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A Week with Fiona Wonder: A Novel
A Week with Fiona Wonder: A Novel
A Week with Fiona Wonder: A Novel
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A Week with Fiona Wonder: A Novel

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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It is exactly one week until sixteen-year-old Mercy Swimmer is to play out a dream scenario: to spend an entire week with movie star Fiona Wonder, the prize awarded to the winner of a contest staged by a teen magazine.

Mercy is kind and compassionate and always tries to see the best in everybody, even when those around her do not respond similarly. For example, her mother’s snippy, hot-tempered friend Nikki is a kleptomaniac who constantly belittles her boyfriend. Her best friend Valerie has anger issues and a weight problem. Beautiful but cold Lady Redding, Valerie’s mother, feels entitled to everything even as others go without. And Mercy’s mother, a severe asthmatic who works two menial jobs in a “dead mall”, seems to care more about Fiona Wonder and Mercy’s upcoming week with her than the pressing issues in their own lives.

Everything is on track for Mercy’s upcoming week with Fiona Wonder, but when her mother’s asthma flairs up, Mercy’s world turns upside down and she is faced with a decision that will ultimately challenge her own capacity for compassion.

A Week with Fiona Wonder shines an intense light upon the dire consequences of social exclusivity and suggests the alternatives of inclusion, empathy and, indeed, mercy.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherOpen Books
Release dateDec 25, 2012
ISBN9781301236176
A Week with Fiona Wonder: A Novel
Author

Kelly Huddleston

Kelly Huddleston was born in 1982 in Denver, Colorado.In 2001, Escape Media published her first novel,The Perfect Pearl.When she was nineteen, Kelly moved to the Island of Corfu in Greece where the literary heavyweights Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller once resided. The beauty of the island as well as the gregarious and colorful culture made up of Greeks and expatriates from all over the world continues to intrigue and inspire her.Still living on Corfu, she works for an online English-speaking magazine about the island.Currently she is at work on her next novel.

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Reviews for A Week with Fiona Wonder

