- Fern made the front page of both the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register because the pictures of her were “the stuff that photo editors dream of – a frightened little girl holding on for dear life above the surreal backdrop of the Magic Kingdom.” Consider what’s appealing about the image, then write news copy or TV coverage for one of the events in The Otherworldlies.
- This story has its own vocabulary – not only are there Rollens and Blouts, but there are also Poseidons, Hermes, and other kinds of vampires, as well as allusions to Titanomachy, Cronus’s Curse, and other mythologically-inspired people and events. Devise your own classification system for Otherworlies. What can you add to the world created by Jennifer Anne Kogler?
- Choose one of the references to Greek mythology or vampire lore that interests you. Write a short essay describing your findings in a way that would catch your classmates’ interest, or let your findings inspire a short story about someone who, like Fern, finds herself confronting myths in the modern world. Who has the powers you’ve envisioned, and how do the powers change your character’s life?
- Sam and Fern visit a preserve where “indigenous creatures” are kept sheltered from the humans’ above-ground world where they would be exterminated. Draw one of the creatures in the preserve, design its enclosure, and write a short blurb explaining what visitors would find if they visited your part of the preserve.
- The story is set in California – Fern does visit famous landmarks like Disneyland, but the setting also informs the story in a more subtle way. Research some of the real places or creatures described in the story. Once you’ve found out a bit more about San Juan Capistrano, the migration of the swallows, and the looks of a jacaranda tree, is it harder or easier to visualize the events of the story? Try writing another scene where setting influences the story.
- Fern questions Lindsey’s motivation when Lindsey, a girl who’s a “social force of nature” at St. Gregory’s, befriends her, the “weakest of the herd.” Does Lindsey need to have a reason to be friends with Fern? What does this say about seventh grade politics? Do you think it’s true outside of middle school that people need to have a reason to be close to others?
- When Lindsey and Fern first become friends, they melt onto the bathroom floor in a “heap of giggles and hair.” How did you first bond with your friends? What does Fern learn about making (and keeping) friends in this story? Can you make any connections to her struggles?
- Jennifer Anne Kogler dedicates this book to her “very own Sam and Eddie.” What people make up your support system?
- Mary Lou McAllister doesn’t mince words when she talks to Chief Quagmire at the end of the story: “She’s not joining your Alliance. She’s got her very own alliance right here in this house!” But Fern’s behavior gains her allies outside of the home, as well. What does her treatment of Telemus, Chuffy, and others who are marginalized by the V.A. say about her? In making her own team, does she eliminate the need to pick sides between Vlad and the Alliance? Does making the choice to stay out of Alliance politics eliminate the need to make a choice about staying a Rollen or becoming a blood-drinking Blout?
- Fern and Sam may not be biological twins, but they do share a special relationship – Sam is Fern’s defender, shares her secrets, and sticks with her even when neither sibling is quite sure what path to take. But there are also moments where he’s jealous of his sister and her powers. Think about someone who’s close to you. If one of you has an experience that can’t be shared, what does that do to the relationship? How can you renew your bond with that person?
- It takes a long time before Mrs. McAllister is prepared to believe the truth about Fern – why does she think Fern lied about what happened at Pirate’s Cove after she first teleports? Why, when confronted with two realities, would she choose to believe the one that “wouldn’t keep her up at night”? Have you ever told the truth to someone who didn’t believe you? Why do you think they had a hard time accepting the facts? When someone loses your trust because they don’t believe you, is there anything they can do to regain that trust?
- Sam tells Fern that superheroes like Lance Armstrong or Einstein are “good freaks.” What are the Otherworldlies? Are they superheroes, or freaks, or both? What makes certain people special? What makes us admire some of the people who are different from us but ridicule some of the others?
- Relations between Normals and Otherworldlies are colored with fear, and several characters make it clear to Fern that they believe humans destroy all the things they do not understand. Do you agree or disagree? Cite examples from the book and from the real world. Then consider Vlad’s statement that “you cannot love something that terrifies you” (214). Do you believe him? Why, or why not?
- What is the significance of the giants’ admonition (“Nothing in Excess”) given the larger context of the book and the world?
- What do you think about the Rollen philosophy? Vlad doesn’t accept that he and his followers should file down their fangs and pretend to be the same as Normals – is there any way in which he’s being reasonable? Why should the Rollens continue to hide who they are? If the Normals will really persecute them and exterminate them, is there hope for the Rollen philosophy? What will the Rollens have to do before they can come out from underground and see the integration initiative through?
- Fern’s not a bad person, so why is she scared that she’ll become a Blout? Why does she worry that there’s a darkness inside her that she can’t control? Can you relate to her – have your feelings or desires ever surprised you? Telemus tells Fern that Phoebe was on the right side “in the end.” Does being on the right side at the end atone for mistakes you’ve made along the way?
- Chief Quagmire says, “There is little that separates the actions of those whom we deem good and evil. It is the cause a person serves that history judges and the results that a person produces.” Do you agree or disagree? Are there actions that are inherently wrong, or can the ends justify terrible means?
- There are vampires in this story who want to abandon that term because it’s “too laden with terrible baggage” – they prefer a more “politically correct” name for themselves, like “Otherworldlies.” Is changing the word used to describe a group of people possible? Does it make a difference what they call themselves if there are still Blouts who drink blood and live up to the stereotypes?
- Many of the characters in this story fit into the role of the protector – Sam, Eddie, and Mrs. McAllister all do what they can to protect Fern from the viciousness of seventh grade girls, and later she does her best to protect them from Vlad and the Hundred-Handers. But there’s a gray area in the middle of the story when the McAllisters are unable to protect Fern from the Alliance because they simply don’t know enough and Fern has trouble protecting them because she can’t control her powers. What is each member of the family feeling in the middle of the story? What is it like to be unable to protect someone you love?
