Kaleb Nation: Harken

To: Mr. Asher,

By the mere fact of you reading this, you have proven that I misjudged you in many ways. It is an error I happily welcome.

You have taken a step down a path from which you cannot turn back, an irreversible decision to remove the coat of one life and take on the armor of another. I will admit to believing you were not strong enough. But you have reminded me of a simple truth: not all things can be judged by appearances. Sometimes behind the mask of a normal person hides the face of a hero.

You have caused a stir where one has never been felt before. Perhaps it is time for the next step in the Grand Design.

Prepare yourself. Don’t trust anyone.

ANON

My hands fell slowly, letting the letter slide into my lap. I couldn’t avoid the thrill that burst from deep inside me, so much that my cheeks felt warm and my fingertips felt electrified. Anon, in his own sparing words, had voiced his renewed support of me, and all at once my failures seemed to be wiped away.

“You know, for the longest time I was sure we weren’t going to make it,” I told Callista, shrugging in an attempt to summarize all the near-deaths we’d faced, and to disguise my excitement. She saw right through me and gave another of her half-grins in return.

“Then Michael, it’s a good thing you’re hardly ever right,” she said.

My first reaction was to counter her, but I didn’t. Not long ago, such a reply would have been an insult to me, but now it was merely a reminder of all the things we’d been through, all the times that I’d thought I was in control and wasn’t. Somehow, we’d ended up alright.

“What else was I not right about?” I asked her suddenly. She looked up to meet my eyes. A burning question in the back of my mind returned, one that I’d barely realized was there until that moment. She waited for me to embellish and continue, and I almost didn’t.

“When you kissed me on the cliff,” I blurted. “Was that really just to make you feel better, or did you mean it?”

She gave that same enthralling, ambiguous smile. For a few moments, we stared at each other across the four or five inches again, the cavern between us almost bridged, if only she would drop her final piece into the center. I wasn’t sure what I wanted her to do, how I wished she would react. Did I want a yes? A no? I couldn’t figure my own hopes out. So I waited for her.

Instead, with a shrug, she gathered her fallen hair back behind her shoulders.

“What do you think, Mr. Eye Guy?” she said elusively. Then she reached across to my hand and took the camera out of it. She turned away, holding it at arm’s length to snap a photo of her face, then dropped it back into my lap.

She pushed up from the bed and walked across my room. Gone again.

The moment she disappeared, my gaze shifted down to the camera, to read the ever-unpredictable truth that hid behind her eyes.

KALEB NATION is an author and online personality. His blogs and videos have received over 50 million hits online, and he has been featured on NPR, Entertainment Weekly, The Huffington Post and more.

While writing Harken, Kaleb documented his progress through video blogs at Youtube.com/KalebNation. A black belt in taekwondo, Kaleb lives in California with his chinchilla. Harken is his first novel for teens.

Kaleb regularly posts on Twitter (@KalebNation) and blogs at KalebNation.com.

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Louie Pinto, Randy Hancock, Stephen Hall, Peng Joon, Laurence Oliviero, Karsten Arend & Sam Mikhail

for believing in me and making this book far bigger than I could have made it alone,

My Los Angeles YouTube Family

for Maggiano’s and Hollywood Sign nights away from my desk,

The FTW Crew

for poking through my Skype invisibility cloak and making me communicate with people who are not imaginary,

Rachul Gensburg

for dragging me outside to get food that was not cooked by microwave,

Kim Fuller

for suffering through the first draft, the second draft, and all the others, swearing to never let that awful stuff leak out (you did, right?),

Ilana Zackon

for daily manuscript critiques across two countries, from my office to your bedroom closet,

Karen Hansen

for knowing far more about how moms think than I ever will,

Ari Corsetti and Rie Goldie

for being unrelenting, and never letting me slide when you knew I could do better,

Zane Spraggins, Jackie Asbury, Robyn Schneider, Lauren Suero & Cassidy Tucker

for pre-reading this book and helping me get it ready for the world,

The Bennings

for letting me ride in your magnificent Shelby GT500 Mustang, all in the name of research (of course),

Louis Beckett & Ferrari Maserati Beverly Hills

for letting me take photos of your dealership’s Maserati even though I couldn’t buy it (yet),

Elana Roth

for gently telling me what needed to be changed in my first draft, which turned out to be everything,

Taylor

for making the book sparkle more,

And The NATIONEERS

for watching from the very beginning as this story came to life.