Rating: 3.187499916666667 out of 5 stars
3/5

48 ratings23 reviews

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  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I cannot, absolutely cannot say how much I disliked this book. The prose was badly written, the characters 'monochromatic' and always bitter and angry, and difficult to find sympathy with. The title has nothing to do with the actual events of the story and there is little finesse in any of it.I was asked to read and review this novel by my wife who had been given an ARC, because she believed she was being too hard in her review. Having read the book now, I have to concur with her review, and actually think she was being kind, to be as positive as she was.Perhaps I'm just old and cynical.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I too determine if a book is good or not If I can't put the book down. In this case, I did keep reading but wasn't a case of couldn't put it down. I thought Mercy was very hateful to her Mother several times, although she did have a caring heart, as shown by her care of the autistic child she took care of. Mercy certainly didn't appreciate the things her Mother did for her although buying the bracelet and trip was her Mother's own dream. I didn't find the characters to be interesting and agree that the title of the book really have little to do with the story line. Thanks for the opportunity to read and review this book.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Everything in this novel is bleak. Mercy's single, asthmatic mother works two waitress jobs, her best friend is not very nice, the town mall is dying, and no one has any hope. The only bright light on the horizon is Mercy's upcoming contest prize trip to meet a movie star. I need to read about happy people living in mansions to erase this depressing story from my mind.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    If I had to summarize A Week with Fiona Wonder in a phrase, I would call it a contemporary YA version of Roseanne. It very much has the feel of the show, but with more teen angst, but real angst not fake angst like on teen TV shows. It is very hard to describe, but a wonderful read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I like this book the characters are well written, interesting.it was a easy book to read I read it quickly.and would recommend this book for anyone interested in reading it.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This was a rambling, angry rant of a book with characters that are so unfathomable you can never really connect with them. The misleading title and optimistic description completely belie the contents. This is a sociopolitical dissertation on the ravages of the recession disguised as a feel good coming of age novel.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I received this book from LibraryThing and recently finished reading it. I am someone who reads quickly but this was not the case with the book. The story was slow and characters were sporadic. Once I found out who Fiona was, I was excited to spend a week with her, unfortunately, that never happened.I am not sorry I read the book, but don't know if I will recommend it to others. I have never found a book I have not been able to complete.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I found this book to be reasonably well written but depressing. I could not connect with any of the characters as they were all really mean people except for Mercy's mother who was nice but incredibly stupid in her actions, and Mercy who at first was unbelievably kind and naive but quickly spiraled to be rather cruel (although this wasn't unwarranted). I am sure that there are many people who would actually enjoy this book but I did not as I didn't see that there was a real point or lesson to be learned from it. I don't think that all stories need to have a moral or a lesson that you learn but in that case they should be slightly more enjoyable to read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A Week with Fiona Wonder is about a girl, named Mercy, whose mother has won her a week with movie star, Fiona Wonder. Contrary to the title, the book has little to do with meeting a movie star and more to do with what winning this "honor" stirs up in Mercy's life. Mercy is aptly named for all that she puts up with. Most of the characters in the book are quite unlikable - some, disgustingly so - which is part of the story's point. The first few chapters, Mercy just stands by and watches what awful things these people do. Eventually, she finally decides she's had enough - and promptly, becomes almost as unlikable as some of the rest of the cast. Frustrating though the trip was, the book comes to an emotional end, and I found myself feeling close to Mercy again, even though she had disappointed me along the way.The writing style is fresh and very readable. Even when I was frustrated with the characters, I was still interested in the plot and where it was going. The spark between Mercy and one of the only really likable characters also helped my enjoyment of the book, and I learned a little about telescopes along the way.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    If you keep in mind this is a teen book, then you won't be too disappointed. The character development is thin and the plot is a bit disorganized but it's an okay read. I was bothered by Mercy's relationship with her self-centered and condescending best friend. About half way through I was confused and irritated by the temper tantrum Mercy started throwing with everyone. I get that she's in a teenage angst phase but it was a bit much.Overall, it was an easy read and the story was interesting. I think I might recommend it more for teens, however. I think they might connect with Mercy's feelings more than an older reader.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    People often say that they can't put a book down, but in this case I simply couldn't convince myself that this story was worth picking up. I struggled through the entire thing, forcing myself through the badly written pages and concept-lacking story line. The main character wins a trip to see a movie star, Fiona Wonder. They are meant to spend a week together, as the title alludes to, however the book itself has nothing to do with its title, other than the fact that the week scheduled is yet to come. Some of the events that brought the celebrity visit about caused the events to happen in the week before, but there is little continuity between what I was expecting to read and what I actually got. Rewrite the title and at least you won't disappoint so many people from the get-go.Beyond mismatch of title and plot, the characters were aggressive, mean and furious at everything all of the time. I found little to no love between any of them and no joys in any of their lives. This story is all about shoving the rotten economy down the reader's throat, forcing them to see how malls are closing, people are losing jobs and pounding you in the head to make you feel sorry for them. I already feel sorry for the people who, like me, had to find other employment in the past few years. I don't need to be thrown a novel of despair and hopelessness and be told to hold on for my emotional salvation. This is not a life preserver or ray of hope if it is filled with pissed off characters who can't see past their own noses. There was one good and interesting conversation throughout the entire book and that was near the end. Not surprisingly, it was the family's big argument. What else can you expect from characters that are based on hate and prejudice, full of spite and conceit and have no other real facet to them?The plot of this story rambles. This is a book about a week in the life of an angry girl whose best friend isn't a friend at all. Her stupidity was beyond my comprehension and her actions and thought process were at times so convoluted and bizarre that I found it difficult to believe the character could exist at all, even on paper. There is potential here for a decent story, if time had been put into working out actual plot and character development. Instead the rambling is tiresome and the reader is filled with useless descriptions of what is on the radio or how to get to the mall instead of what is going on in the minds of the characters while their life is supposedly evolving around them. What could have been a book about family, togetherness and struggling through hard times to find a way above has become an angry, cold thing that I have no desire to relive again and was more than happy to be rid of.