The Noah Confessions (18 page)

SEVENTEEN

Mick closed the book and looked at me.

We were standing in the parking lot at Santa Monica beach, near the location where I had once almost died. It was night and the light from the bonfire on the beach was spilling across the sand and landing on us. It made him look tanned and exotic. His hair was still long and he still pushed it away from his face when he was nervous. The book made him a little nervous but it also made him smile.

There was music coming from the bonfire, too. Old stuff. Classic rock. People were getting sentimental. Bonfires weren't usually allowed on the beaches of Santa Monica, but this was the one night of the year when the cops made exceptions.

“What do you think?” I asked.

He said, “I think it was a lot of work.”

“Not that much. Typing, cutting, pasting.”

“A lot of typing, though.”

I shrugged. “Good practice for a future reporter.”

“That's not what you said in the journal. You claim you're not a good writer.”

“Not poetic. Not good at making things up. Somewhat better at telling the truth.”

He smiled. “I think you'll be great at it.”

“And you'll be a famous artist. And we'll meet in New York and go to galas.”

“I don't see how that's going to happen. I'll be stuck in Rhode Island without a car.”

“Take the train. When you get to New York, you won't need a car.”

“Do they allow scholarship students on the grounds of NYU?”

“There aren't any grounds. It's just the city. Everybody's welcome. Even people without cars. Why do you think I picked it?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Stop doing the Romeo-and-Juliet thing. I'm over it.”

He smiled, rubbing his fingers across the cover.

“I'm flattered,” he said. “That you'd do this.”

“I want you to remember me.”

“Yeah. But this makes me feel like you think I won't. Or that it's somehow the end.”

“If the story of my life proves anything, it's that nothing ends. Look at my parents. Look what they overcame. Look how chance helped them out.”

“You don't believe in chance.”

I smiled. I bumped his knee with mine. “God, then. But artists don't believe in that.”

“Some do,” he said.

“Hey, you guys, get over here and socialize. No isolating. This is a bonding experience!”

This was Talia's voice drifting across the sand. She and Zoe were waving to me. They were talking to two guys I didn't recognize. Friends of Mick's. He had introduced them and obviously they were having no trouble throwing away the boundaries between private and public school.

This was the night where all the kids came together. Graduation night. The same for us as it was for most of the public schools. And everyone got together on the beach for the bonfires. People met and mingled and got to know each other as equals, just for a while, before flying off to parts unknown. We were scattering like marbles. But tonight, on the beach, we were all the same.

He smiled and took my hand and brushed it against his lips. He said, “I didn't really wear an army jacket, did I?”

“Oh, yes, my friend. The journal doesn't lie.”

“What's your excuse? You were interested in a guy in an army jacket.”

“I saw past it.”

“Really, now. And why didn't you ever mail that letter to me? The one you wrote in Union Grade?”

“Because I ended up telling you everything on the phone. And I was afraid you would think it was sentimental and girlish.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I'm older.”

“By a year.”

We laughed.

“I trust the way you feel about me,” I said.

He touched the book a little bit longer, then handed it back to me.

“I can't take it, Lynnie.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's everything that matters to you. It's your mother's letter and it's the journal you kept all that time and it's your past. I can't take it.”

“It's not my past. It's just a recording of it.”

“But your mother's letter. What if something ever happened to it?”

“I had some Benedictine monks write it out on a scroll for me. It's copied and saved and on a disk. Information age, remember? Saving the letter itself is just sentimental. And I'm not.”

He smiled. “This gesture isn't sentimental?”

“No, it's romantic. Do I have to give a semantics lesson? Anyway, my dad even understood that we had to get rid of it. He tried to burn it after we got back from the trip.”

I remembered that moment, coming down in the middle of the night, finding him sitting in front of the fire with the manuscript on his lap. He wasn't sad or scared or anything. He just believed that the trip home had given him closure and he wanted to move on to the next stage of his life. I didn't disagree. But I felt the letter was mine to burn. Or save. I hadn't decided in that moment what to do.

