Towering (32 page)

Rachel had been staying in Danielle’s room since she came home. We looked at each other and said, “We’ll do it,” because we knew it would be too painful for her.

“Thank you.”

One thing that hadn’t changed about Rachel was her hair. It was still short, and it wasn’t growing. Or, I guess, it was growing at a normal rate, not a crazy one. Her magical tears too were gone now that they had served their purpose. And if I wanted to talk to her, I had to go find her.

Which wasn’t that hard, since we were both living at Mrs. Greenwood’s house for now. We had both started classes at the local school, not online, so we had to wait until Saturday to clean out the room. That morning, we put Danielle’s things in bags, some for the garbage, some for charity, some for Hemingway’s junk shelves, “Because, really,” I said, “you never know when someone might want a pair of shoe skates—some people might think in-line skates are dumb.” And some things, like old yearbooks and photographs, Rachel kept for herself.

Rachel took out one of the desk drawers so she could go through it. When she tried to put it back, it wouldn’t go in. “Check underneath,” I said. “Sometimes, something gets stuck in the tracks.” I had to tell her things like this all the time, because she’d never done normal stuff like other people did. Even the dishwasher fascinated her completely, and she kept putting dishes in so she could run it and see them come out clean.

Rachel held the drawer up and looked under it. She drew out a blue envelope.

She looked at it, then gasped.

In what I recognized as Danielle’s handwriting, the letter was addressed to Rachel.

“And did I?” I said after we had both finished reading it.

“Did you what?”

“Show you the wonderful world?”

“You did. You showed me everything, everything I’ve ever seen. You saved my life.”

I kissed her. “And you saved mine right back. Several times now.”

She looked around the room with its boxes and bags everywhere. Her eyes fell upon the window. “Oh, look, it’s snowing,” Rachel said.

“Then I guess there’s only one thing for us to do,” I said. “Make an angel!”

Rapunzel
was one of my favorite fairy tales when I was a child (long before it was a Disney movie—people, Disney did not write these stories!), to a degree that I once tried to write a musical version of it in high school. As soon as I finished writing
Beastly
, I started on a version of
Rapunzel
. I thought that, as here, rapunzel would have to be a drug. Why else would a mother give her baby away for it?

However, it was difficult to write a book in which the heroine is trapped in a tower; more difficult still if I tried to let her out. I ended up putting it down.

Then, one day, my husband was watching the History channel, and instead of wars, they started talking about Greek mythology, specifically, the story of Danaë, mother of Perseus. Like Rapunzel, Danaë was kept in a tower. But there, it was because of a prophecy that she would bear a son who would kill her father. She had to be stopped from bearing that fateful child. However, as anyone who has read mythology knows, you can’t stop a prophecy, so Zeus came to her in a shower of gold and impregnated her. (My husband says that ancient Greek girls who got pregnant must have told their parents, “Really, Dad, it wasn’t Konstantine! Zeus came to me in a shower of gold!”) I had read this story in high school, but now, it seemed like the History channel was talking to me. Several months later, I was driving to New York City with my kids to see the musical
Shrek
(another princess in a tower story), and my daughter, Katherine, was reading her required summer reading book aloud. It was Edith Hamilton’s mythology, and it was the story of Perseus and Danaë. I knew I was meant to write this book. This does show how long these stories have been with us—Danaë was likely the original Rapunzel. Or, perhaps, there was a Rapunzel even before that.

For more information on fairy tales, visit www.surlalunefairytales.com. It has all the classic stories and even merchandise.

Thanks to my editor, Antonia Markiet, also, Rachel Abrams, Phoebe Yeh, and my agent, George Nicholson.

Thanks to Debbie Fischer and Joyce Sweeney, for reading an earlier version of this and telling me it wasn’t that bad (even though it was).

Special thanks to Heather Rivera, for allowing me to do belay training with the moms in her Girl Scout troop and writer, Elisa Carbone, for giving me rock climbing advice, so that snobby rock climbers like her (her words) wouldn’t talk trash about my book.

BEASTLY

A KISS IN TIME

CLOAKED

BEWITCHING

BREATHING UNDERWATER

DIVA

FADE TO BLACK

NOTHING TO LOSE

BREAKING POINT

Gene Flinn

ALEX FLINN
loves fairy tales and is the author of the #1
New York Times
bestselling
Beastly
, a spin on
Beauty and the Beast
that was named a
VOYA
Editor’s Choice and an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers.
Beastly
is now a major motion picture starring Vanessa Hudgens. Alex also wrote
A Kiss in Time
, a modern retelling of
Sleeping Beauty
;
Cloaked
, a humorous fairy-tale mash-up; and
Bewitching
, a reimagining of fairy-tale favorites, including
Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, The Princess and the Pea
, and
The Little Mermaid
, all told by Kendra—the witch from
Beastly
. Her other books for teens include
Breathing Underwater, Breaking Point, Nothing to Lose, Fade to Black
, and
Diva
. She lives in Miami with her family. Visit her online at www.alexflinn.com.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors and artists.

Cover art © 2013 by Howard Huang and Adam Brown

Cover design by Sasha Illingworth

HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

T
OWERING
. Copyright © 2013 by Alex Flinn. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

www.epicreads.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Flinn, Alex.

Towering / Alex Flinn. — First edition.

pages       cm

Summary: “A contemporary retelling of Rapunzel told from the alternating perspectives of three teens whose fates unknowingly bind them together to destroy a greater evil”— Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-06-202417-6 (hardback)

ISBN 978-0-06-202418-3 (lib. bdg.)

ISBN 978-0-06-227632-2 (international ed.)

EPub Edition April 2013 ISBN 9780062209214

[1. Fairy tales. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Blessing and cursing—Fiction. 4. Missing persons—Fiction. 5. Drug abuse—Fiction.] I. Title.

13 14 15 16 17   
LP/RRDH
   10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FIRST EDITION