How to Save a Life by Emma Scott
I’d like to extend a tremendous thank you to my formatter, Angela Shockley: You graciously rearranged your schedule to accommodate my craziness and ensure this book made deadline (by the skin of its teeth). You went above and beyond what any formatter should put up with and I am in your debt.
Thank you, Erin Thomasson Cannon. Your constant support and encouragement is the fuel by which I’ve made it to The End of five novels.
Thank you to Elaine Glynn and Jennifer Balogh-Ghosh for the playdates that kept my kids from mindless boredom while I typed and typed, and gave me time I wouldn’t have otherwise had. And, above all, for your friendship.
Thank you to my beta readers, Dawn DeShazo Goehring and Priscilla Perez. You’re input and encouragement mean the world to me.
Thank you to my fantastic PAs; Melissa Panio-Petersen for keeping my page alive when I was buried up to my neck in the book, and for being there whenever I needed something, be it a teaser, a graphic, or just your friendly ear. And Nathalie Raven for keeping my schedule, for remembering everything I was too frazzled to keep in my head, and for being there for me from the very beginning. Love my team!
And to Suanne Laqueur. There are not enough words to convey what you mean to me. It has been one of the greatest privileges of my life to be the beneficiary of your artistry, your editorial genius, and your emotional ballast when I was sure I was sinking and taking this book with me. And above all else, for your friendship. You so much.
Everybody Knows, Concrete Blonde Heat Wave, Martha and the Vandellas Creep, Radiohead Hurt, Christina Aguilera Smokey Joe’s Café, The Robins Josephine, The Wallflowers The Story, Brandi Carlile Silent all These Years, Tori Amos The Way, Fastball All I Ask, Adele Crazy, Patsy Cline How to Save a Life, the Fray
For Mom,
Who knew I wanted to write before I did,
And who believed in me even before the first word was set down.
With all my love,
J
Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. ~Virginia Woolf
Good morning Karn County! It’s going to be another scorcher today with highs in the low-to-mid 90s. This heat wave shows no signs of lettin’ up, with those high temps continuing through ‘til next week and beyond. So here’s a little a “Heat Wave” for your heat wave, brought to you by Martha and the Vandellas, and your oldies station, KNOL.
Heat wave was the goddamn truth. It’d been hot as hell since we rolled up from Missouri yesterday and the cab of the semi was stifling. Gerry didn’t like to keep the AC on for too long for fear of overheating the engine. I had my bare feet kicked up on the dash and my face practically hanging out the window like a dog, desperate for a breath of wind.
I wasn’t a fan of the music jangling out of the radio, but the choices around these parts were oldies, God, or country. Oldies were the best of the bunch and all three were better than silence. Gerry didn’t talk much while he drove but to answer some other trucker on his CB now and then. Mostly, he just pointed the semi-truck down an almost straight line of road, across the flat horizon of Iowa.
Martha and her Vandellas wondered how love was supposed to be. I wondered if this was all Iowa was supposed to be: miles and miles of corn. As if a vast ocean were drained of water and all that remained were the swaying forests of seaweed. We passed some farms—satellites orbiting tiny towns—and telephone poles measured the stretch of highway at twenty yards apace, stretching up to the cloudless sky. I stared at the flat nothing of green below and the blue above, searching for some kind of interesting for my eyes to land on. A sign came up on my side.
Planerville
Pop. 1,341
“That us?” I asked.
“Yep,” Gerry replied, his eyes on the road and his belly protruding almost to the rim of the steering wheel.
That exchange was the most we’d said in an hour. Not that we had anything to say to each other anyway. Nothing to say. Nothing to see. Going nowhere. Another tiny town, another high school—my third this year alone. And my last, I prayed. Surely Gerry wouldn’t be transferred again before June. There were only a few weeks till the end of the school year and then I’d be done being the perpetual ‘new girl.’
Gerry Ramirez was my mother’s cousin. The only family I knew on her side. When my mother killed herself five years ago, he’d come all the way from Florida to take care of me.