Kindle Edition Amazon Time Traveler's Apprentice at Hollywood High World Nouveau Books Cat Spydell Category:  Young Adult/Teen Publisher: Mischievous Muse Press Type: Fiction Pages: 190 Copyright: 2011 ISBN-13: 9780982886571 Price: $0.99 (eBook) 16-year-old Jessie Allen sees an alien-like time traveler in her bedroom who tells her to break up with her hot jock boyfriend Jimmy Becker, or she will end civilization as we know it. Read 7 sample chapters on Author's Den!       Excerpt Chapter One I flop onto my messy bed, hitting bare mattress instead of the crumpled sheet. I get back up and straighten the covers, tucking in the blankets, annoyed. Today's tortures crowd my brain and for the millionth time I wish I didn't have to go to high school. The only good thing about Hollywood High is my boyfriend Jimmy, but he's graduating next June. I really need to look into passing some GED test so I can escape too, I think as I slide back into my now-made bed and yank my comforter to my chin and breathe in a sigh, trying to forget about yet another lame-ass day. The usual pulsing glow of the Hollywood skyline beyond my window calms me like a lullaby when I snap off the bedside lamp. Headlights illuminate my room. It’s Mother, pulling into the driveway, home from her weekly meeting. My jaw clenches; I know she'll stop by my room to say goodnight. Maybe I will close my eyes and pretend to be asleep. I really don’t have anything to say to her. Did she see the light go off? I hear her coming in, kicking off her heels, putting down her purse, the jangle of her keys up the stairs. "Goodnight, Jessica," Mother calls from behind the closed door. She doesn't come in my room but I can feel her hovering in the doorway. "I know you're awake." "'Night," I say in a tired voice, keeping my eyes shut as she opens the door. "How was your day?" "Fine." "Homework done?" "Yes." "Get some sleep, then." "I will." There is a pause, as if she wants to say a quadrillion more things to me, and I know she does; that meeting was about me, after all. But neither of us is up for that kind of conversation. She closes the door and as I hear her walk down the hallway, my eyes pop open. Outside my window the palm trees bend, illuminated by street lamps and blown by soft Santa Ana winds. I watch the breeze moving leaves around, and hear the tinkling of wind chimes on our front porch. I breathe in to make myself relax, alone at last. As I wait for sleep to take me, I hear a weird humming noise in my room. At first I assume it's the wind, but it’s not a sound I’ve ever heard before. Now what? I sit up and look around, hoping to discover what that sound is, when my heart clutches in fear. I see a vague blue outline of . . . something . . . and realize there’s a tall willowy figure standing at the foot of my bed, with big eyes staring at me! My first reaction is to scream but it sticks in my throat and I can’t. My mouth is locked open like Edvard Munch’s painting and I’m freaking out on the inside, but all of a sudden I get strangely calm, because somehow I now know I don’t need to scream because it is only my granddaughter. Wait, what? My granddaughter? I can't have a granddaughter. I’m sixteen! I'm completely flipped out because in my mind I am being told that this granddaughter of mine is, like, from millions of years in the future. My great-great-great-great-infinity. "What are you doing here?" I ask in a shaky voice, recognizing her for who she is as if we'd just had a sit-down chat at Starbucks earlier and she'd forgotten to tell me something. I feel like I'm in a dream, but I know I'm awake. "I am here to warn you, Jessica," she says in a voice that comes into my head without her opening her mouth. Not that she has a mouth, not really, just a small slit that could be either nose or mouth in the middle of her intelligent blue-gray face. Her luminous eyes bulge in the darkness. Now that I have my voice back I feel as if I should keep with my original plan and try screaming again, but suddenly I feel even calmer, as if she put some kind of mindspell on me. In a weird way she is beautiful and I am transfixed by her being. "Warn me about what?" I ask, the shakiness in my voice gone, and when she blinks at me there is a small death as she closes her eyes, as if the lights have gone out. I realize I don't want her presence to leave me. "You know who I am to you, because I have told you through telepathy," she says with her mind. "I am your kin of what you call the future; you are my direct ancestor. You are the link that brings