Personal Touch (15 page)

The rain slackened. The wind was hurtling the storm to the east. In another few minutes it would be over. The hot sun would begin to bake the puddles.

“I don’t guess I’ll be going back up to Albany very often,” said Tim finally. He stroked my hair and took several deep breaths as if he intended to say more. But he didn’t.

We separated awkwardly. I was so embarrassed I would rather have walked home than sat there for the hour or more it would take us now. “Tim,” I said, trying to think of a way to erase what I’d said. To relax him. There wasn’t enough between us for me to have cried out all those things with such passion. I could imagine how embarrassed he was. “Forget it,” I said at last. “I didn’t mean to say all that.”

Tim gave me his half-irritated, half-sad smile. It was one he usually reserved for his mother. Terrific, I thought. I really handled that one well.

“I hope you did mean it,” he said, touching my face lightly, and then harder, and then hauling me right back in his lap and kissing my hair fiercely. “If I hadn’t had you to talk to this summer, I don’t think I would have survived it. I—Sunny—I—” He broke off.

“You better pour the gas in the tank,” I said. “We need to get going. We didn’t tell our parents we were taking a trip. They’ll be worried.”

Tim waved his hand irritably. “Forget the gas,” he said. “I love you.”

So we forgot the gas. We sat in the silly little Beetle and told each other how terrific we were, especially as a pair, and we kissed. In front of us the sun set: pink and orange and gold slices in a blue heaven. “I love your name, too,” said Tim. “It’s perfect.”

“You know,” I said, “for a second-rate summer, this one has turned out pretty well.”

“Like us,” agreed Tim. “We turned out pretty well, too, don’t you think?”

I thought it was perfect, and I told him so, and we kissed on it.

Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller
The Face on the Milk Carton
. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life.

Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book,
Safe as the Grave
, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.

Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.

Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning
The Face on the Milk Carton,
about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in
Whatever Happened to Janie?
(1993),
The Voice on the Radio
(1996), and
What Janie Found
(2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book,
Janie Face to Face
, will be released in 2013.

Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the
Mayflower
.

The house in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where Cooney grew up. She recalls: “In the 1950s, we walked home from school, changed into our play clothes, and went outside to get our required fresh air. We played yard games, like Spud, Ghost, Cops and Robbers, and Hide and Seek. We ranged far afield and no parent supervised us or even asked where we were going. We led our own lives, whether we were exploring the woods behind our houses, wading in the creek at low tide, or roller skating in somebody’s cellar, going around and around the furnace!”

Cooney at age three.

Cooney, age ten, reading in bed—one of her favorite activities then and now.

Ten-year-old Cooney won a local library’s summer reading contest in 1957 by compiling book reviews. In her collection, she wrote reviews of Lois Lenski’s
Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison
and Jean Craighead George’s
Vison, the Mink
. “What a treat when I met Jean George at a convention,” she recalls.

Cooney’s report card from sixth grade in 1959. “Mr. Albert and I are still friends over fifty years later,” she says.

Cooney in middle school: “I went through some lumpy stages!”

In 1964, Cooney received the Flora Mai Holly Memorial Award for Excellence in the Study of American Literature from the National League of American Pen Women. “I always meant to write to them, and tell them that I kept going!” Cooney says. “I love the phrase ‘pen woman.’ I’m proud to be one.”

Cooney at age nineteen, just after graduating from high school. (Photo courtesy of Warren Kay Vantine Studio of Boston.)