Towering - By Alex Flinn Page 0,96
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.
TOWERING. 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.
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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
About the Publisher
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United States
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Table of Contents
Dedication
1 Rachel
2 Wyatt
3 Wyatt
4 Wyatt
5 Wyatt
6 Danielle’s Diary
7 Wyatt
8 Wyatt
9 Danielle’s Diary
10 Rachel
11 Wyatt
12 Danielle’s Diary
13 Rachel
14 Wyatt
15 Wyatt
16 Wyatt
17 Rachel
18 Wyatt
19 Rachel
20 Wyatt
21 Rachel
22 Wyatt
23 Rachel
24 Wyatt
25 Rachel
26 Wyatt
27 Rachel
28 Wyatt
29 Rachel
30 Wyatt
31 Rachel
32 Wyatt
33 Wyatt
34 Wyatt
35 Wyatt
36 Rachel
37 Wyatt
38 Rachel
39 Wyatt
40 Rachel
41 Wyatt
42 Rachel
43 Wyatt
44 Rachel
45 Wyatt
46 Rachel
47 Wyatt
48 Rachel
49 Wyatt
50 Rachel
51 Wyatt
52 Rachel
53 Rachel
54 Rachel
55 Rachel
56 Rachel
57 Wyatt Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
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Also by Alex Flinn
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher