Lucy, Uncensored - Hardcover

Hammond, Mel; Hammond, Teghan

 
9780593814055: Lucy, Uncensored
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593814053 ISBN 13: 9780593814055
Verlag: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A road trip through gender identity, self-expression, and the thorny process of figuring out where you fit after high school as an out-and-proud transgender teen.

Lucy imagines college as more than a chance to party with other drama nerds and be roommates with her best friend Callie. College will be her fresh start. For the first time, she'll be able to introduce herself as Lucy to people she hasn't gone to school with since kindergarten. Plus, she happens to live an hour away from one of the most prestigious theater programs in the country. She's always dreamed of going to Central, but when she finally has a chance to visit, it's not what she imagined.

While Lucy and Callie are on their campus tour, two kids from their high school make the typical transphobic comments Lucy's gotten used to in her small town. She starts to worry that her dream school might end up being High School 2.0. What if she belongs somewhere else? Somewhere that she can truly have a fresh start?

When Lucy finds a beautiful school with a great theater program on a list of the most LGBTQ+ friendly colleges, it seems like fate—except that the school is hundreds of miles away. And there's something unexpected about it: it's a women's college. As far as she can tell, they've never admitted a trans woman. Will they let Lucy in? There’s only one way to find out: road trip!

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Teghan Hammond lives and drinks excessive amounts of coffee in northern Indiana. She has a deep love for the LGBTQIA+ community, as seen in both her writing and volunteer work. Despite changing her major in college about a dozen times, she has always wanted to advocate for this community in whatever way she can. When she’s not tearing down gender norms, Teghan is probably watching cartoons or gaming. 

As a content development editor for American Girl, Mel Hammond wrote advice and activity books and developed fiction books. Now she writes full time, alongside two feline coworkers who have a variety of skills, including sitting on her keyboard and deleting entire paragraphs of text. Mel lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1


I’ve only been practicing this whole “presenting as a girl” thing for a year, but I’m killing it with today’s outfit: black turtleneck, white power blazer, high-waisted slacks, hoop earrings. Plus the sharpest, most symmetrical cat-eye liner you ever saw. It only took about a hundred tries and three YouTube tutorials.

Callie, on the other hand, still has a drool mark on the left side of her chin, and so help me goddess if she’s about to pull a stained hoodie over her button-down.

“You can’t wear that, Cal.” I lick my thumb and wipe the crust from her chin. “There’s literally a ketchup stain on the boob.”

She pouts and bats her eyelashes. “But I need the comfort of its familiar embrace to carry me through this momentous day.” Her voice is scratchy. She probably didn’t wake up until I texted her that Dad and I were on the way. I’ve been up for hours, even though Callie and I stayed up until two, texting about how the day would go.

“Girls?” Asha, Callie’s stepmom, calls from downstairs. “Almost ready?”

Callie’s fluffy five-pound Chihuahua emerges from a pile of crumpled clothes on the chair. “What do you think, Meatball?” I ask, petting him on the forehead. He opens his mouth in a huge yawn. “See? He says, ‘Where’s that new cardigan we picked out?’ ” We hit the thrift shop last weekend--the best place to stock up on new, cheap clothes for a baby trans like me. And great for Callie, too, who’s already spent her September paycheck on an exotic snack subscription box and color-changing LED strips, which light up her room like a year-round Christmas tree.

Callie groans and peels a beige cardigan off the iguana cage in the corner. Queen Elizardbeth--who, I must specify, is five feet long, nose to tail--gazes back at her sympathetically.

“I look frumpy in this,” Callie says, but puts it on.

I don’t tell her that the sweater smells like the romaine lettuce rotting under Liza’s heat lamp. “You look great,” I say. “Let’s go.”

“Girls?” Asha shouts. “We’re late!”

“Hip bump power up!” Callie says.

We raise our arms and bump our hips together three times--the “handshake” we invented in middle school and are still doing as honest-to-goddess legal adults. Then Callie sticks her ass at me and wiggles it.

“You idiot.” I smack her booty and we head toward the car.

The ride to Central University takes a little under an hour, since Dad’s driving. Mom wanted to join, but the pillow pulled over her head this morning told me she wasn’t up for a day of walking around campus. Her cancer’s in remission, but her fatigue isn’t.

