Kendrick - Scrappy Little Nobody

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First Touchstone hardcover edition November 2016

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Interior design by Jill Putorti

Illustrations and endpaper design by Robin Eisenberg

Photograph on by Joan Marcus

Photograph on by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Jacket design by Cherlynne Li

Jacket photograph by Pamela Littky

Back jacket photograph courtesy of the author

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kendrick, Anna. author.

Title: Scrappy little nobody / Anna Kendrick.

Description: First Touchstone hardcover edition. | New York : Touchstone, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016031452 (print) | LCCN 2016037478 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501117206 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501157493 (trade paper) | ISBN 9781508213550 (audio) | ISBN 9781471156847 (Ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Kendrick, Anna. | ActorsUnited StatesBiography. | SingersUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC PN2287.K6513 A3 2016 (print) | LCC PN2287.K6513 (ebook) | DDC 792.02/8092 [B] dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031452

ISBN 978-1-5011-1720-6

ISBN 978-1-5011-1723-7 (ebook)

To Mike, watch out for the icy patch.

I m sure Ive mixed up the timeline and contradicted myself, but Ive tried to get it right. Ive changed some names to protect the innocentand to protect my mother from people in her book club coming at her like, Thats not how my kid remembers that day in preschool. A lot of things that are meaningful to me didnt make the cut because they just werent entertaining. For example, my childhood best friend Meg isnt in the book at all because it turns out my mom was right: those stories really are only funny to the two of us.

1. braid hair

2. arrange books by color

3. do homework on the floor

4. feng shui room

5. magazine collage

6. lie in yard with Walkman

W hen I was thirteen I started making lists. Ive always liked structure, and I thought if I broke it down into steps, I could will myself to fit in. My idea of normal came mainly from film and television, and with that as my guide, I wrote down the kinds of things a normal girl might be doing when a boy showed up unexpectedly at her house. Of course, the one time a boy showed up unexpectedly at my house, he found this list.

Jared was one of the popular kids at school. We werent close, but he was a neighbor, so he occasionally came by. This was the only time hed ever arrived unannounced. He spotted my notebook, opened it, and started reading out loud.

Oh god, thats stupid. Seriously, put that down, its nothing. I was in a full-out panic. Come on, Anna, why would you generate written evidence of your social and emotional ineptitude and leave it lying around?

As soon as he left, I ripped the pages out of my journal and burned them in the bathroom sink. The fire made the house stink of carbon for days. When my mom and dad came home I told them Id been burning incense. I doubt my parents believed me, but they could sense my desperate need to drop the issue, so they moved on. That night, I resolved to keep the crazy inside my head where it belonged. Forever. But heres the thing about crazy: It. Wants. Out.

Once Id moved out of the house at seventeen and there was less threat of unwanted guests pawing through my belongings, I attempted to keep a journal again. I managed only about a dozen entries over a period of two years, but I never did burn it.

Last year I found this journal. My handwriting as an angsty teen was appalling, yet somehow better than it is now. And the subject to which I devoted the most pages (besides my virginity) was the fear that I would failin all thingsand have to go back home to Maine with my tail between my legs.

I had thought my younger self assumed everything would work outthat I was possessed of some reckless confidence you only have in youth. Otherwise, how could I have been fool enough to try? But the journal wasnt quixotic, it was fearful. The terror was so present, yet I was doing it anyway.

Shit , I thought, I used to be tough. I used to be brave. I used to be a better version of me . Lately I cant paint my bedroom walls without asking ten people for their opinion and eventually talking myself out of it altogether.

Id moved away from everything I knew and loved at seventeen in spite of how scared I was. I wondered if I would still have it in me to do something I found so daunting. Arent you supposed to get more independent as you get older? Shouldnt I be bolder, more self-sufficient? Have I gotten comfortable? Have I stopped pushing myself the way I did when I was trying to make something of myself? Was that a fluke?

I texted my brother.

Me: I miss being a scrappy little nobody. I was much more capable.

Mike: Dude.

Mike: Youre still scrappy. You just get a lot more emails now.

Mike: P.S.

Mike: Youre still a little nobody to me.

As if I had asked the universe to send me an example of something intimidatinga test to see if I still had some nervethe opportunity arose to write a book. Sure, it will be hard, but all you need to be a writer is perseverance, a low-level alcohol dependency, and a questionable moral compass. Is that not what you need? Well, Ive got a bunch of embarrassing stories. And Ill keep the rest of that stuff in my back pocket.

Thanks to my old friend Jared, Im a pretty private person. I never let anyone, not even friends, into my bedroom or my purse. I have a small stroke anytime someone asks to use my laptop; I only use that thing to look for porn and the definitions of words I should already know. Yet Ive chosen to commit intimate details of my life and psyche to the page. So, step into my brain, kids!