INTRODUCTION


I was in London, calling Los Angeles, waiting for a response to my question. I was on the phone with James, a survivor of the Columbine High School shootings, and one of my former roommates at Chapman University. I’d just asked him what he thought about me writing a novel about high school violence and right then I was bearing his silence. As he thought about how to respond, I heard low voices in the background. It sounded like a party. And I ruined it.

After a long pause in which I was certain we might not even be friends anymore, James surprised me.

“Just make it art,” he said.

Just make it art. To this day, these are the most profound words about writing and pain I’ve ever heard, and they have guided my writing career, such as it is, ever since. Would it not have been so much better that day in Littleton, I thought, if the gunmen who truly wanted to do such terrible things actually had to suffer in order to commit them? This is how the idea of King High School first came to me. Instantly I knew the students in my story would not have guns. All violence would be hand-to-hand, face-to-face. It would be consequential, it would require commitment and willingness to sacrifice, and, perhaps most important, it would mirror my own understanding of the body in pain as a survivor of violence myself. It would not be like a Hollywood action film where the main character is shot in the lung and carries on running just as fast, it would be as true as I could possibly make it. I dashed off an e-mail then, asking my good friend Dr. William Peace if he’d be the medical advisor on the book—if he’d read my work and make certain that every act of violence (and medical treatment) in fiction was exactly how it would be in life.

I didn’t wait for his reply. I already had an idea. If I framed my story in the context of a martial arts tale, a vengeance story, it might give me the distance I needed to make it art. Only one thing made sense: kung fu. It seems much of my formative pre-Internet years were spent filling out VHS mail order forms for Hong Kong martial arts films. Those who are now household names brought up bewildered glances when I babbled on about how great they were back then: Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh. There was only ever one favorite for me, though—an American, Bruce Lee. I loved The Big Boss, but something upset me about its story: the female cousin was nothing more than a plot device, someone who, when in peril, inspired the hero’s violence. I decided then that in my tale, she would not only be the narrator, she would be the hero.

When I started writing, it was the voice of this young woman, a survivor, that came to me. She understood what pain was and was willing to risk it in order to protect those closest to her. I knew even then that not every reader would be able to understand her, much less relate to her. To some, she might seem cold, standoffish. Good. These were her survival tactics. Not to feel. To do. This is what consistent violence does to those who must bear it. It makes them wary, tired. One gets eyes for it. Its patterns become comprehensible and must be planned for. Emotions, on the other hand, can become the enemy. Only order makes consistent combat endurable. And here she was, Jen B., a disciplined, intelligent, intellectual fighter who deeply understood every ounce of negative touch—punches, kicks, chokeholds—but couldn’t, for the life of her, understand a hug or romantic love. It broke my heart to tell her story, so I wrote it as fast as I could.

The first draft was done in two weeks, and when I got to the other side, I was not the same writer I had been when I started.


Copyright © 2005 by Ryan Gattis

Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Brandon Gattis