The Lost Boys meets Wilder Girls in this
supernatural feminist YA novel.
Title: Mayhem
Author: Estelle Laure
Publisher: Wednesday Books, St Martins Press
Genre: YA, Fantasy, Contemporary
Release Date: 14th July 2020
BLURB supplied by St Martins Press
It's 1987 and unfortunately it's not all Madonna and cherry lip balm. Mayhem Brayburn has always known there was something off about her and her mother, Roxy. Maybe it has to do with Roxy's constant physical pain, or maybe with Mayhem's own irresistible pull to water. Either way, she knows they aren't like everyone else.
But when May's stepfather finally goes too far, Roxy and Mayhem flee to Santa Maria, California, the coastal beach town that holds the answers to all of Mayhem's questions about who her mother is, her estranged family, and the mysteries of her own self. There she meets the kids who live with her aunt, and it opens the door to the magic that runs through the female lineage in her family, the very magic Mayhem is next in line to inherit and which will change her life for good.
But when she gets wrapped up in the search for the man who has been kidnapping girls from the beach, her life takes another dangerous turn and she is forced to face the price of vigilante justice and to ask herself whether revenge is worth the cost.
From the acclaimed author of This Raging Light and But Then I Came Back, Estelle Laure offers a riveting and complex story with magical elements about a family of women contending with what appears to be an irreversible destiny, taking control and saying when enough is enough.
But when May's stepfather finally goes too far, Roxy and Mayhem flee to Santa Maria, California, the coastal beach town that holds the answers to all of Mayhem's questions about who her mother is, her estranged family, and the mysteries of her own self. There she meets the kids who live with her aunt, and it opens the door to the magic that runs through the female lineage in her family, the very magic Mayhem is next in line to inherit and which will change her life for good.
But when she gets wrapped up in the search for the man who has been kidnapping girls from the beach, her life takes another dangerous turn and she is forced to face the price of vigilante justice and to ask herself whether revenge is worth the cost.
From the acclaimed author of This Raging Light and But Then I Came Back, Estelle Laure offers a riveting and complex story with magical elements about a family of women contending with what appears to be an irreversible destiny, taking control and saying when enough is enough.
PURCHASE LINKS
EXCERPT
Three
Santa Maria
“Trouble,” Roxy says. She arches
a brow at the kids by the van through the bug-spattered windshield, the ghost
of a half-smile rippling across her face.
“You would know,” I shoot. “So
would you,” she snaps.
Maybe we’re a little on edge.
We’ve been in the car so long the pattern on the vinyl seats is tattooed on the
back of my thighs.
The kids my mother is talking
about, the ones sitting on the white picket fence, look like they slithered up
the hill out of the ocean, covered in seaweed, like the carnival music we heard
coming from the boardwalk as we were driving into town plays in the air around
them at all times. Two crows are on the posts beside them like they’re standing
guard, and they caw at each other loudly as we come to a stop. I love every-
thing about this place immediately and I think, ridiculously, that I am no
longer alone.
The older girl, white but tan,
curvaceous, and lean, has her arms around the boy and is lovely with her
smudged eye makeup and her ripped clothes. The younger one pops some- thing
made of bright colors into her mouth and watches us come up the drive. She is
in a military-style jacket with a ton of buttons, her frizzy blond hair
reaching in all directions, freckles slapped across her cheeks. And the boy?
Thin, brown, hungry-looking. Not hungry in his
stomach. Hungry with his eyes. He has a green bandana tied across his forehead
and holes in the knees of his jeans. There’s an A in a circle drawn in
marker across the front of his T-shirt.
Anarchy.
“Look!” Roxy points to the gas
gauge. It’s just above the E. “You owe me five bucks, Cookie. I told you
to trust we would make it, and see what happened? You should listen to your
mama every once in a while.”
“Yeah, well, can I borrow the
five bucks to pay you for the bet? I’m fresh out of cash at the moment.”
“Very funny.”
Roxy cranes out the window and
wipes the sweat off her upper lip, careful not to smudge her red lipstick.