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It is different for everyone how they determine if a book is good or not. If I can't put the book down, if I keep thinking about it and if I look forward to diving back into the story, then that's a good sign for me.Considering the size of this book, it should not have taken me so long to read it. But I was never in the mood. I found the characters pretty unpleasant and it was just hard to get into.The title is a little misleading, it is the reason why the story exists, but not the actual event that is taking place. Interesting take on the reality of our times, like recession and all, but I enjoy escaping to another place when I read, and this for me was a downer.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A very poignant story told by a young girl who wants to believe in kindness and wonder but is in alternation too protected or too bullied to find her place. Caught between her mother's illness and dreams and her best friend's greed and selfishness, she struggles to find her voice, come to terms with a harsh reality that spares no one. The feelings are potent and described with sensitivity - one cannot help but relate to Mercy and feel for her pain and disillusionment.There is also a strong social message about poverty and economical waste, a society that let greed and power strangle a nation and crush its people to the point where even dreams are shattered. I found the conclusion a bit succinct, but with it lives my hope that Mercy will succeed despite what she thinks.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When we are introduced to Mercy Swimmer she is sweet and kind, but as she faces struggles and adversity, she begins to change as her world changes. She faces challenges that many teens face--fitting in, relationships with others--as well as challenges that teens should not have to face at such a tender age. The story is told quite beautifully and although I'm not sure I liked Mercy, I found myself hoping that life would become better for her and those around her.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked that this book is realistic fiction and deals with things that are happening today- recession, mall closings, bankrupt businesses, love, single parent family, friends. Mercy starts out kind and naive and as her world begins to crash down, she does a 180. As her eyes are opening, I found myself cheering her on but worry about her as she is making enemies when she is really going to need a friend. One friend leaves as another one enters. Mercy does have people that care and will be there for her.The end seems to set up for a sequel. I would love to know what happens after.High school girls, especially the "lonely ones" will love this book.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I'm not one to dislike a book, but this book... First, the summary, cover, and title are all highly misleading. Second, the writing style and execution is weak and seems rushed.I've scanned the reviews of others and I've found many saying the novel is "depressing." I quite enjoy reading "depressing" novels and I'm not particularly upset that Fiona Wonder is a bit sad, but I can definitely see why others would find this to be a problem. As many reviewers mentioned, they read the book expecting an upbeat coming of age story, when in actuality the book is dark and tries too hard to be deep while stuck on a superficial level.I still connect with teen angst quite well and I felt that Mercy's (protagonist) angst is forced and fake, as if Kelly Huddleston had never in their life felt any type of angst--as if they'd read of it and tried to emulate it by studying it.Reading this novel was difficult, as it is quite bland. Word choices, particularly in regards to dialogue, are awkward and unrealistic. I found many misspelled company and product names, which may have been due to copyright, but it would have been a better choice to invent new names and products than to try to re-name well-known products with an awkward generic name.As previously stated, the book is bland and lacking detail in important places. The few details included are rambling descriptions of directions to the mall and drawn-out email composing. Unimportant background characters are given lengthy introductions and descriptions that are completely unnecessary. The only character development in the entire novel feels forced and abrupt. There is little escalation or foreshadowing, and the development that does occur makes absolutely no sense. Mercy's feelings are never explored. They're danced around and hinted at, but they're explosive and somewhat irrational with no explanation. I felt I understood the feelings of background characters better than I understood Mercy's.There is not a single likeable or relatable character, except maybe Mercy's peer (and later friend) Robin and her mother's co-worker Gabriel. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if the setting and/or plot were more interesting. The Great Gatsby has zero likable characters and yet, it is a classic due to it's story and message. Fiona Wonder has a sociopolitical message as well, but the idea of this message does not make up for it's poor execution. The only emotions this novel brought me were annoyance and anger. Not once did I feel happy or sad for any of the characters. The majority of them were selfish, condescending, and self-absorbed with no moments of clarity. Maybe this was a statement Huddleston was trying to make, but it didn't feel like one. The characters literally just feel like soulless, pointless pieces in the most boring, uneventful, angry game of chess of all time. There were many times while reading this book that I felt the overwhelming need to set my e-reader down and physically "face-palm" in secondhand embarrassment for the author.Reading this novel felt like reading the initial outline (not even the first draft) to what could be a great novel. The story has potential. Even the horrendous characters have potential, if only they were given some time, thought, and a cup of tea.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I can remember reading So.B.It. in sixth grade and this book reminds me of that novel so much. Both deal with a daughter who has a mother that they wish they could help out, but they can not simply because they are too young. A Week with Fiona Wonder is fitting into a trend of books I’ve been reading lately where the novel is good, do not get me wrong, but it lacks a certain something that makes it great for me. The novel has a misleading title since Mercy’s story is not actually about the week she spends with Fiona Wonder, but the week leading up to it. I enjoyed Mercy, Robin, her mother, Gabriel, and not very many other characters in the novel. A large chunk of the characters are so concerned with their own lives that they lack the compassion to see the turmoil going on in the lives of those around them. Mercy is a sweet girl who gives everyone the benefit of the doubt until she decides that she has had enough at which point she becomes like the characters that I had grown to hate at that point in the novel. This novel was a bit of a frustrating trip, I am not going to lie. The writing style had some really good points, but there were other points when I just wanted to get on with the story and get back to the main plot. The ending was a bit emotional, but slightly predictable. There were quite a few loose ends that were left tied up and relationships that had just begun to develop that I would have liked to have seen grow a bit more. In conclusion I would recommend this novel to fans of So.B.It. although I will give the warning that I think they will enjoy So.B.It. more. I am not saying I wouldn’t recommend this book, but if you have a choice between this and another novel you’ve been waiting to read I am just sayin’ maybe you should pick the other one.