About the Book:
My name is Holiday Sanchez. I carry a heavy burden.
But I’m not the only one.
There are others who know what it feels like to remember. Maybe they are the answer. Maybe we can help each other. Maybe I’ll finally get past it.
Maybe it just takes time—and a little bit of magic.
Read an Excerpt from Me & Milo the Great
Then
Chapter 1
I didn’t call him my father.
Even when he still lived in our house, slept in the room next to mine, ate at the same kitchen table. It wasn’t something I planned. It just happened. I can’t tell you why. I was too young. Maybe he told me not to call him Dad. Maybe he didn’t think of himself as one so he didn’t want me thinking of him like that. Maybe he didn’t want that closeness to me. I don’t know.
People always thought that was strange. I guess to someone on the outside, it would be.
But I just called him what everyone else did. It was normal for them and normal for me.
Stan.
My mother would say, “Stan, would you take Holiday to the store with you?” I’d follow Stan to the car. He wouldn’t speak to me. He was a man of few words. Most of the time he wouldn’t even look at me.
There aren’t enough words to explain what it’s like to be in the presence of someone who doesn’t acknowledge you. There were times I’d try to catch his eye and find something familiar, something good in his face. There were times I wondered how my mother even came to know him. She never spoke of it.
From the time I was little, I would make up conversations with him in my head when we were together. In my head I’d say, “Stan, I learned how to ride my bike.” And (again in my head), he’d say back, “Great job, Holiday! I knew you could do it.” Or he’d say, “Holiday, what do you think of going for ice cream today?” (We never got ice cream in the real world.) And I’d laugh and grab his hand, and we’d walk to the corner of York and Taber, talking about the weather, the neighborhood, and my schoolwork, and then we’d order sundaes and eat them on the patio together. This is what would play in my head while I sat next to him in the car in silence, staring straight ahead, running my fingernail in the crack between the car door and the glass window.
It sounds crazy, right—having made-up conversations with your own father? I know that’s what you’re thinking. Why didn’t you just talk to him, if that’s what you wanted to do? Well, it’s not that simple.
And maybe I’m crazy. Did that cross your mind? That I’m stretching the truth, bending it to my benefit? Maybe I made up the animosity between us. Maybe Stan wasn’t so bad. Even if you believe I might be a bit irrational, a bit unhinged, nothing I will say or do is as crazy as what he did. That was crazy. And horrific. And makes me want to curl up in a fetal position when I think of it.
Yes, Stan was crazy. But that wasn’t all.
You see, Stan was evil. He harbored demons within him. We both knew it, Mom and me, but it wasn’t easy to escape.
Do you know what it’s like to have a man like that raise you? I don’t know you. Maybe you do.
Here’s the thing. I do know what it’s like. I know it very well.
But here’s what I don’t know, and I wish I did: Can someone come out the other side of it?
I have to believe that I can.
About the Author:
Michelle Schlicher is the author of five realistic, contemporary novels, including The Blue Jay, Gracie's Song, Come This Way, Me & Milo the Great and The Way of Lessons, as well as one children's book, A Gnome Story: Adventures with Murphy McWoo. She lives with her family in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa.