myself and thousands of others forth into life. I have been searching for you. I am what you will become." "You look like an alien," I tell her, wondering if that's an offensive thing to say. I used to watch Roswell as a kid before it was cancelled . . . I've seen pictures of aliens and she does look like one . . . big head, big eyes, thin body. But the small flap in her nose/mouth region moves gently at the sides and I am amazed . . . she is smiling. My heart leaps with happiness at the sight of it. I must be under a spell, I'm not even afraid anymore as her words fill my head. "We are, what many of you Early Humanoids, call aliens, but we are not from another galaxy . . . we are the Humans of, in your version of time and space, the future." Her words in my mind are slow and deliberate, as if she is trying to explain something very complex to someone very stupid. But I get it. "Oh . . . cool! You mean, you can, like . . . time travel?" I've seen Back to the Future with my dad about a million times. That's "our" movie, so I'm no dummy about stuff like that. "There is no such thing as Time . . ." she begins to explain, but she stops herself. Re-boot. I'm curious about what she means by that but she's too quick for me. “That is of no consequence now. I am here to warn you of your current relationship. You must use caution Jessica. You have many paths, and only one of them leads to me. The others . . ." Again with the already annoying habit of censoring herself. "The other paths lead to things I cannot tell you now. Heed my words: You must end your relationship with Jimmy Becker immediately. Our lives depend upon it." I don't know what to think when she then touches me on my upper arm with three of her four long fingers, and her touch feels both chilly and hot at the same time. With a really cool wavery blue shimmer she vanishes and I'm all alone in my dark room wondering what the hell just happened. My eyes are bugging, almost as big as hers, as I think of what she said. Beware of my relationship with Jimmy Becker? What's my boyfriend got to do with my future relatives? How can Jimmy be bad for me? Maybe I'm hallucinating-they did drug me up pretty good last year in the hospital. Maybe it's a flashback of some kind. My mind tumbleweeds as I finally fall into a fitful sleep. "Jessica Allen, we're late! Get out of bed!" Mother screams into my bedroom as she runs through the hallway. I bolt upright, my heart racing. What the . . . ? I look at the clock. 7:40! Hell, my alarm didn't go off . . . again. I get up and throw off my nightshirt. I open the closet door--nothing to wear. Just last year's rags. Not even a decent shirt. I grab for the laundry pile under my bedroom window and start digging. I find my favorite jeans . . . just a hint of ketchup. Fixable. A retro "Foxy Lady" glitter T-shirt --totally wrinkled--I sniff the armpits . . . and stinky. Dryer sheet in the dryer? Maybe. Man, I'm so late! Yesterday's bra drapes the chair. I throw it on with some miraculously clean panties from my drawer and run downstairs toward the dryer with my laundry/outfit, barely remembering to grab my plugged- in cell in case I get a text from Kara or Jimmy. Thank God my undies are clean. I sponge off the ketchup stain on the knee of my jeans, put the T-shirt in the dryer with a fresh-scent sheet and get lucky finding my sandals by the refrigerator . . . no socks required, because finding a pair of matching socks in my house has eluded me since kindergarten and now I’m a sophomore in high school, so it’s been a long time since I’ve worn matched socks. I'm dressed and scarfing down my Pop-Tart and OJ when my wretched brother Keith comes in and starts his morning harassment routine. "So, Jimmy called, after you passed out last night. I told him I thought you took a drug overdose and might be dead." "Did he really call?" I ask mildly, knowing Jimmy never calls our house phone; he just leaves me a message on my cell. My blood is starting to simmer anyway and I stare moodily at the kitchen knives for effect. Lucky for me I have gone off the deep end a couple times so Keither is really deep down afraid of me since I attempted suicide last year. My therapist, Michael, says he just hides his fear of me because my presence emasculates him, whatever that means. I think it has something to do with sex. I really don't want to know so I haven't asked Michael to explain. Thinking about Keith in that way just makes me ill. Keith sees me staring at the knives and he flinches. Round one, and I won it. That was almost