Book Excerpt: 'The You Know Who Girls: Freshman Year' by YA Author Annameekee Hesik

As part of our effort to profile more authors within the LGBT community, we present Annameekee Hesik.

As part of our effort to profile more authors within the LGBT community, we present Annameekee Hesik.

Annameekee came out when she was fifteen and has since been obsessed with rainbows. After successfully surviving high school in Tucson, AZ, she went to college for six years and changed her major five times. She earned her BA in English Lit from UC Davis and her MA in Education from UC Santa Cruz. She is thrilled she finally decided to become a high school English teacher (with a background in Anthropology, American Sign Language, World History, and Environmental Biology). When she isn’t helping students learn to enjoy literature or dressing up as the Super Recycler or Grammar Police, she spends her time in Santa Cruz, CA, walking her dogs, napping in her hammock, riding bikes with her wife, slurping down mocha shakes, and writing books that she hopes will help lesbian and questioning teens feel like they’re not the only you-know-who girls in the world. To see embarrassing high school photos of Annameekee, read her blog, and find out what she likes to mix into her macaroni and cheese, visit her website.

The following is an excerpt from Chapter One of her book The You Know Who Girls: Freshman Year, published by Bold Strokes Books, which will be available October 18, 2012:

After Kate leaves, I look around and evaluate the food court lines. I nearly join the crowd in front of Eegee’s, but the line at Hot Dog on a Stick is free and clear, so I beeline it over there instead.

I stand a little ways from the counter and gaze up at the menu to figure out what I want. Ordering french fries isn’t normally a challenge for me, but I guess riding my bike fifteen miles in the hundred-degree heat and baking under the fluorescent lights in the fitting rooms like a Big Mac has sizzled my brain.

I have a bad habit of twirling my hair when I’m thinking, so that’s what I do, as I stand there, spacing out at the menu like a moron.

Then a straw wrapper sails through the air and hits my gaping mouth.

And standing behind the counter, twirling a clean straw between her fingers, is a girl in her red, yellow, blue, and white striped polyester tank top with a whole lot of black hair stuffed under her matching striped paper hat. I have always loved those outfits, especially recently. I used to think it was because I associated the outfits with food, but now I’m definitely beginning to wonder if it isn’t something much more involved than that.

“Is the menu too complicated for you?” she asks. She’s smiling, and her teeth are bright against her cocoa-brown face. It’s a smile I feel like I’ve seen before.

I feel my face turn red like an instant sunburn, but then I do something I’ve never before done to a girl like her: I smile back. Then I stammer, “Uh, sorry. I’ll have a regular fry and a small lemonade, please.”

I watch her peck my order into the register and see that her fingertips on her left hand are rough with calluses. My dad’s fingers looked like that because he played guitar all the time. He was really good. Mostly he played the Beatles, which is why he wanted to name me “Abbey Road” Brooks, after one of their later albums. My mom said no way, of course, because she’s a total bore. So, instead, they named me plain Abbey Brooks. But now that Dad’s dead, Mom calls me Abbey Road. I’ll never get her.

Now I’m wondering how long the girl with the nice smile has been playing guitar and where the heck I know her from. I try to look at her name tag, but it’s hiding in a fold of her uniform and I’m afraid if I look there for too long it’ll look like I’m checking out her boobs, which I’m currently not doing. I mean, not really.

“That’ll be six dollars and twenty-five cents,” she says.

Where could I have met someone cool like her? It’s not like I go to concerts or coffee shops or wherever cool people hang out. Then I notice she’s reaching for another straw and I snap out of it. At that exact same moment, her name tag is finally revealed, but it’s plastered with stickers from Chiquita bananas.

As I reach into my backpack for my wallet, I can’t hold back a goofy smile. See, my dad used to put Chiquita stickers on my nose every time we shared a banana, and I’ve spent the last five years sticking Chiquita stickers all over my wallet to keep that memory close.

The girl, I’ll call her the Hot Dog on a Stick Chick, notices our shared affinity for bananas. “Nice wallet.”

“Thanks.” I smile bigger, if that’s even possible. “Nice name tag.”

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