The Tragedy Paper (28 page)

“Thank you,” Duncan said. He couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. He would wait at the bottom of the stairs until Daisy found him. He would tell her how much she meant to him and make sure to every day. If she let him, he would help her write her own Tragedy Paper—apparently, he was an expert, however accidental that was.

There was one CD Tim had left for Duncan that he had never listened to. He knew the story was over; there was nothing more to say. So he had overlooked it. But when he gathered the CDs together to slip them into the secret compartment of his closet for the rest of the year, he noticed it.

It was different from the others. Instead of having a date scrawled on it—like
Jan. 5 thru Jan. 15
—as the others did, this one had messy musical notes on it. Duncan hesitated, then slipped it in and listened. It was a compilation of Journey songs—“Don’t Stop Believin’,” “Wheel in the Sky,” and “Faithfully,” among others. It was the music Tim had promised he would leave him with. Duncan decided to keep it out.

Duncan finally got around to choosing the juniors. He
did it openly—anyone who was interested could come—and he followed the rule. The first name picked was the junior officer—no question.

In the end, he planned a great senior Game. He took the idea from the man who had provided the sleds last year and arranged a megagame of musical chairs. This time they snuck all the chairs out of the dining hall and set them up on the quad in a long oval. The music he used was Tim’s.

There was some discussion about inviting last year’s senior class to join in, to let them have a positive senior event. It was Daisy’s idea and Duncan loved it, but they decided in the end to make it about their class.

During the Game, Duncan looked up at his tiny round window and thought of Tim’s words:
Well, I bet you’re thinking a lot of things, but at the top of your list is probably that this room sucks. It doesn’t
. He wondered how long it would be before he didn’t hear Tim’s voice at every turn. Maybe it would take leaving school, or maybe it would take more than that. He turned his gaze back to his classmates and smiled at all the white bulldog T-shirts. Without much discussion that had become the color of their year. Whether it was in honor of Tim or the snow, Duncan didn’t know. But it seemed fitting, and he liked it.

Mr. Simon had given Duncan a pass on his Tragedy Paper, but Duncan couldn’t get it out of his mind. Finally, on the morning after the senior Game, Duncan knew what he needed to do.

He went to the Hall and found a free desk in the back. Words were running through his mind, and he started to write them down. There were so many words. The first words were Tim’s:
The day I went to Irving, I was the last one to leave my house, and I don’t mean for the day. I mean forever
. He kept going in that direction for a little while, but he knew it wasn’t right. He didn’t care about his grade anymore—he had already been given an A, and he knew that would stand no matter what he wrote. But this was it: this was his chance to move forward. He took a deep breath and finally wrote:
As I walked through the stone archway leading into the senior dorm, I had two things on my mind: what “treasure” had been left behind for me and my Tragedy Paper
.

Keep these key points in mind while writing your Tragedy Paper. (DO NOT lose this paper. I will not give you another one. Sharing these instructions with students who lost their sheet or missed my handing it out will result in the automatic dropping of two grade points.)

There are two people without whom this book would not exist. The first is my agent, Uwe Stender, who has literally walked with me through every step of this project. He is smart, loyal, and persistent—everything I could ever ask for in an agent (and a friend). I would like to thank Charlotte, Wendy, and Saskia on his behalf. The second is my senior English teacher at Hackley, Mr. Arthur Naething, for assigning me a Tragedy Paper when I was a senior, and for teaching me the most important lesson he could—that I love to write.

I want to thank my amazing editor at Knopf, Erin Clarke, for wanting to publish
The Tragedy Paper
, and for taking me through the long process with kindness, enthusiasm, and remarkable attention to detail. Thank you to my copy editor, Sue Cohan, and my proofreader, Lisa Leventer.
You both did a fantastically meticulous job with this book. Thank you also to Stephanie Moss, the jacket designer. I love the cover! I am so grateful to everyone at Random House.

I have often joked that my extremely generous friend Jennifer Weiner could make a second career out of supporting my writing. She is always willing to help, offer advice, and talk through a plot point or a character’s motivation. She is also a lot of fun to hang out with. I want to thank my other wonderful friends: Simona Gross, Ivy Gilbert, Dawn Davenport, Charlie Phy, Doug Cooper, Nika Haase, Lisa Kozleski, Melissa Cooper, Meghan Burnett, Melissa Jensen, Angie Benson, Leah Kellar, and my pals who walked the halls of Hackley with me.

To my mentors, teachers, and editors: Dianne Drummey Marino at NBC News; LynNell Hancock and the late Dick Blood at Columbia Journalism School; and Tom Watson, Buddy Stein, and the late Ceil Stein at
The Riverdale Press
—I got here because of all of you.

The author S. E. Hinton changed the course of my life with
The Outsiders
and
That Was Then, This Is Now
. Reading her books made me want to be a writer. I wish I could thank her in person.

To Patty Rich and Terry LaBan—thanks for your confidence and love. To my in-laws, Joyce and Myron LaBan—I knew you took my writing seriously when you bought me a laptop ten years ago. You have continued to believe in me ever since, and that means more than I can say.