She’s been having real bad aches the last two days, even aside from her
bruises, and her appetite’s been worse than ever. The only thing she ever wants
is sugar. After having been in the car for so long, you’d think we’d be falling
all over each other to get out, but we’re still sitting in the car. In here
we’re still us.
She sighs for the thousandth time
and clutches at her belly. “I don’t know about this, May.”
California can’t be that
different from West Texas.
I watch TV. I know how to say gag
me with a spoon and
grody to the max.
I fling open the door.
Roxy gathers her cigarettes and
lighter, and drops them in- side her purse with a snap.
“Goddammit, Elle,” she mutters to
herself, eyes flickering toward the kids again. Roxy looks at me over the rims
of her sunglasses before shoving them back on her nose. “Mayhem, I’m counting
on you to keep your head together here. Those kids are not the usual—”
“I know! You told me they’re
foster kids.”
“No, not that,” she says, but
doesn’t clarify. “Okay, I guess.”
“I mean it. No more of that
wild-child business.”
“I will keep my head together!”
I’m so tired of her saying this. I never had any friends, never a boyfriend—all
I have is what Grandmother calls my nasty mouth and the hair Lyle always said
was ugly and whorish. And once or twice I might’ve got drunk on the roof, but
it’s not like I ever did anything. Besides, no kid my age has ever liked me
even once. I’m not the wild child in the family.
“Well, all right then.” Roxy
messes with her hair in the rear- view mirror, then sprays herself with a cloud
of Chanel No. 5 and runs her fingers over her gold necklace. It’s of a bird,
not unlike the ones making a fuss by the house. She’s had it as long as I can
remember, and over time it’s been worn smooth by her worrying fingers. It’s
like she uses it to calm herself when she’s upset about something, and she’s
been upset the whole way here, practically. Usually, she’d be good and buzzed
by this time of day, but since she’s had to drive some, she’s only nipped from
the tiny bottle of wine in her purse a few times and only taken a couple pills
since we left Taylor. The with- drawal has turned her into a bit of a
she-demon.
I try to look through her eyes,
to see what she sees. Roxy hasn’t been back here since I was three years old,
and in that time, her mother has died, her father has died, and like she said
when she got the card with the picture enclosed that her twin sister, Elle,
sent last Christmas, Everybody got old. After that, she spent a lot of
time staring in the mirror, pinching at her neck skin. When I was younger, she
passed long nights telling me about Santa Maria and the Brayburn Farm, about
how it was good and evil in equal measure, about how it had desires that had to
be satisfied.
Brayburns, she would say. In my town, we were the legends.
These were the mumbled stories of
my childhood, and they made everything about this place loom large. Now that
we’re here, I realize I expected the house to have a gaping maw filled with
spitty, frothy teeth, as much as I figured there would be fairies flitting
around with wands granting wishes. I don’t want to take her vision away from
her, but this place looks pretty normal to me, if run-down compared to our new
house in Taylor, where there’s no dust anywhere, ever, and Lyle prac- tically
keeps the cans of soup in alphabetical order. Maybe what’s not so normal is
that this place was built by Brayburns, and here Brayburns matter. I know
because the whole road is named after us and because flowers and ribbons and
baskets of fruit sat at the entrance, gifts from the people in town, Roxy said.
They leave offerings. She said it like it’s normal to be treated like some kind
of low-rent goddess.
Other than the van and the kids,
there are trees here, rose- bushes, an old black Mercedes, and some bikes
leaning against the porch that’s attached to the house. It’s splashed with
fresh white paint that doesn’t quite cover up its wrinkles and scars. It’s
three stories, so it cuts the sunset when I look up, and plants drape down to
touch the dirt.
The front door swings open and a
woman in bare feet races past the rosebushes toward us. It is those feet and
the reckless way they pound against the earth that tells me this is my aunt
Elle before her face does. My stomach gallops and there are bumps all over my
arms, and I am more awake than I’ve been since.
I thought Roxy might do a lot of
things when she saw her twin sister. Like she might get super quiet or
chain-smoke, or maybe even get biting like she can when she’s feeling wrong
about something. The last thing I would have ever imagined was them running toward
each other and colliding in the driveway, Roxy wrapping her legs around Elle’s
waist, and them twirling like that.
