Is It Love?

Welcome to Teen Fiction Cafe, the place to go to talk about every topic under the sun with some of your favorite YA authors! For those of you who don't know me, I'm Lauren Baratz-Logsted and I wrote several novels in various genres before having my first YA novel, ANGEL'S CHOICE, published in December. I live in Danbury, CT, with my husband, Greg Logsted, whose own first novel for tweens will pub in 2008, and our seven-year-old daughter, whose writing talents put both of us in the shade.

So that's me. With no further ado then, off we go!

In ANGEL'S CHOICE, from the very beginning readers know Angel is in love with Danny Stanton, high-school basketball star. Angel and Danny have a history of connecting at parties when neither is with anyone else and Angel is sure that one day Danny will see the reason for this pattern is that he is in love with her too. Her best friend thinks she's delusional. But when Angel gets in trouble - it's not giving away any state secrets to tell you Angel finds herself pregnant - it's Danny Stanton who becomes one of her biggest defenders. Some readers, looking at this, wonder where the groundwork for it is. Because, it's true, Danny does behave like a jerk towards Angel in the beginning. But I wrote Danny Stanton because I know Danny Stanton. Angel's story is not my story, but I know Danny Stanton very well.

Can I be the only female in the history of the world who has fallen in love with a guy who everyone else is certain cannot possibly return those feelings...and yet...and yet? OK, it happened to me no less than three times during high school and college. I would develop huge feelings for some guy and there would be times when we'd connect and I'd be sure the guy felt something for me other than what my friends thought they saw - that he was using me. And then, sometimes it would take years for it to happen, but eventually there would be one night and a huge revelation.

One of the more spectacular of these instances happened when I was in college. A friend of mine and I met these two guys that were also friends at the same party. The four of us spent the whole night, into the early hours of the morning, hanging out together, getting to know each other and finally pairing off. I was immediately so into this guy. I've always had a quirky sense of humor but this guy got every one of my jokes, even finished them for me, and the mirror image was true too. He'd start some riff and I would just run with it. If I used such phrases at the time, I would have said we were soul mates. When we looked into each others eyes, it was like we totally *got* each other.

But then the next day came and the next and my friend kept seeing the guy she'd met that night while the guy I met had...cooled. Oh, he was still pleasant enough, but it was like he wouldn't be alone with me and, somehow, it came across to my brain that he *couldn't* be alone with me. Still, I obsessed about him. With no concrete evidence that he felt anything remotely for me like what I was feeling towards him, I obsessed about him. And I told everyone about my feelings for him, and my certainty that he returned those feelings, to the point where other people were sick of it. So I stopped talking about it out loud. But inside, I still knew.

Then came the night, long after that first night, when a group of us were out and he was in that group. For some reason, everyone else but us was gone from the table at the same time. Were they giving away free munchies? Did everyone, guys and girls, all have to go to the bathroom at once? Who knows? All I know was, there he was, and there I was, alone, together.

It was quiet at that table for a long moment. He looked me in the eyes and it was like being right back at that first night we met, keying right into each other, and then he started talking. He told me he'd been in love with me ever since that first night, that he wanted to get me out of his head, couldn't get me out of his head, had to get me out of his head, because he still felt the same and it was too big for him, it was too scary, it was bigger than anything he'd ever felt.

I will confess: I wished I'd had a tape recorder with me. Here was validation that I wasn't crazy. My extraordinary love *was* returned. And we did spend the rest of that night talking, living in each other's heads, keying into each other once more. Soul mates. But then morning came and he went back to being the same scared-of-love person he was all along, and that was that. I was done with it. Fool for love that I've always been, even I couldn't bring myself to go on carrying the torch for someone who was too scared of their own feelings, too scared of love to leap. So I moved on. But I still wished I'd had a tape recording of that conversation because, I swear, when I told my friends the next day that I'd been proved right, that he *did* really love me down deep, they all still thought I was delusional. But I knew. And that was at least something. It was nice to know I wasn't crazy, even if everyone else still thought I was.

So thats my story for the day and now here's my question for the day: HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN LOVE WITH SOMEONE AND, AGAINST ALL EVIDENCE, GONE ON BELIEVING THAT THAT PERSON RETURNED YOUR FEELINGS?

Thanks for listening. Don't forget to write.

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