~A lot can change in the space between devising a plan and carrying it out. That space is called the Interim.~
High school seniors Jeremy Stahl and Regan Walters aren’t friends. Not even close. He’s a picked-on, picked-apart loser outcast. She’s a cool kid running with the popular crowd. It’s unlikely they’d ever speak to one another. Too bad he’s madly in love with her. But what does it matter, anyway? He’s got no time for love. Only revenge.
Meticulously detailed in the pages of his battered red notebook is his master plan: April 14, 9:30 A.M., two guns, eighty rounds of ammo, backup knives, eleven victims. He’s finally ready to answer every single taunt, jeer, and flying fist—unwarranted abuse that’s spanned six years of his lonely life. He’s justified. He’s ready. But he never readied himself for her.
Regan finds his journal. She reads it, and when he discovers her intrusion, he has to switch tactics. She’s a liability now.
Better fix that.
(WARNING: This is a New Adult standalone that contains graphic language and violence, including gun violence. If school shootings are an especially sensitive subject for you, then I urge you to refrain from reading this book.)
Excerpt:
His heart plummeted when their eyes met that morning. And then the anger bubbled up in his chest almost immediately. The things she must know! He knew she read it. A girl would have read it. Fucking girls. It was written all over her guilty face, her deer-in-headlights eyes. Her body language. He saw the imperceptible tightening of his words against her chest—her biceps flexing as she secured his notebook to her body. Like she owned it. Like she owned him.
His heart plummeted when their eyes met that morning. And then the anger bubbled up in his chest almost immediately. The things she must know! He knew she read it. A girl would have read it. Fucking girls. It was written all over her guilty face, her deer-in-headlights eyes. Her body language. He saw the imperceptible tightening of his words against her chest—her biceps flexing as she secured his notebook to her body. Like she owned it. Like she owned him.
The hell you do, he thought.
This is a book about a school shooting, but it's not about a
school shooting. This is a book about a
would-be mass murderer, but it's really not about a mass-murderer. This is a book about kindness, compassion,
vengeance and justice, but mostly, I think this is a book about love and the
lack of, about how violence and anger and cruelty can change people, and how love
can change the shape and color of all things.
If you've read Ms. Walden's books before, you may have run
across one or two that were somewhat controversial. You may be wondering why she'd take on a
topic like a school shooting. I don't
know, exactly, but I'd guess because these characters came to her and asked to
be heard; and because she is brave and honest, so if a story needs to told, she
tells it, no matter what. So, you can go
into this with your own prejudices, political views, and biases, but you should
be prepared to feel them slip away from you without your control.
I can honestly say that I didn't want to love Jeremy. I didn't even want to like him. I was afraid of him, afraid of what he could
do; and I was afraid of what my deep affection for him said about me. Who loves a killer? Who loves someone who has such a deep desire
to do harm to others? But here's the
thing: Jeremy has no more capacity for vengeance and hate than the rest of
us. Don't we all hold a dark and secret
space that we keep a lid on? How many of
us would admit to our ugliest thoughts, even when they were fleeting,
heat-of-the-moment ideas with no chance of being brought to life? The lucky thing is that most of us will never
have our darkness nourished by a life of anger and abuse, and so we go on in
our sun-filled, good fortune unable to imagine how anyone could actually carry
out their worst thoughts, how they could do harm to others. We are fortunate.
In spite of my reluctance, I gave up the ghost of
non-attachment, and decided to believe the best, to hold onto hope. I took hold of Regan's hand, our young
heroine, and I decided, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, to take a
risk on Jeremy. And it was a risk
because, until just before this horrific event unfolded, I really wasn't sure
which way he'd go.
Jeremy has not led a happy life. He's older than the majority of his
classmates because he was held back a year once upon a time. His father is an abusive, alcoholic, for whom
I hold very little sympathy, who has left young Jeremy with a very noticeable
physical scar on his face (you know, because he didn't have enough psychological
and emotional scars). This scar, along
with Jeremy's tendency to hang back from his peers, earns him the attention of
his class bullies (although there's one in particular, that middle school/high
school pack mentality prevails). So, the
two places that Jeremy spends the most time, home and school, are both
physically and emotionally abusive environments. His one little ray of sunshine is Regan, a
free-spirited middle schooler. That ray
starts to fade, though, as they all transition to high school, and Jeremy
watches her slowly conform to the popular group of kids. The good news is that there is hope!
You see, Regan really is a bit of a rebel. She's not a cigarette-smoking,
curfew-breaking rebel, though. Regan's
got a great family who cares about her and supports her, so she has a
foundation strong enough to support a change.
She transitions, not into something new, but into the person she really
is (and was). Regan's had her eye on
Jeremy for a long time, and while she's never participated in actively bullying
anyone (in fact, earlier she was a champion of the little guy), she begins to
see that her eventual passive acceptance and her inability to admit to what's
been going on right in front of her are just as bad. When she finds Jeremy's notebook detailing
his plans for revenge, she finally makes her move and approaches him.
Here's where everything gets really interesting. What would you do? Would you do what you're "supposed"
to do and turn him in? Or would you
approach him, talk to him, try to gauge how serious his words really are? This journal is a detailed plan, mind you, not
just angry rantings. The decision Regan
makes is dangerous, and I can't say I'd recommend it, but it smacks true of a
teenager. This is one of the many
beauties of this story--it's believability.