This seems like something I
shouldn’t be seeing, some- thing wounded and private that fills up my throat. I
flip my- self around in my seat and start picking through the things we brought
and chide myself yet again for the miserable packing job I did. Since I was
basically out of my mind trying to get out of the house, I took a whole package
of toothbrushes, an armful of books, my River Phoenix poster, plus I emptied
out my underwear drawer, but totally forgot to pack any shoes, so all I have
are some flip-flops I bought at the truck stop outside of Las Cruces after that
man came to the window, slurring, You got nice legs. Tap, tap tap. You
got such nice legs.
My flip-flops are covered in
Cheeto dust from a bag that got upended. I slip them on anyway, watching Roxy
take her sunglasses off and prop them on her head.
“Son of a bitch!” my aunt says,
her voice tinny as she catches sight of Roxy’s eye. “Oh my God, that’s really
bad, Rox. You made it sound like nothing. That’s not nothing.”
“Ellie,” Roxy says, trying to put
laughter in her voice. “I’m here now. We’re here now.”
There’s a pause.
“You look the same,” Elle says. “Except
the hair. You went full Marilyn Monroe.”
“What about you?” Roxy says,
fussing at her platinum waves with her palm. “You go full granola warrior?
When’s the last time you ate a burger?”
“You know I don’t do that. It’s
no good for us. Definitely no good for the poor cows.”
“It’s fine for me.” Roxy lifts
Elle’s arm and puckers her nose. “What’s going on with your armpits? May not
eat meat but you got animals under there, looks like.”
“Shaving is subjugation.”
“Shaving is a mercy for all
mankind.”
They erupt into laughter and hug
each other again.
“Well, where is she, my little
baby niece?” Elle swings the car door open. “Oh, Mayhem.” She scoops me out
with two strong arms. Right then I realize just how truly tired I am. She seems
to know, squeezes extra hard for a second before letting me go. She smells like
the sandalwood soap Roxy buys sometimes. “My baby girl,” Elle says, “you have
no idea how long I’ve been waiting to see you. How much I’ve missed you.”
Roxy circles her ear with a
finger where Elle can’t see her.
Crazy, she mouths. I almost giggle.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Estelle Laure, the author of This Raging Light and But Then I Came Back believes in love, magic, and the power of facing hard truths. She has a BA in Theatre Arts and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and she lives in Taos, New Mexico, with her family. Her work is translated widely around the world.
AUTHOR LINKS
Twitter: @starlaure
Instagram: @estellelaurebooks
Letter From The Author
Dear Reader,
Like Mayhem, I experienced a period of time when my life
was extremely unstable. I can still remember what it was like to be shaken so
hard I thought my head would come off, to watch the room vibrate, to feel
unsafe in my own home, to never know what was coming around the next corner. I
wanted to run. I always wanted to run.
I ran to friends, but also movies and books, and although
girls were more passively portrayed in movies like The Lost Boys back then,
that feeling of teenagers prowling the night, taking out bad people, being
unbeatable . . . that got me through it.
I guess that’s what I tried to do here. I wanted girls
who feel powerless to be able to imagine themselves invincible. And yes, I used
a rape as the seed for that fierce lineage, not without thought. For me, there
is nothing worse, and I like to think great power can rise up as a result of a
devastating trespass.
Please know I took none of this lightly. Writing this
now, my heart is beating hard and my throat is dry. This is the first time I
not only really looked at my own past, the pain of loss, the pain of the loss
of trust that comes when someone puts hands on you without permission, the pain
of people dying, the shock of suicide, and put all of it to paper in a way that
made me feel victorious, strong, and warrior-like. It is also terrifying. I
know I’m not the only one who had a scary childhood, and
I know I’m not the only one who clings to stories as
salve to smooth over burnt skin. I am so sick of girls and women being hurt.
This was my way of taking my own vengeance and trying to access forgiveness.
Thank you for reading and for those of you who can
relate, I see you and you are not alone.
Estelle Laure
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