My new middle-grade novel



was published in April 2008
by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers
and is now available as an audiobook
from Recorded Books.


View the Itch book trailer.
Read an excerpt.
Read a short summary.
Print a classroom Study Guide (Coming soon).

 Order Itch on amazon.com  or barnesandnoble.com or
locate an independent bookseller near you.

                      
  More News   
             
My third book
a young adult novel
Blue Plate Special
is now under contract with
Chronicle Books
and tentatively scheduled for a
Fall 2009
release.

Keep reading to view a summary of the novel
and check out an excerpt. 

To find out more about my other
current projects, click here. 

 Blue Plate Special
(summary)

        Dealing with themes of loss, love, and forgiveness, this novel follows the lives of three teenagers—Madeline, Desiree, and Ariel—who narrate alternating chapters. Overweight Madeline is worn down by years of caring for her alcoholic mother. Teased since childhood, she engages in acts of self-mutilation - until a McDonald’s counter boy notices she exists and acts as a catalyst for change. 
       Angry, foul-mouthed Desiree parties with her boyfriend and best friend, avoiding encounters with her neglectful mother. But when her mother's boyfriend assaults Desiree, she has big decisions to make.  
        Ariel, whose dad is in prison, struggles with the pressures of taking AP classes and coping with a domineering first boyfriend. When she learns her grandmother, whom she has never met, has breast cancer, Ariel must travel to places she's never been, geographically or emotionally.
        As the story unravels, Madeline's and Desiree's and Ariel's lives intersect, illuminating the connections they share, lighting the way toward healing. 
      

Blue Plate Special
(excerpt)

Chapter One: Madeline

Elmira, New York, 1977

 

 “Register four is now open with no waiting,” a ceiling voice booms, interrupting Time in a Bottle, my favorite Jim Croce song, which is playing over the intercom.

When the light for the express lane blinks on, Mom hurries toward it, cutting off a white-haired lady in a fuzzy pink warm-up suit.

I straggle behind, huffing to catch up. By the time I do, Mom’s unloaded the contents of our basket on the conveyor belt—a box of Ritz Crackers, a jar of store brand peanut butter, a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and two cans of Coca-Cola. White Hair is parked behind her, emptying her carriage, clearly breaking the LIMIT 12 ITEMS rule. I count ten cans of cat food, two packages of 100-watt light bulbs, a carton of Virginia Slims cigarettes, and a tube of generic hemorrhoid cream.

“Excuse me,” I mumble, attempting to squeeze past her cart.  But squeezing isn’t a viable option when you weigh over two hundred pounds. My butt catches on a candy rack, dragging a shelf full of Necco Wafers to the ground. I bend to pick them up then straighten, smacking my head on a newspaper display. President Nixon’s face glares at me, unforgiving.

“Excuse me,” I say again, louder.

Finally, White Hair backs up to let me through.

WELCOME TO GRAND UNION! I’M JOYCE! presses the register keys, totaling up Mom’s and my order. Joyce is at least as fat as I am, except she’s older and has large, bulgy frog eyes. The stone on her mood ring is black. “Nine dollars and sixty-two cents,” she reports, staring past Mom and me.

Mom thumbs through a fistful of food stamps. Usually they’re something I manage, since I do most of the shopping, but today she feels like playing grown-up.

Joyce stares at the stamps, like Mom’s produced a handful of dog shit. “You can’t pay for beer with those,” she snarls.  

“I’m aware of that,” Mom snarls back. Then she leans in close to my side. Her liner’s painted thicker on one eye, making the two sides of her face seem mismatched. “Sweetie,” she whispers, “do you have four dollars I can borrow?”

White Hair cranes her neck to watch us. And even though I’m embarrassed, I’m pissed too. I glare at her hemorrhoid cream until her face reddens and she looks away.

“Sure,” I answer Mom, reaching in my pocket, unfolding several one dollar bills. Every month, after Mom signs her welfare check, I take it to the bank and cash it for her. After I pay the rent and utilities, I divide what remains between us. Mom’s half covers her cigarettes and beer for the month. Or it’s supposed to. With my half, I buy household items and school lunches. Whatever I have left over I hide in a shoe box in the back of my closet. I’ve saved close to three hundred dollars. After I graduate, I want to go to the community college and study to become a nurse. Needless to say, Mom doesn’t know about the box. She’d be into it in no time flat the minute she ran out of beer money.

I count out four ones for Mom, smoothing them flat on the counter.