Ms. Walden's got her finger right on the pulse of this age group, and
she writes them with honesty and so much compassion that I forgave all of their
mistakes. They're just kids, and they
are fumbling through these very adult situations and complex emotions. Maybe adults would get it "right,"
but the ability to see black and white has not yet been honed in these teenagers,
and once you enter Jeremy and Regan's relationship, you may wish yours had
never developed either. It's not easy
living on the edge of innocence and an ugly reality, but Ms. Walden's
characters, especially Regan, do it with so much honest vulnerability that I
dare you to judge them.
Jeremy's push and pull is heartbreaking, though that word
fails to really say how deeply Jeremy tore at me. I didn't blame him, and I felt unable to
judge him. He's just a kid, of legal
"adult" age or not, and he is completely out of his depth. He's known nothing but fear, anger, sadness
and loneliness most of his life; then a few people come and offer something
new: compassion, kindness, generosity, and love. The question is this: Are those things strong
enough to fight that darkness? Have they
come too late? Jeremy's darkness is a
constant; it surrounds him. So, how can
these new, small sparks overcome a lifetime of negatives? I had hope before, even listening in on
Jeremy's every thought, because that's who I am--I hope for the best--but I had
no idea if the good would eventually outweigh the bad.
Some people may read the description of this book and think
Ms. Walden has a political statement to make, but I would argue with that
idea. Sure, politicians continue to try
to politicize love, but it's not political.
This book is about the power of love, compassion and kindness. It's about taking care of your fellow humans
and treating people right, and it's about all the ways, in ignorance and in
growing and learning, that we do so much harm.
It's about power, abuse of power, and about trying to keep it. It's about control and weakness and fear;
but, in the end, I maintain that it's about those small sparks of light and how
deeply they can penetrate. It is
possible for someone who has never known love or hope to catch a glimpse and
start to believe it exists.
Right up until the end of the book, Jeremy struggles (and
often loses) to control his emotions, especially the negative ones, but his
persistence in holding onto the good renewed something inside of me, something
that gets kicked around on a daily basis in reading the news, etc. Jeremy
gave me hope that even small acts of kindness can make a difference.
The whole story is told with such a feeling of
immediacy. I'm always impressed by this
author's ability to keep the reader so tightly tied to the action and emotion
of each scene. So many stories are told
exclusively in first person, that when I run into an omniscient narrator, I
really pay attention. Ms. Walden excels
in this brand of storytelling, in my opinion, and she has such a talent for
expressing the thoughts and emotions of each character in each scene, even
while they swirl around each other, mixing and overlapping. She puts the reader in the room, absorbing
the energy right through their skin. We
should all be paying attention. Kudos to
her!
My verdict: You
should read this book. Don't let the
subject matter put you off. Instead,
embrace what you fear, hold it tight, and let it change you. Let Jeremy and Regan fumble their way into to
your world and shine some light. My hope
is that, when you've finished this book, you'll shine that light onto someone
else and watch it grow. Who knows what
difference your light might make.
Letter to the Reader:
Dear Reader,
Not many authors will discourage you from reading their work. After all, the goal of our stories is to grow our readership, not diminish it. I’m well aware of that, but when I first became inspired with Jeremy’s story, I knew I would have to go about promoting it in an entirely different way—something far removed from my past marketing campaigns. I knew I would have to hide the book, stamp disclaimers all over it, plant seeds of doubt in your minds, decline requests for advanced reviews—in essence, all the things an author SHOULD NOT do when marketing her book. That’s why it took me so long to write the damn thing—over a year of worrying, second-guessing, flip-flopping, arguing. Jeremy sat waiting patiently, and I stared back at him wondering just how much he would destroy my career.
Then I remembered that his story is exactly the type of controversial social issue I enjoy tackling. I knew I had to write it because I could. I could be sensitive to the subject matter without being PC. I could leave my political and moral opinions out of it. I could make it a human story, not a gun story. I could do all these things if I worked very hard—if I was diligent and faithful to my characters and their experiences. Once I realized these things, I stopped fretting and just started writing, careful to keep all the details private and sacred. That’s how writing should be: private and sacred.
Now Jeremy’s story is no longer private, but I hope you will find it sacred. I hope you will throw off your preconceptions and bury your social and political views, your moral judgments. It’s too easy to go into a story like this already angry, especially if you or someone you love has experienced gun violence. I urge you to think long and hard before starting Interim if you are especially sensitive to the topic of school shootings. There are extremely violent, descriptive scenes, and I do not wish for my book to be a trigger for you.
I am well aware of the social debate a book like this may provoke. I did not write it for debate. I did not write it to make a statement about guns, gun control, gun access, Constitutional rights, etc. I am not interested in comparing my story to the horrific school shootings that have taken place in the United States. I have no motive other than to tell a story about an abused boy who felt he deserved justice. What you take away from the novel is entirely up to you.
Love,
Summer
S. Walden used to teach English before making the best decision of her life by becoming a full-time writer. She lives in Georgia with her very supportive husband who prefers physics textbooks over fiction and has a difficult time understanding why her characters must have personality flaws. She is wary of small children, so she has a Westie instead. She is the USA Today bestselling author of Going Under. When she's not writing, she's thinking about it.
She loves her fans and loves to hear from them. Email her at swaldenauthor@hotmail.com and follow her twitter feed at @swaldenauthor.
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