Read an Excerpt

Introduction

I started writing this book because of my backpack. I took a bright teal, super-dorky backpack to high school, a backpack my mother had ordered years earlier from L.L. Bean. It worked so great throughout junior high that I figured it had a year or two left in it.

    My backpack got some looks. People would stare at it, wondering, "What kind of idiot wears an accessory like that?" Then they would see me. "Oh."

    One day, I was going down one of my high school's escalators. I was tired. I took off my backpack and put it next to me on an escalator step. For whatever reason, the backpack flipped over and started rolling down like a Slinky.

    Many steps below stood a girl. She had one hand to her face, as if she were on a cell phone, but she had no actual phone. We were the only people on the escalator. The backpack kept tumbling (I watched it sort of helplessly) and whapped her in the back of the calves.

    The girl stopped talking on her fake phone and turned to look at me. She had to take that look: I could've been a cute guy who'd flung my backpack at her to break the ice. She sized me up, cocked her head, and kicked my backpack as hard as she could the rest of the way down.

    When I reached the bottom, I picked up my backpack and thought about it for the rest of the day. On the subway ride home, I pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper and wrote about the cell-phone girl and my stupid bag. I wrote angrily; I used a lot of curses. Afterward, I felt a lot better, and when I read my words the next day, I thought theywere pretty good.

    So I went from writing profanity-ridden rants to slightly less profanity-ridden essays. I was able to get some of them published in a local newspaper, New York Press. Soon I was writing on a regular basis, taking my boring, scary, embarrassing high school moments and turning them into something people could read about. It was a real comfort—if something weird or horrible happened to me, I'd write about it, and then somehow I'd be in control. A little.

    In 1998, I got a piece published in The New York Times Magazine. That got me in touch with Free Spirit Publishing, who gave me this book contract, which I signed, and now somehow I'm here, writing this introduction after polishing most of what I wrote in high school and organizing it chronologically.

    I threw out that backpack when I was a junior and replaced it with a bag from the army surplus store.

    I never did learn the name of the girl.

Ned Vizzini
Brooklyn, New York

My school had seven sets of escalators. It was a high school specializing in math and science, so I guess they figured we deserved escalators.

If you want to write to me about my book, you can reach me at Free Spirit Publishing Inc., 400 First Avenue North, Suite 616 Minneapolis, MN 55401-1724. Or email me at: help4kids@ freespirit.com