Please 'splain?

Let's say there's a girl (G) who has a boyfriend (B).  And it is the belief of B's friends that certain intimate things go on between G and B.  And it's all kinds of shocking or hilarious or whatever because B has always been shy with girls and the last person anyone would have expected to be getting any of anything.  So then B breaks up with G and she is totally devastated.

What exactly would make B's friends decide that one of their new pastimes will be sexually harassing this girl?  To come up behind her while she's at her locker and dance-hump her (term courtesy of J.R. Angelella) and make sexual tongue motions in her direction when she might or might not be looking and laugh about it during and after?

Are they letting the world know that they think: "This girl is such a whore that this is all she exists for"?

Are they saying, "She is so ugly/crazy/otherwise unappealing that I would never want to tap that, so hey, aren't I being funny and ironic by doing this"?

Are they like, "I am so into her.  I hope she wants to give it up to me now that she's single.  This should be a really great way to get her attention"?

I'm asking these questions because, yes, something like this happened to me in high school.  But also -- mainly -- because something like this happened to my main character my current project.  To get these scenes right, I really NEED to understand the antagonists in these scenes, but I don't.  I never have.  And obviously, I'm a little too close to the subject matter to be objective.  (For the record, I always assumed their thought process was one of the first two options, but someone else suggested to me yesterday that it might be the third.  Which I find ludicrous, but what do I know?)

I actually considered writing to those real-life antagonists via FaceBook to see if I can get a response out of them.  Alas!  They don't have FB pages.  (Also, it's possible that I would have been too chicken to go through with it even if they had.)

Can anyone else shed some light for me?

 

New Old Diary entry

I added a new entry under the Read My Old Diaries tab today. I will be updating this feature every Monday with new entries from the journals I kept when I was 13-16, so please come back and check those out!  Or you can subscribe to the RSS feed on that page by clicking the orange boxy thingamagig near the top.  (Er, I'm thinking that if you read from feeds, you actually already know how to subscribe, right?  But if not, please feel free to send me a note via the contact page and I can try to explain it in my non-techy way.  :-)

Oh, and if you're curious about the order of these entries, the newer posts are at the top and go down the page in reverse chrological order.  HOWEVER.  At this point, I'm alternating my diary from age 13 with the one from age 14.

It's kind of like when you watch reruns in syndication.  They might show you an episode of HOUSE from season 1 at 7:00pm and then an episode from season 2 at 8:00.  If you keep tuning in every day, you can watch the stories unfold in order, you just have to follow both of them.  It's complicated, I know!

I just think of my journals as seasons 1 through 4.  The first (age 13) was a mid-season replacement with fewer episodes and was just finding its voice.  Seasons 2 and 3 (ages 14 and 15) were when this story was in its prime.  The fourth season (age 16) had a new worldly and cynical tone and a whole new cast of characters.  It didn't follow up well with the rest of the series and was canceled very early on in the season with no resolution.   :-D

Humilations Galore!

Jody Sparks has a fabulous blog which includes a feature called "Self-Deprecating Sunday."  There, she posts new pictures each week of herself and other YA writer volunteers (including Tenners Josh Berk and C.J. Omololu) as teens. 

So much awkwardness!  So much hilarity!

Today the featured author on Jody's blog is . . . me!  And let me tell you, I am looking fabulous at age 13 in my stretch jeans, braces and swoopy bangs.

What?  You don't believe me?  Click here to be directed to the tragic evidence! 

Dare I say it might be even less attractive than this:

(Yeah, 13 was NOT my year.  I got cuter when I was 14.)

Freefall WoWs

Lots of bloggers of Young Adult books do a weekly feature called "Waiting on Wednesday" or simply "WoW" where they post about a book they are looking forward to reading. FREEFALL has been WoW'ed three times that I'm aware of:  Just Your Typical Book Blog, Sarah's Random Musings, and Pure Imagination.

It is always VERY EXCITING for me to see readers getting excited for my book!  :-)