Leah Williams - The Alchemy of Being Fourteen

ADVANCED PRAISE FOR

THE ALCHEMY OF BEINGFOURTEEN

"Williams' fresh twist on magical realism seamlesslyblends supernatural horrors with the real-life horrors of being ateenage girl, and draws direct lines between imaginary monsters andreal ones. Her heroines win readers over immediately with theirsharp pop culture wit and plucky teen feminism. This is the modern fantasy YA I didn't know I was waitingfor ."

-Aria Taibi, writer

"No one nails what it means to be a modernsuper-powered teenage girl like Leah Williams. The Alchemy of BeingFourteen is a bright, punchy read , sure tosuck you in and leave you wanting more."

-Kyra Arsenault, author of BlackChrysanthemum

"The Alchemy of Being Fourteen takes place in aworld that is painfully similar to and different from this one. Itis the story of two sisters that stumble through the murkiness ofbudding relationships, navigate and respond to racism and sexism,meet vampires and werewolves, and experience your run of the millteenage drama. This is not a story about meek girls who cower fromthe enormity of the world's problems this is astory about the radical potential of teenage girls to save theworld. That is magical; a story that gives young girls theirdue, and recognizes them in all of their complicated, and vain, andpowerful, and lipgloss loving glory.

-Jamila Osman, writer,nomadmanifesto.tumblr.com

"[...]And, um, I appreciate your choice ofslang , but I have never heard anyone say 'rad'unironically in real life. Just a tip..."

-Genevieve, 8th grader, actualteen girl

The Alchemy of BeingFourteen

by LeahWilliams

Copyright 2015 by Leah Williams

This book is awork of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents areproducts of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Anyresemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead,is entirely coincidental.

Please visit mywebsite at www.leahmedia.com.

SmashwordsEdition: September 2015.

This book isavailable in print at most online retailers.

Williams,Leah.

The Alchemy ofBeing Fourteen: a novel / by Leah Williams 1st ed.

p.cm.

Summary:

Winter andArden Allister are two teenage sisters who've just moved fromMemphis to San Francisco. When Winter starts having problems with aboy at school and Arden continues to suffer inexplicable andterrifying blackouts, each girl must tease loose a separate threadof fate from their interwoven, close-knit identity as sisters inorder to unravel the arcane mystery of who they reallyare.

The authoracknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked owners of the followingwordmarks mentioned in this fiction: Spotify, The Breakfast Club,Simple Minds, Vine, Tumblr, Twitter, Harry Potter, SophoclesElectra (Frank McGuinness, 1997), Teen Wolf, Ginger Snaps, BladeRunner, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Taylor Swift, Dawn Richard, Khal Drogo,Disney Princess, Daenarys Targaryan, Fight Club, Amazon, GoPro,Canon C300, Johnny Depp, 4chan, Marc Jacobs, Nintendo 3Ds, MarioKart, Bowser, Rainbow Road, Hobbit, the Academy Awards, X-men,Professor Xavier's Academy, Deadpool, Blu-Ray, Live Long andProsper, Netflix, McDonald's, Red Bull, PetSmart, Yu-Gi-Oh!,Miyagi, Lucky Charms, Instagram, Hogwarts, Pinterest.

Cover photo byGiselle Morgan. Cover and title page design by Leah Williams.Chapter illustrations by Eliza Gauger. Please see for contact information.

SmashwordsEdition, License Notes

Thank you fordownloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with yourfriends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed fornon-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its completeoriginal form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to yourfavorite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author.Thank you for your support.

Table of Contents

for Cori

Foreword

Leah and I met three years ago afterexchanging Tumblr messages. Both unhappy in LA, we discussedfeeling lonely with few friends and crushed by the cost ofwomanhood.

The night we met, we closed out the bar.Leah tells harrowing tales of femininity like no one else. Ifviolence is the center of the burden of womanhood; its periphery isexclusion. Where we see and feel darkness, Leah finds sacredspace.

We sat in an Echo Park yard with two otherwomen to discuss our supernatural encounters. Emma admits that at ascared-straight juvie boot camp for teen girls, she found a birdstalon on a hike and used it to scratch a bully who attacked her.Her bullys wounds became infected and people left her alone. Afterenough wine I admit that one night in college, I burned the lettersI received from my childhood rapist. One week later, I learned hedied.

Leah and I treat our time in California likesummer campa chance to be friends, deeply and entirely, while westill can. We eat midnight breakfasts. I sample perfumes in RiteAid to kill time. She surprises me in the parking lot with a nickedbottle of the lavender one I liked so much.

One night, she tells me a breaking storyfrom Anaheim: an unarmed Latino man was killed by police. Where hewas shot in broad daylight, neighbors gathered and stayed forrecourse. She turns to me and we jump in her car, taking swigs ofwhiskey to embolden ourselves on the hour drive. Police shootrubber bullets and release dogs at crowds that included children.We broadcast it all into the cloud.

Despite the bruises on her body left byAnaheims finest, Leah tells our story. She arms herself withmetalsbrass knuckles and a silver tongue. Leah is fiercelyprotective of me in the scuffle, her transmutation evident in herbody. We survive scrappy and bloodied, the way only someone who hasbeen a teenage girl knows how.

If women lack logic and strength, ourprojected skills must lie in being nurturing and kind. Womensintuition is a sword we wield without a hilt. It is our value, yetits intangible and without proof. We are explained away, ourabnormality accepted. Women are supernatural in this waywho wouldknow better what its like to have a body both monstrous andalluring?

Leahs book is a courageous and nuancedportrait of abject bodies and identities. It is a leap into theliminal space teen girls inhabit out of circumstance and necessity.Her words have moved me back to life; she is a necromancer in herown right. The Alchemy of Being Fourteen is named justlyLeahWilliams has struck gold.

Sara David, Writer

CHAPTER ONE:

DESPITE

W inter Allisters eyes shotopen the moment she heard the soft squeak of her bedroom windowopening behind her. She blinked a few times, coming alive, andsquinted out into the grey darkness of pre-dawn light to the twinbed across from hers. As her eyes adjusted she made out the lumpthat was her little sister, buried under the comforter and stillsleeping.

The window creaked again and was followedwith another heavy pause.

Winter, wide-eyed and frozen, strained tohear any other human movement. Maybe it was only a single-mindedgust of wind? This was an old house but it was new to them; full of foreign noise and strange wooden sighs as it settledeach night.

A third small squeak of the window came asit was hitched open even further.

Winters heart began to race. Someone wasbreaking into her bedroom, and they were either a burglar ofcautious discretion or paramount etiquettethey moved withdeliberate slowness and silence so they wouldnt wake anyone.