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In A Week With Fiona Wonder, written by Kelly Huddleston, we find ourselves plunked plumb in the midst of the angst of teen Mercy Swimmer and the week before she gets to spend a week with movie star Fiona Wonder. Now, before you dismiss this as just another teen ‘coming of age’ story, I strongly advise that you read it. Mercy is doing her best – at least at times – to function in a dysfunctional environment, surrounded by dysfunctional people.Huddleston paints an environment of economic adversity, where no one is exempt from pain. Not Mercy’s mother, an asthmatic who works two jobs as a waitress to support the two of them. We’re never really told where Mercy’s father got off to, and frankly, by the time we’re halfway through Mercy’s week, we no longer care. Mercy’s mom, though, is one of the most tragically flawed, yet sympathetic, figures in the book – aside from Mercy herself. Severely asthmatic, she foregoes buying a rescue inhaler so that she can buy a trinket for Mercy that wins her a chance to spend a week with Fiona Wonder, a movie star about whom we know little other than that she has a big head on screen, but seems to be beset with as many doubts as her adoring fans.Then, there’s Valerie, Mercy’s overweight, over-indulged best friend. Valerie treats Mercy like an old shoe, yet Mercy keeps coming back for more. Likewise, there’s Nikki, her mom’s friend, who is also something of a narcissistic personality with relationship issues.One more warning: while this is a book written about a teenager, it’s not really written for younger readers. It deals with very adult issues, in a blunt, uncompromising way – often even profane. It is also definitely not a coming of age novel; more a surviving from sunup to sundown story. You never know from page to page, really, whether you want to cheer Mercy on or slap her silly. However you feel, though, I predict you’ll keep reading to see what happens next.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was an extremely wonderful book. The main character, Mercy, is struggling in trying to find happiness in her life. Her Mother, Mom's best friend work in a mall that is going to be demolished. Almost every character you meet is dysfunctional in one way or another. Mercy's Mother bought her an expensive bracelet that won a contest to see film star Fiona Wonder. Mercy's mother is her biggest fan but Mercy could care less. In the week leading up to the trip, she struggles with so many emotions with the people in her life. This book was very well written, had a smooth plot line that was easy to follow and had characters that were absolutely believable and loveable despite their own problems. I encourage everyone from teenagers and up to read this book. Well done!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I received this book free from Library Thing to read and review. This is a wonderful book about Mercy Swimmer, a very misunderstood and underappreciated teenager, whose mother wins a week with Fiona Wonder, a movie star, for her. The book focuses on Mercy’s life leading up to her departure for the week with Fiona. In the book, the reader is introduced to a myriad of characters with all sorts of flaws, none of whom really see or accept Mercy for the kind, good-hearted person she is. As the reader progresses through the week leading up to the trip to the movie star’s location, Mercy and her rag-tag group of friends end up in a variety of odd but somehow humorous and endearing situations, until Mercy’s mother’s severe asthma forces Mercy to make some difficult choices. The characters in this book, though all with some sort of “problem” are still quite endearing and realistic, and it is easy to see how Mercy sticks around them. It is often difficult to believe what is going on or why Mercy doesn’t just ditch them for some other friends whose problems will not regularly take the center stage, but that is just how Mercy is. Finally, as the story nears completion, Mercy becomes frustrated with everything and everyone around her, and begins to fall into fear, anger and revenge. How she handles these feelings is interesting. This is the story of a loyal friend and daughter, who goes along with just about everything that happens until the breaking point. The plot is well developed and flows smoothly throughout. I think most readers would find a lot in the book that is of interest and to which they can easily relate. I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to reading more by this author.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This wonderful book evoked a lot of emotions in me, the strongest of which is “melancholy.” I could relate to Mercy in the sense that she is a kind person who tries to see the good in every body. I cheered her on when she stood up for herself, and though some may think she went “overboard” and turned into a complete bitch, I see it as her as someone who’s fed up with what life handed her and who reacts in a realistic, teenager way. I felt a sense of camaraderie with Mercy’s mother, a widow who worked two jobs as a waitress and found solace in Fiona Wonder movies. I’ve struggled working two jobs just to make ends meet, and there have been movies and books that I turn to time and again to escape the world around me. I even saw my mother’s best friend in Nikki. This is a powerful book with very real characters. It touches on real issues of power and privilege, and it gives an honest glimpse into the world of poverty and how the Recession can and has affected millions of people. The title is a bit misleading because the book is actually about the week leading up to Mercy’s week with Fiona Wonder, and it shows that a lot can happen in seven days.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    'A Week with Fiona Wonder' is a beautifully written and deceptively well-constructed novel. Huddleston conjures powerful, evocative, often romantic scenes from the crude base materials of dying shopping malls and tacky fast food joints, in a story filled with deft allusions and brilliantly drawn characters.Mercy Swimmer, the teenage narrator, is misunderstood by those around her, and unable to understand them. In this, there are clear echoes of 'The Catcher in the Rye', a book which Huddleston openly references. But there's a key contrast between Salinger's renowned protagonist and Huddleston's, in that Mercy is not (and nor is meant to represent) your archetypal angst-ridden teen. Mercy doesn't just feel different - she is different. She's a naïve and empathetic young lady who intuitively understands a great deal about the problems of the world, and how some of them could be solved.Celestial motifs feature throughout the book, and Mercy is often to be found gazing at the skies, which cleverly enhances her otherness. She is a misfit in many ways, and a dreamer, for sure - but her dreams are not of fifteen minutes of fame on some dreadful TV show. She dreams only of a fairer, happier world - something she knows in her heart is possible, if only the will were there.As the novel progresses and Mercy's frustrations with the people around her increase, however, another side of her character begins to emerge, one which surprises and disturbs her. She's sucked into new feelings of hurt, anger and vengeance, and before she knows it, it's too late - there can be no return to innocence. As Mercy herself tells us, 'No one knows what goes on inside a black hole unless you're actually in one, and if you're in one then you're already gone.'
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When the story begins Mercy Swimmer is nice and kind to every one even those that are unkind to her. She won the winning receipt to visit to spend a week with movie star Fiona Wonder. The book takes place 1 week before her visit. Strong personalities issues emerge from her best friend Valerie, Valerie’s mom, and with Nikki, her mom’s friend who battles continually with her boyfriend , and her own mom that lives in a dream world, and even Mercy herself begins to have issues. The story shows the value of true friendship – the one that is still there, even through hard times, is priceless.

