Pushing Perfect(80)

I didn’t need to know any of those things to know that, for some reason, the ad was hilarious. I couldn’t help myself—I started laughing. And laughing and laughing and laughing, so hard that when I opened my eyes I could see my parents looking worried. But I couldn’t stop laughing. Because, for me, the tagline had turned out to be true.

Just not the way they meant it.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Thanks again to Melissa de la Cruz, Richard Abate, and everyone at Spilled Ink—I couldn’t have done this without you, and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to work with all of you.

Thanks to the team at HarperCollins, especially my amazing editor Jocelyn Davies and my publicist Gina Rizzo, who have both been fantastic and exceedingly patient with me.

Extra-special thanks to Katherine Bell, who helped me more with this book than is reasonable for any one person to do, particularly given everything she was going through at the time. She claims the book was a welcome distraction; I choose to believe it because her help was invaluable. Keep sending pics of V, please.

Thanks to all my friends who’ve provided moral support and advice, both online and off: Rebecca Johns Trissler, Brandon Trissler, Nami Mun, Gus Rose, Vu Tran, Elisa Lee, Caroline Sheerin, Mary Campbell, the Fearless Fifteeners, and the Group-That-Must-Not-Be-Named on Facebook.

Thanks to my high school friends, who were so incredibly supportive when my first book came out, after the acknowledgments had already gone to press. Vicky Morville helped me with web design; Nadine Levin created wonderful bookmarks, and Mary-Jo Rolnick, Elisa Goldberg, and Cristina Miedema were the best cheerleaders ever.

Finally, thanks, as always, to my family.