too easy. But Keith isn't done with me yet. "Mom!" Keith yells when Mother pops her head around the corner. Her eyes glaze and I recognize her Lost-Keys-in- the-Morning-Look. I suddenly remember a dream I had, a weird-ass dream about some ghost or something in my room. . . what the hell was that? I frown, trying to get the mental picture clear, but it's all a blur. "What?" Mother is testy. I wouldn't be messing with her if I were Keith, but he likes to "ride on the edge," as Michael says. "Jessie just threatened me with a knife!" he says, and I'm pulled away from trying to remember that dream. My mouth drops. Mother looks at me. "Not even," I say, and Mother looks back at Keith, her expression a question mark. "Well, not physically, but she looked at the knives and then at me," he explains weakly. Mother and I roll our eyes in unison. She leaves, and from the dining room I hear the ring of jangling keys. "Let's go!" she calls, and we're out. On the way to school, Keith and his whiny snot-nosed friends sit in the back seat and snicker while I try to piece together the dream. A ghost dream, but not a ghost . . . I'm lost in thought when suddenly the vision of two large black eyes swims into my brain, a remembrance not only from a dream but from life! The fragments fall into place, and I remember my granddaughter, and how I thought she was an alien, and how she told me there wasn't such a thing but that she was a human being from the future. And she warned me about something . . . what was it? Right. She warned me about Jimmy. And then she touched me before she vanished . . . wow, that dream seems too real. I'm really freaked but trying to stay cool as Mother speeds toward the parking lot at our school, while other moms glare at her recklessness. She stops the minivan with a screeching halt alongside Hollywood High's Sheik Territory mural. I get out of the car absently and touch the spot on my arm where The Granddaughter touched me. Keith is getting out of the car and he pokes me hard as he passes. "Did 'oo get an owie?" he mimics in a baby voice as he and his freshman cronies walk on. I glance down at my arm. There are three long chevron-shaped silvery purple welts there, the same shape as The Granddaughter's fingers. I stare at the marks, astonished, as Mother yells, "close the door, Jessie! I'm late!" I'm still standing there staring at the welts long after she's driven off. Chapter Two With The Granddaughter on my mind I forget to be careful on my way to class. Molly Johnston, who was once my best friend and is now my worst nightmare, shoves me, and my unzipped backpack goes flying, my books and homework sliding out onto to the sidewalk in front of the school. Her bimbo friends laugh as I bend over and begin shuffling papers into a pile. “Ooh, sorry about that Jess. Don’t kill yourself over it.” I remember what Michael says about counting to ten to control my deepening anger as I shoulder my backpack. One, two, three . . . my homework is covered in chalky white grime from the shoe bottoms of the entire Hollywood High population . . . four, five, six, seven . . . I grit my teeth and taste dirt as I wipe it off and shove my papers back into the notebook . . . eight, nine, ten . . . “Oh, hi Moll. Klutz much?” I ask sweetly. Molly’s posse, the same girls we both went to Girl Scout camp with years ago, giggle. Molly turns as red as her hair. I am calmer now, and I need to remember to tell my shrink Michael about this little victory: Here my arch nemesis and the most popular girl in school just got in my face, and I let it slide. I glare at her, wondering how it’s possible that she could have been my friend once, and how can she still be friends with my boyfriend? The people at this school are crazier than the ones in the mental ward I lived in last year. “Be careful, Jess,” Molly says in a fakey-friendly way. “Jimmy doesn’t want to date a girl who embarrasses herself in front of everybody.” “I’m not embarrassed,” I say as I zip up my backpack. “You should be,” she whispers, and she brushes her fingertips across the faded scars on my left wrist. She and her best buddy Cristabelle Jenners, the bitch who turned Molly against me in the eighth grade, whisper as they slither away. I cringe but hold in the outburst that roils inside of me. Jimmy comes to the rescue, sweeping his arm across my middle. “Hey babe,” he says. He holds me up as I’m about to crumble and I feel relief. “I saw that whole thing. Molly’s such a bitch.” “Can’t you do anything about them?” I ask uselessly, but I know the