Book preview

A Week with Fiona Wonder - Kelly Huddleston

A Week with Fiona Wonder

Kelly Huddleston

Open Books

A Week with Fiona Wonder ©2013 by Kelly Huddleston

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, to include electronic and mechanical means, without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords License Statement

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover art Endless Sky by Elena Börner

To learn more about the artist, visit http://likerain.at/

For more information about Kelly Huddleston, please visit www.open-bks.com

Contents

SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

The Assistant Marketing Director at Almost There Magazine called at ten-thirty this morning to talk to me about what's going to happen next week. I mean my week with Fiona Wonder, the movie star. Except when she called I wasn't anywhere near the telephone. I was at the bottom of the hill outside our apartment building lying flat on my back with my hands underneath my head and staring up at the sky, contemplative and dreamy I guess you could call my state of mind, thinking about nothing really worth thinking about, only how glad I was that it was summer and how big and blue the sky looked, and also what was behind it.

What I mean is just because my eyes couldn't see behind all the blue of the sky didn't mean that what was behind it wasn't there. So what I did was this: I imagined taking Mom's nametag—I chose the BONANZA BURGER nametag, a shiny orange button with her name written on it in fat loopy cursive rather than the nametag for Waffle Falafel, a white rectangle with her name misspelled on it in solid black capital letters—and with the sharp point of the metal clasp I poked a hole into the blue. Through the hole I saw the next layer; I saw a pinprick of space.

Except what I really wanted to see was less sky and more space. So I imagined taking a pair of scissors from Nikki's hair station at Clippers, and with the point of the scissors I dug into the hole I'd punctured with the nametag pin. I snipped at the blue until the sky split in half. The two halves drew open like an old-time movie theater curtain until eventually they fluttered away completely. What was left was space. Deep black space. I saw all the planets in the solar system and then, way far out there, the end of the galaxy and the beginning of the next, and then the end of that galaxy and the beginning of the next; and everywhere I saw ribbons and folds of every color imaginable, and millions upon millions of twinkling white hot stars, most of them fixed in place just like the glow-in-the-dark stars glued onto the ceiling above my bed that Mom bought on sale at CostMart, but a few of the stars fell and spun and exploded and fizzled into the blackness. And it went on forever, and it was so endless that it was like looking at everything.

So, as I said, I was thinking about nothing really worth thinking about. Still, it was nice, you know, to just lie there feeling the cool wet grass on the backs of my arms and legs. I felt an ant crawl under my shirt and start to work its way up my stomach. I was in such a mellow mood that it didn't even bother me.

Then the sun went dark, like an eclipse. The eclipse turned out to be Mom's head. From where I lay, and from where she stood, it looked like her head was put on backwards. Mom looked down at me, her mouth where her eyes should have been, and her lips the wrong way, and her nose turned round so I could see right into her nostrils. Behind Mom's head the two blue halves of sky fluttered back together until there was just a seam of space left where I had snipped open the sky with Nikki's scissors. That's when I saw a woman's hand zipper the seam that closed the universe.

It was Mrs. Redding's hand. I recognized it from the pink, perfectly manicured nails and the plain gold wedding band she wore on her ring finger. I had watched Mrs. Redding's hand perform the exact same movement last Wednesday morning after I had spent the night at the Redding's house, only with a zipper on the back of my best friend Valerie's skirt.

Why are you lying there on the grass like that? Mom wanted to know.

