The Next Great Jane
Dial Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
Copyright © 2020 by K. L. Going
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Going, K. L. (Kelly L.) author. Title: The next great Jane / K. L. Going.
Description: New York : Dial Books for Young Readers, [2020] | Audience: Ages 10–14. | Audience: Grades 7–9. | Summary: “Jane, a budding writer and Jane Austen fan, discovers the true secret to writing when a famous author and her cute, but annoying, son come to her small coastal town and play seemingly unwitting roles in affecting the custody battle between Jane’s Hollywood mother and marine biologist father”— Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019038768 (print) | LCCN 2019038769 (ebook) | ISBN 9780803734753 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780698408777 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Authors—Fiction. | Custody of children—Fiction. | Remarriage—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | Maine—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.G559118 Nex 2020 (print) | LCC PZ7.G559118 (ebook) | DDC
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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For Ashton Paul Adams
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty- Four
Chapter Twenty-five
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
Nothing important ever happened in Whickett Harbor, Maine. So, it figured that the two biggest things to hit the town in a decade would occur on the exact same night. One of them even threatened to cancel out the other, but I was not about to let a hurricane keep me from meeting a best-selling author.
Little did I know, the hurricane would bring more trouble than I bargained for, including: the most annoying boy I’d ever met, a night of disaster, and worst of all . . . my mother, fresh from Hollywood.
Well, you know what they say: a good story is full of trouble.
* * *
“Emmett? Jane? Anyone home?” The voice drifting through the front door belonged to the coolest person I knew. Ana Taylor was my babysitter, our housekeeper, car fixer-upper, weekly planner, and all around Most Important Person Ever. Without Ana, Dad and I would be lost.
“In here!” me and Dad called out at the exact same time.
For Dad, “in here” meant he had his head stuck in the refrigerator, making sure he wasn’t missing any stray jars of seawater. He’s an ocean scientist, and there’s only one way to describe how he feels about his plankton samples: true love.
For me, “in here” meant I was in my writing nook. Our old-fashioned kitchen has a huge cupboard set into the wall that used to have shelves until Ana knocked the top ones out with a sledge hammer. As long as I bring a flashlight, it’s the best place to create, like I’m in a hobbit hole or a secret compartment.
Ana sighed. “Should’ve known. Either of you planning on emerging any time soon?”
I swung open the cupboard door and jumped down. “Please, please tell me that the library event hasn’t been canceled.”
“Hello to you too, Jane.” Ana tousled my hair. She’s known me since I was in kindergarten, so she’s allowed. “It’s still on. They really don’t want to call it off.”
In the whole history of the town, there had never been an event of this magnitude, and if we canceled now, J. E. Fairfax might never come back.
Ana frowned. “Emmett?”
Dad tried to emerge from the refrigerator, bumped his head, then smacked his hand when he went to touch the bumped spot. Dad is tall, built like a lumberjack with broad shoulders, and he frequently collides with the furniture in our old house. “Ooh. Oh. Ouch. Sorry. Hello, Ana.”
He scrunched up his nose and chuckled as if he knew exactly how nerdy he was.
“You’re staying home tonight, right?” Ana pressed. “Weather report says the brunt of the storm won’t hit until ten, but the wind’s picking up already.”
Dad shook his head. “Got to get these samples to the lab in case our power goes out. I’ll probably sleep there. Need to make sure nothing gets damaged.”
Dad regularly gathered samples on his boat and then carted them home until he could return to the lab. It was a standing rule that no one ever ate or drank anything from our fridge that wasn’t clearly labeled.
“Really?” Ana frowned. “Shouldn’t you stay here with Jane?”
My father scratched his chin as if that idea hadn’t occurred to him. “Right. Yes. Maybe I should come back. It’s just . . .” He gave Ana the pleading face he reserved for convincing her to work extra hours. “These samples are invaluable resources for the oceanography community around the globe. If anything happened at the lab, we’d have lost them.”
He seemed to think we should be horrified at the idea.
Ana put her hands on both hips. “Oh no, Emmett Brannen. Those big brown eyes of yours aren’t going to sway me this time. The fact is, you wouldn’t have to worry about these samples if you’d learned to work the generator like I told you.”
Dad looked shame-faced. The thing about generators is that they aren’t as simple as most people think. You don’t just throw a switch when your power goes out. You’ve got to maintain a generator—turn it on periodically and make sure all of the spark plugs and such are working. I’d heard Ana remind Dad about it a hundred times, but no matter what, when it came time to flick that switch, our generator was never in working condition.