rules even before he shakes his head. Jimmy’s a jock, dating “The Freak” on campus (me). The only girl with dyed black hair and attempted suicide scars. And while I used to be a part of their group until our last year of middle school, when our dance classes turned into gagglefest cheerleading squads, and I thought it was lame and said so, then I became The Target. Now the cheerleading and jock crowd think I’m just a phase Jimmy’s going through, and I can tell they’re just waiting for me to disappear. But this time, I won’t disappear. I smile up at Jimmy. He kisses me slowly on the lips as the bell rings. My nightmare of a morning melts away. We go our own ways, me to science, and him to social studies, and I realize that in the confusion I forgot to tell him about The Granddaughter and show him the welts on my upper arm. When I put on my jacket in biology class I notice the marks are fading and hard to make out. My shrink Michael is wearing his usual geeky Bill Cosby-inspired sweater, and once again I wonder who does his shopping. I suspect his mother but I’ve got more pressing issues at hand as I sit in his office after school. Coming here twice a week is the only way the school would take me back after what happened last spring. “She did it on purpose,” I mutter, and Michael nods knowingly. “But I counted to ten. I didn’t get pissed off, I mean, lose my temper, or turn on myself. Just like you ordered.” “We have discussed the strong feelings Molly has about you regarding the person you’ve become, and how she cannot disassociate herself from you and it frightens her, so she acts out violently against you. Knowing that, how do you feel about maintaining control?” Michael asks in that light monotone way of his that, by now, feels really comforting. I pause. Michael’s trained me not to answer a question without thinking it through. “I feel like I wish I’d hit her, because if I could just hit her once, she’d probably leave me alone and then I wouldn’t have a problem.” The honest answer. Michael’s disappointed by it, I can tell. He breathes in this nasally way when he’s disappointed. When he’s pleased, he licks his lips. “Well, maybe that would solve that small portion of the problem. But you’d have a bigger problem, ultimately, wouldn’t you? You’d be in trouble with the school, probably get detention or suspended, and then you’d have a lot of people angry with you.” “A lot of people are already angry with me,” I say. “Let’s talk about that, then. What makes you feel as if people are angry with you?” It’s like a game we play, I think. I say this, you say that, I say this until I say the thing you want me to say, and then we stop, until next time. I’m a little tired so I try to think of something to say that he wants me to say. “Well, aren’t they angry, Michael? Didn’t I break all the rules by trying to leave everything behind? It’s like I ditched class and they all had to stay, and they’re jealous. They didn’t want to get left behind. They’re curious, you know, but not brave enough to try it or anything like that. So they’re mad at me. They can’t relate to me any more because I broke the rules of the game.” There, I think. Chew on that for awhile. Michael licks his lips. I suppress my smile. “So you think that people are angry with you because you made a move--trying to kill yourself--that they only wish they could make? Is that your feeling?” The monotone raises slightly at the end, and I know the session is nearly over. “And you relate suicide with ditching a class . . . that’s a fascinating perspective, Jessie. And a very real response to your past history. I appreciate it when you share with me on that level. Your feelings about how others view you may be valid, Jessie, but that doesn’t mean that their feelings are accurately portraying you. You are not their feelings. You are your own person. You don’t need to get caught up in other people’s opinions of you.” “I know,” I say, and I mean it but I’m bored with the Michael Game now. What I really want to say is that I was visited by an alien last night, Michael, only she wasn’t really an alien but my great-great-great-great-great infinity time-traveling granddaughter from eons in the future! And there really are no aliens, just these humanoids from her time, and I’m some sort of genetic marker for this future race of humans and my relationship with Jimmy Becker has something to do with it, isn’t that beyond cool? But I know, by now, exactly what will and won’t get me thrown back into the Not-So-Funny-Farm. I shut down, pull my