But not long after Mick and I started dating, I knew what I had to do. Stuck in my drawer, it remained a secret, and the point of a secret was to expose it and pass it along. Giving it to Mick meant that it would go out into the world and find its own purpose. And the point, the ritual, the ceremony of giving him all this was to let him know that I intended to remember. As long as you remember who you are, what matters to you, who the players are in that drama, then the future is nothing but possibility. It's when you forget who you are that it all turns to pain. Remember, but don't get stuck. Remember and pass it on.

“I can't believe he wants you to give it to me,” Mick said. “He's never been my biggest fan.”

“He likes you now.”

“He tolerates me.”

“No, it's moved into like. Because of Penny. Stepmothers have that kind of effect. The good ones, anyway. She argues the feminine perspective.”

He laughed. “Remind me to send her a thank-you note.”

“Just take the book,” I said. “It's yours.”

“What if I lose it?”

“It's yours. Do whatever you want with it.”

“But honestly, I'll be so paranoid about losing it.”

“It's just a book. And the thing you're really worried about losing, you can't.”

He looked at me. “I can't lose you? Even in New York City?”

“You can't lose this,” I said, touching his face. “What we are right now in the moment.”

“And after the summer?”

“That will take care of itself.”

“Seriously, you two! The party is not in the parking lot! Stop lusting after cars, Lizard, it's not gonna happen.” This was Jen, my surfing buddy, using my surfing nickname.

“I'm gonna miss that one,” I said.

“Where's she going?”

“University of Hawaii. You have to ask?”

“I guess we all end up in the right place,” he said.

He touched the birds dangling around my wrist.

“You're not giving me this?”

“No, the birds stay with me.”

I heard the music drifting from the beach and I put my arms around his neck and he pulled me in close. It was an old song, something my mother might have listened to with Noah, sitting in the parking lot after tennis, staring at the sky and daring to imagine a future.

Me, I didn't have the same kind of battle to fight.

I was already in the dance. All I had to do was move.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. In chapter one, instead of the car Lynnie is expecting for her sixteenth birthday, her father presents her with an old charm bracelet that used to be her mother's. Lynnie believes that the only reason her father gives her the bracelet and not a car is because of his irrational fear that she will experience the same fate as her mother (Chapter 2). Think of an irrational fear you might find yourself dealing with. How might a person overcome such a fear?

2. Even though Lynnie is highly disappointed with the bracelet from her dad, she wears it to school (Chapter 2). What are Lynnie's reasons for wearing the bracelet, and what do they reveal about her relationship with her father?

3. “In her younger years, Lynnie would pray for her mother to come back. Later, Lynnie became angry at everyone. Then a quiet sadness took over, like the sadness her mother had. But as the years went on, Lynnie came to realize that death was a part of life. For her, some people got unlucky and she was one of them. And her mother was one of them too” (Chapter 8). Try to recall an instance when something happened in your life over which you had no control. What were your feelings then? What are your feelings now? Discuss how time can change the way a person sees events in his or her life.

4. Lynnie, the good girl, befriends Jen Conner, the school rebel, and is pleasantly surprised at their similarities and how well they relate to one another. What are the characteristics of a “school rebel”? Do you feel that stereotypes have influenced your reactions to other people? How would you describe yourself? Would others describe you the same way?

5. When Catherine (Lynnie's mother) was young, she and her father shared a secret. This made her feel special, but it also made her privy to very unsettling information (Chapter 13). Has anyone ever shared unsettling information with you? Try to describe how a person might reconcile conflicting feelings like Catherine's. Would you break a confidence if keeping it felt like a burden?

6. When Catherine gives John the letter explaining her family history (Chapter 17), she insists that they never talk again. After reading the letter, John is more determined than ever to help Catherine. He convinces her that they should share with his parents the information they've learned about the missing person. He explains: “When you have to do the right thing you don't worry about what happens next. You just do it. And you trust that doing the right thing will get you through somehow. And you don't worry about dying because living with it is worse” (Chapter 18). Do you believe that admitting the truth can do more damage than lying? The choices that Catherine faces about revealing family secrets are not simple. What might you determine to be “the right thing” in Catherine's situation?

7. After Lynnie's surfing accident, she and her father talk about what it means to have character (Chapter 28). Lynnie's father points out that she is well on her way to having character, not because of her mother but because of the choices she has made. List some character-building moments for Lynnie.

8. At the end of the novel, Lynnie delivers by hand the letter she was initially going to mail to Mick, along with her mother's letter. Mick protests, saying that he can't take them because they matter so much to her. Lynnie replies, “It's not my past. It's just a recording of it” (Part 7). Why do you think Lynnie gives these personal things to Mick? How would you describe the change in Lynnie's attitude?

9. Lynnie's mother is dead when the book opens, but she is present throughout the novel. How have Lynnie's mother, her father, and the power of family love each changed Lynnie?

a conversation with BARBARA HALL

Q: What made you decide to become a writer?

A:
Well, I never wanted to be anything but a writer. I started writing when I was around eight years old. I wrote long letters to local DJs getting them to play my song requests and to read my thoughts on the air, and I wrote poems and sent them off to magazines. I was first published at fourteen and then again at fifteen, at which time I was paid ten dollars. It was the beginning of my life as a professional writer. I wrote all through high school: poetry, short stories. In college, I was an English major, concentrating in creative writing.

Q. Has growing up in the South informed your writing?

A:
Very much so, although it wasn't until after I moved away from home that I began to understand how growing up in the South had shaped my personality as well as my voice as a writer. Coming from the South means coming from a long tradition in which storytelling is everything. The adults often sit around and tell stories. And the way people talk in the South is very dramatic, very gothic, and very musical, so it's not just reporting the facts; it is really important the way a story is told. It's not unlike the Irish tradition of storytelling. This is what I grew up around, and my writing just became an extension of that.

Q: Where did the idea for
The Noah Confessions
come from?

A:
Secrets are big in the South, and they are often confused with privacy, which is how I ended up writing
The Noah Confessions.
When I would ask about my ancestors my mother would often say, “We didn't know much about that side,” or, “You might want to be careful what you go digging for.” I don't believe my family was aware of being secretive; I think they just believed they were being private. The secrets revealed in
The Noah Confessions
are much more dramatic than the ones I uncovered in my own life, but the dynamic is similar.

Q: After discovering the truth about her parents, Lynnie realizes the difficulty of “fitting in” while being truthful to the growing changes within her. Did you experience a similar struggle as a teen?

A:
Back then, I looked a little bit crazy to my family and to the inhabitants of the town where I grew up. I was the youngest of three kids and I didn't follow in any of my siblings' footsteps. Years later, when I came across the quote in which Albert Einstein claimed he was not particularly intelligent, just passionately curious, I was greatly relieved. I no longer had to be eccentric, stubborn, or complicated or have ADD—I could be passionately curious. If only I had known this when I was a teenager.

Q: In addition to writing novels, you are also a successful producer and writer for television and have even broken new ground. Can you tell us what some of the differences are between writing for television and writing novels?

A:
Television is a collaborative medium. You're only halfway there when you finish a script. It has to be put on its feet by other participants, most notably actors and directors, but also by a lot of other artists the audience never gets to see. It's a fun creative community. It's kinetic and noisy and fast. Writing novels allows a lot of creative freedom, but it's just you and the page (or the computer screen) for a very long time and it can get lonely. That's why I like to do both.

Q: Do you have any other young adult novels in the works?

A:
Yes, I do. Coming in 2009 is a new young adult novel about a girl who starts a rock band in high school and takes it all the way to a music festival for unsigned aspiring artists.

Q: What motivates you to write for teens when you are involved in the much more lucrative and glamorous television world?

A:
I have always cared about kids. I have always felt like one. I just remember what it was like to feel scrutinized and unseen, talked at and unheard. The feeling of being the outcast with big ideas, struggling to get someone to take you seriously, is not unlike the dilemma of being an artist in Hollywood.