ASK MJ: LOVE AND PANTS

Today, I am starting up an old feature called ASK MJ, in which people ask me things and I answer them. These questions have been coming in on the Ning, on Twitter, and on Facebook. I think I will be doing many ASK MJ blogs, so please continue to send in your questions!

Many of today’s questions are about LOVE, but we will start with one about PANTS.

Falletron asks: I'm infinitely tired of (myself and others) always wearing jeans, Maureen. What other members of the trousers/pants family would you recommend?

First of all, I want to tell you all about another exchange I had with Falletron. Falletron watched my Pediophobia video, in which I escorted Libba Bray around an American Doll Place store to help her get over her fear of dolls. In the bathrooms, they have metal devices where you can clamp your doll in while you use the facilities. Falletron wrote to me saying that he thought I was lying, and that the metal devices on the walls were actually for toilet paper.

Now, most of you will already have spotted Falletron’s error. I never lie. I explained to him that American Girl Place is not just a store, but a Temple of Doom-like center where you are encouraged to bring your doll in to visit. There is a doll hospital, and a doll beauty parlor, and a big restaurant where you can go to tea with you doll. So it only makes sense that there is a big claw on the wall to grasp your doll while you are in the bathroom.

Falletron continued to doubt me. I asked him to contact American Girl and ASK them for verification. And so, he did. Humbled, he sent me their reply:

Dear American Girl Friend,

Thank you for your inquiry! We are happy to assist with any type of question. In this case, your friend is correct. We realize this isn't something you would normally see in a restroom facility, but as our young customers will often bring their dolls to visit our stores with them, we want to be sure they have a safe place to put their "best friends" when they need to use the restroom.

Sincerely,
American Girl® Retail Service Support

In thinking about your options, Falletron-who-doubts, I remembered something I once read while researching my nonfiction writing thesis. See, I was a nonfiction student, and I was writing this book on people who maintain identities in another time period (obviously imaginary). People who, for instance, might be bankers by day, and Sir Percyville Guildford in 1674 by night.

In doing my research, I actually found the woman who invented the Renaissance Faire. It really was one person, and the faires started off much different than they are found today. It took some doing to locate her, but I finally got her on the phone and we talked for a few hours and she said, “Look, why don’t you just come to my house for a few days and I’ll tell you all about it.”

And I did. I got on a plane to California (being a poor student, I found a cheap, last-minute ticket), and I spent a week in the California hills learning the entire history of the Renaissance Faire. The woman had a complete archive and mini-library built into a small outbuilding, and I spent many hours in there reading about the Renaissance Faires of the 60s and 70s. Which is how I found the following quote, which pretty much is the be-all, end-all on pants, and perhaps human behavior:

“Fair veteran Jim Kelly remembers hitchhiking to [the city where the faire was] in 1969, when he was 21, with no money. He was in midst of a silent period, during which he communicated only via interpretive dance. ‘I was wearing billowy paisley pants and not much else,’ says Kelly.”

My point, of course, is that Falletron (who I know to be a 21 year old Scottish male person) will now forever be on the American Girl Place mailing lists and they will want to know how he is doing with his dolly.

And really, I think you should just wear a kilt. You’re Scottish. You can get away with it.

Addie asks: Is it a bad idea to date your older brother's friend?

Please see Suite Scarlett (and Scarlett Fever) for details on this one.

Evan asks: Would you go out on a date to the Waffle House with me? WOULD YOU? I'm watching you. *stare*

Yes.

Brian asks: Being a dude... I'd like to know, from a woman's perspective, if I clean the house without being asked... is that romantic?

Well, I guess anything that reduces the chances of you being covered in your own filth is probably romantic.

Gabby asks: What's your favorite way to say i love you? It can be a gesture or just words.

Ever hear that old song, “I love you a bushel and a peck?” It’s from Guys and Dolls. It goes:

I love you a bushel and peck
A bushel and peck and a hug around the neck
A hug around the neck and a barrel and a heap
A barrel and a heap and I'm talking in my sleep
About you, about you

Cause I love you a bushel and a peck
You bet your pretty neck, I do
Doodle, oodle, oodle, doodle, oodle, oodle, doodle, oodle, oodle oo

This song is based on an old tradition from where I come from (Philadelphia), which is why I know what it means and no one else does (unless they are from Philadelphia).

In Philadelphia, when you love someone, you leave a bushel of live crabs and a chicken by their door while they are sleeping. The crabs will usually stay in the bushel, but the chicken will often try to get away, so you usually have to tape it to the sidewalk or something. When the Love Object wakes up and sees all the live crabs and the taped-down chicken . . . well, first, you have to figure out who put them there, because it’s hard to sign live crabs or a chicken. A lot of people just stand around all night waiting for the Love Object to wake up, because it can take so long to put these things together that no one gets anywhere. In those cases, they usually hold the chicken, and eventually it becomes quiet and complacent. The chicken, I mean.

Anyway, once you’ve identified the person who gave you the bushel of crabs and the chicken, you have to decide whether or not you like them. If you don’t, you simply leave them on the sidewalk without comment and pretend you don’t see them. (Which is where we get the phrase, “crab-blind and chicken-stupid.”)

But if you DO like them, a formal ritual ensues. First, there is the hug around the neck. Then, you take out the barrel (you have to have a barrel on hand, which all Philadelphians do) and set it out on your lawn along with a pile of any objects of your choosing (the “heap”). When this occurs, all of your neighbors will know you have entered a love contract. They will start putting things in your barrel—usually small household goods like staplers and cushions. In return they will take one object from your heap. Within a day or so, the heap should be gone and you will be left with a barrel full of unwanted items. (They pretty much always get regifted into other people’s barrels.)

People are normally so wound up by this process that they lose sleep, and what little sleep they DO get is fraught with strange dreams that cause you to mumble. Because if any objects are left behind in your heap and your barrel remains empty, your neck becomes the legal property of the State of Pennsylvania, and then you’re just in for a world of aggravation. Everyone knows that the state normally doesn’t act on this right, but at any time, if they really wanted to, they could make you wear a huge, funny collar. It happens every once in a while, usually in some far-off corner of the state where they have nothing better to do. The shame is terrible.

Anyway, once you get through this whole mess, you can finally start dating. But this is why everyone leaves Philadelphia. It’s just not worth it.

THE PEACOCK DIARIES

The great thing about going away to write in a castle with nine other writers—if you are me—is that they can be counted on to blog about it while you sit in a corner and finish your book and eat things you find on the floor, whether or not they are food.

You might, if you are me, Twitter a little when the castle internet decides to work. (I am turning into a Twitter fanatic! It quiets the hamsters in my mind.)

But anyway, just yesterday I finished SCARLETT FEVER, the sequel to Suite Scarlett. And just in time, too, because I have lots to do to get ready for the paperback release of Suite Scarlett on May 1st! But I should really talk a little bit about the castle.

BUT BEFORE I DO! I must tell you where you can SEE ME this week, at the TEEN LIT FESTIVAL in NYC!

Tomorrow! Friday, March 20: “I love you, New York” Teen Lit in the City. Speaking with Coe Booth, Paul Griffin, David Levithan, Cecily von Ziegesar, and Rita Williams-Garcia.

The New York Public Library, South Court Auditorium, 42nd St and 5th Ave, NY NY, 6-8 pm

Saturday: I will be at the New York Public Library’s Stuff for the Teen Age event. (Suite Scarlett made the list of 100 awesome things!)

Sunday: I will be at the BIGGEST YA AUTHOR SIGNING EVER! 4pm! Books of Wonder! BE THERE!

Okay.

Now, if you’ve read any of the other accounts by Holly Black, Cassie Clare, Carrie Ryan, Sarah Cross, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Sarah Rees Brennan, Ally Carter, Diana Peterfreund, or Robin Wasserman, you might be pretty up to speed. You might also notice, if you looked at the pictures, that I am not generally in them. That was because I was sitting in the writing room more or less the entire time, finishing the aforementioned book and eating the aforementioned things off the floor.

But I was there! And this is how the trip went for me.

First, I was coming from London, which means that I had one of the shortest trips to make. It takes about 50 minutes to get from London to Dublin on a plane. Once at the Dublin airport, I was supposed to meet Robin Wasserman, who had scheduled to come in on a plane from Paris just fifteen minutes before me. From there, we had booked a fine hotel in Dublin—in fact, our hotel was so fine, it was listed as a TOURIST ATTRACTION. We were smug about our plan.

For some reason, I had decided that the only suitcase suitable for this trip was the REALLY BIG ONE. I usually do not bring the REALLY BIG ONE when I go to the UK because it does not fit into Oscar’s car. Oscar has a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny car. It is a sportscar. It has two seats and no trunk and no backseat. I bought a MUCH SMALLER SUITCASE to go in this car.

