Fifteen is a cool and weird age because you think you know yourself, but in reality you have no idea what you’re capable of. And I don’t mean that in a hollow “reach for the stars!” way, or in a condescending “you’re just a kid!” way either. At that age, you really don’t know what you can do, and your potential could go in about 100 different directions. Your brain and your body are still growing. Sorry this sounds like a commercial for Omega‐3 enriched milk or something, but it’s true. Every day you could wake up and be pretty much an entirely different person from who you were before.
I was figuring this out in some very literal ways the summer I was fifteen, which is what my graphic novel HONOR GIRL is about. It’s set at a 100‐year‐old all‐girls camp in the Appalachian Mountains where I went every summer. They had a riflery program, and I was suddenly getting really good at it after years of being a mediocre shooter. The reason this happened is that I had a great counselor on the range who basically said to me, If you think you suck, that’s 90% of the why you suck. Get out of your head. Don’t screw yourself by assuming you know your own limits.
HONOR GIRL. Copyright © 2015 by Maggie Thrash. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.
During this time, I also had a sleep‐walking problem. At night I’d often wander into the woods and then wake up with no idea where I was. The fact that my body was capable of operating without my conscious mind’s participation was pretty creepy. What’s ironic is that there were strict rules about us campers going into the woods. Our very scary camp director would threaten to beat us with a canoe paddle if we ever set foot outside the orderly confines of tent row. I don’t think he ever actually committed child abuse, but we were still terrified of him. I never would have broken the rules while I was awake, yet I did it compulsively in my sleep.
HONOR GIRL. Copyright © 2015 by Maggie Thrash. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.
And at the same time, I was realizing I was in love with an older female counselor at the camp. She was from Colorado, and played the guitar, and knew all the constellations, and suddenly I was so obsessed with her I could barely get through the day. Up until this point, the principal love interest of my life had been Kevin Richardson from the Backstreet Boys. So this came out of nowhere for me, and slammed me with the force of a thousand meteors. And not many people (including myself) at this untouched‐by‐ time Christian camp were equipped to deal with it.
Realizing you have actually no idea who you are can be scary and depressing, because you’re pretty much waving goodbye to your childhood. But it’s exciting too, because anything could happen.
A big thank you to Maggie Thrash for sharing!
Honor Girl
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By: Maggie Thrash
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Release Date: September 8, 2015
Maggie Thrash has spent basically every summer of her fifteen-year-old life at the one-hundred-year-old Camp Bellflower for Girls, set deep in the heart of Appalachia. She’s from Atlanta, she’s never kissed a guy, she’s into Backstreet Boys in a really deep way, and her long summer days are full of a pleasant, peaceful nothing . . . until one confounding moment. A split-second of innocent physical contact pulls Maggie into a gut-twisting love for an older, wiser, and most surprising of all (at least to Maggie), female counselor named Erin. But Camp Bellflower is an impossible place for a girl to fall in love with another girl, and Maggie’s savant-like proficiency at the camp’s rifle range is the only thing keeping her heart from exploding. When it seems as if Erin maybe feels the same way about Maggie, it’s too much for both Maggie and Camp Bellflower to handle, let alone to understand.
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I have been dying to read this!
looks good