Excerpt from Under This Red Rock by Mindy McGinnis, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

ONE

From the beginning, I have made rules for my monsters.

That they are not real is the first rule, and the one that we all tacitly agree is only occasionally true. I informed them they were not real as a young child, but they became louder; more frantic, fingernails within my brain scratching for purchase, desiring acknowledgment, gray matter shredding as I ignored the plaintive voice that came from under my bed, asking for water. And so the rule was amended—my monsters are real, but only when I cannot ignore them any longer, when the desire for contact has superseded my need to remain sane.

In this way, I have negotiated with them. Also, it would be helpful to have more friends. Or at least one.

"Neely? We're going."

This voice is real. This voice is Grandma. This voice also refuses to be ignored and is gratingly nonspecific. Grandma will not say the destination or the function—namely, to put flowers on the grave of my mother and brother for Memorial Day.

"Are you leaving?" asks the girl under my bed, and I give a small kick to the mattress. It's light and chiding, not aggressive, a simple reminder to her that she is not real.

"Neely?"

Grandma is here now, in the doorway, watching me.

"I'm ready," I tell Grandma, yanking my hand away from my neck when she spots it twisting there, furtively pinching.

"You're not," she says. "When's the last time you took a shower?" There's a snicker from the closet.

My hand goes back up to my neck, fingertips brushing over the line of small bruises and tiny half-moon marks, the topography of invasive thoughts.

"Neely?" Grandma asks again, this time coming into the room. She stands directly in front of me, which is a good move on her part. The more something can fill my five senses, the more chance it has of proving that it is a real thing, in the real world, attempting to interact with me.

I can hear Grandma, see her, smell her. The scent of the lilies that she puts on Mom's grave every year have stuck to her, a trail of bright yellow pollen smears her wrist. They are the flower of resurrection, a promise of everlasting life, a symbol of purity. They belong on the grave of a young mother who was killed by a drunk driver, calmly asking her children to recite their full names and addresses before she died so that we could identify ourselves when the first responders arrived. Mom gets lilies. Lance gets a plastic display that sticks into the ground, bought on sale, with very little attention paid to the message or the meaning. Last year, Grandpa had grabbed a blue wreath that assured Lance he might be gone but not forgotten, then thanked him for his service. He was never in the armed forces, but it was only one of the lies—he was definitely gone, and the forgetting part was being actively engaged. Grandma and Grandpa practically chase it.

Dead single moms get lilies.

Suicides get half-off, factually inaccurate statements. Someone grabs my hand, yanks it from my neck.

"Neely, shower!" Grandma says. "We can't take you out looking like ..." She trails off, trying to find a word that won't break me, won't make me start crying, curl into a ball, or declare the absolute impossibility of personal hygiene today.

"Looking like this," she says. She grabs my wrist, gives it a light squeeze. Unlike my kick to the girl under my bed to remind her she is not real, this is Grandma telling me I am.

I am real, and she is real. The world is real, and something is being asked of me; I must shower and then go say important words to dead bodies that are six feet underground, whose tympanic membranes rotted away years ago and most certainly cannot hear me. Somehow, that is considered sane. But if I answer the girl under my bed, or the man in my closet, that is a problem.

"Okay," I tell Grandma. It's all I've got, the most I can offer right now. I will clean myself and go to a location where we gather all the dead bodies and do what is expected of me. I know these things make Grandma and Grandpa if not happy, then at least a little less worried. And if pretending to be sane can alleviate some of the burden I bring to their lives, I will do it, every day, for as long as I can.

Excerpted from Under This Red Rock by Mindy McGinnis. Copyright © 2024 by Mindy McGinnis. Excerpted by permission of Katherine Tegan Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.