- There are special places like the beach at Pirate’s Cove or Carlsbad Caverns where Fern tingles with pleasure and feels like she’s at home. What about you? Do you know places that seem perfect? If you could teleport, where would you go? What places would be in your Disappearance Directory, and why?
Fern McAllister may be able to predict the weather and communicate with her family dog, but she’s also the kind of girl who has trouble making friends and seems doomed to spend the entirety of middle school hiding up in a tree with a book. When she accidentally teleports to the beach from English class one day, she realizes that she is really, truly different from the cruel girls in her seventh grade class who make fun of her. She tries to keep her suspicions about herself secret, worrying that her differences will alienate her from her family. Her twin brother Sam figures out Fern’s secret and vows to help her discover the truth. Working together they learn that Fern is a member of The Otherworldlies – an ancient vampire sect – and may even be one of The Unusual Eleven who are thought to possess unique powers. She becomes the target of another vampire sect, the blood-drinking Blouts, as well as a person of interest to the suspicious Vampire Alliance. Fern must learn to stand up for herself and her loved ones, speak truth to power, and figure out how to make friends in the seventh grade. Can she do it?
The Otherworldlies - A Reader’s Guide
√ Activities & Writing Projects
Ruby Tuesday | Fun Facts | Read An Excerpt | Buy The Book
Ruby Tuesday | Fun Facts | Read An Excerpt | Buy The Book
RuBy TuEsDaY
Height: 5’1”
Weight: 99 lbs.
Sex: Female
On a dare from Howie, Ruby once chewed a single piece of gum for 18 days.
Sometimes Ruby and Hollis play Battleship in different rooms using walkie-talkies.
Ruby has never quite understood why Beta-Max never caught on.
Ruby’s favorite Rolling Stones song is definitely not Ruby Tuesday, it’s Waiting for a Friend.
When Ruby plays handball, her favorite swing, of course, is the ‘underdoggie’.
Ruby is passionate about candy corn.
Ruby buys days of the week underwear, but only wears Tuesday, which Hollis doesn’t find economical.
Her first word was ‘hello’.
Her favorite movie is Goonies, which she saw three times in the theater.
If she had to choose, Ruby would eat burritos for the rest of her life.
Hollis snores so loudlt sometimes that Ruby can hear him at night.
Ruby Tuesday | Fun Facts | Read An Excerpt | Buy The Book
Chapter One
It began the day my father sliced off his index finger. I was thirteen, and that was the hottest fall of my life. Summer that year had refused to take its own scheduled vacation. As my older brother Jack’s October wedding approached, our conversations were mired in talk of the perfect honeymoon locale and multilayered carrot cake options.
I’ve never put much stock in the saying that all things have a beginning. After all, I can’t tell you exactly when I realized that my friends at Laguna Heights didn’t read as much as I did. I don’t know when I began to like the way my legs looked in a skirt, the smell of gas stations, or the company of my mother. And while I’m unable to locate the inaugural date of my adolescence, I guess, when I think back on it, I started to become a player in my own life on Jack’s wedding day.
My brother’s reception convinced me that weddings are a tricky business. If they go as planned, some people go home happy, some drunk; the luckiest teeter home both. But like anything that involves planning, there’s always the element of surprise, and Jack’s big day was no exception. There is no such thing as a pleasant surprise at a wedding.
Jack met Mae on a sunny day in June at Mission Beach. The waves were glassy barrels curling two feet overhead, and she liked the way he carved the surf with his board. A few Mai Tais at Woody’s Wharf and a salty kiss later, they were in love—at least, that’s how they told the story at the rehearsal dinner.
In keeping with my family’s tendency to avoid normalcy, Jack and Mae had decided early on to get married at the beach, scorning floral arrangements, stained-glass windows, bow ties, and frocked ministers.
“This ceremony isn’t progressive, it’s preposterous,” my Nana Sue began. “I should not have to wear SPF forty at my grandson’s wedding.” She huffed as she spoke, clutching the peeling paint railing, following my father and me down the earthen stairs toward Woods Cove, a well-hidden beach in Laguna. Nana Sue limped with both legs, but her odd march made her that much more intimidating. Around the weathered banister, a mat of phalecia, lupine, and bright golden poppies wallpapered the hill, swaying in the breeze—a dazzling backdrop to our steep descent.
“This is the only wedding I’ve seen where I have a better chance of catching melanoma than the bridal bouquet,” she wheezed. My grandmother laughed at her own joke with a gentle sucking of air that exploded into a cackle.
I had been told by most everyone who knew her that Nana Sue was beautiful when she was young—so beautiful, in fact, that I wondered if her now-cragged face made her bitter when she stared at it in the morning mirror. Whenever I looked at her, I thought of the faded photo perched atop our TV. In it she stood holding my infant father, Hollis, enveloped by a parched Reno desert, her face shaded with the unmistakable softness of youth. Now she looked jagged and cynical in pictures.
Nana Sue always smoked half a pack of Virginia Slims in the morning and drank at least four tumblers of Knob Creek, straight up, by the time she went to bed. The day of Jack’s wedding, she wore a collared ivory shirt with tiny anchors across it. Navy slacks hung loosely from a tan belt over the SAS deck shoes that women her age often wear. A visor shielded her face. Her hair was the smooth color of Xerox paper, and her face was a dehydrated version of Hollis’s. Still, she was spry for a seventy-four-year-old, and she’d made the five-hour trek in her black ’78 Mercedes from her home in Las Vegas without complaint.
When I had finally reached the roped-off section of the beach at the bottom of the cliff, it was half full with guests mingling in bikinis and swim trunks. Some of Jack’s friends were bumping a volleyball in a circle, killing time. Old beach chairs were strewn in uneven rows around the seaweed-draped podium. Rainbow-colored paper lanterns swung from poles like airy tetherballs in the coastal breeze. I lagged behind as Hollis and Nana Sue plodded toward the matrimonial sandlot.
“Why, that woman’s in a thong!” Nana Sue shouted, looking half amused and half appalled at the procession of scantily clad guests.
