Towering (32 page)

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Authors: Alex Flinn

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Rachel had been staying in Danielle’s room since she came home. We looked at each other and said, “We’ll do it,” because we knew it would be too painful for her.

“Thank you.”

One thing that hadn’t changed about Rachel was her hair. It was still short, and it wasn’t growing. Or, I guess, it was growing at a normal rate, not a crazy one. Her magical tears too were gone now that they had served their purpose. And if I wanted to talk to her, I had to go find her.

Which wasn’t that hard, since we were both living at Mrs. Greenwood’s house for now. We had both started classes at the local school, not online, so we had to wait until Saturday to clean out the room. That morning, we put Danielle’s things in bags, some for the garbage, some for charity, some for Hemingway’s junk shelves, “Because, really,” I said, “you never know when someone might want a pair of shoe skates—some people might think in-line skates are dumb.” And some things, like old yearbooks and photographs, Rachel kept for herself.

Rachel took out one of the desk drawers so she could go through it. When she tried to put it back, it wouldn’t go in. “Check underneath,” I said. “Sometimes, something gets stuck in the tracks.” I had to tell her things like this all the time, because she’d never done normal stuff like other people did. Even the dishwasher fascinated her completely, and she kept putting dishes in so she could run it and see them come out clean.

Rachel held the drawer up and looked under it. She drew out a blue envelope.

She looked at it, then gasped.

In what I recognized as Danielle’s handwriting, the letter was addressed to Rachel.

Dear Rachel,

I am writing this to you because I know you will be born, and I know you’ll be a girl. I’m going to tell whoever takes you to name you Rachel because that’s my favorite name.

I hope that you’ve grown to be a beautiful young woman when you read this. I know that I probably won’t be around, and that makes me sad, but it also makes me happy that I could have you. We all have our destinies. Mine was to be your mother, and I hope that was enough. Yours is to be someone special, heroic, and I hope that, since I am your mother, that makes me a heroine as well.

About your father. I met him when I was a teenager. We fell in love, and then, he left me. But he sent me a letter not long after. He told me that you would be an incredible person. You would have healing powers and strength, and you will change everything for many people. I hope you will have enough strength for what you need to do. And I hope you will have help.

I loved your father very much. I hope that you will meet someone, someone like him, who will show you all the beauty of the wonderful world.

Your father also told me to be careful. I am trying, but I don’t know if it will be enough. If it isn’t, I want you to know I love you, my baby.

Your mother,

Danielle

“And did I?” I said after we had both finished reading it.

“Did you what?”

“Show you the wonderful world?”

“You did. You showed me everything, everything I’ve ever seen. You saved my life.”

I kissed her. “And you saved mine right back. Several times now.”

She looked around the room with its boxes and bags everywhere. Her eyes fell upon the window. “Oh, look, it’s snowing,” Rachel said.

“Then I guess there’s only one thing for us to do,” I said. “Make an angel!”

Author’s Note

Rapunzel
was one of my favorite fairy tales when I was a child (long before it was a Disney movie—people, Disney did not write these stories!), to a degree that I once tried to write a musical version of it in high school. As soon as I finished writing
Beastly
, I started on a version of
Rapunzel
. I thought that, as here, rapunzel would have to be a drug. Why else would a mother give her baby away for it?

However, it was difficult to write a book in which the heroine is trapped in a tower; more difficult still if I tried to let her out. I ended up putting it down.

Then, one day, my husband was watching the History channel, and instead of wars, they started talking about Greek mythology, specifically, the story of Danaë, mother of Perseus. Like Rapunzel, Danaë was kept in a tower. But there, it was because of a prophecy that she would bear a son who would kill her father. She had to be stopped from bearing that fateful child. However, as anyone who has read mythology knows, you can’t stop a prophecy, so Zeus came to her in a shower of gold and impregnated her. (My husband says that ancient Greek girls who got pregnant must have told their parents, “Really, Dad, it wasn’t Konstantine! Zeus came to me in a shower of gold!”) I had read this story in high school, but now, it seemed like the History channel was talking to me. Several months later, I was driving to New York City with my kids to see the musical
Shrek
(another princess in a tower story), and my daughter, Katherine, was reading her required summer reading book aloud. It was Edith Hamilton’s mythology, and it was the story of Perseus and Danaë. I knew I was meant to write this book. This does show how long these stories have been with us—Danaë was likely the original Rapunzel. Or, perhaps, there was a Rapunzel even before that.

For more information on fairy tales, visit www.surlalunefairytales.com. It has all the classic stories and even merchandise.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my editor, Antonia Markiet, also, Rachel Abrams, Phoebe Yeh, and my agent, George Nicholson.

Thanks to Debbie Fischer and Joyce Sweeney, for reading an earlier version of this and telling me it wasn’t that bad (even though it was).

Special thanks to Heather Rivera, for allowing me to do belay training with the moms in her Girl Scout troop and writer, Elisa Carbone, for giving me rock climbing advice, so that snobby rock climbers like her (her words) wouldn’t talk trash about my book.

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Also by Alex Flinn

BEASTLY

A KISS IN TIME

CLOAKED

BEWITCHING

BREATHING UNDERWATER

DIVA

FADE TO BLACK

NOTHING TO LOSE

BREAKING POINT

About the Author

Gene Flinn

ALEX FLINN
loves fairy tales and is the author of the #1
New York Times
bestselling
Beastly
, a spin on
Beauty and the Beast
that was named a
VOYA
Editor’s Choice and an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers.
Beastly
is now a major motion picture starring Vanessa Hudgens. Alex also wrote
A Kiss in Time
, a modern retelling of
Sleeping Beauty
;
Cloaked
, a humorous fairy-tale mash-up; and
Bewitching
, a reimagining of fairy-tale favorites, including
Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, The Princess and the Pea
, and
The Little Mermaid
, all told by Kendra—the witch from
Beastly
. Her other books for teens include
Breathing Underwater, Breaking Point, Nothing to Lose, Fade to Black
, and
Diva
. She lives in Miami with her family. Visit her online at www.alexflinn.com.

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Credits

Cover art © 2013 by Howard Huang and Adam Brown

Cover design by Sasha Illingworth

Copyright

HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

T
OWERING
. Copyright © 2013 by Alex Flinn. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

www.epicreads.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Flinn, Alex.

Towering / Alex Flinn. — First edition.

pages       cm

Summary: “A contemporary retelling of Rapunzel told from the alternating perspectives of three teens whose fates unknowingly bind them together to destroy a greater evil”— Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-06-202417-6 (hardback)

ISBN 978-0-06-202418-3 (lib. bdg.)

ISBN 978-0-06-227632-2 (international ed.)

EPub Edition April 2013 ISBN 9780062209214

[1. Fairy tales. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Blessing and cursing—Fiction. 4. Missing persons—Fiction. 5. Drug abuse—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ8.F5778Tow 2013

2012051742

[Fic]—dc23

CIP

 

AC

13 14 15 16 17   
LP/RRDH
   10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FIRST EDITION

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United States
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New York, NY 10022

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