I started writing Girl Unmoored when I was ten years old. I know because I still have the original notebook on which I sketched her face and wrote: A Girl Named Apron. I don’t know where the name Apron came from. I’ve never known anyone named Apron, and I’m guessing you haven’t either. (I didn’t want to come up with an explanation in the book, but my editors made me – worked out all right though, in a weirdly synchronistic way).

I never did finish that particular draft. Not just because I would have rather watched David Cassidy do his thing on The Partridge Family, but because it had no plot. All Apron did was pack up to go live with her grandmother, for no reason. But I knew she would stay with me, or rather stare at me through the screen, until her story showed up. And that happened when I met my friend Mike. My Mike isn’t the same as the Mike in the book, but he too had blond hair that he whipped around a lot. And he too showed me a thing or two about courage.

It’s hard to put the character you love through so much heartache. But in a coming-of-age story, it’s necessary. Growing up can be crazy hard, and Apron’s in the thick of it: her mother’s gone, her best friend’s traded her in for a more popular version, and her future stepmother has waged war against her. Apron’s father, a Latin professor who had already been parking his emotions a little too far from the curb, is now impossible to reach. He refuses to see what Apron knows; that M only needs to marry him to stay in the country.

“Apron,” he said, bad mood back on his face. “Listen. You’re going to have to face it. This is our new life. Dixi. Look it up.”

He stood and walked by me, leaving a cloud of

madness behind. And when the screen door slammed shut, every single one of those birds got scared off, too.

Even bikini-seeking, frog-loving Grandma Bramhall won’t step in and save Apron.

I untwirled an inch. “Do you think I can come live with you?”

For a second, the only noise was the lawnmower.

Then I heard Grandma Bramhall’s shoes clicking

up the stairs.

“Oh, dearie, wouldn’t that just be the monkey’s uncle?”

I heard a squeak and water running. “Now listen,

did I tell you about the cruise that Mr. John is taking me on?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Apron? I’m starting a nice hot bath. You sure you won’t come tomorrow?”

I spun myself out of the phone cord.

“I’ll pick you up at nine forty-five?”

I said no, thank you, I had a lot of homework.

“All right. But we still have a Handy’s brunch date, with or without the bride and groom. Preferably without. Next Saturday, then?”

I didn’t say yes or no, just something in between.

But Grandma Bramhall wasn’t even listening. “I’ll

tell you all about the cruise,” she said.

After we hung up, I stared at the phone and swallowed the piece of my heart that was lodged in my throat now. She was my last chance.

With no one left to buoy her, Apron comes unmoored. Until she meets Jesus. Not the real Jesus, the actor who plays him in Jesus Christ Superstar. Apron’s been trying to avoid this guy since she first saw him in the musical. No one should look that much like Jesus unless they were ready to do a miracle or two.

Maybe he couldn’t help it that he looked exactly like Jesus.

Still, he could have dyed his hair at least.

But suddenly Mike is everywhere. Even in the Church of Sadness, where Apron’s father is about to marry the biggest mistake of his life. Mike and his friend, Chad, have come to decorate the Church for another wedding and Apron finds herself stuck with them. And then a weird thing happens; her heart blinks on for the first time since everything went wrong.

And even though I had freckles and red hair and almost killed Grandma Bramhall, I danced like I didn’t. I danced like I didn’t know that Rennie was having Jenny Pratt over for the night, and I danced like my dad wasn’t going to ground me for hitting Grandma Bramhall.

And mostly, I danced like it was all a mistake – M

wasn’t pregnant and she’d be gone by the Fourth of July.

At first, Apron can’t help but have a crush on Mike, even after she figures out Chad is more than a friend. Chad’s grumpy and seems to sweat a lot, but pretty soon he and Apron hit it off too. And when Mike and Chad offer her a summer job in their flower store, Apron grabs it – anything to get away from M. 

It’s smooth sailing for a while, until Apron uncovers Chad’s secret. And then she witnesses a hate that’s deeper than any kind she’s ever seen before. Even from M. Instead of fighting back though, Apron watches Mike surrender to it: 

Mr. Perry lifted his hand in a wave and when he

turned away with the rest of his family, we all saw it: Mrs. Perry leaning into Eeeb’s ear to whisper something, and Eeebs quickly wiping his hand on his pants. The one he had used to shake Mike’s hand.

I looked at Mike, still hanging on to that smile, but barely. “I hate those people,” I said through my teeth.

Mike dipped his head at me and said as sad as the

bluebird sings, “Then the cycle continues, doesn’t it?”

Shame knocked the wind out of me. Not just for

how much I hated the Perrys now, but for how much Mike didn’t.

Girl Unmoored is about friendship. Deep, loyal friendship. The kind that keeps you anchored when everything else is falling apart. The kind that can save you. 

But it’s 1985 and AIDS has made its way into America. Turns out, Chad’s not just grumpy, he’s sick. And now Mike needs Apron as much as she needed him. Suddenly Apron knows what her real job is, and it has nothing to do with flowers.

“Apron,” Chad said, sounding a little nervous. “I’ve been wondering. Do you think you and me would have been friends, if, you know, we were in seventh grade together?”

I thought about it for a second. I thought about

Rennie and Jenny Pratt making fun of Chad, his

swishy way of walking down the halls, and Johnny

Berman and Sherman Howl writing faggot on the top of his desk and picking him last for dodge ball. And I thought about how, if I ignored them all and decided to be friends with Chad anyway, he would have been my only one.

“Yes,” I nodded. “We’d be friends.”

Omne trium Perfectum (everything that comes in threes is perfect), and Chad, Apron and Mike are no exception. But love doesn’t always mean rings and roses; sometimes it means broken hearts and broken windows, and not being able to fix either. And sometimes it means knowing that there’s no such thing as time in Heaven, so for now, stop and smell the roses.

Apron’s search for the meaning of love is the same search we are all on. And although each of us may find different meanings in the end, one thing remains true: Love is the opposite of fear, and every minute of every day we are choosing between the two. This is what Mike and Chad teach Apron. This is what saves her.

I wish my friend Mike was here to read the book. He would have liked it, I think. Especially the part about how well he sang.