An airplane moved across the sky, its vapor trails reminding me of the lines made by the green felt pens that my English teacher, Ms. Starburn, uses to underline metaphors in books. I watched the airplane enter one of Mom's ears, disappear inside her head, then reappear from her other ear.

Mercy— Mom said, saying my name, but then she stopped. A second later she started to breathe hard. I knew what was coming next. She was going to have an asthma attack.

The last time Mom had an asthma attack was on the morning after Junior Prom. But at least that time it wasn't as bad as the time before that. The time before that she ended up in the hospital Emergency Room.

The day after Junior Prom I was still in bed when I heard her come home from her graveyard shift at Waffle Falafel. Mom has two waitressing jobs. She is a waitress at BONANZA BURGER, a chain restaurant inside Heritage Shopping Mall where you build your own burger and get unlimited steak fries. She works there from six pm until ten or eleven pm. Then she works at Waffle Falafel, which has its own building and is located on the perimeter of one of the mall parking lots. She works there from midnight until six am, except Thursdays. That's Mom's one night off from serving both burgers and falafel waffles.

Usually she is home by six-fifteen—six thirty at the latest. On the morning after Junior Prom, however, she arrived home at five minutes after nine. I remember the exact time because I looked at the clock when I heard the door open. Instead of going straight to her bedroom as she usually does, she went instead into the bathroom.

I checked to see if my best friend, Valerie, had woken up. She hadn't. She lay in a sleeping bag on the floor next to my bed, her thick red hair in a tangled mess all over the pillow that she'd brought with her, and her mouth wide open, snoring. Valerie's entire right hand was not visible. That's because it rested inside an opened, jumbo size bag of potato chips. Her huge stomach expanded and deflated with her breathing. The snoring stopped momentarily, interrupted by a loud snort, then picked up again with the same rhythm and loudness as before. I watched her left foot twitch. Then her right hand spasm. It went flying and ended up on top of her chest, the cellophane glove of the potato chip bag still firmly in place. It looked like she was about to recite the pledge of allegiance.

The night before, while most of our classmates attended Junior Prom, Valerie had ordered and paid for an extra large Hawaiian pizza. She'd eaten, except for the two slices that I ate, an entire pie. She drank a quart of fruit punch that she'd brought with her from home. The bag of potato chips, as well as a bag of Jelly Squiggles, had emerged from her over night bag about ten minutes before ten o'clock, the same time that Heritage Shopping Mall closes and that Mom stops serving at BONANZA BURGER.

Sitting next to me on my bed, Valerie alternated eating chips and squiggles. She told me that she thought my mom was nice looking in an average sort of way—that she's not too skinny and she's not too fat, she's not too tall and she's not too short. She's not movie star beautiful like Fiona Wonder, or classically beautiful like her own mother, but at least she didn't look like our English teacher Ms. Starburn, with her weird square shaped glasses, or like Nikki, my mom's best friend, who Valerie thinks looks like a ferret. She looks like a lot of other mothers out there, Valerie said.

In her own way I think Mom is beautiful, but I think everyone is beautiful in their own way.

She'd look better if she didn't wear her hair in that big greasy-looking ponytail all the time, Valerie said. And it might help if she bought some perfume to hide her smell, she added.

What do you mean? I asked. I think she smells fine.

Valerie huffed. She smells like her work: grease and fried onions and dirty mop water and hamburger meat and disinfectant and powdered sugar... And, the ever-so-faint scent of tip money, too!

That's not nice, I said.

Your mom has been a waitress forever, hasn't she? Valerie said.

I just nodded my head and looked out my bedroom window at the shopping mall.

Heritage Mall is an eight-minute walk from our apartment building. From my bedroom window I can see the entire south side rooftop and part of the giant skylight in the middle of the enclosure. Sometimes at night, after Mom's gone to work, I turn off the light in my bedroom and sit on my bed and look out the window at the bright rectangle of light that comes from the skylight. I think about all the people walking around inside the mall, and about Mom serving burgers and never-ending baskets of steak fries at BONANZA BURGER, and about Nikki, too, who cuts hair on the upper floor of the mall at the chain hair styling salon, Clippers. Thinking about all the people inside the mall doesn't make me feel happy or sad; it makes me feel, in some unexplainable and wonderful way, that we are all connected to each other.

One time last year I tried to explain it—this idea that we're all connected—to Ms. Starburn. It was during fifth period, the hour I spent with her during junior year inside the English teachers' room working as her teaching assistant. As usual, we were sitting across from each other at an old lunchroom table. I had just finished grading a multiple choice quiz on Chapter 11 of Word Power Made Easy, and Ms. Starburn had just finished reading an essay about the various metaphors found in John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany.

