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Praise for Dear Dylan, also by Siobhan Curham
‘Tender, quirky and cool. Siobhan Curham is a name to watch’ Cathy Cassidy
‘An absorbing, moving novel . . . I’m still thinking about the characters so much that I want to check on them and see how things are going for them now!’ Luisa Plaja, Chicklish
‘A funny, moving, thought-provoking story about a very special friendship’ Tabitha Suzuma
‘Reminds us of the power of true friendships. A wonderful achievement’ Booktrust
‘A great, fast-paced read. All I can say is, “GO, GEORGIE!”’ Bookalicious Ramblings
‘I didn’t want to leave these characters behind. A wonderful read full of laughs, tears and heart’ Carrie’s YA Bookshelf
‘Truly a diamond of a novel. Touching, funny and full of heart; I just couldn’t get enough’ Lauren’s Crammed Bookshelf
‘A story to lighten the soul. I laughed and cried and wanted more’ Tales of a Ravenous Reader
‘Fabulous . . . poignant . . . honest’ The Sweet Bonjour
‘Touching and emotional . . . really special’ So Many Books, So Little Time
‘Strong and realistic characters that people of all ages will relate to’ A Life Bound By Books
‘Keeps the reader captivated from start to finish. Intimate and honest . . . I loved it’ I Was a Teenage Book Geek
‘A very beautiful story. You’re going to love it’ Darlyn and Books
‘I really couldn’t put it down’ Sarah’s Book Reviews
‘A fab story’ The Overflowing Library
Hi there,
A couple of years ago, a writing magazine that I worked on published a letter from a teenage girl complaining about the lack of interesting, inspirational heroines in Young Adult books. At the time I’d just finished my first YA novel, Dear Dylan, and was wondering what and who to write about next, so I decided to use the girl’s letter as a challenge. For many years I’d wanted to write about bullying – I know several people who have been affected by bullying and it’s something I feel very passionately about – so the seed of an idea took root. What if I created a character who was a victim of bullying but was determined to fight back in her own original way? A character who used her love of books and writing to reinvent herself as a unique and memorable heroine. And so Cherokee Brown was born. I still have the magazine letter that sparked the novel pinned to my noticeboard and I hope I’ve met the challenge and created a character who’s both interesting and inspirational. I have no idea if the girl who wrote the letter will ever read this book, but I’m hoping the fact that I named Cherokee after her will bring it to her attention somehow.
I really hope you enjoy Finding Cherokee Brown, and that it inspires you to become the unique and inspirational hero of your own life story – whatever that may be . . .
Siobhan x
For more from Siobhan, please visit her blog:
http://www.dearwriterblog.blogspot.com/
You can also find her on Facebook, or visit www.electricmonkeybooks.co.uk
Finding Cherokee Brown Published 2013 by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN
Text copyright © 2013 Siobhan Curham
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
ISBN 978 1 4052 6038 1
eISBN 978 1 7803 1265 1
www.electricmonkeybooks.co.uk www.egmont.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
50042/1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Please Note: Any website addresses listed in this book are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont cannot take responsibility for any third party content or advertising. Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.
EGMONT
Our story began over a century ago, when seventeen-year-old Egmont Harald Petersen found a coin in the street. He was on his way to buy a flyswatter, a small hand-operated printing machine that he then set up in his tiny apartment.
The coin brought him such good luck that today Egmont has offices in over 30 countries around the world. And that lucky coin is still kept at the company’s head offices in Denmark.
For Jack Phillips and Katie Bird
– may your souls forever be fearless
Cover
Praise
Siobhan Curham
Title page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
NOTEBOOK EXTRACT
Character Questionnaire No. 1
Chapter One
Chapter Two
NOTEBOOK EXTRACT
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
NOTEBOOK EXTRACT
Character Questionnaire No. 2
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
NOTEBOOK EXTRACT
Character Questionnaire No. 3
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
NOTEBOOK EXTRACT
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
NOTEBOOK EXTRACT
Character Questionnaire No. 4
Epilogue
Finding Cherokee Brown Playlist
Acknowledgements
Prologue
I’ve decided to write a novel. If I don’t write a novel I will kill somebody. And then I will go to jail and, knowing my lousy luck, end up sharing a cell with a shaven-headed she-he called Jeff who smokes roll-ups and thinks it’s cool to keep a fifteen-year-old girl as a slave. But if I write a novel I can kill as many people as I like with my words and never have to be anyone’s slave.
It was Agatha Dashwood who first put the idea of writing a book into my head. Last Saturday afternoon I’d gone down to the Southbank – again – and I was browsing through the tables of second-hand books – again – and there it was, stuffed in between a biography of Princess Diana and A Complete History of Piston Engines:
So You Want to Write a Novel? by Agatha Dashwood.
There was a photo on the cover of this fierce old lady glaring over her glasses like some kind of psycho librarian. But that didn’t put me off, because the first thing I thought when I read the title was, Yes – I do. Which was a bit random because I’d never thought of writing a novel before. So I picked the book up and did my usual page 123 test. I do this whenever I’m deciding whether to buy a book. I don’t bother reading the blurb on the back, or the first page – the writer’s obviously going to be trying their hardest there, aren’t they? It’s how they’re getting on by page 123 that’s the real test. If they’re rubbish at writing or bored with their story then you can bet they won’t be making any effort at all by that point. So I flicked through the yellowing pages, trying not to be put off by the musty smell, and this is what it said at the top of page 123:
‘ The Authentic Novelist Writes About What They Know.
Aspiring novelist, if you want your writing to ring true – for your words to echo around your reader’s head with passion and clarity, like church bells calling worshippers to mass – then you have to write about what you know.’
I know the church bells and worshippers stuff sounds a bit nuts, but the rest of it made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I snapped the book shut and took it over to pay. With Agatha Dashwood’s help I was going to write a novel about my crappy life but, unlike my crappy life, it wouldn’t be dictated by my mum or Alan or the brain-deads at school or any of my stupid teachers. It would be my story. Told my way.
Notebook Extract
Character Questionnaire No. 1
‘When I started out in my writing career, many years ago, writing short stories and serials for The Respected Lady magazine, the Character Questionnaire became my most cherished friend. Use the template below before you start your story to get to know your own characters even better than you know yourself.’
Agatha Dashwood,
So You Want to Write a Novel?
OK, I’ve got a bit of a problem. I’ve been trying to do a Character Questionnaire on my main character – namely me. And that’s the problem: the ‘namely’ bit. I mean, who would choose to call their main character Claire Weeks? It’s hardly exciting, is it? Hardly the name of a kick-ass literary heroine. I’ll just have to invent myself a new name. A heroic name. A name that will sit proudly alongside Anne Frank and Laura Ingalls Wilder on bookshelves and not want to cower in embarrassment.
Possible Kick-Ass Literary Heroine Names:
Roxy Montana – too much like Hannah?
Ruby Fire – naff !
Laura Wild – too similar to one of my real literary heroines.
Anna Franklyn – ditto.
Jet Steele – sounds like a female wrestler!
Hmm, I guess I’ll come back to my name later or I’ll never get started on the book. I’ll just stay as Claire for now. And keep my surname as Weeks, even though it sounds like ‘weak’. Just another great thing to thank my stepdad Alan for, I guess. Along with a knowledge of Neil Diamond that borders on child abuse. Why can’t he listen to music from after 1980? And songs that don’t have titles like ‘Forever in Blue Jeans’! Is it any wonder I’ve been driven to seek refuge in the world of literature?
Anyway, back to the questionnaire:
Character’s name:
Claire Weeks (soon to be changed to something way more kick-ass).
Character’s age:
Fifteen (well, fifteen in one day’s time).
Briefly describe your character’s appearance:
She is short and thin, with dark brown shoulder-length hair and brown eyes. She needs a radical makeover.
What kind of clothes do they wear?
Black.
How do they get on with their parents?
They don’t.
What physical objects do they associate with their parents?
An iPhone permanently attached to her stepdad’s hand like some kind of growth. And a collection of tracksuits in every colour of the rainbow for her mum.
Do they have any brothers or sisters?
No, but they have a couple of alien life forms from the Planet Obnoxious posing as seven-year-old twin brothers.
What was their childhood like?
Grim – and it still is.
Think of one positive and one negative event from their past and how it has shaped them:
Hmm, well, the first thing that springs to mind is the day Helen moved away to Bognor Regis. This was mortally negative on two counts: firstly, I lost my one true friend and secondly, who wants to live in a place that is named after a bog? Seriously! And just because some bright spark added the word Regis (which I think means royal), it doesn’t make it any less bog-sounding. Then there was the time last summer when I wanted to go to the Hyde Park Music Festival, but Alan said I couldn’t because Jay-Z was headlining and he felt that listening to too much rap music would be ‘bad for my personal development’. Like listening to Neil Diamond droning on about being ‘forever in blue jeans’ isn’t?!! Of course, my mum agreed with him. She always agrees with Alan because he is a life coach and therefore ‘an expert at life’. I’m not so sure about that. As far as I can tell, being a life coach basically means that you charge people a load of money to tell them how messed up their lives are and then charge them another load to tell them they need to fix it.
Alan’s company is called OH YES YOU CAN! and he likes to do those really annoying mimed speech mark things with his fingers whenever he’s talking and wants to emphasise a word. For example, when I told him that I don’t even like rap and I actually wanted to go to the music festival to see the rock band Screaming Death, he looked at me and sighed and said, ‘I don’t really think that subjecting yourself to a day of heavy metal would really be “helpful” for your personal development either, Claire.’ And he wiggled two fingers on each hand around the word helpful. Personally I think he is a “complete moron”.
Right, better try and think of a positive event for my character. There was the moment I made friends with Helen, on our first day at Rayners High. I’d been sitting in our classroom, faking smiles like I had a twitch while thinking, Oh, God, why couldn’t I have been born in 1867 to a pioneer family in the American Midwest and only have to worry about making it through the next winter rather than seven long years at high school? But then, when one of the boys started teasing this Asian girl and everyone else started laughing, I caught sight of Helen. I could see from the way she was frowning that she was thinking the exact same as me – this boy is a total loser. As soon as I managed to make eye contact with her I sort of raised one eyebrow, the way I’d seen this sarcastic cop character do on TV, and she did the same back and then we both started smiling – but proper, mean-it smiles rather than oh-my-god-my-jaw-is-going-to-break-if-I-have-to-prop-this-thing-up-any-longer kind of smiles.
That was a whole four years ago now. It’s been six months since Helen moved away. Her leaving is another reason for me writing a book. I don’t really have anyone to talk to any more – not anyone who gets me. And the great thing about having an imaginary reader is that you can write exactly what you want, how you want, and you can at least pretend that they’ll like and understand you. And won’t want to beat you up or call you names.
How does your character speak?
Too fast apparently, at least according to her mum and Miss Davis, her form tutor.
What is their favourite meal?
Fish and chips wrapped in paper, with loads of salt and vinegar, outside on a freezing cold day.
Do they believe in God?
No. Don’t know. Maybe. But not a God with a long white beard who sits on a cloud. I gave up on that one the year we went to Florida on holiday and I stared out of the window looking for God for the entire eight-hour flight. No one lives on clouds. At all.
What is their bedroom like?
Full of books. And full of mess according to my mum, but she doesn’t get it. I know where everything is and I like having everything close to hand, not shut away in cupboards or filed away on shelves like everything else in our house.
What is your character’s motto in life?
Tidying is for wimps. And cleaning is for people with way too much time on their hands, who should be made to move somewhere deadly dull – like Bognor Regis.
Does your character have any secrets?
Yes. Since Helen left I’ve skipped school three times to go up to the Southbank to people-watch for the day. And although everyone in my class – including my teacher – knows I’m being bullied, my parents don’t. What a great secret!
What makes them jealous?
People who are happy and don’t ever get picked on.
Do they have any pets?
No, because a stray dog hair or morsel of cat food might get on to the carpet and cause their parents to have a total freak-out.
Is their glass half full?
She’s currently drinking a can – of coke – and it’s nearly empty. Bit of a random question!
Have they ever lost anyone dear to them?
Helen when she moved away. And I guess there’s my real dad. Although he left when I was just a baby and moved to America, ‘because he had commitment issues and was incapable of growing up’ according to my mum, and I’ve never seen him since. Can you lose something if you can’t remember ever having it?
Who do they most admire?
Laura Ingalls Wilder and Anne Frank.
Are they popular?
