About The Thin Door
What is NORML? NORML is everything that leaks into your head from the daily opinion. and most of it is so wrong, but you have to deal anyway.
NORML is Not Only Real, Mostly Lies,
NORML is the answer to “To a fish, what is water?”
The Thin Door is a story for this time of truthiness and big lies, a contemporary YA with two competing narratives in the way the MC experiences the world.
In the tricky underside of small-city America, sophomore Ramie can’t protect her kid brother from street life or fix her broken family, but her survival instincts and her love for the certainties of math get her through the treacheries of high school, where a reality show culture mirrors the adult world. To protect herself, Ramie joins in the betrayal of her oldest best friend.
She does have one true thing, a numinous memory that opens like a door into a parallel world where she can choose her own storyline. But when she summons extreme sports legend Xavier, he begins to take charge of her story—and then, her identity.
When the class star plans Ramie's support role in a lethal revenge plot, Xavier crosses worlds, naming his price for rescue. And the one girl who could be her ally is the one girl she has betrayed.
Safety First
"All I ever wanted was to be safe, but some things you don’t get to choose, do you? Some people are Have’s and some of us are Not’s, and if you’re a Have Not, you have no choice but to survive it the best way you can.
But I had one thing no one else had, and if it chose me or if I made it myself is something I couldn’t think about. I didn’t want to know that, or it would all blow up and smash into smithereens and then what would I have? Not being safe even inside myself, that’s what.
Some things you’re better off not knowing, is what. Safety first."
Ramie said that.
The Thin Door
Two parallel worlds, with the thinnest of doors between them, and a girl who is very good at slipping through the portal to safety.
For sophomore Ramie, NORML is a daily drama of changing facts, humiliating roles, and pretense. High school without a cell phone. The roles they invent for her. The missing kid brother. A killer plot, with her role as accomplice.
But through the Thin Door, she is the Unnamed Traveler, choosing her own adventures, until the extreme sports champ Xavier finds her and gives her a name. Then he begins to take over how her story is to be told.
And then, he asks everything of her.
The Thin Door is a contemporary retelling of the adolescent tale of awakening and initiation. It is the quest out of personal enchantment, told in two intertwining narratives.
It is a map for adults who have lost the map to adolescence.
Who is the CRASH TEST DUMMY and why is she on the Show?
TWITCH
Nah, she’s the Twitch. See that left cheek spaz when she crashes back onto the Show?
Twitch, spaz, I told you so.
On The Show that never ends, she’s the Twitch. Welcome to the daily Show!
She’s not always here, you ever notice? the Twitch.
She’s a zero.
THE CRASH TEST DUMMY
She knows what she is, and it’s not pretty.
She’s the CRASH TEST DUMMY, hiding onstage,
but the audience is throwing garbage.
They throw raw eggs and never miss.
Unless, of course, you are useful for a minute.
CRASH TEST blinks.
CRASH TEST is not really here.
CRASH TEST remembers sweet innocent Summertime and the smell of
fresh-cut grass,
and crashes through.
ZANDRE
Or she’s Zandre, peach queen of Summertime, goddess of lovely being,
the mystery lady with an empty chest, waiting for Xavier to fill her up.
Zandre, so lovely and graceful and yes magical in ways that
only Xavier can reveal.
RAMIE
Ramie. Baggage of days and things that don’t add up.
Who is she anyway?
Then there’s RAME.
Huh.
So exciting to be here on the #Show, blah blah, even if someone else is hoggin the mic, and the spotlight just catches you for the laughs.
The three R's of Chick Lit: Romance, Rescue and Revenge—so satisfying, so righteously comforting. But when does rescue = annihilation?
The Quest is never what it appears on the surface. That search for the perfect solacing donut never leads you to the donut anyway--and it wasn't even what you were looking for.
She’s only the babysitter, so last-year, so yesterday, so outgrown. So why is her name Sofi…Sophia… and why does she keep showing up when you need her?
This curious card of unanswerable riddles—this thin thing scrunched in a forgotten pocket—a tease of questions when all you want are the answers, straight and simple.
Who is that wild-haired woman Willa, that desk-drummer, that scat singer, that space changer, and why do the Shelter Rocks lead to her door?
Crow cuts off the path with a black winging of air. Crow turns back to perch with a loud fierce caw caw caw to attention.