But Oscar offered to take me to Gatwick early in the morning. So the night before, we did a trial run to see if the really big suitcase could actually fit. I got in the car, and the massive suitcase was shoved on top of me. It created a wall that split the car in two, and I couldn’t see Oscar or out of the windshield, and Oscar had some trouble shifting, but we figured it would work.

So that morning, I was stuffed into the car with the really big suitcase and rode alone to Gatwick unable to hear or see a thing. I got to the airport extremely early. Exactly thirty minutes before my flight was scheduled to board, I had a well-timed breakfast, a look at my e-mail, bought my in-flight coffee, and went to look for my gate.

I was puzzled as the screens changed, because it LOOKED like what they said was: BRITISH AIRWAYS, 10:15 FLIGHT TO DUBLIN, CANCELED.

I laughed. I was seeing things.

Except that I wasn’t. There was one British Airways flight canceled that morning, and that was the 10:15 to Dublin. British Air didn’t really have any good reasons for the lack of an airplane. I showed them my actual, quite real ticket, and they approved of it highly, and got a little vague when I asked them how I was supposed to get to Ireland. I had visions of things going much like they had just two weeks before, when I bought an actual, real ticket to go to Denver, and United Airlines decided to send me to Tulsa instead.



MY ACTUAL, REAL TICKET

What British Air decided to do was make us all walk to the South Terminal, stand in a bunch of lines, and eventually put me on a flight much later in the day leaving from a different airport. So they gave me a coach ticket to that airport, and a voucher worth ten pounds to buy food.

“Can I use this at Heathrow?” I asked. “I mean, I’m going to be there for hours.”

“No,” she said. “You can only use this here, and you can only use it today.”

I reached over and took my two pieces of paper and examined them.


First thing first . . . I didn’t want a snack or a coffee, but this little voucher was my . . . my prize. My thing that I got instead of a seat on a plane. So I rolled my bags over to the Costa Coffee. I stood around for a minute, seeing if there was anyone I could give it to, but no one came along. So I started buying things.

I took a smoothie. I took another bottle of water. I like to have a lot of drinks around—the problem was, I was about to go to Heathrow and go back through security, which means they would take them all away, and I ALREADY had a large bottle of water in my bag that I had purchased past security. You can only drink so much before you just explode. The three bottles I had now was already pushing it. I took them to the counter. They came to four pounds fifty. I still had much more to go. I took some chocolate wafers from the container next to the till and added them.

“How much now?” I asked.

“Five pounds ten.”

More wafers. More wafers.

“Six pounds . . . seven . . .”

“I’ll just have all the wafers,” I said.

The woman behind the counter was Italian, and I could see from the way she was looking at me that she thought that “all the wafers” was just another one of those annoying expressions in English that she would have to get used to. When in fact, “all the wafers” was just me scooping all the wafers from the container and pushing them forward. I didn’t exactly know what I was going to do with all these wafers, but they were going to be mine.

I walked out with a bag of liquids and wafers.

The ride from Gatwick to Heathrow takes about an hour, more or less, but we got stuck in massive midday traffic. I had my liquids and wafers, all the precious things I had acquired.

“These,” I said, clutching the bag, “these things are mine.”

I was also worried about Robin, who was already wandering the Dublin airport waiting for me. I had the hotel information, and she had no way of knowing where I was.

So I got to immigration in Dublin. My passport is pretty full at this point, and it shows a lot of trips between the United States and England, so the passport people sometimes (understandably) give me a bit of a hard time when they see me, and they ask me piercing questions about my life. They do this to make sure I am not doing something illegal. I am pretty good with this, because I do it a lot. This time, I was asked who I was staying with in Ireland.

And my brain was thinking, “Well, I am staying with friends, but not friends who LIVE here, well, except for Sarah Rees Brennan, SHE lives here, but she is from everywhere, and I am not staying at her house, I am staying at a castle, and if I say I am staying at a castle, they will think I am a deluded American, and what she really wants to know is if I am intending to take up some kind of RESIDENCE here with some Irish people and drain the system dry, which I am not, I am coming to write and then go home, and by home I actually mean back to England which is sort of home but not really, and she probably wants to know what I have to say for myself because she is staring at me . . .”


What came out was, “I have no Irish friends.” That is actually what I said to passport control.