Joyce rolls her big bulgy frog eyes. “You still need nineteen cents.”

I reach back in my pocket, pulling out a dime and two nickels. Except I don’t hand the coins to Joyce, I drop them on the conveyor belt, watching her fat fingers struggle to collect them.

Mom cradles her Grand Union bag—carefully, like it’s a baby she’s carrying—and starts for the EXIT door.

Not bothering to wait for my penny, I follow her. Fast.

Or as fast as a fat girl can travel.

*     *     *

It’s over a half-hour drive to the cemetery. By the time we get there, the sun is low in the sky. The graveyards closer to home lock their gates at dusk. But Cherry Hill never shuts down. I guess that’s why it’s Mom’s favorite. It’s there for her, anytime. 

Mom parks her rusty Charger in the usual spot, three turns past the visitor’s center. I grab the grocery bag and start toward the place we always sit, beside the tall concrete angel. Her wings are spread, and on her base is carved:

Sophie DeSalvo

Beloved Daughter

March 1, 1959—September 15, 1961

Sophie was born the same year I was, except she only got to have two birthdays, which is completely unfair. Death should be reserved for old people. People like White Hair. I picture her slumped across the conveyer belt at the Grand Union, clutching her heart with one hand, squeezing her tube of generic hemorrhoid cream with the other.

Next to Sophie’s angel is a bubbling fountain. A breeze blows and I feel the spray on my face. Even after I blink several times, the droplets still cling to my lashes.

Before Mom joins me, she cranks up her car radio, and then rolls down the driver’s side window. Barry Manilow’s voice leaps out, puncturing the dusky silence. I don’t bother to tell her what I’m thinking—that it’s disrespectful to play Top 10 tunes where Sophie DeSalvo is buried. It wouldn’t do any good. This is part of Mom’s ritual.

Seconds later, she’s beside me, unfolding a wooly blanket she’s retrieved from the trunk of her car. It’s a leftover item from an old boyfriend, Jake. He had a dog, and the blanket still smells just like him. The dog, that is, not Jake.

Mom spreads the blanket across the low flat rock she calls Our Rock. As if that cold gray mass is meaningful because we’ve clamed it. As if we’ve made some mark on the world by sitting there, and in a hundred years, after we’re both dead and gone, someone will put a plaque on the stone that reads: LEONA FITCH AND MADELINE FITCH ONCE SAT HERE.

The sky turns a deep shimmery pink, so bright it doesn’t look real.

My mother pops the top on a can of beer. She tips her head back, swallowing again and again, like she hasn’t had liquid in a week. I open the peanut butter and dip crackers in the brown goo, chewing.

By the time my mother’s finished her fifth beer, and I’ve polished off the crackers, the last band of color has disappeared behind the black hills. I glance at the moon, which hovers over Sophie’s angel, bathing the concrete in a cool, silvery light.

I lick my finger, dabbing RITZ flakes off the shelf my boobs make, and then I eat those tiny crumbs, too.

I’m still hungry. I have a bottomless chasm in my middle. I could peel the Grand Union store open like a can of sardines and empty all the aisles down my throat, and even then I wouldn’t feel full.

Mom starts on beer number six. It’s the one I call the Talking Beer. Soon she’ll fill the night with more words than you’d ever guess she owned.

I lean my head back, looking up at the stars. I find one that blinks on and off, praying it’s telling me something. I do that a lot—hope objects are trying to communicate with me, making up for the people who aren’t.

My mother burps, and I can smell the beer stench on her breath. Instead of excusing herself, she announces, “I won’t be seeing Kyle anymore.”

Of course, I already know this. That’s why we’re here, after all. To officially and ceremoniously add another name to the Men Who Failed Leona Fitch list.

“I thought he was going to be The One,” she continues. “He was so thoughtful.”

She’s right. Kyle was thoughtful. He gave me a cute, brown Bobble Head dog the first time Mom brought him home to meet me. And he earned bonus points for the fact that I never once caught him staring at my rolls of fat or my massive chest.

There’s a long silence between us. 

Mom pokes me with her bony elbow. “You gotta boyfriend yet?”

I stare at the spot where she jabbed me. I’m wearing long sleeves, like I always do, even on the hottest day of summer. “Dozens,” I say. “Boy’s know fat’s where it’s at.”

Mom extends a finger, playfully tapping my chin—which is actually three chins—and I get this lump in my throat because she almost never touches me. Not that I can blame her. People don’t like to touch fat. “Maybe if you dressed a lil’ diff’rent . . .” she slurs, tugging on the cuff on my sweater, which I instinctively pull away from her. “Maybe if you showed a lil’ flesh you’d get some action.” She giggles.

