1 A Memoir from the Author, Girl Prodigy

My life has been a shame.

Well whatever. Maybe it's a little pretentious to talk about my life so seriously since I simply just started my second year of high school. But the things I struggled at fourteen turned my world upside down. Trial followed on adversity, outbreaks of outright craziness followed which, and in one short year, I felt as if my life had ended.

Why? Because during that year, the eyes of all nations were on me: a brilliant, unknown author who appeared to be a lovely young girl.

It all started in the spring of my last year of intermediate school.

I was fourteen-soon-to-be-fifteen, experiencing the life of a wholly common middle school boy. I had friends, had a girl I liked, and the entertaining you'd demand someone with those things to have. An impulse made me submit the first novel I'd ever written to a scholarly magazine for a new author competition. I won the grand prize and was the youngest winner ever, to boot.

My narrator was a young girl, and my pen name was Mia Samantha Dizon—a girl's name—so I picked up a lot of fame with headlines such as "Youngest Winner Ever! 14-Year-Old Girl Takes the Prize!" or "In a Universal Decision, Realistic Style and Refreshing Sensitivity!"

Gosh, I'm so ashamed.

My publisher ran with it. "People are more receptive to girls, so let's go ahead with the mysterious young girl as a concealed author to sell it."

I didn't quite get how people would recognize the author was a cute little lady if she was putting on a mask, but they published the award-winning book, which immediately became a best seller. The book was rushing out of stores, and it instantly wrecked the one-million-copies-sold mark. They adapted it into a movie and a TV miniseries, and there was also a comic book adaptation. It became a phenomenon.

I was astounded. My family didn't know what to think.

"My son? Well… he used to be such a nice, ordinary boy. What can we do? The royalties are a billion! I mean, that's twenty times his dad's payroll!"

They were in shock.

Whenever I took on the train, the ads for my book were glaring me in the face, the title lettered in colossal letters. And if I so exceptionally as set foot in a bookstore, I saw my book piled up on the checkout counters like stalwart fortresses with big-name commentaries on the covers.

"Little Mia is still in middle school, right? I wonder what she's like. I bet she's cute."

"I heard she's a rich kid from an old, aristocratic family. That's why they can't say who she really is."

"She must have been raised by governesses since she was a baby. She's apparently never had to lift anything weightier than a pen."

"Oh, obviously. She just yells 'book girl.' You just realize she's an elegant, virtuous young lady. God, Mia, I want you so bad! Marry me!"

Whenever I discovered people expressing these things, I got so flustered it felt like I was suffocating. I only cared about getting away.

I'm so sorry, please don't get frantic at me, it was just an impulse. My book's not some exquisite piece of literature. They were just scratches in my notes for class that somehow won an award. I'm really sorry. I could never believe to have "refreshing sensitivity." It's just the ramblings of a boring, worrisome little kid. The outstanding members of the judging panel were only trying to make a joke. They were just thinking, Hey, wouldn't it be funny if a fourteen-year-old girl won the prize? Wouldn't that be incredible PR material? And it would give the enterprise a real shot in the arm, too. I bet it would sell like crazy. That would make the publishers happy. They led in to temptation. I have no talent. Please, please forgive me, I'm so sorry.

I thirsted to go to every corner of the country and throw myself at people's feet to confess, until finally it happened—the stress made me hyperventilate, and I passed out at school and had taken to the hospital. I was breaking down pathetically about how I couldn't write stories anymore, and I even withdrew to go to school. I put my parents and my little sister through a lot.

Have I mentioned how embarrassing that year was?

That was how the mysterious genius, the masked young author, Mia Samantha Dizon, burned out after writing only one novel. I took my exams, passed them, and started high school, which is where I met a real "literature maiden"—an older girl named Aliceliese Granger.

Why did I start writing again?

Because I met Alice under the brilliant white magnolia trees that day.