Ana was a petite blond spitfire. She could chop a cord of wood, outwork half the men in the Whickett Harbor Volunteer Fire Department, and fix your flatbed truck in her spare time. The only thing Dad could do with your flatbed truck was remember where he parked it.
If you were lucky.
“Ana,” he said, “these are red tide samples from off Monhegan Island.”
She j
ust narrowed her eyes.
Dad shuffled his feet. “Well . . . Jane could come with me and we could sleep at the lab.”
“No. Way.” I shook my head. “I am not missing J. E. Fairfax’s talk. You know I’ve been waiting for this forever.”
Dad raised one eyebrow in my direction. “Forever, huh? You’re only twelve. Besides, she doesn’t even write for kids; she writes trashy romance novels. I’m pretty sure all of her advice will be aimed at adults.”
“Her novels are not trashy, Dad,” I argued. “The New York Times called them ‘sweeping, romantic sagas full of high drama.’” The library had used that quote on their posters, and I’d memorized it because it sounded incredible. “Every one of her books is a best seller, and three of them have been made into movies.”
Ana grinned dreamily. “I adore her movies. There are always two people who are meant for each other, but they can’t see the truth until fate forces them together.”
“Remember that one with the guy in the military who moved away from his childhood sweetheart? Then years later they found each other again—”
“Oh, I loved that one!” Ana clapped excitedly.
Dad cleared his throat, giving us his best bewildered expression. “Could we get back to the point? Ana, could you, possibly—”
“Uh-uh.” Ana crossed her arms over her chest. “I need to be at my apartment to look in on Mrs. Wallace next door. She practically had a conniption when I left to get Jane. She’s so worked up about this storm, she’ll probably have a stroke.”
“We could do rock, paper, scissors,” Dad suggested.
Ana threw her hands up. “No! We couldn’t. You need to stay home with your daughter. Period!”
There was a long moment of silence where none of us said a word, but finally my father relented. “Okay. You’re right. I’ll pick Jane up at the library after these samples are stored properly, and I’ll ask Marty to check in on the lab later tonight.”
Ana beamed. “Thank you. I knew you’d make the right choice.” She practically glowed.
Dad ran a hand through his sandy blond hair, making it stick out in weird directions. “Well, I’d better get moving if I’m going to be back in time. Thanks for dropping Jane off at the author thing.” He picked up one of the coolers, then paused. “You know you’re amazing, right?”
Dad had been telling Ana that for years. She blushed and made the same scoffing noise she usually made.
As Dad walked past, he nudged me in the ribs. “Have fun. Remember this night when you’re supporting me in my old age with the fortune you make on your writing.”
I rolled my eyes. “Your jokes are terrible.”
Dad grinned and I shoved him the rest of the way out the door. He loaded the coolers in the back of the truck, then climbed into the cab and leaned out the open window. “Once we get home, we can watch movies until the lights go out. We’ve got popcorn and dill seasoning, right sprite?”
Those were the only two grocery items Dad never forgot to stock up on.
“Yup.” I waved as he backed out.
Sounded perfect. A chance to learn the tricks of the writing trade from a famous author, followed by a whole evening hanging out with my father during a hurricane? What more could a girl ask for?
Too bad that’s not even close to how the evening turned out.
CHAPTER TWO
My best friend, Kitty, wants to be a model, and she’s willing to suffer for it. I’ve watched her freeze in an off-the-shoulder sweater mid-winter, squeeze her feet into pointy-toed heels, chase after flimsy hand-knitted berets when the sea breeze snatched them off her head, and wriggle her bottom into pants two sizes too small.
Writers, on the other hand, are allowed to look any way we want, but tonight was a special occasion. The only authors the library had ever hosted were Twyla Jenkins, who’d written The Downeast Guide to Lobster Casseroles, and Georgie Doyle, who’d written a memoir called The One that Got Away. So, when news came around that the internationally known romance author J. E. Fairfax would be in town, they’d planned a cocktail party—the height of sophistication. I didn’t want anyone to say I wasn’t just as committed to my future as Kitty, so I’d done something I hadn’t done for ten years.
I’d put on a dress.
I knew it had been ten years, because the last time I’d worn a dress was right before my mother moved to California. She’d gotten me all dolled up for a mother-daughter photo. We had matching pink gowns and sparkly tiaras. I’m only two years old, but I have on lip gloss, blush, and real diamond earrings. My not-quite curly hair is twirled into jet-black ringlets, and Mom’s hair is styled to match. We look utterly ridiculous.