“Right,” I snap. “Welcome to Sea World. Step right up and pet a real live whale. Can’t get much sexier than that, can you?”

Mom’s quiet again.

I glance over, making sure she she’s still upright.

“We’re quita pair,” she says, forcing a smile. “I drinka lil’ too much and you eata lil’ too much.” She lifts her Talking Beer toward a patch of stars. “Here’s to whatever makes you happy.”

Her head drops, landing on the giant hill my shoulder makes.

Softly, she starts to cry.

Happy is the last thing I’d call us.

 

                                                            *     *     *

                                   Current Projects 


     
    I've recently finished a young adult novel, Unsaid, and I'm now I'm at work on a middle-grade novel, Downtown. Below is a summary of each. 


                                                          Unsaid

        Charlotte (nicknamed Charlie), and Amber are complete opposites. 

Charlie listens to classic rock; Amber’s into top 40.

Amber reads the book; Charlie waits for the movie on DVD.

Amber swings straight A’s; Charlie barely manages B’s and C’s.

Still, they've been best friends since fourth grade. And they've told each other everything. Everything. Until the spirng of their junior year when Amber falls for a boy at the same time Charlie develops a crush on a girl.
        Unsaid explores the secrets we keep, the damage they create, and the path we must travel to uncover our own truth.
       Change isn't easy. But neither is living a lie.
       Sometimes we have to risk it all. With or without our best friend. 

Click here to read the first chapter of Unsaid.

                                  Downtown

The year is 1965, and eleven-year-old Jolene Lipton craves a life as sparkly as the lyrics of Petula Clark’s Downtown. But nothing in her ho-hum existence comes close to the glimmer of her favorite billboard hit.  The oldest of three girls, Jolene feels hugely underappreciated—and more than a little embarrassed by a mother who specializes in Rude and Nosy Questions.

When her family moves from their cramped apartment in Pawtucket’s Peak, Pennsylvania to a bungalow on the banks of the Susquehanna River in New York State, Jolene is anything but disappointed. Never mind that their new house is “stained” by flood damage, Jolene has high hopes that starting over might be just the change she needs to bring a little bit of Downtown into her own backyard.

One by one, she meets her new neighbors. Most interesting to Jolene is eccentric Mrs. Spitzer who has an odd hobby: crafting hanging lanterns out of glass jars, tin cans, and stove pipe wire, fashioning them to resemble different animals. Jolene’s favorite is a turtle, named Barnaby after Mrs. Spitzer’s twenty-two-year-old son. However, after meeting Barnaby the person Jolene much prefers the lantern. Not only does Barnaby have a humungous chip on his shoulder and use his vocal chords even less than her painfully introverted father, he’s crippled with Polio and hasn’t left the house in years.

But as the two spend time together, Jolene learns that Barnaby is more than just a bitter recluse in a wheelchair. He’s someone with his own Downtown dreams—dreams he will never live out. As their friendship grows, Jolene becomes determined to help him try.

After all, there’s a little bit of Downtown sparkle in all of us.

The trick, with some folks, is finding it.

        

 

             

Unsaid
(excerpt)

Chapter One 

             Structure is important to my mother.   She organizes everything. Books. Clothes.

Groceries.  My father’s life. Mine. 

            She groups her CDS on shelves by Category and Purpose (her words, not mine).

Classical: Dinner Music. Jazz: Cooking. Opera: Housecleaning. My personal favorite is Light

Rock: Letting Your Hair Down, which never sees much action around our house. We’re not what

you’d call card-carrying members of the Relaxed Hair Club.

Tonight, my mother selects a Mahler Symphony for meal time. As she reaches for seconds of grilled asparagus and Dad salts his food a third time, her severely-plucked eyebrows scrunch together like anorexic caterpillars doing a head butt. Instead of lapsing into a lecture

on the evils of sodium intake—like I’m expecting her to do—she turns to my father and says,

“Richard (not Rick, which every other person on the planet calls him), “we need to talk.”        

Dad clears his throat then coughs, which means he’s either (1) nervous or agitated, or (2) has a glob of Mom’s disgusting couscous caught in his throat and needs someone to perform the Heimlich Maneuver.

Managing to swallow, he tosses a glance my way.