So eventually I got to Dublin. Robin had made her way to the hotel and talked her way in by pretending to be me, which is apparently pretty easy. (Because for the next 24 hours, the staff referred to Robin as Ms. Johnson and to me as Ms. Wasserman, and even swapped our names, so she was Ms. Robin Johnson and I was Ms. Maureen Wasserman. It was very confusing.)

Robin, for some mysterious reason, had just come from Paris, and hadn’t slept in two days. I hadn’t had much sleep either. So after wandering the streets and getting some food, we decided that the most awesome thing to do would be to go back to our awesome, swanky hotel, put on pajamas, and watch Irish television. Also, we had been told that the VIP style awards were being held in our hotel that night, as a testament to its swank factor. We asked what these were, and were told that they were for “style” and for naming the “most stylish person.”

“What?” Robin asked. “You mean like when the PRINCE sends his servants to roam the land to look for the fairest maiden?”

And they said yes, something like that, but with more text voting.

So we also spent a good while speculating on that, and wondering if we should crash said awards in our pajamas. We also ate wafers.

The major discovery of that night, however, was a button on our phone that simply read: “Delighted to Serve.” It was NOT room service. It was NOT the concierge. It was some weird, other button that just promised service.

I immediately pressed it.

And THERE, I pause, because I have to go out and see TIGER BEAT, the YA band! Libba Bray is singing! I am rocking out to THAT!

I look forward to your comments/complaints/questions as always.

THE BADGER DIARIES, THE AFTERMATH

Those of you who bravely made it through The Badger Diaries, parts one, two, three, four, and five may be wondering . . . “What happened after you left the castle?” Or you may not be. I don’t want to make any assumptions about what you do with your personal wondering time.

In any case, I am here to provide the answer . . . and to tell you how this connects to THE FUTURE.

About the other residents . . . in my account, I am frequently paranoid about them. This was the reality. In fact, they were all quite nice people, and after I left, I communicated for a while with Ron, Nigel, and even Petunia, I think.

It turned out, almost everyone was experiencing something similar . . . the castle had the habit of doing that. In the last few days, as we all started to get to know one another better, Hubert explained this. He said that frequently, people completely went nuts in the first two weeks, and then calmed down in the third week, and grew to love it by the fourth. Which is exactly what happened to me.

He went on to say that there had been cases of the writers REALLY LOSING IT. One tried to escape by bicycle and flipped over the handlebars, another went for an aggressive walk on the path and fell down the wall of rock I describe on the in the fifth section—the one that slopes down, down, down to the river in one solid sliding board of stone. Apparently he was down there in the river for a while, until the housekeeper noticed he was gone, hours later.

I did have to trim a small section entirely devoted to how I used to steal the internet for the entire last week—because it contained a lot of details about the personal lives of the others. But I should admit that I was sneaking around for the last five days with a cord I bought in town. There was a phone jack in the main hall, right by Hubert’s room. Once Petunia noticed this, it was all over. We would wait for Hubert to go out, and then we would all cluster on the stairs and hover around the jack, plugging in our computers, using some old dial up connection that Petunia had. If we heard Hubert come in, we’d all scramble, like roaches when the lights come on.

I got addicted to the phone jack. Unlike the others, I was in a foreign country, and desperately wanted to talk to people from home. I got more brazen. I used to do these sneaky drive-bys in the hall. I’d have the cord rolled up and hidden in my hand. If I was sure Hubert was busy outside or watching TV (he had one in his private rooms), I’d slink along, plug the computer in, suck the e-mails right off the line, yank it out, and KEEP RIGHT ON WALKING.

To get this good, I had to prep in my room beforehand. I’d have e-mails ready and written, all in the outbox. I’d have the prompt window up. I’d have gone through all the settings quickly, so I knew exactly what to click. I was fast and crazy and reckless.



THE PHONE JACK

And one time, I almost got caught. That phone jack was in a VERY public place. I heard Hubert come along unexpectedly, and I pulled the thing right out of the wall and scrambled to the sitting room where the others were—and then Hubert came in, and I was doing a terrible job covering, and I had to sit on the cord for about AN HOUR.

But those illicit e-mails allowed me to plan something. See, I figured since I’d already come all the way across the ocean, why not STAY across the ocean for a bit? I’d had to buy a ticket quickly, not really knowing when I was going to return, so I had five days to kill. So I thought I would go back to London, then take the Eurostar to Paris!

