Beth Turley - The Flyers

The Flyers

Beth Turley

If This Were a Story

The Last Tree Town

SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Childrens Publishing Division

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text 2021 by Beth Turley

Jacket illustration 2021 by Celia Krampien

Jacket design by Krista Vossen 2021 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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Interior design by Tom Daly

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Turley, Beth, author.

Title: The Flyers / Beth Turley.

Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2021] | Audience: Ages 812. | Audience: Grades 46. |

Summary: Picked to become an intern at her favorite teen magazine and spend an adventure-packed summer, between seventh and eighth grades, in New York City, Elena is excited but also worried about losing her best friend.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020050952 (print) | LCCN 2020050953 (ebook) | ISBN 9781534476721 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534476745 (ebook)

Subjects: CYAC: Best friendsFiction. | FriendshipFiction. | Internship programsFiction. | PeriodicalsPublishingFiction. | New York (N.Y.)Fiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.1.T875 Fl 2021 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.T875 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020050952

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020050953

For all best friends, especially mine

My sister and I used to read magazines together obsessively. Delivery days were the best days, and we had our rituals for all the different sections. I am so thankful to my editor, Krista Vitola, and the entire team at S&S Books for Young Readers for allowing me to write the magazine book of my dreams, and to Celia Krampien for a beautiful cover to match. I am also lucky to have Zoe Sandler, who saw the Bold Type potential in these characters, as my agent.

Thank you to my parents for their guidance and for the many subscriptions to Discovery Girls, Highlights, and Seventeen. I learned so much from those magazines, and from you both. Thank you to my sister, Cristina, for honoring our traditions. To every member of my big, funny familyI have felt support and excitement from all of you. Thank you for your jokes and love. And to my writing family at Western Connecticut State University: nothing is better than when were all together.

I dedicated this book to all best friends, especially mine, because I could not ask to have more generous, bold, and brilliant people to call my friends. You are all my Flyers.

Are you a Spread Your Wings magazine superfan?

Apply now to be a Flyer! Selected Flyers get to spend five days in New York City, and are a critical part of the development of the September issue. This program helps budding journalists see just what it takes to work at our iconic magazine through hands-on experience, writing workshops, staff meetings, and best of all, New York City adventures.

To apply, you must submit (1) up to five photos that represent you, (2) your personal questionnaire and contact information sheet, and (3) a writing sample.

Unfortunately, we can only select four Flyers for the program, so if your application is not accepted, we urge you to try again next year.

Good luck!

Fly High,

The Spread Your Wings Internship Team

Chapter One The Text

Summer and I read SpreadYour Wings magazine the way some people read mystery novelsin one big, exhilarating gulp. Summers favorite part was the essays at the end, written by other Spread Your Wings readers like us. In the September issue, it was the four chosen Flyers who wrote them. My favorite was the Ask Amelia advice column. It was like always receiving the right diagnosis and treatment to lifes problems. Crush doesnt like you back? Diagnosis: broken heart. Treatment: remember how great you are anyway. (And if that doesnt work, throw eggs at said crushs house.)

I imagined writing egg house into the yellow notepad Id have when I grew up and became a therapist, mending broken hearts.

This Flyer was on the US national swimming team. How do we compete with that, Elena? Summer asked. Her words rushed out like a fast-moving train. Hyper-speed was her default setting.

She twirled a red chunk of hair tight around her finger. We sat on my bed with a bag of Bugles and last years September issue of Spread Your Wings in front of us. Even though we both had our own subscriptions, we still liked to flip through one copy together. Summer kept hers safe in a plastic bin underneath her bed.

You done? Summer would ask when we read.

Almost, Id say.

Summer read fast. I liked to do things carefully, absorb each word and let it sit in my brain until I was certain I understood what it meant.

We compete by being number one fans. I pointed across the room. I didnt keep my issues in a bin; Summer and I cut them up and taped them to my baby blue wall. Pages from the past two years of Spread Your Wings covered every inch of space, pictures and articles and Letters from the Editor, Akshita Balay. Bright pink (Summers) and yellow (mine) Post-it notes glowed in between the pages with our thoughts written on them. Practice for if we were ever picked to be Flyers and got to write our own essays for the magazine.

Yeah, but. Summer inhaled a Bugle. Only one of us should use it, we cant have our applications looking the same. Crumbs fell from her mouth and onto the comforter. She brushed them away with the back of her hand. Best friends arent grossed out by things like that, especially best friends since birth. Especially best friends who live right next door to each other. Our parents liked to tell the story of the first time we met, in our strollers, at the spot where our yards connect. They say we looked at each other like we knew we were being introduced to someone important.