It's really obvious that Ms. Starburn loves words. Last year in class we spent a lot of time searching through whatever novel we were reading for metaphors and allegories and similes. It was fun—like hunting for Easter eggs or digging for lost treasures. Ms. Starburn always uses one of her green felt marking pens to underline metaphors, but I still use a pencil in case I make a mistake and need to erase something.

The day I tried to explain to her how I thought we were all connected, Ms. Starburn at first seemed startled, then less startled and more surprised, then not surprised at all but really, really happy, like I had just presented her with a big golden nugget that I had magically produced from my backpack.

It's funny because that same day after school I tried to explain it to Valerie. We were sitting at her kitchen table, pretending to do our social studies homework, drinking sodas and eating chips. Actually, now that I think about it, it was more Valerie than I who plowed her way through the chips along with a plate of homemade cowboy cookies that Mrs. Redding had laid out for Jeremy, Valerie's big brother, and his friends from football practice.

Valerie's mom, Mrs. Redding, had her back to us. She was silently cutting stalks of flowers over the sink. They were purple tulips from the garden. She was using a pair of garden scissors with rubber handles, not like the scissors Nikki uses to cut hair at Clippers. I could hear the thud of each stem as it hit the basin.

Valerie is right about her mother: She is beautiful. She is very tall and slender, and she has thick red hair and big gray eyes and perfect pale skin that actually looks like porcelain. In a way she reminds me of a corpse laid out in an open casket, she's so pale and perfect and silent. In any case, Mrs. Redding finished cutting all the stems of the flowers. She placed them in a tall glass vase then turned from the sink to the kitchen nook where Valerie and I sat on matching wooden bar stools. Her eyes found and held mine, then flicked away. I don't know why exactly, but the way she looked at me made me want to stop talking about how I thought we were all connected to one another.

It was Senior Prom that really mattered, not Junior Prom, and everyone knew it, too—that's what Valerie had said on the night of Junior Prom, as she sat next to me on my bed before tilting her head and dropping an iridescent squiggle into her mouth. She took a huge swig of fruit punch straight from the bottle. Then she belched.

I had a moment of déjà vu. All her eating and swigging and belching reminded me of the night of another dance—the Winter Ball during Christmas vacation that her parents had attended at the city's art museum. I had spent the night at Valerie's house that night, too. Now here we were more than six months later—Valerie, the girl with everything except the one thing that she really wanted, and me, the girl without anything except the truth.

The truth was that I had been asked to the Junior Prom. I told the boy no because of Valerie. If Valerie had known that I had been asked, and more specifically if she had known just who had asked me, and if I had said yes to him instead of no, then it would have meant that she would have suffered deeply. You see, regarding Junior Prom and my refusal of the invitation by the boy who'd asked me to go, I looked beyond myself and my feelings and looked instead at Valerie and what it would have meant to her. I mean, I tried to look at the whole picture.

The next morning, while Valerie lay snoring with her hand inside a potato chip bag on top of her chest, I heard Mom start to wheeze inside the bathroom. Valerie didn't move a muscle as I got out of bed, tiptoed across the room, opened the door and made my way down the hallway to the bathroom.

She hadn't closed the door all the way. Without her knowing that I was on the other side of the door, I saw Mom sitting on the edge of the bathtub, not only wheezing but crying too. She still had on her waitress uniform. The front of it was soiled red with a gigantic ketchup stain—an entire bottle's worth of it, it looked like, caked dry, the color of blood.

The way that she wheezed and coughed, I could tell that she was having a full-blown asthma attack. I wanted to push open the door, to ask her what had happened, to tell her to calm down, to make her take a dose of her rescue asthma inhaler, but something held me back.

I felt like I was a witness to something that wasn't real, to something that wasn't actually happening. It was almost like I wasn't me at all, but rather Mom watching a movie with Fiona Wonder in it. By far Fiona Wonder is Mom's favorite actress. She owns all her movies on DVD. Any chance she gets she watches one—no matter how many times she has seen it. She slips in a DVD, sits or lies on the couch, and stares at the television, wordless and almost hypnotized. Movies aren't based on real things, and yet to Mom they seem real. A lot of times I think that they seem more real to her than real life. And that's just how I felt watching Mom.

The attack came and went. Slowly, Mom stood up from the bathtub. She wasn't too steady on her feet. She had stopped crying, at least. Without looking at herself in the mirror she started to undress. The ketchup stained uniform fell in a rumbled pile to the floor. In her underpants and nylons, she picked up the uniform and looked down at it. She started to cry all over again.

Stop it! she told herself in an unforgiving tone of voice that doesn't usually sound like Mom at all. She said to herself: "It's over. It's done. So just stop!"

Her hands worked through the material, slowly at first then more frantically. She was looking for her nametag, of course. The one with her name misspelled. If she loses it then the cost of it is deducted from her pay. Ditto with her nametag for BONANZA BURGER. The ketchup stained uniform, I already knew, was ruined. I'd wash it later that morning, but the stain had already set. She wouldn't be able to wear it again. Luckily, she had an extra uniform, identical to the other, hanging in her closet.

