollars, and I probably overpaid. There were over three hundred thousand miles on the odometer, it had a weird smell that I could never get rid of, and it stalled more than a six-year-old at bedtime.
When it stalled on the way to school that fateful November morning, I patted the dashboard and said, “Come on, baby. It’s just a few more blocks.”
Sometimes that got it to start back up right away. This time it didn’t.
It almost always started back up if I just gave it five or ten minutes, but the heater wouldn’t come on when the car was stalled, and there was freezing rain coming down that morning. I wasn’t about to sit there in the cold, so I put on the flashers, braved the sleet, and ran down Cedar Avenue to McDonald’s for a cup of coffee.
That was where the story began.
When I stepped inside, a gruff voice called out, “Hoo hoo!” and I turned to see a scruffy guy sitting at a table wearing a tattered overcoat and a bent fedora.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Anyone ever tell you you look like Grimace, kiddo?” he asked.
“Who?”
He flashed me a goblin grin and stood up. When he did, I saw that he was hunchbacked, and couldn’t have been more than four and a half feet tall. His curly brown hair—what I could see of it under his hat—must have been at least 50 percent grease.
The little weirdo hobbled up to a sign on the wall with all the characters from the McDonald’s commercials and pointed at Grimace: the big, fat purple guy who looked like a talking eggplant or something.
“All that purple you got on, kiddo,” he said, in a growly voice that made it sound like he was gargling whiskey. “You’re the spitting image!”
For a second I was too dumbstruck to say anything.
He
was the one who looked like something made by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. And he was calling
me
a big, fat eggplant man.
“Dick,” I said.
He kept grinning at me as I slunk away from him and walked up to the counter.
My purple coat made me look fat. That was all. It was a big coat. I knew I wasn’t the skinniest person in town or anything, but I was
not
shaped like an eggplant.
“Don’t mind him,” the woman at the register whispered. “He’s been here every day lately. And when we close, we see him sitting in the parking lot across the street, smoking cigars.”
“What a freak,” I said.
“And when he gets a burger, he eats the whole thing. Like, the wrapper and everything.”
I looked back over at the guy. He was back to sitting at his table, pouring some red liquid from a bottle in a brown bag into a teaspoon and slurping it up. I assumed it was not grape juice.
He was not the kind of guy you expect to see in Iowa. Not in suburban Des Moines, anyway. Maybe out in the smaller towns. There are plenty of weirdos out there. I ought to know—my town used to
be
a small town before it got absorbed into suburbia, and it was a regular freak show.
“Maybe you should call the cops,” I said. “Are you sure he didn’t, like, escape from an asylum or something?”
“No!” the weirdo shouted from his table. “I didn’t.”
I blushed and probably shivered a bit. I hadn’t thought he could possibly hear us.
He put the bottle away, looked out the window at the strip malls and sleet, and started singing a song that went “Bang, bang, Lulu, bang away strong …”
“Well,” I whispered, “you could at least get him on public drunkenness.”
“Believe me, we’ve tried.” The woman sighed. “But he passes the test every time.”