Then he turns back to Mom. “Toni,” he says calmly, “can’t this wait until later?” His eyebrows, unlike Mom’s, don’t budge. Dad never shows tension in his face. He could do Botox commercials posing for the AFTER TREATMENT photo without ever having an injection.

“I’ve got homework,” I say, standing to walk my plate to the sink.

I pause below the arch that separates our dining room from the kitchen.

When Mom lets me go without commenting (“Charlotte, did you ask to be excused?”),

I feel a sudden surge of panic. As much as I resent her always “steering the ship” (“Someone has to!”) it’s kind of unsettling when she doesn’t.

The Mahler Symphony ends. The room is suddenly silent.

My father stifles a burp.

Mom’s fork bangs her plate.

The CD player hiccups toward the next disc. Too bad it doesn’t have a brain,

that it can’t say to itself, This might not be a good time for music. I think I’ll shut up for now.

As I rinse my plate and feed it to the dishwasher, a horn concerto begins. My parents’ voices weave in and out and around the somber notes, gradually climbing with the music, building tempo and volume and speed.

Within minutes, of course, they’re fighting. Except my mother refuses to call it that; she

refers to their arguments as passionate discourse. Not surprising. Her Ph.D. in English, which has never landed her a real job, shows up in her ability to euphemize (not to be confused with euthanize, which she could probably do well, too.)

Dad looses his cool, shouting, “My God, Toni, when did we become these limited people who have to lead such controlled lives?”

On my way down the hall toward my room, I mumble, “Jesus, Dad, you’re just now noticing?”

*     *     *

I reach for the tablet below my bed—an 18 X 24 block of 140 pound Arches hot press paper Dad got me for Christmas last year. The rough side’s good for watercolors, but I almost always use the smooth side since I prefer drawing to painting. It’s immediate. I don’t have to waste time prepping materials or washing brushes when I’m done.

I lean the tablet against my bed and sit cross-legged on the floor, studying myself in the hand mirror I keep in my pencil box. I’m working on a self-portrait for extra credit. In this particular drawing, I’ve zoomed in close to my face so it’s, like, five times larger than real life—something I got inspired to try after Ms. Keyes, my art teacher, showed us a Power point on the work of Chuck Close.

I’m about to shade the zit on my chin, which is easily the size of an Oreo cookie, when the phone rings. The house grows silent while Mom puts the argument on pause. She wouldn’t miss a call if Dad were hemorrhaging on the floor—especially not now, while the town library, where she volunteers, is preparing for their annual book sale.

I stand and open my door, listening for the sound of Mom’s nauseatingly cheerful Phone Voice.

“He-lllloooo?” she half-chimes, half-sings, followed by a small, curt, “Oh” that can only mean one thing. “Charlotte,” she calls flatly, “it’s for you.”

I pick up the phone on my nightstand. Waiting for Mom to hang up, I stare across the room at my computer monitor. I changed my screensaver recently—from the bouncing 3-D shapes to the pipe thing under construction, thinking it would be less manic. Except it’s not. The motion starts to wig me out.

I hear the hanging-up click.

My parents resume their passionate discourse.

 “Hello?” I say into the phone.

“God,” my best friend Amber says back, “will your mom ever ditch the Charlotte shit?”

I laugh. Amber almost never swears, so when she does, it sounds really comical, like someone playing grown-up or something.

Faking a Bette Davis voice, I say, “You’re just jealous you’re not named after some crazy lady in a 1960’s horror movie.” The truth is, I’d love to have a name like Amber’s. So normal. So this century.

“You’re right,” Amber says. “You’re onto me.”

There’s a long moment of silence between us. Usually I start the conversation, jumping in, head first, venting about whatever’s on my mind. But I realize I’m not feeling very talkative.

Amber’s voice cuts through the phone static. “What’s wrong?” she asks me.

I roll a charcoal pencil back and forth across my leg, leaving smudges on the knee of my jeans.  “Mom’s on Dad’s ass again,” I say, immediately regretting I did. I always feel guilty when I complain about my parents since I’m lucky enough to have two, and Amber only has her Mom because her dad died of cancer six years ago.

“Want to come over for a game of Scrabble?” she asks. “Mom’s zonked out on the couch so she won’t be needing her car. I can come pick you up.”

I stare across my room at the clock, barely visible behind a tall stack of homework.

It’s still early, only ten after seven. If I hang out at Amber’s apartment for the hour it takes to play a game, I’ll still have time to finish my portrait.

“Sure,” I say, reaching for my denim jacket, “I’ll meet you out front in a few.”