To Sequel or Not to Sequel

By Ellen Hopkins, August 2010
I started Crank in 2002. My daughter—my beautiful, perfect straight-A kid—had just gone to prison. Prison! We, her family and friends, had witnessed her descent into the hell that is crystal meth addiction for six years. Truthfully, I was happy she was going away because she was slowly killing herself, and I couldn’t stop her. Without lockup, no one could have. At the time, I blamed myself. Blamed her father. Blamed her friends. But even then, I wasn’t exactly sure why she made the choices she did. And so, being a writer, I looked for answers through writing. If I could become her somehow, maybe I could see where she took the wrong turns, and what part I might have played in her chosen detours. I started Crank for me. Not for publication. Certainly not to make money. Simply to gain understanding. I was only a few pages into it when I sat down with an editor at a writers’ conference. I showed her a picture book I had written. She loved it, but told me she didn’t do picture books and asked if I had anything else. I had ten pages of Crank with me. I showed her those, and really, the rest is history. Simon & Schuster published the book in October 2004. It has gone on to touch tens of thousands of lives. That would have been it, except within a couple of years, my readers wanted more of Kristina’s story. Was she clean? Was she alive? How was Hunter? I wrote Glass to answer those and many more questions, and to explore the deeper phase of her addiction, when Bree truly took control. By that time, I had become an anti-meth spokesperson, and I wanted readers to understand how low the drug can carry you, and how quickly that can happen. Glass published in August of 2007. But, still, there were questions. Did Kristina really go to jail? Did she get out and have her second baby? Was that baby impacted by her drug use? Did she and Trey get back together? I really didn’t want to write a third Kristina book. I didn’t want to tell the same story over again, though there was a lot more to tell. In talking with a sociologist friend, I came to the idea of writing a book from Hunter’s point of view. Addiction, after all, doesn’t only affect the addict. It affects everyone in the addict’s life, especially those who love him or her. Many, many of my readers have written, telling me how they lost a parent or other loved one to addiction, and I thought it only fair to give them a voice too. Rather than write solely from Hunter’s point of view, I decided to write from the points of view of the three children who in real life have, for the most part, never had their mother in their lives. Kristina’s story is their story too. And now I give it to you, in Fallout.

We hear that life was good before she met the monster...

Margaret K. McElderry Books • Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing EllenHopkins.com • TEEN.SimonandSchuster.com • Twitter.com/SimonTEEN 

Hunter, Autumn, and Summer—three of Kristina Snow’s five children— live in different homes, with different guardians and different last names. They share only a predisposition for addiction and a host of troubled feelings toward the mother who barely knows them, a mother who has been riding with the monster, crank, for twenty years. Told in three voices and punctuated by news articles chronicling the family’s story, FALLOUT is the stunning conclusion to the trilogy begun by CRANK and GLASS, and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person’s problem. 

We Hear
That life was good before she met the monster, but those page flips went down before our collective cognition. Kristina wrote that chapter of her history before we were even whispers in her womb. The monster shaped our lives, without our ever touching it. Read on if you dare. This memoir isn’t pretty.

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Hunter Seth Haskins So You Want to KnoW

All about her. Who she really is. (Was?) Why she swerved off the high road. Hard left to nowhere, recklessly indifferent to me, Hunter Seth Haskins, her firstborn son. I’ve been choking that down for nineteen years. Why did she go on her mindless way, leaving me spinning in a whirlwind of her dust?

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If You Don’t KnoW

Her story, I’ll try my best to enlighten you, though I’m not sure of every word of it myself. I suppose I should know more. I mean, it has been recorded for eternity— a bestselling fictionalization, so the world wouldn’t see precisely who we are— my mixed-up, messedup family, a convoluted collection of mostly regular people, somehow strengthened by indissoluble love, despite an ever-present undercurrent of pain. The saga started here:

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foreWorD

Kristina Georgia Snow gave me life in her seventeenth year. She’s my mother, but never bothered to be my mom. That job fell to her mother, my grandmother, Marie, whose unfailing love made her Mom even before she and Dad (Kristina’s stepfather, Scott) adopted me. That was really your decision, Mom claims. You were three when you started calling us Mama and Papa. The other kids in your playgroup had them. You wanted them too. We became an official legal family when I was four. My memory of that day is hazy

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at best, but if I reach way, way back, I can almost see the lady judge, perched like an eagle, way high above little me. I think she was sniffling. Crying, maybe? Her voice was gentle. I want to thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Haskins, for loving this child as he deserves to be loved. Please accept this small gift, which represents that love. I don’t really remember all those words, but Mom repeats them sometimes, usually when she stares at the crystal heart, catching morning sun through the kitchen window. That part of Kristina’s story always makes Mom sad. Here’s a little more of the saga.

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Chapter one

It started with a court-ordered summer visit to Kristina’s druggie dad. Genetically, that makes him my grandfather, not that he takes much interest in the role. Supposedly he stopped by once or twice when I was still bopping around in diapers. Mom says he wandered in late to my baptism, dragging Kristina along, both of them wearing the stench of monster sweat. Monster, meaning crystal meth. They’d been up all night, catching a monstrous buzz. It wasn’t the first time they’d partied together. That was in Albuquerque, where dear old Gramps lives, and where Kristina met the guy who popped her just-say-no-to-drugs cherry.

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Our lives were never the same again, Mom often says. That was the beginning of six years of hell. I’m not sure how we all survived it. Thank God you were born safe and sound. . . . All my fingers, toes, and a fully functional brain. Yadda, yadda . . . Well, I am glad about the brain. Except when Mom gives me the old, What is up with you? You’re a brilliant kid. Why do you refuse to perform like one? A C-plus in English? If you would just apply yourself . . . Yeah, yeah. Heard it before. Apply myself? To what? And what the hell for?

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I KInD of enjoY

My underachiever status. I’ve found the harder you work, the more people expect of you. I’d much rather fly way low under the radar. That was one of Kristina’s biggest mistakes, I think— insisting on being right-upin-your-face irresponsible. Anyway, your first couple years of college are supposed to be about having fun, not about deciding what you want to do with the rest of your life. Plenty of time for all that whenever.

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I decided on UNR—University of Nevada, Reno—not so much because it was always a goal, but because Mom and Dad did this prepaid tuition thing, and I never had Ivy League ambitions or the need to venture too far from home. School is school. I’ll get my BA in communications, then figure out what to do with it. I’ve got a part-time radio gig at the X, an allowance for incidentals, and I live at home. What more could a guy need? Especially when he’s got a girl like Nikki.

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Autumn Rose Shepherd

Sometimes I See Faces
Somehow familiar, but I don’t know why. I cannot label them, no matter how intently I try. They are nameless. And yet not strangers. Like Alamo ghosts, they emerge from deep of night, materialize from darkness, deny my sleep. I would call them dreams. But that’s too easy.

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I Suspect
One of those faces belongs to my mother. It is young, not much older than mine, but weary, with cheeks like stark coastal cliffs and hollow blue eyes, framed with drifts of mink-colored hair. I don’t look very much like her. My hair curls, auburn, around a full, heart-shaped face, and my eyes are brown. Or, to be more creative, burnt umber. Nothing like hers, so maybe I’m mistaken about her identity. Is she my mother? Is she the one who christened me Autumn Rose Shepherd? Pretty name. Wish I could live up to it.

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Aunt Cora Insists
I am pretty. But Aunt Cora is a one-woman cheering section. Thank goodness the grandstands aren’t completely empty. I’m kind of a lone wolf, except for Cherie, and she’s what you might call a part-time friend. We hang out sometimes, but only if she’s got nothing better going on. Meaning no ballet recitals or play rehearsals or guy-of-the-day to distract her from those. But Aunt Cora is always there, someone I can count on, through chowder or broth, as Grandfather says. Old Texas talk for “thick or thin.”

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Generally
Things feel about the consistency of milky oatmeal. With honey. Raisins. Nuts. Most days, I wake up relatively happy. Eat breakfast. Go to school. Come home. Dinner. Homework. Bed. Blah, blah, blah. But sometimes, for no reason beyond a loud noise or leather cleaner smell, I am afraid. It’s like yanking myself from a nightmare only, even wide awake, I can’t unstick myself from the fear of the dream. I don’t want to leave my room.

