Author's Message

When I was 12 years old, I thought I was going to be a ballet dancer. I was a member of the Neubert Ballet Company and I was in a show, The Little Rats of the Paris Opera, that spring. Neubert was housed in Carnegie Hall and one Saturday, while I was leaping around, there was a No Nukes Rally being held in Central Park. It was June 12, 1982 and I couldn’t go because I was dancing. But I was sorry that I couldn’t go because as young as I was, the Cold War scared me. Nuclear bombs scared me. Cold hearts scared me. War scared me. (All these things still scare me.) And I couldn’t understand why we all hated each other so much. I still don’t understand hate. I never will. 

When I was 15, my family moved into a new townhouse. It was strange to me and my family that there were men in suits hanging out on the corner at all times. When I’d come home late from being out, they’d stealthily walk me up the hill, or eyeball me from where they were standing to make sure that I got home safely. It wasn’t their job, but I was a part of the neighborhood and it was their job to keep it safe and to know what was going on. That’s because a Soviet family lived next door and there was a Soviet Compound across the street, and they were, by all accounts, KGB and CIA. By then, I’d given up ballet, and was fully entrenched in theater and in my sophomore year at the High School of Performing Arts. 

I always knew that there was a story there. And I knew even then, that one day I was going to write a story about it. Because it seemed so strange and surreal and yet also totally banal. Like, oh, there are the Russians. Oh, I have math homework. 

So, here are the things that are true about my new novel Rose Sees Red. I lived in the same apartment that I have my character Rose live in Riverdale in the mid 80s. Across the street there really was a Soviet Compound. Next door to me lived a Soviet family they had a daughter named Nastja who was four years younger than me. We really did once go for ice cream together and we were followed by suits. I actually went to the High School of Performing Arts, for drama though, not dance. And it was the best school ever. 

Here are the things that aren’t true. Everything else in the story. While it is the closest book to my actual High School experience, it was nothing like it at all. Except for the acting and the dancing and the way cool friends! (Except for the ones that weren’t cool.)

For years I wondered about Nastja and wondered about whether or not, if we had been closer to the same age, we would have become friends. I was encouraged not to have any contact with her when she moved back to Kiev. Her parents had me over for tea, right before they left, to inform me that we could not be pen pals, and then they gave me a framed picture of Red Square. (I am not kidding.) (I still have it in a box somewhere.)

I began to think about the politics of friendship. The strange dynamics of groups, the tender balance between being in with friends and out. About that desire to fit in so badly that despite how manipulative someone is being, you would rather shut your mouth about things that are just plain wrong so that you are not in the spotlight, so that you are not given the silent treatment, so that you belong. I began to think about the effect of bullying, and abusive friends and manipulators who prey on those who wear their hearts on their sleeves. I began to think about how much harm a cruel person can do to another. About how that harm can be so severe and so painful to someone that even though they might not look beaten up, on the inside they cannot stop bleeding. That is what Rose’s abusive friendship with Daisy does to her. Rose has a terribly destructive friendship with Daisy and when she tries to strike out on her own, follow her own truth, to dance, because dancing is bigger than anything, Daisy tries to destroy her. And the terrible thing is that sometimes, with a toxic friend, that destruction works. 

We’ve all had incidents with bad friends. I’ve had my share in middle school and high school. Mean girls. Group dynamics. Trying so hard to fit in that you are not yourself anymore. It’s heartbreaking to lose friends. It’s heartbreaking to leave them behind, let them go, recognize that they are cruel, and to allow yourself to go out and find your true tribe. It’s also scary. And it is something that, sadly, can happen even when you are an adult. 

While I was writing Rose Sees Red, I had a very bad experience. Something terrible happened to me, I was ruthlessly betrayed by the person whom I thought was my true love and rather than show kindness and true friendship, a few of my close friends turned their back on me. It was quite shocking and it made me feel smaller than I’d ever felt before

So I wondered, in light of my past experiences and the one I was going through, when you are that down and that low and feeling gun shy, how is it possible to restart your wonderful self? To make new friends? To trust people again? I thought that setting a story about a girl, who is shut down, and juxtaposing the politics of friendship with the politics of the cold war, it would be an interesting way to see someone emerge out of the darkness. To see that there is beauty and hope in the world despite a terrible and destructive menace. Yrena, the Soviet girl comes out of left field in Rose’s life and it shakes Rose right down to her core into doing everything differently for one day. And sometimes after going through a bad thing with a friend who turned out to not really be a true blue kindred spirit friend after all, that is all it takes to find yourself again. One day. Everything zagging instead of zigging. 

In the long run, friends come and friends go. And even the bad ones, the cruel ones, the abusive ones, the mean girls, they inform how we choose the new people in our lives. The better people. The ones who make our hearts lift with joy. I’m so glad that Rose took a chance on Yrena. I am so glad that I took a chance on my new friends after what happened to me. And I am so glad that you are going to go and talk to that cool person you don’t know that you suspect is your real kindred spirit. Go do it!

And while you are at it. Why not go on an adventure!

- Cecil Castellucci

Rose’s Top Five Places to see in Manhattan

Lincoln Center (Go to the ballet! Yo!)

Central Park. All of it. 

An East Village Café (Why not try Café Orlin! There in the 80s and still there!)

The Cloisters (Unicorn Tapestries. ‘Nuf said)

Tkts Tkts (Go see a broadway play, please)

Yrena’s Top Five Places to see in Manhattan

Top of the Empire State Building (Hello view!)

Backstage. At any theater where there are dancers.

Fifth Avenue window shopping.

The Russian Tea Room. (Eat the caviar)

The subway. (Ride all of them. Delightfully.)