energy inward. Michael studies me a moment and recognizes that it’s time to stop. “That’s enough for today, Jessie. Except before we go I want to talk to you more about your brother . . . that look you gave the knives this morning was an immature step backward, don’t you agree?” “Mother called you?” “Yes, as I have asked her to do when you regress to this level. However your standing up to Molly Johnston was a step forward, and I applaud you. These are all the tiny steps toward recovery, Jessie. I’m proud of you.” Michael gives me his usual little impersonal sideways shoulder squeeze, and pats me on the arm, right where The Granddaughter touched me. The spot burns a bit after he touches it but I still have my hoodie on so I can’t tell if the welts are there. I’m tempted to check but decide it would be too hard to explain if they are there. “I’ll see you at our next scheduled appointment, then,” Michael says and I pick up my backpack and leave. I rush to the bathroom at the end of the hallway. Once inside I slip my jacket off my shoulder. The welts are there, and I’m surprised. They look even more glowy than before. I’m even more surprised when I look in the mirror, and there beyond my tired face and messy Ebony-Midnight Number Three hair stands The Granddaughter, shimmering in that wavy blue way and looking down on me with the wisdom of the ages shining in her huge black eyes. I turn around and there is no one there, no tall alien-like being standing behind me with those knowing eyes, but when I look in the bathroom mirror again I see that blue sparkling light that I saw the night before when The Granddaughter disappeared, and suddenly I feel woozy. The floor beneath me is rubbery and coming closer, closer. I surrender to it.

Praise for an honest journey by a suicide girl
at Spydell surprised and delighted me with her new novel, "The Time Traveler's Apprentice at Hollywood High." When I picked up this Young Adult novel I had no idea that I'd be getting such valuable insight into the mind of a sixteen-year-old "Suicide Girl." Jessie Allen attempted suicide the year before the book begins, and the fallout from that attempt has created unexpected issues in her life. The Mean Girls at Hollywood High are brutal in their hatred of her, especially since the popular Jock chose Jessie as his girlfriend, her relationship with her parents is strained at best, and she plays verbal games with her therapist to give the "right" answers she thinks he wants from her.

But then the strangest thing happens. Jessie is visited by a blue vision of her distant descendant who has time-traveled to help Jessie choose the path that basically ensures the survival of the planet. And despite the huge leap of imagination both the character and the reader have to take to accept "The Granddaughter" as a time-traveling prophet/advisor, she quickly becomes integral to Jessie's ability to understand the devastating fallout of her suicide attempt, to herself as well as everyone around her.

Spydel has given Jessie an authentic, funny, honest, occasionally painful sixteen-year-old voice, and through her, gives the reader access to the very real drama around friends, enemies, family, boyfriends, love and sex. And she doesn't shy away from the confusing journey Jessie embarks on to finally, and fully, own her mistakes and the choices that can bring her a deeper understanding of who she is and who she wants to be.

"The Time Traveler's Apprentice at Hollywood High" is an entertaining and engaging story about a proud and defiant girl who is finally able to see the wasteland she's created around her, and choose something different... real life.

Great fun!
I had a blast reading this book and couldn't put it down! It was a lot of fun and the premise was unusual. I've never read anything that has this plot - it's completely original. I can't believe no one has ever thought of this concept - it's fascinating to explore the possibilities, but it's also a lot of fun, and the kids in the book are like real kids you know. Cat Spydell is an excellent writer and she's no recluse- she's very involved with the daily lives of kids and "gets it". She's one of the only adults I know of who is sought out by kids who just want to hang out. In other words, she's cool and it shows in her writing. The book takes you on a great ride that will leave you thinking about it long after you've finished it. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this book made into a movie. -Stacey O'Brien, author of NY Times Bestseller, WESLEY THE OWL.