“I still can’t believe Jack scheduled this thing during game one of the Series,” my father grumbled. “The kid grew up bleeding Dodger blue.” It was true—the two things the entire Sweet family watched together were Dodger games and sunsets. I’d been initiated at an early age.
In fact, the Los Angeles Dodgers were as close to a religion as we Sweets had. While other girls were learning to crimp, tease, and braid, I was learning to recognize the topspin of a curveball from our field-level box seats at the stadium. A good portion of my life was spent staring out at nine players in Dodger uniforms. Sometimes my eyes would venture toward the faint lights of LA’s urban sprawl outlining the hills of Chavez Ravine. It was understood that Hollis, Jack, and I would be at each home night game. We’d sit side by side, content to spend three hours together fixated on Orel Hershiser’s pitch count. During the season before Jack’s wedding, Hershiser had wowed us, pitching fifty-nine consecutive scoreless innings to break Don Drysdale’s major league record. In between Dodger Dogs and seventh-inning stretches, I had discovered that watching baseball with my father was a way of surreptitiously peering into his past. My father had grown up on legends like Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, and Maury Wills, and he prided himself on his knowledge of even the most obscure Dodger trivia. He talked warmly of hot afternoons watching games with Nana Sue when they’d made the trip from their home in Reno to Los Angeles.
“I just wish the wedding wasn’t during the Series, that’s all,” my father said, tugging my ponytail.
Nana Sue stood fully upright as her arm shot toward the pocket of Hollis’s pants. She clenched a handful of his yellow linen trousers, searching for something.
“You don’t have a radio on you, do you, Hollis?” Nana scowled. “Because, I swear, honey, you’ll break Jack’s heart right open if he sees you listening to him say ‘I do’ in one ear and the broadcast of the bottom of the fifth in the other.”
Hollis stood silent.
“You aren’t in play? You don’t even have a double sawbuck on the game, right?” Hollis and Nana Sue’s conversations were often sprinkled with strange words like sawbuck that I rarely understood. Still, I could tell by Nana Sue’s venomous tone that she meant business. “Hollis, look at me: Couldn’t you spare a day? This is your only son’s wedding.” My father’s face gave him away—he grimaced like he was suffering from a migraine, and his expression read like a confession.
“Oh my word, Hollis . . . you do have money on the game!”
“It’s not what you think, Nana Sue,” Hollis said. I wondered if he’d ever called her Mom.
“I’m worried about you, Hollis—and this is coming from me—a railbird who split time between Reno and Vegas her whole life. This isn’t natural. Are you in the hole? Are you in trouble?” Nana Sue’s anger straightened her spine.
“No, of course not, Nana. It was last winter when I placed . . . I had no way of . . . it was a future on the World Series. Look, it’s a long shot that might pay off big.” Hollis glared sternly at Nana Sue and then at me. It was the kind of glare parents have been directing at children for generations—a signal that this discussion was not suitable for young listeners. My ears immediately pricked up.
“Don’t worry, Sue. I’ll watch the highlights later on Channel Seven like everyone else here. No radios. It’s just me, you, and Ruby here, enjoying Jack’s big day.”
Hollis shot me a knowing look—a look that I can still visualize. I was the only one privy to my father’s scheme for the evening, partly because it included me: Once the preacher introduced Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sweet and the party began, Hollis would switch on the transistor sleeping in his front pocket. Assuming I could avoid the pubescent table and jockey for a seat next to him, he’d slip me a side of his earphones and we could listen to the last innings of game one.
I hoped I was up to the task.
We continued down the beach in search of Jack—my father’s tall shadow stood against the twilight, my grandmother’s short silhouette lost in his, with my own trailing behind.
Hollis spotted Jack in the corner of the makeshift beach chapel. His green Hawaiian shirt and Dockers looked brand-new.
“Dad, Nana Sue . . . right on time.” Jack grinned, his bleached teeth shining in the orange rays of the setting sun.
“Are you going to pull this thing off before it gets pitch black, Jack?” my father asked.
“Or are we going to have to rely on the moonlight?”
“We have plenty of time. The sun won’t set for another fifteen minutes.”
“Should be charming,” Nana Sue added, putting on a saccharine smile. Her perfect dentures looked odd against the backdrop of her sagging, liver-spotted face.
“Where is Uncle Larry?” I asked, directing my question at Jack.
Nana Sue bristled. “You have the child calling him ‘uncle’ now, Hollis? For shame!”
“Larry is not your uncle, Ruby,” Jack said, his face lit with amusement.
“That greenie is your father’s bookie,” Nana Sue snapped.
“Dad’s what?” It was more of the same—words that mystified, phrases that loitered unexplained. I made a mental note to write any new words down when I got home.
“Never mind, Rube. I’ll explain later.” I knew he would do no such thing. The subject change had an immediate permanence.
“Speaking of unlikely guests, Jack,” Nana Sue began, “is Darlene expected?”
“I don’t know. But she does know about the wedding. I invited her.”
My father’s jaw dropped, and Nana Sue clicked her tongue at the news of Darlene’s invitation.
None of us, Nana Sue included, was on good terms with my mother. Whenever she popped in on Jack and me, she lugged in presents that defied the conventions of gift giving. Once it was a portrait of her made entirely of tree bark by an Amish artist, another time a gift-wrapped sack of jalapeño beef jerky from an Indian reservation near Tucson. Then there was a Jackson Browne album with the signature of Jackson himself on the cover. Like all things associated with my mother, the authenticity of these offerings was tainted with a maddening uncertainty.
The way we figured it, Darlene Sweet required three things: her independence, the Rolling Stones, and Johnnie Walker by the handle. Hollis had a standard response whenever her name was mentioned. He called her a social chameleon—she changed from hippie to hard rock in an instant, always the most stylish person in any room. She just didn’t take to children. “Can’t choose who you love,” he would say, but he never seemed to give up on her entirely.
To me, Darlene was like the Santa Ana wind. She blew in about twice a year, made my face contort into strange expressions of discomfort, and then disappeared. In her wake she left the debris she had dressed up in wrapping paper. Worse than a completely absent mother, she came around just often enough that I couldn’t forget her.
I turned my attention back to Jack’s handsome face and asked him if he was nervous. I thought this was a question I should ask—someone had done it in every movie I’d seen that involved a wedding.
“Nah. My part is simple. I just have to repeat what someone else says.” Jack patted my head in a fatherly fashion. He had taken to doing this in the month since he’d moved out of our house, and it only made me miss him more.
“Jack, I’m proud of you. You’re the luckiest guy here.” My father rarely spoke in superlatives, but today he was all parental pride. He gripped Jack’s shoulder with brawny affection in that way men do.
“I should get married more often,” Jack said. “I’m liable to drown in all these compliments.”
“I wouldn’t worry, Jack,” Nana Sue said, laughing. “You’re far too shallow to drown.”
This was the kind of nimble, harmless banter characteristic of every Sweet gathering.
And I loved it.
Jack turned to leave. “Well, I should probably go take my place.”
He stopped halfway between the podium and the spot where the chairs for the wedding party had been set up.
“I’ll see you after it’s official,” he said with a wink.
Of course, it wasn’t a matter of if my mother would arrive, but when. Darlene didn’t appear until a few minutes after Jack had taken his position by the podium at the end of the seashell-bordered aisle. She sauntered toward us from the flowered cliff, waving, her eyes shaded by Jackie O sunglasses. Most everyone on the beach, even the youngest guests, focused their gaze upward as she approached.
The last time I’d seen my mother, she was in town to catch Rod Stewart at the Coach House, and she called to say she wanted to spend the afternoon with me. I remember sneaking upstairs as she approached the house wearing purple leg warmers and a baggy tee. I didn’t want her to see that I’d been looking out the kitchen window for hours, waiting for her Thunderbird to motor up our hill. We spent the afternoon at the Salvation Army sifting through old clothes that smelled like wet pavement. She was convinced we were both minutes away from a “great find.” I came away with a hat that said “Sun Records” to complement her “Elvis Lives” rhinestone belt. She dropped me off in front of the house and told me to “send Hollis her love,” like always. It had been years since she’d stayed the night at our house, and I knew it would be months before I saw her again. Six months had passed between our shopping trip and the day of Jack’s wedding. I often wondered why she bothered coming at all.
Today Darlene’s hair was an unconvincing shade of blonde, and her tight red halter-top sundress clashed with her broiled skin. Huge iridescent sea horse earrings dangled to her shoulders like a pair of competing wind chimes.
Before any of us could manage an awkward greeting, the wedding march boomed out from enormous Bose speakers on the ocean side of the beach, and people began adjusting their beach chairs to view the windblown procession. The stately chorus struggled against an off-key orchestra of rusty hinges.
Five bars later, the sound of an approaching siren swallowed every other noise. Mae had arrived, chauffeured in a lifeguard jeep, red lights ablaze. As the jeep jitterbugged across the sand, she stood, gripping her lavender bouquet of El Moro Canyon wildflowers with one hand and the roll bar with the other.
I had met Mae a few times before at tense family dinners and decided she was pretty, but as I looked at her in her white appliquéd lace bikini, she became a gorgeous sea siren. Her short, shell-encrusted veil flapped in the wind behind her tall glistening frame as fountains of sand sprayed in her wake. The lifeguard killed the engine and rushed to the other side of the jeep, helping Mae down from the passenger side. She stared at Jack as she made her way to him from the parked jeep, and soon they stood hand in hand. They were a couple of glamorous beach bums, barefoot and squinting at each other through the orange dusk of a slouching sun.
“May you ride the perfect wave, catch the perfect tube, and forever be committed to the endless summer that is marriage,” the preacher-surfer hybrid concluded, smoothing his rumpled Hawaiian shirt. He ended by pointing to the location of the buffet, set near the rising tide. Scattered folding tables sank slowly in the white sand, alongside a wedding banquet offering a choice of fish taco especiales, pinto beans, guacamole, cheese wheels, crackers, and fresh sliced California-grown oranges and strawberries.
As we walked toward the food with the other sunscreened guests, I could feel my palms turn clammy and my stomach rumble with nervous hunger. It was easy to forget that Jack was now a married man in the excitement of my father’s and my World Series listening gambit.
“Alright, Ruby, as soon as we sit down with our plates, I’ll hand you your end of the earphones.” Hollis whispered to escape the attention of Nana Sue. “Slip the cord behind your earlobe and put the speaker in your ear.” Hollis viewed this game’s outcome as the best predictor of the Series. If the Dodgers won the first game, they’d win the whole thing. As always, the odds backed him up.
We both piled our paper plates with watermelon and corn tortillas stuffed with charbroiled ahi and green cabbage and sat down at the nearest sand-anchored table. We were soon flanked by brittle relatives: Nana Sue on one side and my mother Darlene on the other. The silence led me to believe that, at least for the moment, everyone had chosen his or her taco especiale over conversation. I was relieved.
As I grabbed for the earpiece under the table, I felt a naughty exhilaration. This was better than smoking a forbidden cigarette or shotgunning a warm beer with Jack behind the garage. Cupping the earpiece in my hand, I pretended to scratch my ear. Seamless. Contact had been established. I had performed as well as expected. The Dodgers, however, were losing to the Oakland Athletics, 4–2. As I looked at the mixed company around me, I remembered how quickly things could turn from silence to a searing argument at any Sweet gathering. Both Hollis and I tried to keep up with conversation between spoonfuls of pinto beans and earfuls of the Dodger game.
Darlene stared at my profile and leaned toward my father.
“Hollis, Ruby looks as pale as a ghost. You should send her outside more often. She reads too much.” She waited for Hollis’s answer. “Hollis? Hollis, are you listening to me? I’m trying to communicate with you here.”
Nothing.
“Hollis? Are you deaf? Are we going to spend our son’s wedding in silence?” There was a look of serene pleasure on Hollis’s face. He had not heard a word of Darlene’s umbrage—he was under the spell of longtime hall-of-fame Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully.
“Answer me! What in the world is wrong with you? Are you calculating over/unders on how long the party is going to last?
“Fine, ignore me. That’s mature. It’s worked for you in the past.” Sitting up slightly, she reached into her frayed yellow purse and produced a silver hip flask. She poured three seconds’ worth of brown liquid into her bottle of Dos Equis and then downed a significant portion. Nana Sue darted her hand across the table.
“Mind if I borrow a drop or two?” Nana Sue said, flashing her dentured smile.
“Sure, have four. We might as well try to drink Hollis’s misbehavior off our minds, right?” Darlene snickered to herself. My father snapped to attention.
“Let’s not turn this into one of our clashes. . . . And by the way, Darlene—Ruby is pale because the sun causes cancer. Maybe you haven’t heard the news. The statistics are quite compelling.” Nice save, Hollis.
Normally Darlene would have deferred to the line she used whenever Hollis’s penchant for sarcasm found its way into one of their divisive talks. Sarcasm destroys families, Hollis. This time she snapped back on topic.
“I’m not encouraging you to marinate her in the sun—but she looks like she’s dying. Her skin is translucent—I mean, I can practically see through her.” Being the ball in one of my parents’ games of verbal Ping-Pong had stopped bothering me long before that moment. I did what I used to do best: I kept silent and let the argument run its course.
“She is also going to live a long, cancer-free life. Darlene, you really should read. . . .” My father trailed off as a crack from the earpiece tickled my ear. It was the sound of a bat making contact, piped in through the earphone. The Dodgers had just scored another run, making the score A’s four, Dodgers three.
I nudged Hollis’s knee to remind him that Darlene expected him to finish his sentences. My heart was pounding, knowing full well the volatile table would erupt into all out verbal warfare if we were found out. The plan began to seem foolhardy, and I wondered if we’d even make it through an inning. Hollis was talking to me now, and not about the wedding but the World Series playing out in his ear.
“I know, Ruby. Four, three—it’s a real barn burner!” I put my face in my hands, frustrated, near tears. Nana Sue spoke next.
“What in the world are you talking about, Hollis? Four three what? Maybe you better lay off the hooch.” Nana Sue’s southern accent kicked in full force, as it always did when she was stern or angry. Hollis spoke again.
“Four three two one.” He offered up a dumb smile to the table.
“Lately Hollis has been countin’ when he’s excited,” I added, taking my father’s lead. “That’s what Dr. Toni Grant tells people to do.”
“Since when has Ruby Tuesday been calling you Hollis, Hollis?” Darlene demanded. This made me angry. My mother was now on the offensive. I looked at my father. He wasn’t with us—he was with Scioscia, at the plate with a three-two count in the bottom of the seventh. I tried to step up and save him.
“Well, that’s his name, right, Darlene?” It was the first time I had said my mother’s name out loud to her face, and it felt good. Everyone was staring at me. I continued. “Hollis says if I want to be treated like an adult, I need to start acting like one. You don’t call Hollis ‘husband,’ do ya?” I was really on a roll. Heck, Nana Sue had laughed. But Darlene’s glare was toxic.
“Now you see why I can’t live with her full-time. The child’s spoiled. She has no manners. Soon she’ll be swaggering like some Vegas cocktail waitress.” She marshaled her flask back from Nana Sue and took a swig. Then she closed her eyes and let out a burning alcoholic sigh.
“Oh, I don’t know if that’s so bad, Darlene,” Hollis began. “It’s what you were when I met you.” I heard my mother’s voice echo in my head. Sarcasm destroys families. Things were heating up. Darlene’s eyes got smaller.
“I don’t mean that, Hollis. I mean if she doesn’t have any discipline she’s going to end up like you or me or like the rest of this family!” Darlene raised her hands above her head.
“Even Jack—I thought he’d turn out all right; he’s got a good head—but look at this nonsense.” She waved her arms at the tables full of bathing suit–clad revelers with sunburned cheeks now mingling in the dusk. Hollis raised his arms toward the blackening sky.
“This is our son’s wedding. Why don’t you show some class.”
“Oh, yeah,” Darlene countered with a boozy leer. “Nothing says class like a bride in a bikini.”
“Why do you insist on being so critical of this family?” Hollis tried to muffle his anger.
“Ruby shouldn’t talk like she does. She’s only twelve.”
“I’m thirteen.” It was the first time I can remember interjecting my own opinion into one of their displays of marital unbliss.
It wasn’t long before Nana Sue weighed in too. She was good at playing the peacekeeper, able to keep the passion of my parents at bay with one well-timed utterance.
“Let’s keep things civil. Ruby, do not talk back to your mother,” Nana Sue scolded me.
Scioscia had grounded out to second base. The seventh inning had ended. And Darlene remounted her attack.
“You’ve got money on the game tonight, don’t you, Hollis?” Darlene was relentless.
“You’re always betting on something, aren’t you, you fool? In fact, I’m surprised you’re missing the game. Your whole life revolves around whether some round object is hit by some idiot over a stupid fence, or put in a hole, or through a basket.” The drunker Darlene got, the more insulting she became. “You are pa-thetic. Our only son’s wedding.” My mother’s face was glowing with an arrogant expression. Her garbled speech had quieted the table. I tried to block out everything else, concentrating on Vin Scully and the Dodgers in my ear. The Sweet family silence lasted through the break in between innings—a pitch for Farmer John Bacon, Union Oil, and season ticket packages. Nana Sue spoke first.
“Darlene, we haven’t yet asked what you have been up to. How rude of us all,” she said. I knew it was taking all of Nana Sue’s resolve to be courteous for Jack’s sake. Reluctantly Darlene set her grievances aside and answered the question.
“Actually, I just left the Sawdust Festival. You know that macramé planter that hangs from the porch eave? I sell—”
“Well, guys, how does it look?” Jack approached, flashing his silver screen smile and wiggling his ring finger. He had been making the compulsory rounds and had saved our table for the end. Mae had split off to mingle with a table full of her own adoring relatives.
“Look, the band’s about to start playing.” Jack seemed to sense that conversation hadn’t flowed in his absence. “Promise you won’t sit here for the rest of the night—dance a little. For me. Please.”
He turned away, and I envied him. Jack was married now. His escape had a permanence that I could only imagine. Now he would only have to sit at the Sweet table for weddings and funerals. Mae and Jack were a we now. I was jealous.
Men in white shirts and white pants moved about lighting the large Tiki torches that surrounded the tables and the dance floor. It had grown dark. Guests flocked toward the band as they began playing The Platters’ “Twilight Time.” The Dodger game had reached the ninth.
“This isn’t music with any beat to it,” Darlene slurred.
“Darlene, you’re drunk,” Hollis told her. She turned away from him and faced the cover band jamming in their matching OP shirts and shorts.
“I’ve heard better dance music in elevators—how about a little ‘Summer Romance’ or ‘Everybody Needs Somebody to Love’! ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ would be better than this garbage.” My mother’s heckling disturbed a few nearby guests, and once again Hollis played the diplomat for a drunk Darlene.
“Ruby, how would you feel about going over to the buffet for some more guacamole, then having a dance or two?”
Hollis didn’t wait for my answer. He grabbed my hand forcefully and walked us toward the food. We kept our backs to Darlene and Nana Sue, who were still discussing whether to dance, eat, or sulk. The small wire connecting Hollis’s right ear to my left kept us close. We tried to match our steps in the cold sand, like contestants in some kind of three-legged race, and I no longer worried that someone might see the slender cord that held us together. My father waited until a significant distance separated us from our disgruntled family group before he spoke.
“Bottom of the ninth, four to three, Dodgers trailing with two outs. Eckersley walked Davis. Lasorda’s bringing in Gibson to pinch-hit even though he can barely walk—the game’s on the line.” His face was flush with the thrill of a close contest. I squeezed his hand until he spoke again.
“Come on. Let’s go pillage the cheese and fruit and hear the end of the game in peace.”
The full moon shone like a flashlight in the sky directly behind Hollis, leaving what looked like a snail trail on the water. His eyes were dilated with excitement. His cheeks no longer sagged from the forced smiles and congratulations of the day. The reception line in front of us cast dancing shadows against the Woods Cove cliffs. The linen-covered buffet table was the closest thing to the water.
In my ear, narrating events thirty miles away, Vin Scully described the gimpy Gibson dragging his injured leg to home plate. It wasn’t long before Eckersley had Gibson down no balls, two strikes. Hollis stood to my left, mindlessly cutting thin slices of cheddar cheese. I shoved sesame crackers into my mouth, not chewing but soaking them with saliva instead. The crowd roared in my ear as Gibson fouled two away and took three pitches for balls. Eckersley was throwing nothing but fastballs. The count was now full: three balls, two strikes. I looked back at my family among the drunken revelers.
Nana Sue and Jack stood at arm’s length, moving in firelight dim enough to hide any trace of awkwardness. Darlene stood on the side of the dance floor, glowing with pride as she tried to catch the eye of her son waltzing. They all looked happy, their faces bright with a beaming mix of moon and twilight. But then Vin Scully’s excited voice piped in and brought my attention back to the roar of fifty-six thousand fans at Dodger Stadium.
Gibson had connected with a hanging slider.
“Way, way back, back to the track . . . it . . . is . . . gone.” The broadcaster’s voice was barely audible above the madness of the crowd. It was a noise so loud, for a moment I could hear nothing else. It was deafening and it was wonderful. “In a year of the improbable,” Vin Scully shouted into my ear, trying not to be drowned out, “the impossible has happened!” My father jumped three feet in the air, painfully yanking the left side of the earphones out of my ear.
The screaming delight of thousands of delirious Dodger fans gave way to the solitary, unnatural howl of my father. I looked at him. He was staring wide-eyed at the buffet table. His face had drained as his eyes turned over in their sockets like rolling marbles.
And there it was.
At what point during Vin Scully’s call of Gibson’s home run my father missed the cheddar cheese and, instead, sliced off the top of his index finger, is anyone’s guess. It was severed right above his knuckle. Resting there, the finger might have blended innocently with the edge of the cutting board if it hadn’t been for the shimmering pool of bright red blood spreading across the white tablecloth like an accelerated shadow at dusk. Transfixed by the detached portion of Hollis’s finger, I moved closer to it. It looked abandoned—a little white death adjacent to a half-eaten wheel of cheddar cheese.
Hollis stopped howling and covered one hand with the other, blood dripping from the wound through his clenched fist, spotting the white sand beneath us.
The band stopped abruptly and a crowd gathered around us, dozens of eyes bouncing in unison from my father’s gory hand to the loose earphones that dangled from his ear, to the cheese, to the knife, and finally to the bloodless tip of his index finger, now completely surrounded by a scarlet island of stained tablecloth. The woman closest to me let out a murderous shriek. A lady with graying braids dropped her plate of cantaloupe and keeled over backward like a falling domino in the sand.
Darlene and Hollis had never been silent when together in a confined space, but as my mother drove her mint-green, mint-condition Thunderbird through a maze of red lights and red stop signs on Pacific Coast Highway, an absolute stillness filled the car. Hollis’s finger rested between them, packed in a Ziploc full of ice from the caterer’s beer cooler. When we arrived at St. Joseph Hospital, Darlene gingerly carried the finger inside.
Mae and Jack arrived a few minutes after we did, perhaps slowed by the clanging tin cans attached to their bumper and the “Just Married” sign reflected in the rearview mirror of Jack’s jeep. The waiting room wasn’t as exhilarating or as dire as I expected. Small clusters of people just like us waited for news. We finally got word. Hollis’s finger could not be reattached. It would be a stump. And it would only be a matter of months before his loss was reduced to a punch line at family gatherings: Your finger just called, Hollis, and it wants you to know it misses you. Do you have any finger to go with the crackers? How ’bout a high-four, Hollis? Once word got out to the kids at Laguna Heights—which was a certainty considering much of Laguna had been at the wedding—the fingerless jokes would be flying at school too.
“You know Dad’s going to be just fine. No one dies from a fatal finger wound, Ruby.” Jack tried to comfort me, but all I could think about was the rubble of shaken guests and bloodied napkins that our family had left at his wedding. I wished the Sweets could do something—anything—in a normal fashion.
“Aren’t you mad that all this broke up your wedding?”
“Nah. I mean, I think I was about to be roped into dancing with Mae’s mother. And that, Ruby, wouldn’t have done anyone any good.” Jack’s happiness, usually as infectious as a winter cold, had no effect on me that night. My father was released in a little over three hours. His right hand was now a mound of gauze. His eyes were pools of dejection.
“How much did you have on the Dodgers, Hollis?” Darlene’s question came without a trace of humor once we were back in her car.
“What makes you say I bet money on the game?” He had never directly discussed his gambling in front of me before. I willed myself still.
“Oh, maybe because you snuck a radio into your son’s wedding. Maybe the fact that you’re an appendage short now because they won. You may bleed Dodger blue, but you don’t bleed for Dodger blue.” Hollis chuckled for the first time since he and his finger had parted ways.
“It was a future on the Series I placed at Caesars months ago. Forty to one odds.”
“How much did you lay down?”
“A lot.”
“Translate ‘a lot’ into dollars.”
“Enough.”
“It’s been a long night, Hollis. I’m tired. You’re tired. Our son got married. You chopped off your finger. Excuse me if I don’t want to dance around this with you. How much?”
Hollis whispered into Darlene’s ear, close enough to kiss it. They were telling secrets. They were married.
“Holy—I mean, Hollis! That’s a fortune. That’s an absolute fortune.”
“I know.” Hollis looked down at his bandaged hand. The white gauze was already bloodstained. They had all but forgotten me, silent in the backseat. So had I.
“Why, you could do anything with that. That’s a college fund. That’s a mortgage payoff. That’s a future.” Darlene was stunned, almost proud. Quiet flooded the car. She glanced at me in the rearview mirror. Hollis finally spoke.
“The Dodgers haven’t won the Series yet. Just game one. There’s no use even talking about it.”
“I wish that you weren’t so good at what you do.” Darlene paused. “I mean, you don’t have a job. I’m no example. I stopped trying long ago. But you could start with this. You could stop.”
“We’ve had this conversation before. You said it—we’re both tired.”
“You know it’s not real, right? Putting money down on a bunch of morons playing games—it isn’t a career. It isn’t even legal.” Darlene was never shy about voicing her opinion—to her, Hollis was a waste. The blinker ticked away like a metronome keeping the rhythm of our silence. We turned onto Bent Twig Road, and we were home.
Like most houses perched on the hills overlooking the beaches of Laguna, ours appeared as if one hiccup of the earth would loosen it from the hillside and send it tumbling into the sea. Darlene left the car running and opened my side door. She kneeled down and wrapped her arms around me. Then she pushed me an arm’s length away and gave me a purposeful stare.
“Ruby Tuesday—this is good-bye for a while. I’m going to miss you while I’m gone.” I couldn’t bring myself to do more than stare back at her.
“Look. You don’t have to listen to me, but I want you to do two things while I’m away. Do what Hollis says. You try to get as smart as you can, and you can get out of here.
Hollis will send you to college wherever you want. Do you understand, Ruby?” Darlene said it with the kind of tone that begged for my full attention. She wanted her words remembered, cherished, reflected upon. Maybe she did care. Maybe I cared. Both options bothered me.
I nodded and she pulled me back to her, squeezing tightly. As fast as I could get away, I slammed the car door and left my mother and her familiar good-bye behind me. Hollis opened our front door with his good hand, and I followed him inside.
We went straight to the kitchen and Hollis plopped on the first of three bar stools at the counter. Jack, Hollis, and I had spent countless nights on these cold, metallic stools, leaving them warm with body heat when we left to go to bed. Jack’s stool was empty now.
I grabbed two bowls, two spoons, and a box of Frosted Flakes from the cupboard and sat next to my father. When he finally spoke, his voice seemed distant and hollow.
“I bet we’re both starving. Cereal. I’ve always thought cereal was a large step for civilization. It has a simple elegance to it. The bowl. The spoon. The milk. The flakes.” Tired creases returned to his face. He began to look like himself again as he spooned flakes with his good hand.
“Hollis?”
“Yes?”
There were so many questions I wanted to ask. Like how the Dodgers winning the World Series was going to pay for a future. Like what my father did if he didn’t go to work. Like what life at the end of Bent Twig Road was going to be like without Jack. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t ask any of them. I would find out soon enough.
Ruby Tuesday | Fun Facts | Read An Excerpt | Buy The Book
Plenty of girls have trouble relating to their parents. Few have to turn to a dictionary for help. Ruby Tuesday Sweet keeps a battered webster’s by her side — but when her dad tunes in to eight baseball games at a time on his wall of TVs, his talk of parlays and chalks and spreads keeps Ruby mystified. Then the Dodgers win the World Series, Ruby Tuesday’s dad wins a bet, and his bookie is murdered. Ruby finds herself on the run to Las Vegas with her long-lost rock-and-roll mom in a race against the thugs who want Mr. Sweet’s winning ticket.
A rare breakthrough novel, Ruby Tuesday is the story of a gambling father, a card-shark grandmother, and a family of women inhabiting a Vegas casino. At the center of it all is the girl who never noticed they were different.
Critical Praise
“Irresistibly readable and wonderfully funny. This is a most impressive debut.”
—New York Times best–selling author Joyce Carol Oates
Grew up in? Tustin, CA. Born and raised.
Childhood ambition? Become a writer (well-done me!)
Favorite Twin? Jeremy Kogler, my very own twin.
Favorite sports team? The Los Angeles Dodgers, of course
Book to take on a desert island? Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird – the most perfect novel ever written. If I were allowed two more, I’d probably take The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. And Watership Down by Richard Adams because it’s the only book about talking rabbits that’s any good. Oh, and anything P.G. Wodehouse wrote.
Favorite city? Seville, Spain. The streets are lined with orange trees.
Favorite CD? The Smiths ‘The Queen is Dead’ might very well be my favorite but ask me what I’m listening to right now. Okay, I’ll tell you. The Shins. Both albums. They’re great to write to.
Where do you write? I write in a room with a card table. The table wobbles a bit more than I’d like and the room is my twin brother’s old room, now it’s my office.
Qualities you most admire? Loyalty and good humor.
What do you do to relax? I relax by going for runs in the canyon by my house. I run to the lake and back while listening to music. I recommend you do the same. Just inquire and I’ll email you directions.
What classic/contemporary author would you most like to have dinner with? I would want two people there: Mark Twain and Jane Austen. Can you imagine the witty banter between those two? I’d love to just sit, watch, cut up my steak, and soak it all in.
What classic/contemporary fictional character would you most like to date? Mr. Darcy. Hands down. He’s a lovable snob. Although, I’ve also always had a thing for Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby. He’s a sharp observer and a cynical romantic. I think we’d be happily observant together and get invited to some pretty wild parties.
Place you were/are happiest? In the last year, I’d definitely say a top happy moment was when I was in the Sports Book of Caesar’s Palace during the opening day of March Madness and the Tigers were up by 8 over Texas at halftime.
Favorite National Park? Yosemite. I fell in love with Vernal Falls as a kid and I still love the place. Badlands National Park runs a close second for its high cool-quotient.
At what point does a sandwich become expensive? Seven Dollars.
What adjectives might you use to describe RUBY TUESDAY? Improbable, curious, perceptive.
Hi! Welcome to all things Otherworldly.
◊ Click here to view the Official Reader’s Guide for The Otherworldlies!
◊ Or, better yet, check out Jennie’s Blog to find out more about her school tour . . . coming to a cafeteria near you!
◊ What people are saying about her tour and the book:
I am a big fan of Kogler’s first YA novel Ruby Tuesday, and again here in The Otherworldlies, Kogler’s intelligence and imagination are standouts in the YA field. (Kogler is currently attending Stanford Law School, so we can only hope she will find time to continue to write for YAs in the future.) The Otherworldlies is a vampire novel, a complex one… The main character is Fern, a 12-year-old with a twin brother, Sam. As is true with Ruby Tuesday, the young age of the heroine might be misleading because both books demand much of the reader and older teenagers would still be fascinated by Kogler’s stories…but Fern’s dilemma of identity, her intelligence, her loyalty to her human family, and her remarkable relationship with her twin brother will challenge YA readers of any age.” - Claire Rosser, KLIATT
“Brimming with action and colorful characters, The Otherworldlies brings you a gutsy heroine who must learn to embrace her ‘Unusual’ talents. You’ve never seen vampires like this before.” - Laura Ruby, author of The Chaos King
“Author Jennifer Kogler’s book brings a voice that fits the young adult audience perfectly. She grabs their attention and never lets go! Students jockey to get their hands on her book, knowing that the wait will be worth it. Jennifer Kogler is a YA writer whose time has come and YA’s will be there standing in line for her books.” - Library Resource Center Director, Lisle, IL
“I would highly recommend Jennifer Kogler… our students were totally enthralled… believe it or not, she talks in the most interesting way about the importance of citing sources. Because she is sharp, has a great sense of humor, and thinks on her feet, she fielded questions with the greatest of ease. She is a librarian’s dream author visit.” - Library Media Specialist, Cupertino, CA
“We’ve had several very successful author visits, and yet some students concluded that Jennifer’s was the best yet. One teacher shared his pleasure with her presentation and said, ‘Whatever it is, Jennifer’s got it. That special quality that just makes some people shine.’ I couldn’t have said it better myself.” - Library Media Specialist, Monmouth Junction, NJ
Jennifer Anne Kogler, 26, lives in California, where she was born and raised. She’s wanted to be a writer since she was old enough to hold a pencil. When the first stories she wrote as a youngster became too long, she solved the problem by simply killing off all her characters, a technique she improved upon in her later work.
While a student at Princeton University, Jennie spent a semester studying in London, finding time between classes to travel through most of Europe (including an almost fatal boat ride to Inishmore off the coast of Ireland). After graduating with a B.A. in English and delivering a graduation speech with her twin brother Jeremy, she returned home, determined to fulfill her career dream of becoming a fulltime writer.
Taking up residence in her old bedroom she revised the novel that she’d written as her senior thesis at Princeton. She got a job in a local restaurant and realized that her life had become a fully-realized cliché: The waitress/would-be writer. By the end of the summer following graduation Jennie sent her revised manuscript, Ruby Tuesday, off to literary agencies. Within a few days, she received a phone call from an agent offering to represent her and two months later, she had a two-book deal with HarperCollins.
Jennie is a longtime fan of the L.A. Dodgers. Her second novel, The Otherworldlies, is her first “official” foray into fantasy. She is currently at work on her third novel and just completed her first year at Stanford Law School.
About Jennie’s Latest:
“Fern communicates with her dog, blisters from just moments in the sun, and has correctly predicted the daily weather for more than two years. Even so, she’s always seemed to be a normal twelve-year-old girl…until one day when Fern closes her eyes in class and opens them seconds later on a sandy beach miles away from school. When Fern disappears again, this time to a place far more dangerous, she begins to realize exactly how different she is.”