To top it all off, Mom hadn’t thought things out very well, because the ear piercings were brand-new. She’d taken me to Claire’s boutique right before we got our pictures taken and I’d screamed my head off, so my face is all red and blotchy beneath the makeup.
When Dad tells this story it sounds like the funniest thing ever, but we both know that the very next day Mom moved to California to become an actress. Now she’s got the framed 8 x 10 version of that photo hanging on the wall of her apartment, and when I make my mandatory visits, she points it out and says, “Sweet baby Jane. We’ve always been so close.”
In what universe?
Some of the kids at school find it hard to believe that I’ve never been close with my mother, but when you haven’t lived with someone for a decade, and you only see them twice a year, it’s hard to feel like you really know them. I guess I think of my mom more like an aunt—a distant aunt who is my polar opposite.
If Mom were making me get dressed up tonight, I’d have dug in my heels, but since J. E. Fairfax was about to offer me the keys to my future, I wanted to look grown-up and sophisticated when I met her. Who knows? Maybe someday she’d remember the time she met Jane Brannen, future award-winning author, in Whickett Harbor, Maine.
As I checked my dress in the mirror for the hundredth time, Ana tapped her foot. “Can you move a little faster, Jane? You don’t want to be late.”
“Are you sure this isn’t too baggy?” I asked. I’d had to borrow a dress from Kitty, and like most of her wardrobe, it was pink, black, and white—the signature colors of the Hello Kitty brand. The bottom half had a silky fabric and the top half was plain pink with a cat face on the pocket. Kitty insisted the cat face was retro-chic.
“The dress looks great,” Ana said, tapping her fingers on our kitchen island. “It’s adorable. Very retro. Kitty knows what she’s doing.”
I grinned.
You wouldn’t think we’d be best friends, but Kitty is like my sister. Her parents died when she was small, so her grandmother (everyone calls her Granny V) raised her. Dad practically adopted her as well. When I got a tree fort, he built one for Kitty too. When I got a tire swing, so did Kitty. If there was a father-daughter event, he took us both. Granny V called herself my honorary grandmother because it was understood that Kitty and I were a pair.
Even though Kitty didn’t like to write, she did love to draw, so all our lives we’d created stories as a team. Our longest one was Two Princesses of Penmore, where Kitty found out that she was the undiscovered heiress to the Hello Kitty fortune. She inherited the Penmore Estate and we moved in together.
The Penmore Estate was a real place—a beautiful old mansion about a half hour from Whickett Harbor. It was tucked away in the woods, surrounded by a wrought iron fence, and no one I knew had ever been inside. Kitty and I were sure it was full of chandeliers, marble statues, spiral staircases, and ghosts of wealthy people.
While Kitty was busy pretending to be an heiress, I liked to pretend that I was descended from Jane Austen, one of the most famous writers of all time. She’s also Ana’s favorite author. Even when I was small, we’d curl up together and watch the movie versions of her books. Since Jane Austen lived in England during the 1800s,
all of her stories take place in that time period. There are floofy dresses, men in strange-looking pants, and lots of fancy language, but I don’t mind. Ana loves the romance of it all, and I love Ana, so things that make her happy make me happy too.
Now though, Ana frowned, staring out the window. “It sure is getting dark out there.”
I knew I’d better hurry up before she changed her mind about letting me go. “I’m ready.”
Ana looked me over with a critical eye. “Something is missing.”
“Really?” I looked down at my dress. It wasn’t exactly sophisticated, but I did have dangly earrings and matching shoes.
“You need a necklace.” Ana pulled a small box from her jacket pocket and handed it to me.
I wanted to throw my arms around her, but first I opened the box to see what was inside. Usually, I didn’t wear jewelry, but the necklace was perfect. The chain was a burnished bronze, and at the end was a small metal book charm. When I opened it, there was a dark silhouette of a woman’s profile on one side, and on the other side in flowing script, it said: Indulge your imagination in every possible flight. Jane Austen.
“I almost got you the one that said ‘obstinate, headstrong girl,’” Ana said, laughing, “but I chose this one instead. They’re handmade.” She paused. “I think every writer needs a talisman. Something to bring them luck. Don’t you agree?”
I nodded, unable to speak while my nose was sniffling and my eyes welled up. Ana pulled me into a hug and kissed the top of my head.
“You’re going to be the next great Jane,” she told me. “I’ve always said so.” For just a moment her voice was soft and wistful, but then she gave me a playful shove. “Except if we’re late, because then you’ll be a dismal failure.”
I laughed, then wiped my eyes and followed her out to her truck. “Thanks,” I said, fingering the necklace. “I love it.”
Ana grinned. “Had to do something to mark this occasion.”