Be Good Be Real Be Crazy (21 page)

This story would not have become exactly what it is without Second Book Syndrome, self-help podcasts, Rumi's poetry, too much time alone, NPR, Mark Twain's
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
, Jack Kerouac, self-doubt, John Bunyan's
The Pilgrim's Progress
, a suitcase filled with mixed tapes, a Jeep Cherokee named “Little Tank,”
The Canterbury Tales
,
Don Quixote
,
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,
Homer's
The Odyssey
, John Steinbeck's
Travels with Charley
, Bill Bryson, Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysics, theology, the University of Cambridge's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk,
One Hundred Years of Solitude
,
Siddhartha
, National Geographic coffee-table photography books, three-a.m. insomnia, a defective GPS, the original Dr. Az (Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi), a cross-country train ride with a long layover in the Mojave Desert, Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Maria Mitchell, a fantastic road trip that included the length of Oklahoma and the worst Thai food I will ever
eat, heartbreak, luck, delayed planes, Greek mythology, people who use religion to justify atrocities as well as believers whose convictions offer a giving and healing light, existential angst, absolute love, and the realization that faith manifests itself in so very many forms.

Thank you to my agent, Stephen Barbara, who coaches me through the spots where I can't tell my left from my right and does so graciously.

Thank you, Sarah Dotts Barley, my editor for
Even in Paradise
, for giving my first novel a home and believing in me so much. I'm still amazed that Erica Sussman, an editor as diligent as she is thoughtful, wanted to work with me.
Be Good Be Real Be Crazy
is an exponentially better book because of her.

If I could melt my gratitude to liquid form, it would flood the offices of the many HarperCollins folks who helped usher
BGB
R
BC
into the universe. Thank you, Renée Cafiero, Alison Donalty, Erin Fitzsimmons, Stephanie Hoover, Joey Jachowski, Jenna Stempel, and Elizabeth Ward.

I am grateful to have access to smart people who know what I don't and have experienced what I have not. Thank you to Coleman Barks for giving me permission to quote his translations of Rumi's poetry. Thank you, Laura and Brian Rossbert, for helping me untangle physics and theology and then jumble them back up again. Thank you to Chuda Niroula and his family. I was only a friend of a friend, and yet you opened your home and shared your stories about day-to-day existence
in refugee camps and what it means to leave a place forever behind. Thank you to Eamon Aghdasi for correcting my Farsi and to every librarian who, over the past two years, has turned me in the right direction.

My “kidney friends,” please know that I am amazed to have you in my life. I am blessed by your support. If you asked me to, I'd swim to Pluto and back. I'd catch the feeling of a summer evening in a jar and discover new constellations to name after each of you. I'd attempt so many impossible things because you deserve nothing less than incredible.

Thank you to my family (my parents, Karen and Bill Philpot, and my siblings, Natalie, Saeger, and Harris) for being my gravity. Thank you with sprinkles on top to my little sister, Saeger, and my brother-in-law Chris for giving me space and time to think and write. I am inspired by the depth of your generosity and the strength of your accepting hearts.

Levi, I met you and the universe did pause. You are extraordinary. If I haven't made that clear already, then over the years I will. Promise.

I have lived three lifetimes in the past two years. At the most confusing parts, I've felt like my orbit was off. That I was spinning too fast and getting stuck in corners that shouldn't exist. However, time and time again, readers pulled me back to earth by reminding me why I love what I do.

Dear readers, please know that I am honored and awed by
you. If something in my words spoke to you, I'm glad. If you've made me think about my own work in a new way, I'm thankful. So, so thankful.

This all, this everything, is, indeed, spectacular.

Photo by Alan MacRae

CHELSEY PHILPOT
is the author of
Even in Paradise.
She's written for the
New York Times,
the
Boston Globe,
Slate, Buzzfeed, and
School Library Journal.
Chelsey studied English and philosophy at Vassar College and earned her master's degree in journalism at Boston University. After years of living “elsewhere,” she once again calls New England home. You can visit her online at
www.chelseyphilpot.com
.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
hc.com
.

Even in Paradise

Be Good Be Real Be Crazy

Cover photograph © 2016 by Ashraful Arefin

Cover design by Jenna Stempel

Lines from the Rumi poem “A Moment of Happiness” used courtesy of the translator, Coleman Barks.

HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

BE GOOD BE REAL BE CRAZY
. Copyright © 2016 by Chelsey Philpot. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

www.epicreads.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Philpot, Chelsey, author.

Title: Be good be real be crazy / Chelsey Philpot.

Description: First edition. | New York : HarperTeen, [2016] | Summary: “Homer, Mia, and Einstein are three aimless teenagers searching for meaning on an epic road trip up the East Coast—a journey that will take them to the most unexpected places”— Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016000194 | ISBN 9780062293725 (hardback)

EPub Edition © September 2016 ISBN 9780062293749

Subjects: | CYAC: Automobile travel—Fiction. | Self-realization—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Friendship. | JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Siblings.

Classification: LCC PZ7.P5496 Be 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000194

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FIRST EDITION

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