Honest June: The Show Must Go On - Hardcover

Wells, Tina

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593379276 ISBN 13: 9780593379271

Verlag: Random House Books for Young Readers, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

June can't tell a lie - and that made for a lot of drama even before she joined her school musical! An enchanting middle grade series that readers won't want to miss. Honestly.

June has a hard time telling the truth when it isn't what people want to hear. But she's trying to be honest with herself, and auditioning for the school musical is what she really wants -- even if her parents have other ideas. 

But the drama is brewing offstage, too. On the night of the play, June's secret blog is released to the whole school. ALL of the inner secrets she's been desperate to keep to herself are unleashed! Will her friends and family forgive her fibs? Or will this be June's final act?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tina Wells is the founder of RLVNT Media, a multimedia content venture serving entrepreneurs, tweens, and culturists with authentic representation. Tina has been recognized by Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business, Essence’s 40 Under 40, Cosmopolitan’s Fun Fearless Phenom, and more. She is the author of nine books, including the bestselling tween fiction series Mackenzie Blue, its spinoff series, The Zee Files, and the marketing handbook, Chasing Youth Culture and Getting It Right.

Brittney Bond was born in sunny South Florida to a Jamaican family. A self-taught artist, she works primarily digitally with a passion for using appealing color palettes, intriguing lighting, and a magical and positive aura throughout her illustrations.

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CHAPTER ONE

Bikes. Park. Noon? the text message from Lee said.

Lee Noel and I have had some of our best times together on bike rides. We’ve ranked the best movies and music videos of all time. We’ve talked about where we go when we die. We’ve made drive-by scavenger hunts that have taken us through our entire subdivision. So of course when he asked me to go for a bike ride on Saturday, the day when I had no field hockey practice and no major tests to study for, I thought that we could spend hours talking and riding. Then maybe he’d ask me to sit on a bench and he’d sit next to me, nervously, and he’d hand me a flower he’d picked from by the river and say that the flower was just as beautiful as I am. And then he’d confess his true feelings for me and ask that we get married when we’re older and raise our family near our parents and grandparents in Featherstone Creek. Or we’d just ride bikes. Whatever.

Yeah, sure, I answered, eager to hang out with him, but wondered if something was up.

At least I knew one thing for sure: I think Lee is someone special. But no one knows that.

Lee and I had been close friends for years. But lately, I’d felt our relationship was changing. We were getting older, more mature, and it felt like our friendship was also moving in that direction. We were having more in-depth talks about the future, the world. He’d been asking to come to Sunday dinner every week. Yes, my mother’s cooking was good. But was he really just there for the food?

The truth of the matter here was that Lee was my best guy friend who I’d started to see as more than just a friend. But if I told him that, a few things could happen. One, he could confess he feels the same way. Or two--gasp, ugh, ack!--he could say “I like you, but I don’t like you like you.” And then things would be different. He wouldn’t come over for Sunday dinner anymore, he wouldn’t text me funny videos of squirrels twerking, we wouldn’t ride bikes together, and we wouldn’t go to our lake houses together and hang out all day. The potential for option two to happen was enough to make me want to keep my mouth shut.

And I couldn’t just ask him directly if he felt the same way. That would automatically make things weird. I couldn’t say what I was feeling, either. I didn’t exactly understand what I was feeling. I was only eleven years old! I was hardly an expert on relationships yet. Besides that, I had other issues--things that were weighing much more heavily on me than just a potential crush on my best guy friend.

The heaviest thing on my mind is this: I can only tell the truth. About everything. About the weather, my grades, my preference for chicken over steak, and, of course, who I might have a crush on. And this predicament, or superpower, depending on who you ask, is all thanks to one woman. Victoria.

I met Victoria a couple of months ago, at the fun house at the Featherstone Creek Festival. She claimed to be a fairy godmother, and she put a spell on me that makes me tell the truth. I literally cannot lie. When I try to lie, she gives me signals that she’s watching and that I need to be honest with people. Say I’m talking about how I don’t like asparagus, even though I really do. All of a sudden, I’ll get hit with a sneeze attack. It’s like Victoria has sprinkled pepper all over my lunch. The only way to get it to stop is to confess that I really do like asparagus. In other words, tell the truth. In fact, the only way she’ll lift the spell entirely is if I tell the truth entirely. To everyone. No matter what.

I’ve tried to hold back truths that would hurt people, or at least not say them out loud so that other people could hear them and possibly be hurt. I like making people happy. I get joy out of seeing others happy. So instead I write my truths down in a secret blog, to keep people’s feelings from being hurt. Which has worked--whenever I have to confess something embarrassing or something that’s not ideal about myself or anyone else, I write it down before it comes spewing out of my mouth.

In some ways, it’s been a blessing. Since I’ve been telling people my honest opinions out loud to their faces, I’ve been doing fewer things to make other people happy and more things that I want to do. Following my own passions, like writing for the school newspaper. Picking out my own clothes.

In other ways, it’s been a curse. I told my dad that I didn’t necessarily want to be a lawyer like he is, and it didn’t go over too well. Granted, I told him by making a scene at a restaurant, like a baby having a temper tantrum. I really gotta work on my delivery.

With all truths, there are consequences. Some are good--admitting you’re lost and need directions, then getting those directions and finding your way. Or admitting you can’t do something, and having someone teach you how. Some truths cause disagreements. For example, I like pears and someone else doesn’t, and now we have to end up debating which fruit makes for a better snack.

But the hardest consequence to deal with is rejection. Someone saying your hopes and dreams are never happening. Someone saying you can’t do what you want to do. Someone out there trying to prevent you from living that truth.

So with all that uncertainty, all that potential for disaster, what would you do?

In my case, I have to tell the truth, of course. No matter what it costs me.

Unless it’s about Lee. That’s a truth I’m not ready to let out yet.

 

CHAPTER TWO

I put on my favorite sweatpants and hoodie over a white T-shirt and pulled my hair back into a bun. I jammed my feet into my white slip-ons and walked toward the garage to grab my bike. When I opened the garage door, Lee was already in my driveway, pulling up to my house wearing a flannel shirt and jeans. And Timberlands.

“Timbs to go bike riding?”

“We’ll be by the river,” he said. “It could get muddy.”

“Right . . . ,” I said, looking down at my white shoes. “These won’t work, then.” Leave it to Lee to be spontaneous and not tell me the plan ahead of time.

I went back inside to the mudroom to change them out for my older black Nike high-tops. “All right,” I said, walking back toward my bike, feeling even more uneasy about what was in store for me and Lee. What were we going to do by the river? Were things about to get messy? “Let’s head out.”

We rode side by side down our street to the main road that took us toward the park. I let Lee take the lead as I admired the leaves hanging above the road--they’d already begun to change colors, and I found a rainbow of reds and browns along the edges of the sidewalks. I looked at Lee from behind. Did he get, like, two inches taller since last time I saw him?

We hung a right and headed toward the park at the base of the river, where families had gathered to watch the geese dance around the lake and kids took turns on the slide and the swings. The weather was still warm enough on this November Saturday to only need a light jacket, and the snack cart that sold coffee and ice cream was still open, even this late in the season. “The park’s hopping today,” I said. “Remember how many times I’ve fallen on those monkey bars? I almost broke my arm once!”

“Once?” Lee said. “Maybe a few more times than that!”

We pedaled our bikes toward the river path, and then dismounted and started walking them toward the creek. “So, what’s...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Books for Young Readers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593379276
• ISBN 13: 9780593379271
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Zeichner: Bond Brittney
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Harder; https://www.edel.com; ; Neum�hlen 17; Hamburg; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland