The Divorce Express

“Actually I’m old—fourteen—but new to the school.”

“I heard you ride the Divorce Express.”

“You heard?” I didn’t think anyone had even noticed me.

“Woodstock’s really a small town. Word gets around. I usually ride the bus, too, but haven’t lately. My father’s a musician and he’s been on tour, so I haven’t been going. I start next weekend.”

“Maybe we can sit together next time.” I blurt it out without thinking that maybe she’s already got someone to sit with. What if she says no or makes some dumb excuse to get out of it?

“Great. It’s been really boring, the times I had to go down there. A lot of kids our age who have ridden on the bus for years give it up by the time they’re in high school. I used to sit with my best friend, Jenny, but she had to go live in New York full-time. There was a custody fight and her father won.”

“I live with my father, too, but there was no custody fight. It just worked out that way.” Even though I’m sorry about her friend leaving, I kind of hope that she’s got an opening for the position of new best friend.

The Cat Ate My Gymsuit

The Divorce Express

It’s an Aardvark-Eat-Turtle World

The Pistachio Prescription

There’s a Bat in Bunk Five

This Place Has No Atmosphere

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Once upon a time, I took a class called “Writing for Television.” It was for writers who were well known in other writing fields. Every week I listened to people talk about how writing for television was different from other types of writing. It didn’t seem like TV writers had much control over their work. There were committees, directors, producers, and actors who would all want to make suggestions. I realized that I didn’t want to write for television.

During the course, we were given an assignment to develop a pilot for a series. My idea was to do one concerning a divorce and shared custody.

What a good idea, I thought . . . . What a bad idea to use it as a television series that would probably never be produced. So I started writing it as a book.

One day, I was shopping at a store in Woodstock, New York. The owner, my friend Nancy Kafka, walked in and said, “I just put my kid on the Divorce Express.” Boing!!! I had a title. I had great advisers—Nancy and her daughter, Aviva . . . and the Divorce Express arrived.

—Paula Danziger

“You’re New, Right?”

Books by Paula Danziger

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

A Note from Paula

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Special Excerpt from
It’s an Aardvark-Eat-Turtle World

If a Prince Charming or a Prince Semi-Charming came up to my door and said, “Rosie Wilson, you are the most beautiful, individualistic fourteen-year-old in the universe,” I certainly wouldn’t slam the door in his face.

This is the first line of Paula Danziger’s hilarious and moving
It’s an Aardvark-Eat-Turtle World
. First lines fascinate me, and this one says a lot about Paula, her stories, and her characters. The author of over thirty titles for young adult readers, Paula was known for capturing her audience with her uncanny ability to tap into teenage psyches—to write realistically and unflinchingly about families, divorce, friendship, first love, insecurity, and injustice, and to do so with a wicked sense of humor. It’s rare for a reader to find herself laughing out loud, then just a few sentences later, searching for tissues in order to wipe away tears. Paula courted difficult, sometimes controversial subjects; her self-effacing characters and her love of humor made her books compelling reading.

Paula herself was as memorable as any character she created. She made friends wherever she went and was passionate about them. Somehow each of us felt as if we were Paula’s
best
friend. She was flamboyant and flashy. She tied colorful scarves around her head, wore as many oversize rings as possible on her fingers, and shopped with great joy for glittery sneakers and sequined purses. She liked video games and slot machines. She once managed to light one of her fake fingernails on fire. The first time I spent a weekend at her house, she offered me a breakfast of Coke, M&Ms, and Circus Peanuts.

Paula was a marvel of disorganization. I’ve never seen anything like the inside of her purse. It was a jumble of
loose bills and coins, receipts, lipstick cases, candy, lint, notebooks, keys. She frequently lost her keys, or thought she had, and a dramatic search would ensue before they were located, surprise, at the bottom of her purse. Her desk was worse, overflowing with larger items.

Yet out of this chaos sprang books that have resonated with readers for decades. Paula’s first book,
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit
, was published in 1974. Thirteen-year-old Marcy, the protagonist, may wear panty hose, buy records for her stereo, and never have heard of cell phones, but it doesn’t matter because she faces the same issues contemporary kids face:

All my life I’ve thought that I looked like a baby blimp with wire-frame glasses and mousy brown hair. Everyone always said that I’d grow out of it, but I was convinced that I’d become an adolescent blimp with wire-frame glasses, mousy brown hair, and acne.

Marcy’s story continues in
There’s a Bat in Bunk Five
when she experiences her first love while at summer camp:

This thing with Ted isn’t a crush . . . . What if I let myself start to care and get hurt? I’m not sure I can survive a broken heart. I get hurt so easily anyway, so I’ve never let myself get too close to a guy, not that there have been that many opportunities. I’m scared. What if it turns into a real relationship and it’s as bad as my parents’ marriage?

In
The Pistachio Prescription
Paula tackles divorce as Cassie Stephens’s family begins to crumble. In later books, other characters face the aftermath of divorce, but this story chronicles the Stephenses’ slide from dysfunctional, a theme Paula visits often, to separation. In a scene from the beginning of the book, Cassie visits her friend Vicki:

We sit down with her parents. Nobody fights at the Norton house. At least not while I’m there. Vicki says that they do
fight sometimes, but that it’s psychologically healthy to air feelings honestly. I don’t know if my family does it honestly, but if awards were given on the basis of yelling, we’d win the Mental Health Award of the century. I guess we’d probably be disqualified, though, on the basis of lack of sanity.

I smiled when I read that paragraph. But later the tone of the story changes:

[My father] walks over. “Cassie, I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I guess your mother’s right. There’s no use pretending we can get along. It’s over and that’s all there is to it.”

That’s all.

As simple as that.

Three kids.

A broken-up family.

Yet the ending is hopeful. Cassie realizes her family may not be the one she wishes for, but that she’ll survive.

Rearrange the letters in the word PARENTS and you get the word ENTRAPS
. This’s how
The Divorce Express
begins. Four years after the publication of
The Pistachio Prescription
Paula writes about Phoebe, who shuttles between her father’s home in Woodstock, New York, and her mother’s home in New York City. Travel is the least of Phoebe’s concerns, though. Now her parents are seeing other people:

Maybe I’m a prude, but I don’t like to think about my parents having sex with anyone but each other
.

Phoebe analyzes the stages parents go through when they get divorced:

 . . .
the fighting and anger—then the distance—and making me feel caught in the middle. After the divorce they try to be “civilized.” I know that there were even times that they missed each other. I know for a fact that after the divorce they even slept with each other once in a while. It was confusing. Now they act like people who have a past history together, but only a future of knowing each other because of me
.