Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nancy Rue has written over 100 books for girls, is the editor of the Faithgirlz Bible, and is a popular speaker and radio guest with her expertise in tween and teen issues. She and husband, Jim, have raised a daughter of their own and now live in Tennessee.

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Four girls are brought together through the power of a mysterious book that helps them sort through the issues of their very real lives.

While family dinners and vacations to touristy destinations are ordinary events for her “normal” friends, fifteen-year-old Jessie Hatcher's normal life means dealing with her ADHD and her mother's bipolar disorder. So why is Jessie shocked when the unexpected happens? Now her "normal" includes living in Florida with the father she always thought was dead and learning the secrets of sushi from a man who teaches by tormenting her. Life isn't any saner with her dad, but a cute guy and a mysterious book might just be the crazy Jessie needs.

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Motorcycles, Sushi & One Strange Book

ZONDERVAN

Chapter One

I did think my friend Chelsea's life was a little weird. Her parents had been married to each other for twenty years and her family sat down at the table to eat supper together every night. They always had dishes like broccoli and cheese casserole or green beans la mode. Or something.

I definitely considered my friend Marcus's life to be strange. His family went on a two-week vacation every single summer to places like Key West and the Grand Canyon. The day my world went insane, he was off with his parents and his little sister in California where they were staying in hotels and eating in restaurants that had tablecloths. Totally off the wall.

Okay, so I need to get to the point, which as you'll see I sometimes have trouble doing. I was like that even before that Saturday morning in late June-or was it early July? Doesn't matter. It was summer, so there was no reason to keep track of what month it was. At least not until August, when it would be time to think about going back to school. I tried not to.

It was going along like any other day in the life of Jessie Hatcher-that would be me. I was cleaning the house, sort of, and watching "I Love Lucy" reruns on TV Land-now there was a wacko, that Lucy woman-and talking to Chelsea on the phone. And she, as usual, was giving me grief.

"I wish you'd get a cell phone," she said.

"What's wrong with a land line?" I said, although I knew. We'd had this conversation before. I always pretended to forget.

"What's wrong with it is that you can't text on it."

"Why do I need to text? We're talking."

"No, you're whispering. I can hardly hear you. It's like you're in a library."

"Or a bank," I said. "Why do people always whisper in banks? Are they afraid somebody will find out how much money they have? Or don't have?"

"I don't know!"

I could imagine Chelsea raking her hand through that ginormous head of butter-blonde hair. She has enough for thirty-seven people. I barely have enough for me, which is probably good because it's bright red. The kind of red that makes people stare at you like you're Raggedy Ann come to life. So the less of it the better.

"Why are you whispering anyway?" Chelsea said.

I shifted the phone to my other shoulder so I could lift the corner of the dining room rug and slide a pile of crumbs under it with my foot. I'd already put the Swiffer away. Not that my mother would have noticed anyway. Those crumbs must have been there awhile, because the last time we ate in the dining room was probably four years ago on my eleventh birthday.

"I'm whispering because my mom's asleep," I said.

"At one in the afternoon? Oh, I forgot she works at night."

That wasn't exactly true. Okay, it wasn't true at all, but I must have led Chelsea to believe it at some point. I tried not to out-and-out lie. Usually.

"See, it would be so much easier to have a conversation if you could text," Chelsea said. "I'm totally getting you a cell phone for your birthday."

"Oh no-the whole thing's overflowing. I knew that was going to happen."

"What's overflowing? What are you doing, anyway?"

"I'm watching Lucy."

"Lucy who?"

I changed which ear was on the phone again and used my forearm to shove all the random stuff on top of the buffet into the drawer and craned my neck again to see the TV in the family room. Lucy and Ethel were knee deep in suds pouring out of an industrial-sized washing machine. Speaking of which ...

I darted for the laundry room.

"Lucy Ricardo," I said.

"Who? Never mind. I need to talk to you about Marcus."

Good. A safe topic. I hated it when Chelsea went off about text messaging. I couldn't have done it if I had an iPhone in my hand at that very moment. Not so anybody could understand it, anyway. Writing of any kind wasn't one of my talents. Actually, I hadn't really discovered any talents-

"Are you serious about him?" she said.

"Who?"

"Marcus."

"Define serious."

"You know what I mean."

Chelsea's voice dipped into that rich place where only the most delicious news can dwell. I knew her huge brown eyes were bubbling like chocolate fudge. My blue ones were so small compared to hers, I always imagined myself looking cross-eyed when I was around her. I looked in the round glass on the front of the washing machine. Okay, not exactly cross-eyed. But definitely too close together. My nose didn't help.

"Did you hear me?"

"What?" I said.

"I just think that for as long as you and Marcus have been together, it's time to either get serious or move on."

"Uh-hello-you know I don't do 'serious.'" I picked up a hunk of clothes out of the dirty clothes hamper and dumped them into the washer. "I want to be able to flirt with whoever I want. Aw, man, we're out of detergent. Can you use dish soap in a washing machine, I wonder?"

"Huh," Chelsea said.

"Is that 'huh, yes' or 'huh, you're an idiot' or 'huh, I don't know'?"

"Okay, could you focus for like ten seconds?"

That would be about it, yeah.

I heard Chelsea sigh like she was practicing to be a parent. "Before Marcus left for California, he told me he was getting ready to ask you to go out seriously. Would your mom let you?"

I stopped with the thing of dish soap in my hand and considered that. Right now Mom might, since she was going through one of her In-Bed Phases. Actually, she might have let me take her credit cards and go to Acapulco if I'd asked her during an In-Bed Phase. Which I didn't, because I never knew when she'd emerge from her dark-as-a-movie-theatre bedroom and go into one of her No-Bed Phases, where she polished the doorknobs and put the spices in alphabetical order. During her last No-Bed Phase, during which she didn't sleep for seventy-two hours, she "housecleaned" my room and found that letter from the school that said I needed to repeat ninth grade English, and the note from Adam Ackerson telling me he wanted to take me out as soon as he got his license in two years, and that other letter addressed to "Jessica Hatcher" that I got in the mail from somebody in Florida but never opened because it looked official and I was sure I wouldn't be able to figure out what it was talking about anyway.

Fortunately that was all just a few hours before Mom returned to her bedroom. Most of the time I wondered which was better, the In-Bed Phases or the No-Bed Phases-but in situations like that, when she was too busy sleeping to call the school or Adam Ackerson's mother or whoever the stiff-looking letter was from, I had to go with the In-Bed Phase. I might have to clean the house, sort of, and do the laundry when I ran out of underwear, but it was better than having my space invaded and my CD collection arranged by album color.

"So would she?" Chelsea said.

"Would who what?"

"Would your mom let you date Marcus?"

"I don't know!" I said.

"Do you want to get serious with him?"

"Do I have to make a commitment this minute?" I squirted some dish soap into the washer.

"No," Chelsea said. I could picture her folding her arms like the guidance counselor who was constantly calling me into her office. "So what are you gonna tell him when he asks...