When she found the nametag within the folds of stained material it took her forever to unclasp the needle on the back of it. That was because her hands were shaking. She dropped the uniform to the floor again. She worked at clasping the needle back into its tiny notch. When she set it on the edge of the bathroom sink it immediately dropped to the floor. Slowly, Mom crouched down to pick it up.

That's when I saw it—the small white bag, not big enough to place an orange inside, on the floor. Block letters written on its side read: COLEANNE'S JEWELLERY & FRAGRANCE DEPARTMENT.

Of course I had no way of knowing then what was inside the bag—Fiona Wonder's Shooting Star Bracelet and the receipt that came with it. For all intents and purposes, it was the receipt that really mattered; it was the receipt that won me a week with Fiona Wonder, the movie star. On the back of the receipt was a sixteen-digit number that later that day Mom sent, along with my name and our address, to the contest that she found in Almost There Magazine. Out of all the Shooting Star Bracelets that were bought, and all the millions of receipts that came with those bracelets, and all the gazillion sixteen-digit numbers that were sent to the contest in Almost There Magazine, it was Mom who sent in the winning number—0188236908826738—and won me an entire week with Fiona Wonder, the movie star.

Just where Mom had gotten the money to buy the bracelet in the first place was another story altogether—a story so incredible that when Mom finally spilled the beans and told me—well, it was like I wasn't me but Mom, sitting on the couch, staring at the television, wordless and hypnotized, watching a Fiona Wonder movie. All over again it was like looking at Mom through the crack in the bathroom door, knowing that she didn't know I was watching her, knowing that I was a witness to something that was real yet all the same didn't seem real at all. Like looking at the beam of yellow light coming from the skylight of the mall and having the feeling that we are all connected to each other and knowing it so simply, and so plainly, as I explained it to Ms. Starburn, yet not knowing it at all later that day when I tried to explain it to Valerie and her mother, who had turned from the kitchen sink to look at me as if  I really didn't belong there, or even belong on Earth, as if I were some sort of alien. Like saying no when I really wanted to say yes to the boy who'd asked me to Junior Prom because I didn't want to hurt my best friend's feelings. Like looking up at the sky—seeing everything and nothing all at the same time.

The Assistant Marketing Director, Mom said to me at the bottom of the hill outside our apartment building. Her hands fluttered at her sides. She stopped to try to breathe. The Assistant Marketing Director at Almost There Magazine is on the telephone. She wants to talk to you about your week with—" But she didn't—couldn't—finish her sentence because she wasn't getting enough oxygen to her lungs.

I sat up, wheeled my butt in a circle on the grass, and looked up at her.

Mom, I said, where's your asthma inhaler?

She waved her hands at me as if the fact that she couldn't breathe was no big deal. That's when I saw the red blotches bloom on both her cheeks.

Mom, where's your inhaler? I repeated.

I don't know why I even asked her. I knew exactly where it was—in the chipped blue dish on the dressing table in her bedroom where she keeps her nametags.

I stood up quickly, so quickly I almost bumped heads with her. I took another look at Mom then started running up the hill to our apartment building. It seemed to take forever to climb that hill. It was like one of those dreams where I'm running as fast as I can yet at the same time not moving at all. When I reached the top of the hill I had to stop for a minute to catch my own breath. Below me, on the freeway, there were less cars than usual, but only because it was Sunday morning. Most people, I figured, were still at home or at church. It would pick up again starting at noon. For one thing, Pacy's Department Store was having a big sale—50% off everything! For another thing, Fiona Wonder's new movie, The Immortals, had opened on Friday and was playing in the mall theater opposite BONANZA BURGER.

Still trying to catch my breath, I turned away from the freeway. At the bottom of the other side of the hill I saw Mom. She looked so small and fragile and alone standing there with her back to me. I watched her put her arms over her head, something she always does when she's having an asthma attack. I started running again. In my mind I could see her rescue asthma inhaler next to the two nametags inside the chipped blue dish on top of her dresser. Mom takes one inhaler twice in the morning and twice at night every day; the other inhaler is much stronger, more expensive, and only used when she gets an asthma attack. We call it the rescue inhaler. That's the one I was on my way to get.

The first thing I saw when I rounded the corner to the front of the apartment building was Nikki's car—a two-door Daihatsu that leaks oil and smells like hairspray and is almost as old as I am. As usual, Nikki had parked it in our designated parking space. We never use it, the designated parking space, because Mom doesn't have a car. I looked up the flight of stairs to the top floor where our apartment is located and saw a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Nikki! I shouted.

What? Nikki's voice shouted back

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