Sounds exciting, right?

I made this plan from someone from America, who was to fly over the day I left the castle, and meet me in London, at the flat where my friends Trevor and Grace Dangerous lived. (This flat was the model for Richard’s home in 13 Little Blue Envelopes—at least in location. Their actual flat was immaculate and stylish.) Two tickets on the Eurostar were purchased. A hotel room was obtained. All systems were go!

On the morning I was to leave, I was having breakfast with Nigel and Petunia, when the phone rang. It was for me. The person on the other end of the line was my travel companion, who I will call Biff.

I thought it was very clever of Biff to be calling me when he was supposed to be 42,000 feet directly overhead, about to land at Heathrow Airport in 30 minutes time. He told me that Things Had Gone Wrong—that he had been about to leave for the airport when he noticed a Tiny Problem. His passport was expired. He was still in America.

This caused a bit of a snag.

I spent the last hour of my stay literally running through the castle, as this conversation made me late. I was in an utter panic, throwing my last items into my suitcase. WHAT TO DO? I was about to be thrown into this trip by myself.

My bag was ridiculously large. (I had borrowed it from my parents at the last moment before leaving, because my parents take TOURS and CRUISES and other things where people carry your bags for you, and they are oblivious to the fact that their bag is actually people-sized. I could fit in the suitcase. I know this because I tried. I got really bored one night in the castle and climbed inside to see if I could zip myself in, and I made it 80% the way around. Anyway, my mom was all, “Just take the big bag. You’ll be sorry if you don’t bring enough sweaters and hats!” So I borrowed the big bag, because I was in a rush, because I had exactly five days to prepare for the trip, including ticketing and paperwork, and all the other things you have to do. I filled it with every sweater I owned, thinking, “I am going to Scotland, in the winter, for a month.” The bag became a running joke to all who saw it. It didn’t fit in Trevor’s car. It barely fit up the stairs to our rooms. It was two times the size of any suitcase that anyone else brought, and was clearly AN AMERICAN’S BAG . . . so a tip for any Americans thinking of traveling abroad, take it from me . . . LITTLE BAG. Seriously. You don’t need that stuff. I tell you this as someone who goes to England several times a year and had to buy progressively smaller suitcases for each trip . . . well, partially because Oscar Gingersnort, keeper of the London Office, owns a “sportscar,” or, as I like to put it, “a car only slightly larger than a hamster ball” and it literally has no backseat or trunk, and whatever suitcase I carry must fit ON ME. You will not run into this specific restriction, but I’m telling you, JUST BRING THE SMALLER BAG.)

Anyway, I was packing my monstrous bag and running around in an upset panic, because all had gone to pieces. I was ALREADY nervous that day because I was going to be traveling back to London on a SLIGHTLY ILLEGAL TICKET. Well, not illegal but . . . I had this train ticket that was supposed to be used at a completely different time, because when I bought it, I had no idea when I was leaving the castle . . . so I had made this plan to get on the train with it, pleading American Stupidity and hoping I could talk my way out of the hundred or so pound fine by saying, “Well, gosh! I just don’t know the ways of your fancy train, here!” Which is not right, obviously, and no one should do that . . . but frankly, it almost always works. You can get away with a lot in the UK just by playing up your American accent and blinking a lot. It helps if you carry a Coke and wear a sweatshirt with the name of a state university on it. It doesn’t improve our national image, but it will get you out of trouble. (Travel tip!)

ANYWAY . . . I was packing my bag and generally losing my mind, and the bag was TOO HEAVY TO LIFT. So Nigel came to my rescue and carried the bag all the way down the stairs, and the groundskeeper drove it and me up the path to the road.

Where I was deposited. When you’re done at the castle, you’re just done. I had to wait for a bus to Edinburgh (a trauma in and of itself, getting the bag on there, etc.). And then I had to get the bag to the train. And then I had to trick a conductor.

Which I did, successfully. But not without getting a lecture. I spent the entire four hour train ride trying to look meek and sorry—and inside, my wheels were turning. What was I going to do? I had two tickets to Paris, and only one of me.

Trevor met me on the other end and commiserated with me. Neither he nor Grace could go to Paris. We tried to find someone in the next few hours who could, but there was simply no one. The notice was far too short. I mean, there I was, running around with a ticket, saying, “You can have this FOR FREE. Just come with me to Paris! Right now!” But people had to “work,” and “do things,” and they wanted to come the next day or the day after.

