I could not have gotten through this book without my unnis—Kat Cho (the nice one), Nafiza Azad (the tough love one) and Axie Oh (the CP and support from the very beginning one). I love you guys and I hope you always know it. Our group chat still remains the best group chat, hands down. So much love to my other sisters: Nicole (heart), Aeman (big) and Fati (salt), who are willing to talk about everything and nothing.

Thank you to the best reference librarian in the world, Ms. Kiersten, who has been guiding me to good reads and dispensing excellent advice since I was two years old.

I would like to thank my 2017–18 seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-grade ELA classes at MDQ Academy, for being such great kids and excellent students, and getting me through a rough year with laughs and hugs and plenty of good reads. You were the best kids a first-year teacher could ask for and I will never forget it.

(My seventh graders—Alina, Amir, Hayaa, Asiye, Ayoub, Sumaya, Shiza, Hasan, Maryum, Ayesha A., Hamid, Mohid, Maryam A., Mohammad, Ayesha I., Marium F., Yassna, Elijah, Murtuza, Aleena A., Aleena S., Usman, Furghub, Nabila, and Ameen—made me promise as their homeroom teacher to acknowledge them in my next book. I told you guys I would!)

A special thank you as well for their sweetness and encouragement to Amar of last year’s eighth grade, Aaliyah of last year’s tenth grade, and Sabrena of last year’s eleventh grade, who are all awesome readers and writers and will do great things in this world.

Thank you to my dearest friend Moira Fox-Maranski for keeping it real since September 2006 when we were both teen dorks holding intense discussions in between the library shelves and keeping a weather eye out for our baby brothers to interrupt. I love you and appreciate you more than words can say.

A special thank you to the author-heroes who took me under their wing and let me soak in their wisdom: among others, my middle grade fairy godmother Anne Ursu, Aisha Saeed, Sabaa Tahir, Libba Bray, Ellen Oh, and Tracey Baptiste. It is always an honor.

I wish I could name all the lovelies of my Twitter feed and online publishing haunts by name. The support through the particularly dark nights, the tagging in pictures of Sailor Mercury and encouraging words during writing sprints mean everything. You guys are everything. Thank you forever for being my community.

And thank you, once again, to you, dear reader. Thank you for the love and encouragement. Thank you for the bought, borrowed, or bartered copies, the bookmarks, and the dog-ears. Thank you for the giddy selfies taken in signing lines, and the excited whispers of your favorite scenes. May you always have good friends at your side, hope in your heart, and the winning hand in your favorite game. You deserve it.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR