Past Tense
CBC Books | Posted: July 11, 2018 6:32 PM | Last Updated: July 17, 2018
Star Spider
Julie Nolan is a pretty average girl with pretty average problems. She's been in love with her best friend, Lorelei, ever since they met in Grade 3. Only Lorelei doesn't know about it — she's too busy trying to set Julie up with Henry, her ex, who Julie finds, in a word, vapid.
But life gets more complicated when Julie comes home to find her mother insisting that her heart is gone. Pretty soon it becomes clear: Julie's mom believes that she has died.
How is Julie supposed to navigate her first year of high school now, while she's making midnight trips to the graveyard to cover her mother with dirt, lay flowers and make up eulogies? And why is Henry the only person Julie feels comfortable turning to? If she wants to get through this, Julie's going to have to find the strength she never knew she had, and to learn how to listen to both her mom's heart and her own. (From HarperCollins)
From the book:
My mom and I were born on the same day. Every year on our birthday she would kiss me and hug me and tell me, "You're the best birthday present I could have asked for, Julie." I never said it back, but I should have.
Lorelei tells me my breath smells like pork rinds so I hit her in the arm. Then she screeches and says, "You're the worst friend ever, Julie," and my heart hurts a little because I can't stand the idea that Lorelei thinks I'm the worst friend ever. And then Mr. Gomez comes over and pulls me away to give me a stern "talking to." Totally condescending, of course, because I don't think Mr. Gomez has really clued in to the fact that we are in grade nine and completely capable of handling our own issues.
From Past Tense by Star Spider ©2018. Published by HarperCollins.