So I ended up in the Eurostar station by myself, sipping a coffee and waiting for a train to France. While I was there, I picked up a napkin at the Costa Coffee and drew a stick figure on it.

“You will be my companion,” I said to the napkin. “We will go to Paris together. I will call you Napkin Biff.”

And so we did. I sat Napkin Biff in the real Biff’s seat. The entire ride to Paris, I waited for someone to ask me if that napkin had a ticket, because I had it right in my pocket and was ready to produce it. “Oh yes,” I would say. “Here it is.” And I would be known as the person who bought a Eurostar ticket for a napkin.

But no one did.

For the next three days, I took my napkin friend all around Paris. It hailed much of that time. The sky turned pink and green. The trees were bare. There was a strange smell in my hotel room, and for fun, I watched Scrubs dubbed into French and the last helicopter explosion movie I had left. I took a full photographic record of my travels with Napkin Biff (which seems to have vanished from my hard drive—I have asked Daphne if she has copies).

Mostly, I spent my time in the Louvre, drinking tiny coffees until I shook, and putting together the puzzle for 13 Little Blue Envelopes.

And there, I bring you back to the present . . . or, to about three weeks ago, where the story picks up.

So, I’m sitting working with Libba Bray and Cassie Clare, and Robin Wasserman, like I often do. I was talking to my beloved agent, Daphne, online. We were discussing an EXCITING NEW PROJECT I am working on. I had hoped to be able to tell you what that project is, but cannot reveal it yet, for various reasons . . . but I HOPE TO TELL YOU SOON.

Anyway, I was talking to Daphne, and Cassie leans over to me and says, “Hey . . . want to go write in a castle in Ireland?”

And I said, “Yes. When? Yes. What? Who’s going? Okay. When?”

Because I sometimes ask questions out of order.

So, on the fifth anniversary of the Scottish castle, I am going off to work on the SEKRIT PROJECT in an Irish castle . . . but this time, with friends! I will be joined by Cassie, Robin, Holly Black, Carrie Ryan, Ally Carter, Diana Peterfreund, Sarah Cross, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and Sarah Rees Brennan.

I know. I know. Ten YA writers. One Irish castle. Ireland, are you out there? Are you ready for us?

Takeoff for that is this time next month. By that point, I hope to be able to reveal my SEKRIT.

Feel free to guess MY SEKRIT in the comments, or to reveal SEKRITS of your own!


PS . . . my addiction to Twitter grows. It is now approaching my addiction to Facebook. Please, come join me on my upward spiral.

HARRY POTTER SECRETS REVEALED!

Guys, you will never guess what happened to me.

I stopped in Starbucks this morning while I was out, and I noticed a woman in the corner. She was wearing what seemed like an obvious disguise—an oversized sweatshirt that said “I love London,” a floppy wool hat, sunglasses, and a fake moustache. At first, I thought I was imagining things. Though she was clearly trying to hide, I could tell it was J.K. Rowling.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Just because you are in England dosn't mean you will see J.K. Rowling. But she has to be SOMEWHERE, doesn't she? And apparently, somewhere happens to be in the Starbucks at the end of the road.

To be honest, I was surprised to see her in this state—disheveled, obviously nervous, sitting around in a Starbucks in the middle of the day with fake facial hair on. I bought an extra coffee and approached her carefully. She started when I came near, but when I set down the coffee and identified myself as a fellow author, she relaxed a little. We authors have an unspoken bond like that. She snatched the coffee and drank it in big, sloppy slurps, then glanced around the room with frightened eyes.

“I can’t take it anymore, mj,” she said. “Do you have any idea what it’s like? Everyone in the entire world wants to know what happens in Harry Potter seven. And you know who knows the answer? Me, my editor, and two other people who set the pages. This morning? A van came around, took my editor away. They say she’s being kept in a volcano until the release. They killed the other two. I heard they fed one of them into a woodchipper, and the other was encased in cement. That's how much keeping this secret is worth. I just escaped this morning. I don’t know how much longer I can keep it in. I won’t last until the 21st.”

I wasn’t sure if any of this was true, but I had to admit, it is a lot of pressure.

“Relax, J.K.,” I said, coming closer. “I am the soul of discretion. Tell me all about it and get it off your mind. What happens in the last book?”

She took off the sunglasses and looked me in the eye.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell you. Maybe that’s the only way I can stay sane. But once I tell you, you’ll be in danger, too.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I have plans to get a stun gun. Lay it on me.”

The following is all 100% true. Please don't spread it around too much, or the book will be ruined for everyone.

DRACO AND NEVILLE

“Let’s start with Draco,” I said. “When we last saw him, he was punking out his job. He couldn’t kill Dumbledore. What was with that?”

“You must know where Draco’s headed,” J.K. said.

“Hell? In a handbasket?”

“Try Paris. Milan. New York. Draco goes into fashion.”

“Fashion?” I repeated.

“Draco has always had an interest in labels. You’ve seen him on Diagon Alley. His eventual goal is to design upscale handbags, sunglasses, and footwear. He does all of the outfits for the final battle between good and evil . . . you know, because no more Hogwarts, no more school uniform. Part of this final battle takes place on the catwalk. Guess who does the outfits for good! Go on! Guess!”

“That guy who does the robes?” I offered.

“Neville,” she said smugly.

“Neville?”

“Yep.”

“Wasn’t Neville almost the Chosen One?”

“Yep.”

“And isn’t Draco the kind of evil Chosen One?”

“Yep. And here’s the exciting part. Their conflicting styles and viewpoints result in a tantalizing dance of fabrics and colors. They eventually team up to form the house of Longbottom and Malfoy.”

“Draco and Neville form a fashion company together? That’s really not what I expected.”

“That’s why I am a record-breaking author,” she said. “I give people the unexpected.”

She adjusted her moustache. I was feeling a bit weird about this news, but she was right. She does deliver the unexpected. I decided to move on to a character from a family I admire deeply—the Weasleys.



Draco hates what you’re wearing.

GINNY

“Ginny’s a robot,” J.K. said offhandedly, eyeing the cakes in the dessert case.

“But she’s Ron’s sister,” I replied with a start.

“Robot.”

“But . . .”

“Ron doesn’t know,” she said with a sigh. “That’s one of the major reveals. Ginny gets attacked, and her arm is blasted off and all of these wires come out. Cho Chang is too. All the girls Harry make out with or like are robots. All those French girls in the fourth book were robots. Every last one of them.”

“But . . . why? And how would Ron not know that his sister was a robot? And how would HARRY not know?”

“They are very sophisticated robots. She was adopted from a robot farm.”

“Did you just say robot farm?”

“I am J.K. Rowling,” she explained. “I can do what I want. Now get me a muffin.”

RON

I returned with two muffins. I let J.K. choose which one she wanted, because I wanted to get her in the right mood for my personal big question.

“Ron’s my favorite,” I confessed, giggling and going all pink.

J.K. looked at me with deep compassion. Or dislike. It was hard to tell.

“Then you won’t like what I’m about to tell you,” she said, clawing at the lemon poppy seed muffin.

I gripped the table.

“Please,” I begged. “Please, don’t tell me you killed Ron. That’s my worst Harry Potter nightmare.”

“I didn’t need to.”

“What does that mean?” I gasped.

“There is no Ron.”

I stared at her. She didn’t blink. For like two minutes. I began to wonder if J.K. was entirely human.

“Ron was all a dream,” she said.

I didn’t reply.

“It was obvious,” she went on. “The first person Harry meets. The one person no one else seems to see or talk to . . .”

“Everyone talks to Ron!”

“In Harry’s mind.”

“Ron is there,” I said firmly. “He drives the flying car into the Whomping Willow. He gets taken to the bottom of the lake in The Goblet of Fire and Harry has to rescue him. He becomes the Quidditch Keeper.”

“It’s all in Harry’s head.”

“You’re making this into a poor man’s version of A Beautiful Mind. And the ‘it was all a dream’ device is the worst ending ever! It doesn’t even make sense!”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t hear you over my millions and millions of fans. What were you saying?”

I cleared my throat, and she devoured her muffin in three bites.

“Let’s move on,” I said.

“Let’s,” she said.



Just a dream. A beautiful dream.

HERMOINE

“Well, then,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “What are you going to tell me about Hermione? You’ve covered robots and dreams, so what is she? A hologram?”

“Don’t be stupid,” J.K. said. “The fans would never buy that. Hermione is a normal girl.”

“So . . .”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know.”

“Surprise me.”

“What, are you dumb?” she asked.

I refused to answer this question. She finally smiled a bit.

“She’s . . . Harry’s . . . sister.”

“You mean . . . like Luke and Leia in Star Wars?”

“What’s Star Wars?” she asked.

“Star Wars!”

“I don’t watch much television. What is that? A reality show? Like American Idol?”

“It’s a movie!” I exclaimed. “A very famous movie. Darth Vader, the Dark Side, the Death Star, may the Force be with you? Is any of this sounding familiar?”

“Vaguely,” she said. “Is this one where, if you get the monsters wet, they multiply? All those little monsters with the cute names . . . Gizmo, Frodo, Bilbo. So they have to go back in time in a 1980s car to get rid of them?”

“That was Gremlins,” I said. “And the Lord of the Rings, and Back the Future. I’m talking about Star Wars. Does the word Jedi mean nothing to you?”

“Is it a kind of cheese?”

“Look,” I said. “Luke is the hero, and Leia is the heroine, and you eventually find out that they are brother and sister after they fight side by side against evil over the course of several stories. And there is a third member of the group, a kind of funny, unlikely hero called Han, not unlike Ron.”

“Completely different.”

“No it isn’t! And Star Wars might be the only thing more famous than Harry Potter!”

For the first time, there was a flicker of concern. Then she swung her arm wide and knocked my muffin to the floor.

“Looks like someone needs a new snack,” she said.

I grumbled and went to the counter for a new muffin. While I was up there, I heard frantic scribbling behind me.

“Like I was saying,” she said, brushing eraser scratchings off the page, “that’s so derivative. Hermione ends up with Ron.”

“You mean like Leia and Han.”

“Who wrote this War Stars, anyway?” she snapped. “And which one of us is getting their own theme park? Hmmm? I rest my case. Next question.”


Somehow related to someone, or possibly dating someone. No matter what, Obi Wan is her only hope.

HARRY

“We’ve reached the big one,” I said. “And I can barely wait to hear what you have to say about this.”

“Oh, right,” she said with a yawn. “Harry, right?”

“Right.”

“People seem so hung up on him,” she said. “I never understood why.”

“Maybe because you called the books HARRY POTTER.”

She nodded thoughtfully, as though she had never considered this before.

“So . . . what’s the story. Does he die or doesn’t he?”

She stirred her coffee for what felt like ages, until I “accidentally” kicked her under the table.

“Oh, sorry . . .” she said. “I was miles away. You were asking about Harry, right?”

“Yes . . .”

“And you wanted to know whether what? Whether he dies or not?”

“Yes . . .”

“Well, I have no idea.”

“What?”

“Harry’s not in the seventh book.”

I had to get up and go to the bathroom and put my head in the sink for a moment. When I came back, I caught the last sight of my muffin being hastily shoved into J.K.’s mouth.

“They cleared the table,” she lied, coughing out crumbs. “And your muffin . . .”

“Whatever.” I sat down and folded my hands on top of the table. “So, tell me. What possessed you to leave Harry out of the seventh book, and where might he have gone?”

“I’m so bored of him,” she said, slumping petulantly. “So I sent him off to do a year abroad. In Spain.”

“Spain.”

“Yes,” she replied. “He’s in Spain.”

“And presumably, since Ron is apparently a figure of Harry’s imagination, he’s not in it either.”

“No.”

“So who is in it?”

“The seventh book,” she said, “is mostly about Kevin Whitby.”

“Who is Kevin Whitby?”

“You know. Kevin Whitby. The last student to be sorted by the sorting hat in book four. He’s a bit of a mysterious one.”

“By mysterious, do you mean ‘not really in the books at all except for that one mention one time.’ Is that what you mean?”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like?” she asked. “That stupid name is all I’ve heard for the last ten years—and it took me seven years before that to write the first book. I am so sick of Harry Potter. So from now on, it’s all about Kevin Whitby.”

“Does Kevin Whitby have an exciting past involving Voldemort? A scar? A destiny?”

“No. He’s just looking for a girlfriend who isn’t a robot.”

“I see.”

We fell into an uncomfortable silence.

“I’m going to go,” I finally said.

“That’s probably for the best,” she replied. “You won’t tell anyone what I’ve told you, will you?”

“Never,” I said. “My lips are sealed until the 21st.”

When I last saw her, J.K. Rowling was running down the street, cutting in and out of traffic, and flipping off the cars that honked at her. I wasn’t sure whether or not I should reveal the contents of our conversation, but in the end, I decided that you had to know, just so you could brush up on your Kevin Whitby trivia.

You guys can keep a secret, right?