“So what about Yale?” I ask.
“Looks like I’m going to have plenty of time to get a degree,” he replies. “Or ten. I don’t need to start right away.”
I lean my head on his shoulder and watch the landscape speed by. We drive in silence for a while before Miles speaks again. “This is a weird place to be in. For both of us, but more for you than for me.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“When we were talking about an epic road trip, I thought of how your life up to now is already like an epic story. Your old life in Alaska is like an entire book that you’ve already worked your way through from start to finish. It’s over. Done. I know you’ll want to read it and reread it until you understand what happened—to make sense out of everything. But pretty soon you’ll be able to close it and move on to a new one. One you haven’t even cracked open. It’s your new life. Just about to start.”
My heart is in my throat—I can’t even talk. This boy knows me better than I know myself.
“So we’re in a weird place right now,” he concludes. “It’s a no-man’s-land between two epic stories. After the end of one . . . waiting until the beginning of the next.”
“What kind of book will the new one be?” I ask, leaning back to look at him—this muddy, brave, wise boy who doesn’t even resemble the person he was a few weeks ago. He earned my respect. He earned my friendship. And now he has earned my love.
“A mystery,” he replies with a grin, “with a kick-ass heroine, a hero who is so hopelessly into her that he’ll follow any crazy plan she suggests, and a bit of magic and action thrown in to keep things interesting.”
I can’t help but beam. “Mysteries are my favorite.”
Miles gives me his quirky smile. “Finally it looks like we’ve got something in common.” He pulls me close to him, and we begin our drive across America. Away from the darkness of our old lives and toward the bright sparkling future of the new.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK WAS NOT CONCEIVED IN A VOID. MY own childhood provided me with a fierce will to survive and a need to search for my own path to truth. Although I didn’t have Miles, Poe, and the Yara to accompany me on that path, there were others who helped me along my way: Madeleine L’Engle, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, C.S. Lewis, Ursula Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Helprin, Charles Williams, Ray Bradbury, Walker Percy, George MacDonald, Anne McCaffrey, and a host of others. These individuals helped me escape my internal world and learn to see the one outside me through different eyes. They saved me. Books saved me. Story saved me.
As for bringing the story of another survivor and truth-seeker to the page, I want to thank Tara Weikum and Christopher Hernandez for helping me organize my thoughts on Juneau, and prodding me about the ideas that weren’t quite true until I took them further. Thank you for your guidance and wise advice.
Once again, thank you to my agent, Stacey Glick, for finding the perfect home for Juneau and Miles.
My friend and beta reader Claudia Depkin had the patience and grace to read the story chunk by chunk as I churned it out, and then read it all over again . . . several times. Thank you for your encouragement and feedback, Claudia. Gratitude as well to fellow writer and wereboar sister Anna Carey for reading, reassuring, and advising.
Thank you to my assistant, Alana, for all of her help in organizing me, proofreading, coming up with discussion group questions, and all of the other tasks I set for her. I forgive you for leaving me for university, and have no doubt you have a very bright future, whether in books, physics, or whatever else you put your mind to.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to Until the Beginning’s final package. Copyeditors Melinda Weigel, Alexandra Alexo, and Anne Heausler helped clean things up inside, while the outside was treated with grandeur and beauty by Jenna Stempel, Alison Donalty, and Craig Shields.
There were several batcaves used in the making of Until the Beginning: besides my regular haunt in Paris was a brownstone in Brooklyn with Lisa Steiner; a cozy flat on the Isle of Bute, Scotland, with Lisa O’Donnell; a home in the desert in Lake Havasu, Arizona, with my cousin Diana Canfield; and a convent-school-turned-artist-retreat near Reims, France, the Performing Arts Forum, run by the indefatigable Jan Ritsema. It seems that one must travel in order to create a road-trip book.
Finally, and most important, I want to thank my readers for loving my stories and for telling me so. Your enthusiasm and support means everything to me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR