Read on for Jessica's piece on the real life event that inspired the story of Between...
Between by Jessica Warman
Publisher: Egmont Books Ltd.
Release date: October 3rd 2011.Only the good die young. Right? Elizabeth Valchar has it all: friends, money, beauty, a cute boyfriend and assured popularity. But on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, she is found drowned next to her parents' boat. Everyone thinks it was a tragic accident - teens drinking on a boat, a misstep leading to a watery death. But Liz is still here after death, and she doesn't know why. There are gaps in her memory. Her only company Alex, a boy killed by a car a year earlier, Liz sets out to piece together her life. But their small coastal town is hiding many secrets - about families, boyfriends and friendship. Plus, Alex hates Liz for being mean when they were alive. Was she as squeaky clean as she thinks she was? Could it be that she herself is hiding the biggest secret of all? Can Liz discover the truth? And if she does, who can she tell? An engrossing, compelling thriller that peels back the layers of small-town life to expose true, ugly, cruel human nature.
Jessica Warman on the spine-chilling real-life event that inspired the story of Between.
Out of all my novels, Between was by far the most fun to write. I actually came up with a tiny fragment of the idea many years ago. When I was growing up, my parents owned a houseboat, which they kept docked in the summers on a nearby river. Like most houseboats, ours had a cubby, which is a space underneath the bow (the front part of the boat) accessible from a tiny hole beneath the stairs. Cubbies are usually used for storage and, sometimes, a cozy place for guests to sleep. And when I was a kid, I loved sleeping in the cubby.
This particular river (The Allegheny, in Pennsylvania) has lots of large fish, and when I used to lay in the cubby at night, trying to fall asleep, I’d often hear carp (which are big, ugly fish) as they swam past, their bodies smacking against the fiberglass exterior of the boat. For some reason, I was mesmerized by that sound. I’d lay down there, drifting off, and I’d make up stories, imagining more sinister things that might be moving around beneath the surface of the water.
One night, the summer after I turned 16, my older brother had a party on the boat. I wasn’t invited. My dad was out of town, and I was at home with my mom while my brother and his friends did who knows what on the river. I remember it all so vividly: I was sleeping in my parents’ bed, next to my mom. I was working on my summer reading assignments, and that night I’d fallen asleep while reading A Death in the Family by James Agee. Around 4 AM, the phone on my dad’s nightstand rang. This was way before everyone had a celphone, and when you got a phone call in the middle of the night, you just knew something bad had happened.
My brother was on the line. One of his friends had disappeared from the boat a few hours earlier, just after everyone had fallen asleep. This friend – I’ll call him ‘Tom’ for now – he’d left his house keys and his shoes on the boat. He had no way of getting home. Everyone had been drinking. Tom’s friends looked for him around the docks and shore for awhile, but eventually they called the police.
Rescue teams spent the next three days searching, dragging the river for Tom’s body. My brother and his friends were interrogated exhaustively by detectives, who assumed there had been foul play. The story made the local news. It was a nightmare for everyone – the boys on the boat, my family, everyone involved.
Eventually, Tom showed up, alive and well, in a homeless shelter in West Virginia, about three hours from the boat. In the middle of the night, he’d decided on a whim to get up and hitchhike to wherever.
Even though everything worked out okay, I’ve never forgotten that night – the horrible feeling I had when the phone rang so early in the morning, the sight of divers surrounding our boat docks, a bodybag laid out on the shore, waiting to be filled. I used to think of it all the time, and I’d think of those carp going thump thump thump on the side of the boat as I lay in the cubby, trying to fall asleep. I knew I wanted to write about it; I just didn’t know how.
Those memories eventually came together to create the first few scenes from Between. By the time I started working on the book, I was spending a lot of time running. I’m a distance runner; it’s not unusual for me to log 7-10 miles in a day. I knew that I wanted to make my main character, Liz, a runner, because running is when my mind at peace. When I started the book, I used to think, why is Liz running so much? Why is she so desperate for peace?
When I was working on the first draft of the book, I’d get up early in the morning and I’d set out for a long run, sometimes two hours or more. And the whole time, I would think about Liz and the mystery surrounding her death. I’d think about the phone call my mom and I got that morning. I’d think about the thump thump thump.
The plot unraveled from there, in my mind, during those long runs. I’d come home and spend the rest of the afternoon sitting at my computer. It was wonderful – Liz’s story sort of presented itself to me during those runs, and I felt so close to her by the time the book was finished. Writing Between felt like letting out a deep, long breath that I’d been holding for years. It was such a pleasure. I can only hope that my readers feel the same way.
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