Phoebe's Diary

by Phoebe Wahl

Genres: YA Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Drawn from real life, here is a bracingly honest diary of a teenage girl that captures the explosive turmoil and joy of adolescence.
 
Meet Phoebe. She’s cool and insecure, talented and vulnerable, sexy and awkward, driven and confused, ecstatic and tragic.

Like you.

And here is her diary, packed full of invaluable friends and heartbreaking crushes, spectacular playlists and vintage outfits, drama nerds and art kids, old wounds and new love. Based on her own teenage diary, Phoebe Wahl has melded truth with fiction and art with text, casting a spell that brings readers deep into the experience of growing up.

Release date: September 5, 2023

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 256

Sample

I’m afraid of how hot it’s going to be on our trip. We’re leaving in a week and a half, right after the summer play ends, for a family road trip to Montana. What if I get heatstroke like I did the time Roxie and I sat at the park for hours while Mom hosted her harmonizing workshop at our house, and I almost passed out on the bike ride home? Plus, Roxie will probably mock me because I’m not tan, and because my only swimsuit is a one-piece.

I barely ate anything today too, which might be contributing to the headache. I just wasn’t very hungry… maybe it’s the heat. Or because I’m nervous about the first performance of the play. OR that I’m dreading our family road trip… or maybe the fact that I’m desperately in love…

Torn, between three different men.

I AM feeling nervous about the play, though. I’m afraid of people being better than me. I get so jealous of the other actors. It’s the same way with my art. I even got jealous of the old people in the figure-drawing class I took last year, who had about 60 years more practice than I did.

Everyone always “raves” about what a “good artist” and actor I am, but I know I’m not, compared to a lot of people who are even just a few years older than me.… Everyone who is in the play has acted before. And it’s true a lot of them are juniors and seniors, but even the other people my age, like Nora and Nathan, were in the school plays last year as freshmen, if only just as chorus. I was in drama class but was too nervous to audition for any plays until the summer came around… even though my teacher, Ms. Hanley, was always encouraging me to. Ugh, what have I gotten myself into? Maybe I should pretend this headache turns into the bubonic plague so I can’t perform.

ANYWAY. The first object of my love is Owen McCloud.

Here is what I know about Owen McCloud. He’s 16 and lives in the cohousing community down by the creek, which means there’s a good chance our families know each other through the hippie grapevine.

He’s always finding excuses to sit next to me during rehearsal and laughs when I laugh. He makes a lot of eye contact. I like him better than David… for the moment. There’s such an intensity about David, I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Owen seems more honest, and relatable. Plus, he’s only a year older than me (he’ll be a junior this fall). And David will be a senior, which does feel a little out of my league.

Which brings me to love interest #2, David Berglund.

David is ridiculously smart. Last night I read all his blogs on Myspace.

They were so philosophical and deep that I had to read each post about 15 times before I understood what he was talking about. But nonetheless I found myself kind of falling in love with his words.… He also has lots of outdoorsy pictures on his profile.… I’m a bit intimidated by his wholesome nature-y-ness actually. What if we did start dating, and he was such a mountain-man sage that he could never really BE with me? What if he loved shrubs and beavers more than me? What if he expected me to, like… scale Everest with him but I wasn’t in good enough shape and he just left me huffing and puffing in the snow?

At rehearsal recently he said, “You did really good today” (or something of that nature). I was surprised, partly because he’d never talked to me before, and because I only have a small role and there isn’t really any chance to do much intense acting. I said, “Thanks, you did good too” (which he did) and he said, “Thanks.”

Maybe he’s too shy to talk to me, even though he doesn’t seem like a shy person around anyone else.… I think maybe I like him more than Owen.…

Love interest #3 is Lukas Viitala.…

Lukas is less of a factor actually… because he’s just so out of my league. And I think he likes Mari. Everyone likes Mari. And it doesn’t help that she plays his love interest in the play.

I play his mother—so he’s already predisposed to see me as more of a matronly teapot than a female human with sex appeal. Although he does kiss me on the cheek in the play. But it’s more of a mother-son peck.… It WAS my first cheek kiss, though (from someone outside my family). But I didn’t tell him that. I made it seem like I get kissed on the cheek by Scandinavian-sex-god seniors all the time.

Lukas is always nice to me but we barely interact outside the scenes we’re in together.… He generally hangs out with the other seniors—Mari, David, and Annie—during rehearsals.

I wish I could skateboard so we’d have something to talk about. Once I stood on Roxie’s longboard for like three seconds and fell off. He’d probably like her better since she’s into skateboarding and more his type: petite, thin, and cool. I asked if she knew him and she said they had Spanish class together. So he can speak three languages. HOT.

Anyway. I don’t think he’ll ever like me, but a girl can dream, right?

Owen likes me. I think.

Actually, I have no idea, but it’s my secret suspicion he does.

Which isn’t even secret, because I shared it with Roxie. She didn’t know who he was, even when I showed her his picture in the yearbook. She probably thinks I’m kidding myself that he could like me, but at least she’s humoring me, for now.

Today it was pouring rain, and everyone came to my house to rehearse. We usually practice in Mari Blume’s yard, because it’s big and open enough for us to do our blocking (since it’s the summer play, we’re not on the school stage). But because of the rain we needed to be indoors, and Mari couldn’t find her key and her parents weren’t home, so we were locked out. Ms. Hanley, our director, said, “Does anyone else live nearby? Looks like we need a different practice spot today.” Mari lives right next to me, so I suggested everyone go to my house. My heart was pounding because I was nervous at the thought. But I knew it might be my only chance in history to have cool, popular people over, like Annie and Lukas (aka the most utterly beautiful human you will ever witness) and David and Owen (not too shabby themselves). Plus, I wanted to save the day.