No. But I try not to let this get to me because I wouldn’t really want to be popular with most of the people I go to school with anyway. It’s kind of like asking Anne Frank if she’d want to be popular with the Nazis.
Do they love themselves?
No, of course not!
What is their motivating force in life?
To get through a day without being beaten up.
What is their core need in life?
To not feel like the wrong part in a jigsaw all of the time.
What is their mindset at the beginning of your story and what do they want?
She is totally fed up and she wants to change everything. Everything.
Chapter One
‘Dear writer, imagine if you will that your reader is a trout, swimming merrily downstream. The first paragraph of your novel should be like the maggot on the end of the fisherman’s line. Juicy and appealing to the point of irresistible. Hook them with that and then let the rest of your first chapter reel them in.’
Agatha Dashwood,
So You Want to Write a Novel?
If you could pick any date in the calendar to find out that you aren’t actually who you thought you were then I suppose your birthday is pretty much perfect. Today, on my fifteenth birthday, I found out that for my entire life I’ve been living a lie.
I actually got up before my parents this morning as they’d been to this cringey conference called ‘Unleash Your Inner Tiger’ last night and didn’t get home till late. Well, when I say late, I mean late for them. They got back at twelve-thirty. I know this because I was still up re-reading The Bell Jar at the time. Normally, my parents go to bed at nine so they can get up mega early and do an hour of Nordic Walking before work. Nordic Walking should be renamed How-to-Totally-Humiliate-Your-Kids Walking. It basically involves striding about in giant steps while holding a pole in each hand – the type of poles you use when you’re skiing. This wouldn’t look so weird if you were hiking your way through a snow drift, or up a mountain. But when you’re walking down a London street in the middle of summer it looks about twenty different kinds of wrong. Anyway, when I got up this morning at seven, there was no sign of them, their walking poles or the twins.
I poured myself a glass of icy water from the fridge and sat down at the breakfast bar, wondering if there was any chance Mum and Alan would let me have the day off as it’s my birthday. But getting Alan to agree to me bunking off is like getting the Pope to sell his soul to the Devil – it’s never going to happen. So I sat there sipping at my water, hoping it would dilute some of my usual morning sickness. I’m not expecting a baby or anything – just another crap day at school. To be honest, I haven’t even been kissed before, let alone anything else. Well, I’ve been parent-kissed, and too-much-perfume-Grandma-kissed, but not heart-trembling, knee-quivering, boy-kissed. So there’s probably more chance of the Pope getting pregnant, but anyway . . .
When the post plopped through the letter box I nearly didn’t bother going to see if there were any cards for me. I mean, all of my friends would be giving them to me in person in school, wouldn’t they – ha ha! But then I remembered the text I got from Helen last night about the card she’d sent me with a really sick joke on the front and how I wasn’t to open it in front of my parents. So I put down my water and trudged along the hall to the door. Fanned out across the doormat were a couple of the insane magazines Alan subscribes to – Get a Life! and Do It Now! – and some brown, bill-looking envelopes for my mum. Poking out from underneath them I could see two that were obviously cards. I picked them up but only one – the one in Helen’s handwriting – was addressed to me. The other one, in a bright blue envelope, was addressed to someone called Cherokee Brown. I double-checked the address, thinking that the postman had delivered it by mistake; there was no way someone with such a cool name could be living in Magnolia Crescent. The most exciting thing to happen around here is when the milkman leaves an extra pint by accident. But the address was definitely ours. I was still turning the envelope over in my hand when Mum came bounding down the stairs in her bright pink tracksuit.
‘Happy birthday, pumpkin,’ she called, coming over to give me a kiss. Then she saw what I was holding and said, ‘Ooh, a birthday card. Is it from Helen?’
I shook my head. ‘No. The other one is. This one’s for someone called Cherokee Brown.’
Mum stared at me as if I’d said, ‘This one’s for someone called Adolf Hitler,’ before snatching the card from my hand.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked as she marched off down the hall and into the kitchen. By the time I got there she was stuffing the card into the bin.
‘Well, it’s not for you so we’d better get rid of it,’ she replied, her voice all weirdy high.
‘Yes, but aren’t we supposed to put it back into the mail or something? Return it to sender like that Elvis song Alan’s always singing.’
‘Dad,’ Mum muttered.