This is what I write in my social media bios: "I write books for bad kids."
But what do I mean? I think the idea that people have when they hear the words "bad kids" conjure a specific kind of image. "Bad kids": the class-cutting, spray-painting, drug-doing teens that movies and television love to slap a leather jacket on. And yes, sure, I am talking about those kids, but there are so many more kids than that that fall through the cracks. "Bad kids."
As a high schooler, I struggled with my mental health, and at the time (2006-2010), we still didn't have the best set of words to explain why my brain did what it did, and most people still didn't believe in mental health days. I started skipping class -- ones that I struggled in, ones whose teachers didn't like me, ones in which the other kids didn't like me -- I talked back, I didn't do my homework, and I wasn't the things that people were asking me to be. That said, most people termed me "all right student" or " not a bad kid," because I mostly just cut class to go to the library.
Then it got worse, and worse, and even though all I was doing was skipping homework to read what I wanted, my dean officially branded me a Bad Kid. On speakerphone. To my mom.
I slipped through the cracks, and I didn't have to. As a kid, I blamed myself, but as an adult, I know that the education system failed me. There were so many times that somebody could have reached out, but I think it was easier not to. It's easy for adults to blow kids off and call their problems trivial, and we lose them that way.
That's why I write the books that I do. I write books for the kids that people don't want to waste their time on. Every book of mine has somebody in it who didn't do what they are supposed to do -- be queer, be neurodivergent, act neurodivergent, make questionable choices -- these characters as just as valuable to read about as the model students and well-to-do businesspeople. I should be paid $50 for every YA book I have read in which the main character was an excellent student with a bright future of Ivy League colleges. This protagonist isn't a bad thing, but I became tired of it being the only thing.
So I wrote Evergreen Cutler with ADHD and an incredible knack for creativity. I wrote Garrett Spelling, perfect on the surface and suffering under it, his depression and queerness weighing him down when he knows that those are everything he isn't supposed to be. Callum Chessman is bipolar and barely scraping by in school, but the important parts of him aren't the way his mental illness manifests, but the fact that he has survived and the fact that he's as loyal as they come. The school system is built to chew him up and spit him out, but it never took the determined kindness out of him. Gemma Spelling has experienced more trauma than a kid should, and she acts out and copes in ways she shouldn't. She is also creative and vibrant and bright.
I hope that I reach a kid who's trying to find a way to hang on. I hope I reach a parent who needed a way to understand the human that they're raising.
I want to create books that are built for understanding. They are for reaching out and saying, "Hey, this was me. This is me. Maybe it's you too, or maybe it's somebody you know. Do you get it now?" I hope that someone does. I hope that these books are a chance for somebody to see and understand what a "bad kid" looks like.
In all honesty, I don't actually believe in "bad kids." As somebody who works directly with young adults, I can safely say that what I believe in are frustrated kids, scared kids, lonely kids, traumatized kids, bored kids -- but never bad ones. I use "bad kids" as shorthand for all the kids who have been told that they are bad.
You're not bad, kid.
You weren't bad, either.
And neither was I.
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