As we left Mari’s, Owen said, “Where’s your house?”

I said, “Down there,” and pointed through the trees. I asked whether he thought we should take the trail or the road. Owen said, “Let’s brave the outdoors,” and smiled his adorable smile. I didn’t have the heart to point out that the road was also outdoors. So down the trail we went.

It felt funny leading Mari down the trail, as if we hadn’t scrambled down it a million times together. Before Mari was the cool, popular queen of the Thespians that she is today, we were friends as kids. Our moms met working together at Planned Parenthood in the 80s or something, and then Mari’s family moved in next door. She was home-schooled like us, so she and Roxie and I would play together almost every day growing up. What we did isn’t the kind of homeschooling most people think of when they hear the word—everyone is always surprised Roxie and I aren’t, like, backwoods evangelical extremists or reclusive, hard-core intellectuals. Our homeschooling was on the more relaxed, lefty side of things… no curriculums, no homework, no real structure at all. I was a “kindergarten dropout,” as Mom likes to say. I started like everyone else when I was five but immediately hated it because there wasn’t enough time to draw, and my parents said Roxie and I were “losing our sparks” (she was in fourth grade when we left). So, Mom started reading all kinds of books about radical unschooling and decided to pull us out. At home, “school” basically consisted of drawing all day and playing outside for hours on end. Most people can’t believe it when I tell them I did whatever I wanted every day and are so surprised we don’t have zero social skills. But it’s not like we were being cloistered away in some remote cave.

Roxie and Mari and I would put on plays for our families, record pretend radio shows on cassette tapes, and go on all kinds of hikes and field trips, like to the science center in Vancouver, or to the Seattle Art Museum, or midnight clamming on the beach with Dad.

Since Roxie is the oldest, she was always the leader, and Mari was kind of the second-in-command.

In summertime, we’d meet up early in the morning and play together all day with the other kids in the neighborhood, making forts and picking plums and playing sardines or hide-and-go-seek in and out of neighbors’ yards.

That’s when we bushwhacked the trail through the blackberry-covered bank below Mari’s house, and it became a permanent path. It comes out at the top of our driveway, making the perfect shortcut between our houses.

I still take it sometimes to go up to her house for rehearsal. But she probably forgot it even exists. Or is at least pretending like it in front of everyone else. A relic of when she was uncool enough to have been friends with me. Everything started falling apart when Roxie and Mari both decided to go back to public school, Mari for seventh grade and Roxie for high school. Roxie started to get too cool, and Mari started making other friends. It just got awkward and I was kind of left behind. The family gatherings kept going but they weren’t the same. Mari would bring a book and read quietly in the corner, and Roxie would disappear into her room.

I’m sure Mari would die if the other people in the play found out our families are so close.

Last year, when I decided to start high school part time, I was secretly hoping Mari and I could be friends again, but she didn’t talk to me. She’s only started to a little bit now that we’re in the play. I bet her mom said she had to be nice to me or else.

Sorry, had to go eat dinner.

ANYHOO… Owen and I were kind of alone, ahead of everyone else going down the trail. The most alone we’ve ever been, since usually there’s other people around at rehearsal. We didn’t say anything to each other, but it wasn’t an awkward silence, just a silence. My legs were shaking as I walked because I was nervous about falling on my ass on the muddy trail in front of Owen, who was loping gracefully down the path with his hands in his pockets, like some kind of goddamn forest elf.

I kept being surprised at how close he was behind me. Ms. Hanley and the rest of the cast were all a ways behind us on the trail. Wouldn’t he hang back with them if he DIDN’T like me? Was he excited to go to my house???

I thought about running ahead to hide any pictures of Roxie, so he didn’t realize I had a cooler, prettier, older sister and decide to like her instead.…

Every time I’d glance back at him, he’d just smile, the same smile he gives me whenever I catch his eye at rehearsals. It looks kind of like, “Hi, it’s just me.” And it makes my heart skip. It’s SO hard to break eye contact whenever we make it, it’s like I’m being sucked into a vortex of blue and can’t look away. Must. Keep. Eyes. On. Path. So. I. Don’t. Fall. On. My. Ass.

When we got to my house, Owen was looking all around, and that was another thing that made me think he likes me. Because he was acting a bit like I would act if I was in the house of someone I like, just quietly taking everything in. He stared at some of my paintings on the wall, and I wondered if he knew I made them. Throughout rehearsal, he sat on two different chairs and a stool, and I wondered if he was trying to sit on as many pieces of MY furniture as possible. He asked if he could have a glass of water, and I wondered if he wanted to touch MY glasses and drink MY water. And of course, I wondered if I was imagining everything. If I was taking the very smallest hints and running wild with them, just like I always do, because I want it SO badly to be true that he likes me.

He probably just thinks I’m a nice person, or a good actor and artist, and wants to be my friend. Maybe he’s one of those overly nice people who make you think they like you because they’re just so kind and genuine… like maybe he knows I like him and he’s humoring me out of pity, and because he’s too nice to turn me down.

Ugh, how embarrassing.

It’s best to keep my hopes down, because it’s always when I’m not expecting it that exciting things happen.

Mari acted like she’d never even been to my hous. . .