End of the Innocence (37 page)

Authors: John Goode

Tags: #Young Adult, #Contemporary, #Gay, #Romance

Your story is as, if not more, important than the one you just read. You cannot let the people whose hearts are filled with hate beat you down. You just can’t. We are all people, and we are all deserving of respect. And you can’t let anyone take that away from you. Ever.

I posted these in the last book, but I am going to repost them again in case you missed them.

If you are a gay or lesbian student being bullied in high school, you can contact the It Gets Better Project at http://www.itgetsbetter.org. If you are just someone being bullied in high school, regardless of your sexuality, you can find help at http://stopbullying.gov.

If you are a parent of a gay or lesbian teen and want information or resources on talking to them about it, please go to
http://
www.pflag.org
.

You are not alone, and it
does
get better. There is always another choice out there, and if you think you are alone, you are not. If you are feeling suicidal, please visit http:// www.suicide.org/gay-and-lesbian-suicide.html for help.

I am not going to lie to you and say that all stories have a happy ending. I hated to hear that when I was a kid, and I hate it now. It’s not true. Some stories end horribly, so it is just an untrue statement. Instead I say this: happy endings are for people who make their own. If you sit around the house waiting for some lady to appear with a magic wand and make things all better, you have a long-ass wait ahead of you. People can and will hate you for any reason they can think of. I don’t know why they do it, but they do, and it sucks.

What sucks worse, though, is when you let those people make you hate yourself. Don’t do that. Why would you hate yourself? I like you. I bet my friends would like you…. I am not so sure about my cat because he is a dick, but he would fake liking you if you had tuna.

Life isn’t about what other people think of you. It’s about what
you
think of you. If you are going to let other people cloud the way you think about yourself, then you are going to be miserable for most of your life, and there is nothing I can do to help. But if you like yourself despite what people around you say and don’t give into the hatred and darkness that seems to be everywhere….

Then let me be a magic Kindle for you, if only for a few seconds.

You’re going to end up just fine.

Don’t give up, not yet.

John Goode

Sitting by the second
window at Nancy’s
with my laptop open

About the Author

J
OHN
G
OODE
is a member of the class of ’88 from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, specializing in incantations and spoken spells. At the age of fourteen, he proudly represented District 13 in the 65th Panem games, where he was disqualified for crying uncontrollably before the competition began. After that he moved to Forks, Washington, where against all odds he dated the hot, incredibly approachable werewolf instead of the stuck-up jerk of a vampire, but was crushed when he found out the werewolf was actually gayer than he was. After that he turned down the mandatory operation everyone must receive at sixteen to become pretty, citing that everyone pretty was just too stupid to live, before moving away for greener pastures. After falling down an oddly large rabbit hole, he became huge when his love for cakes combined with his inability to resist the commands of sparsely worded notes, and was finally kicked out when he began playing solitaire with the Red Queen’s 4th armored division. By eighteen he had found the land in the back of his wardrobe, but decided that thinly veiled religious allegories were not the neighbors he desired. When last seen, he had become obsessed with growing a pair of wings after discovering Fang’s blog and hasn’t been seen since.

Or he is this guy who lives in this place and writes stuff he hopes you read.

Meet Brad and Kyle in