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Crank
This edition: eBook, 544 pages
Ages: 14 and up
Availability: Available for immediate download
List Price: $9.99

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Text Excerpt 3

Alone

everything changes.
Some might call it distorted reality,
but it's exactly the place I need to be:

no mom,
Marie, ever more distant,
in her midlife quest for fame
no stepfather,
Scott, stern and heavy-handed
with unattainable expectations
no big sister,
Leigh, caught up in a tempest
of uncertain sexuality
no little brother,
Jake, spoiled and shameless
in his thievery of my niche.

Alone,

there is only the person inside.
I've grown to like her better
than the stuck-up husk of me. She's

not quite silent,
shouts obscenities just because
they roll so well off the tongue
not quite straight-A,
but talented in oh-so-many
enviable ways
not quite sanitary,
farts with gusto, picks
her nose, spits like a guy
not quite sane,
sometimes, to tell you the truth,
even I wonder about her.

Alone,

there is no perfect daughter,
no gifted high-school junior,
no Kristina Georgia Snow.
There is only Bree.

Text copyright © 2004 by Ellen Hopkins