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Can’t Bear the Thought
Of people staring, I’m sure they will. Sure they’ll know. Sure they’ll think I’m crazy. The only person I can talk to is Aunt Cora. I can go to her all freaked out. Can scream, “What’s the matter with me?” And she’ll open her arms, let me cry and rant, and never once has she called me crazy. One time she said, Things happened when you were little. Things you don’t remember now, and don’t want to. But they need to escape, need to worm their way out of that dark place in your brain where you keep them stashed.

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Summer Lily Kenwood

Screaming
I learned not to scream a long time ago. Learned to bite down hard against pain, keep my little mouth wedged shut. Fighting back was useless, anyway. I was fragile at three, and Zoe was a hammer. Girls are stinkier than boys when they get dirty, she’d say, scrubbing until I hurt. And if I cried out, I hurt worse.

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I’m Fifteen Now
And though Zoe is no longer Dad’s lay of the day, I’ll never forget her or how he closed his eyes to the ugly things she did to me regularly. He never said a word about the swollen red places. Never told her to stop. He had to know, and if he didn’t, she must have been one magical piece of ass. Cynical? Me? Yeah, maybe I am, but then, why wouldn’t I be? Since the day I was born, I’ve been passed around. Pushed around. Drop-kicked around. The most totally messed-up part of that is the more it happens, the less I care. Anyway, as foster homes go, this one is okay. Except for the screaming.

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Screaming, Again
It’s Darla’s favorite method of communication, and not really the best one for a foster parent. I mean, aren’t they supposed to guide us gently? Her shrill falsetto saws through the hollow-core bedroom door. Ashante! How many times do I have to tell you to make your goddamn bed? It’s a rule! Jeez, man. Ashante is only seven, and she hasn’t even been here a week. Darla really should get an actual job, leave the fostering to Phil, who is patient and kind-eyed and willing enough to smile. Plus, he’s not bad-looking for a guy in his late forties. And I’ve yet to hear him scream.

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Darla Is a Different Story
Here it comes, directed at me. Summer! Is your homework finished? Hours ago, but I call, “Almost.” Well, hurry it up, for God’s sake. Like God needs to be involved. “Okay.” I need some help with dinner. Three other girls live here too. And turn down that stupid music. The music belongs to one of them. I can barely hear myself think. She thinks? “It’s Erica’s music.” Well, tell her to turn it down, please. Whatever. At least she said please. And would you please stop yelling?

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Gawd!
My neck flares, collarbone to earlobes. Like Erica couldn’t hear her scream? I fling myself off the bed, cross my room and the hall just beyond in mere seconds. “Erica!” (Shit, I am yelling.) “Can’t you . . . ?” But when I push through the door, the music on the other side slams into me hard. No way could she have heard the commotion. “Great song, but Darla wants you to turn it down. What is it?” Erica reaches for the volume. “Bad Girlfriend.” By Theory of a Deadman. I just downloaded it today. She looks at me, and her eyes repeat a too-familiar story. Erica is wired. Treed, in fact.

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I Totally Know Treed
In sixth grade, the D.A.R.E. dorks came in, spouting stats to scare us into staying straight. But by then, I knew more than they did about the monster because of my dad and his women, including my so-called mom. Her ex, too, and his sister and cousin. Plus a whole network of stoners connecting them all. The funny thing is, none of them have a fricking clue that I am so enlightened. Tweakers always think no one knows. Just like Erica right now. “Shit, girl. You go to dinner lit like that, you’re so busted. Darla may be a bitch. But she’s not stupid, and neither is Phil.” Here comes the denial. Her shoulders go stiff and her head starts twisting side to side. But she doesn’t dare let her eyes meet mine. What are you talking about?

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“Hey, no prob. I’m not a spy, and it’s all your life anyway. I’m just saying you might as well be wearing a sign that says ‘I Like Ice.’ If I were you, I’d skip dinner.” I turn, start for the door, and Erica’s voice stops me. It’s just so hard to feel good, you know? I do know. And more than that, it’s just so incredibly hard to feel.

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Ellen Hopkins has been writing poetry for years. Her first novel, Crank, released in 2004 and quickly became a word-of-mouth sensation, garnering praise from teens and critics alike. Ellen’s other bestselling novels include Burned, Impulse, Glass, Identical, Tricks, and the upcoming Fallout, a companion to Crank and Glass. She lives with her family in Carson City, Nevada. Be sure to check out Ellen Hopkins online at ellenhopkins.com and myspace.com/ellenhopkins.