Asha sits up front drinking a baby-shit-green breakfast smoothie, and Callie and I slouch in the back scrolling through our College Dreams Pinterest board. Since I last checked, Callie has added three new images of a make-your-own-waffle bar that allegedly exists in one of the dining halls, plus some photo mural ideas for our dorm room. (We have a roommate pact, obviously. An added perk of me being out as a girl.) I added a tip sheet for students applying to the Hughes drama program. Number one: Nail your audition. Number two: Slam dunk your application. Number three: If you should be so lucky as to land an interview, schmooze those fools to the moon and back.

Luckily, today is just a tour, so we aren’t being evaluated. Officially. But you better believe I’m going to be on. Just in case.

By the time I wrangle my body out of Dad’s SUV, my legs are stiff as uncooked pasta. I check my makeup in the window, ignoring Dad’s side-eye. Trust me, he’s come a long way from the shouting tornado he turned into on the nights I came out--first as gay and then, after I figured my shit out, as trans. But he still acts shifty when I dress extra girly or dare to swallow my hormones in his presence.

“This is it, Lucy!” Callie yells. Callie jumps straight into the Footloose dance we used as an audition piece for our freshman-year musical, and I hop in next to her. It’s no surprise that we worked crew for that show.

“The Dream’s almost here,” she says, arms flailing, toes pointing. “We’re college kids now.”

“Or are we college adults?” I ask, since we both turned eighteen over the summer.

“You’re college kids in eleven months,” Dad says, locking the car. “Don’t get carried away.”

Asha takes a brush from her purse and pulls it through Callie’s shoulder-length dirty-blond hair. “Honestly, Callie, on tour day?” The contrast between Callie and her stepmom is stark--Asha is Indian American with brown skin and silky black hair, and she doesn’t start the day without her green smoothie and eight-step skin care routine. Callie is white, pays no mind to her acne, and doesn’t leave bed before eleven a.m. if she can help it.

“It’s not like it’s the interview.” Callie pulls away and adds some of the signature muss back to her hairstyle.

If we get through the first round of the Hughes selection process, they’ll call us back for a formal interview with the board of directors and some of the theater professors. The Hughes program is super good but super competitive, especially for a state school. And that means a whole extra application process, with essays, fees, and the perfect excuse to dress up like the badass professional lady I truly am. Maybe next time I’ll brave the formidable pencil skirt.

“Well, you ready--?” Dad starts to say my deadname and inelegantly slips into “Lllllucy?” He draws it out as if it’s an unfamiliar word he picked from of the dictionary.

I can’t tell if he’s still messing up by accident or if he truly has not climbed aboard the transgender train so long after departure. Either way, best to take care of this issue now. “If you pronounce my name like that, everyone will think you’re some creepy stranger instead of my dad.” I’m not the person who can straight up call somebody out--that’s more Callie’s style--but the joke should keep him in line. Hopefully.

“Sorry, kid,” he tells me. “I’m trying.” He usually tries harder when Mom’s around.

“Let me get a picture, girls,” Asha says, ushering Callie and me in front of the Central University sign. “Beautiful, Lucy. I love the blazer.”

“Thanks. Thrift shop.” Asha always makes a point to call Callie and me girls and squeeze my name into casual conversation as often as possible, without its being awkward. Did I mention I love Asha?

A chilly October fog blankets the ground, which makes the campus seem even bigger than it is--like it’s a vast city that goes on forever. As we step into the cloud world, Callie takes under-the-chin selfies in front of everything. A bench with an abandoned soda cup. A tree exploding with orange leaves. A pedestal with a bearded man’s statue head on top.

Asha sighs. “I don’t know why you insist on looking ridiculous in every picture you take.”

“Because I’m a wrinkly-necked ghost roaming my ghost kingdom,” Callie replies, gesturing to the fog. She juts her chin down to create more neck folds. “Plus, beauty is a social construct. Get in this one, Luce.”

She pulls my body into hers, and we pose in front of a...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Knopf Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593814053
ISBN 13 
9780593814055
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
256
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Knopf
https://knopfdoubleday.com

3 Queen Caroline Street Hammersmith
London
W6 9PE
Vereinigtes Königreich
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

Lengericher Landstr. 19
Osnabrück
49078
Deutschland