A Heart in a Body in the World

A Heart in a Body in the World 1


Annabelle Agnelli is trying to hold it together in the parking lot of Dick's Drive-In. After what just happened, she's stunned. Frozen. And then-imagine it-Annabelle's wrecked self suddenly takes off like a lightning bolt. She's clutching the white bag, which has the unfortunate word, Dick's, stamped across it in orange. Her burger is still warm. She's holding the Coke, too, which sloshes like a stormy sea as she tries to outrun the bad visions of the recent past. French fries spring loose in the bag, and it shakes around like a maraca.

Of course she's heard that saying-A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Coach Kwan has a poster of it in his office. It shows the silhouette of a girl at sunset, running up a steep mountain path, and it's all clouds parting and God rays shining down and purple mountain majesties. There is no panic and dropped napkins and hair flying. That poster does not look like this.

Where is she going? No idea.

Why is she going? Well, sometimes you just snap. Snapping is easy when you're already brittle from the worst possible thing happening. It is easy when you're broken and guilty and scared. You snap just like that. Like the snap has been waiting around for the right moment.

So, now, Annabelle Agnelli is no longer trying to hold it together in the Dick's Drive-In parking lot. She's lost it. Utterly lost it. She's ditched her car entirely, and she's jogging down the sidewalk, fast, at a really good clip. Coach Kwan would be proud. She's getting sweaty and her mind is swirling, and it's all a little unhinged for the straight-A student that she is. She is a good and nice person who keeps things together, but that has been a big job, an enormous job, a job that's way, way too big for her lately.

It gets worse. Of course, this is what often happens: Things get worse and worse still. A spiral follows gravity downward. She's been running for who knows how long, and it

Deb Caletti is the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of over sixteen books for adults and young adults, including Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, a finalist for the National Book Award; A Heart in a Body in the World, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book; Girl, Unframed; and One Great Lie. Her books have also won the Josette Frank Award for Fiction, the Washington State Book Award, and numerous other state awards and honors, and she was a finalist for the PEN USA Award. She lives with her family in Seattle.

A guy in a parking lot leers at her, and Annabelle Agnelli takes off running. Eleven miles later, she stops, only to realize that running is exactly what she needs to do. Not just an impromptu, panic-stricken bolt, but an outlandishly extreme run that will take her from Seattle to Washington, D.C. It might help with her PTSD, and it might help her come to terms with her body. It will surely give her time to mourn the terrible losses of the previous year, and atone for the role she was never meant to play. This remarkable book traces Annabelle's cross-country adventure while gradually peeling apart the events that led to the trauma she's running from. Annabelle was on the rebound from a disrupted relationship when she befriends a socially awkward boy, now known only as "The Taker." Annabelle couldn't decide if he was weird or cute and tried not to encourage him, but looking back, she is tormented by her every smile and kindness. Through Annabelle, Caletti rips apart the contradictions of a society that commands women to be compliant and pleasing and then blames them for male responses to their attractiveness, however violent they might be. This timely, well-written novel is crucial reading in the days of #metoo. - Diane Colson Booklist *STARRED REVIEW* June 1, 2018