I wish my late father, Arthur Trostler, could be here to read this book. He is always with me, and his motto “Keep your eye on the ball” rings in my head constantly. To my mother, Barbara Trostler, who has continuously given me everything she has—I will never be able to thank you enough.

I couldn’t have done any of this without my loving husband, Craig LaBan, who keeps up my strength by feeding me really well, and who has always buoyed my dream of being a novelist. (He also makes the best cappuccino I have ever had.)

And to my children, Alice and Arthur, thank you for jumping up and down when I told you I (finally) sold a novel. This one’s for you. May your lives always be full of good books and great stories. I know everyone says this, but in this case it is true: you are the best kids in the world.

THE TRAGEDY PAPER
IS YOUR FIRST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL. HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA TO WRITE IT?

I have wanted to write a book since I was in fourth grade. My friend Marshall Cooper would come over and we would try to come up with stories to fit a character we had named Chopped Suey. In my mind he was a cool, urban kid detective. We never got past designing the cover! But from that time on, I was always writing stories in my head. The idea for
The Tragedy Paper
came in different stages. I liked the concept of writing a classic love triangle. I was also struck by the notion of using an intense school assignment to help the story unfold. When I was a senior in high school, I was assigned a long-term project we called the Tragedy Paper, similar to and yet slightly different from the one the students at Irving write. My task was to define a tragedy, and then decide if it could exist in modern literature. Several years ago, I actually found my paper. Reading through it again so
many years later made me want to write my own tragedy. Those words that become ingrained in Duncan’s mind never really stopped swirling around in my mind, either.
Magnitude, reversal of fortune, hubris
—I have always loved those words. And then suddenly Duncan was walking under that archway.…

PLEASE TELL US WHY YOU DECIDED TO TELL THE STORY USING A DUAL NARRATIVE
.

My agent suggested I read Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s
The Sorrows of Young Werther
when I was beginning to write my book. In it, Werther writes to a friend about his life and troubles. I loved that structure and had Goethe’s story in my mind the whole time I was writing
The Tragedy Paper
. As a nod to the famous novel, there is a mention of linden trees—the type of tree Werther is buried under after he kills himself—when Tim and Vanessa take their fateful sleigh ride. I knew I wanted Tim to tell his story in his own words, but I also knew he had to be telling it to someone for a reason. I liked the idea that Duncan was just a normal kid who became connected to Tim by chance. They knew each other, but they also didn’t know each other at all. The more I wrote, the more I liked Duncan and wanted him to have his own story, too.

DID YOU ALWAYS ENVISION TIM AS AN ALBINO OR DID THAT COME LATER IN THE WRITING PROCESS?

I pretty quickly decided Tim was an albino, and once I did it stuck for me. I knew Tim had to be an outsider, and not just because he was new to the Irving School. I wanted him to deal with an affliction that was with him all the time, but not something
that made it hard to live his everyday life. As I did research about the things albinos have to sometimes deal with, making Tim an albino gave me a way to amplify the insecurities that are present in most teenagers, and offered so many possibilities for the choices he makes in the book.

THE PRIVATE SCHOOL SETTING PLAYS A BIG ROLE IN THE BOOK. WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO SET THE BOOK AT THE IRVING SCHOOL?

For my last two years of high school, my parents sent me to an amazing private school called Hackley in Tarrytown, New York. It sounds really corny, but I think my two years there changed my life. They weren’t perfect years—I had a few run-ins with mean kids and I was really lonely when I first got there—but overall it was the first time I felt like I was truly a part of a place and the culture of that place. It was also the first time I understood the idea of enjoying learning. I just got a mailing from Hackley and there was a quote from an alumnus saying he wished he could return as a student. If he could, he promised he would read everything that was assigned to him and he would pay better attention in class. Couldn’t he please go back in time? I realized after reading his words that writing this book and creating the world of the Irving School was doing just that for me. It let me go back to that wonderful place and hang out for a while.

THE ENDING DOESN’T TIE EVERYTHING UP IN A NEAT BOW. WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO LEAVE IT OPEN-ENDED?

I never wanted the ending to be so concrete that there was absolutely no hope. I always wanted there to be the possibility
that anything could happen. There is no question that everyone involved is changed forever. I didn’t think the stage had to be strewn with bodies. When I was a senior in high school, I tried to answer the question of whether classic tragedy could exist in contemporary literature. And if it does, can it be slightly different from William Shakespeare’s vision of it? What do you think?

YOU SPENT SOME TIME TEACHING AT A COMMUNITY COLLEGE. DID YOU RESEMBLE MR. SIMON IN ANY WAY?

Not at all! I loved teaching, just as Mr. Simon does. But many of my students were adults, so the dynamic was very different from that between Mr. Simon and the students at the Irving School. Mr. Simon, who in many ways was based on my own senior English teacher, Mr. Arthur Naething (he really did dismiss us daily with “Go forth and spread beauty and light”), is so good at being accessible to the kids on one level and yet terrifying them on another. I never had the nerve to scare my students. I was just happy that they came to class and seemed interested in what I was saying.