conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled Notes from Ghost Town about Olivia's, Olivia, Stern's with the genre: Teen & Young Adult, Literature & Fiction.. Start with the sentence 'Gr 9-11-Sixteen-year-old Olivia's best friend, Stern, is murdered, and her mother confesses to the crime'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Gr 9-11-Sixteen-year-old Olivia's best friend, Stern, is murdered, and her mother confesses to the crime. Her mother had never been well balanced, and her refusal to stay on her meds led to increasing mental instability. Unable to cope, Olivia's father filed for divorce. And just a week before Stern's death, Olivia's sight started faltering, all color bleaching out of her world. She is afraid that her graying vision is just the first sign of impending, inherited schizophrenia. With the boy she secretly loved dead, her father remarrying, and her mother in prison awaiting sentencing, Olivia struggles to make it through each day. When Stern's ghost shows up to save her from drowning, she wonders if it is another sign of her oncoming madness or if the visitation is real. If it is truly appearing, what could be causing his spirit's unrest? This tightly plotted novel is both heartfelt and suspenseful. Olivia mourns not only the loss of her best friend/romantic interest, but also the life she once knew. She feels as if her parents, home, friends, and even her artistic talent have all deserted her in one way or another. the author portrays Olivia sympathetically yet realistically, creating a believable character in an extreme situation. This book will find many readers, among them fans of Sarah Dessen's works and Jennifer R. Hubbard's The Secret Year (Viking, 2010).-Heather E. Miller Cover, Homewood Public Library, AL(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Notes from Ghost Town
  Think about a moment, a little centimeter of time you'd happily exist in forever, if time could be laid out along the spine of a ruler. Maybe it haunts you in that blue inch of half consciousness just before you're fully awake.
  I'd see him standing before me, spun out, golden, suspended in light that looks like honey. The thick black curls of his hair, how wide his eyes get, blazing electric in the sun. The slender gap between his front teeth he always tries to hide with his hands when he smiles.
  We'd be in the old shed behind Oh Susannah, the bright purple house my parents built before I was born. Stern named the house when he was four years old—the year he began taking piano lessons with my mom. It's the first song Mom taught him to play when he was a Tiny. He came to associate the house with the song.
  I could stand here at the door to the splintery shed with that vibration of anticipation between us, staring at his god-awful glorious face forever. And we would never have to do anything but this.
  He heaves the canvas above his head, while I stoop to the dusty ground and lift a different painting—blackbirds, nestled between the thick leaves of palm trees. Stern and I both pause in the dark of the shed, still not willing to move back out under the sun. The cotton of my tank top sticks to every inch of my skin.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: My heart skips a beat as he sits beside me on my bed, leans close, wide-eyed. I inhale deeply, wanting him to smell like himself, but he smells like air. Like nothing.
  He closes his eyes, starts playing an invisible piano on the bed. His whole body seems to grow brighter, like it's being lit from the inside. It's hard not to see Mom's old excitement in him—the way she looked when she'd play. Sometimes, she wouldn't let me in the studio because she needed to focus, and so I'd watch her secretly through a crack in the door. "I remember... a big recital. A competition, maybe," he goes on. "I was nervous, really nervous about it."
  And then more, the same ones I'd spent hours analyzing for clues. Stern just shrugs, none of it seeming to trigger anything at all but little mutters of surprise, grief, and, sometimes, glee.
  I notice the picture of a girl named Tanya Leavin at the bottom of one of the articles. It mentions her death in relation to his—her body, still missing, never found—of both of their deaths representing a general sense of failure within the Miami PD in the prevention of violent crimes. Something about her face—her eyes, maybe—reminds me so much of Raina it makes my stomach churn.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: My heart skips a beat as he sits beside me on my bed, leans close, wide-eyed. I inhale deeply, wanting him to smell like himself, but he smells like air. Like nothing.
  He closes his eyes, starts playing an invisible piano on the bed. His whole body seems to grow brighter, like it's being lit from the inside. It's hard not to see Mom's old excitement in him—the way she looked when she'd play. Sometimes, she wouldn't let me in the studio because she needed to focus, and so I'd watch her secretly through a crack in the door. "I remember... a big recital. A competition, maybe," he goes on. "I was nervous, really nervous about it."
  And then more, the same ones I'd spent hours analyzing for clues. Stern just shrugs, none of it seeming to trigger anything at all but little mutters of surprise, grief, and, sometimes, glee.
  I notice the picture of a girl named Tanya Leavin at the bottom of one of the articles. It mentions her death in relation to his—her body, still missing, never found—of both of their deaths representing a general sense of failure within the Miami PD in the prevention of violent crimes.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: And then he goes. He does not shiver away this time. He glows, he glows so bright, and then I can't see him anymore. But when I blink, I see the brightness of him for a whole minute, like after staring into the sun. And I realize, right now and forever, maybe: so what if I am a little crazy, if ghosts are real, or if they're not. I got to tell him I loved him. I got to say it. Who knows if it was real for him, if he felt it, if we were there together in some other place entirely. It was real for me, real as anything else, a thing that burned inside of me and found release.
  Raina leans forward to turn up "Fourth Time Around," and our mouths—hers and mine and even Austin's (who is messing up all the words because he's just starting to figure out Bob Dylan)—open to take the music in and release it: a loud, fearless, whole-hog singing, which is the only way to sing as you drive to your father's wedding with a person you love deep, and another you might love—one day—and another you will always love, forever, and who is gone.
  First and foremost, I owe thanks the length and weight of thirty-to-forty full-grown elephants to Lexa Hillyer, Lauren Oliver, and Rhoda Belleza, for always pushing me further, and better; for trust, patience, ideas, insights; for always being on the other end of whatever line's around to keep me calm and writing; for making all of this seem manageable even when it feels glaring and mountainous; for making every sentence better; for being teachers, and beacons, and wild party animals, when the time is right.
  All the folks I met in Miami—and especially Barbara (and a very cool dog named Dmitri)—who were among the kindest, most generous people I've met, and who took me in and cooked me meals and showed me how amazing and weird and truly unique your city is. (But no thanks to the very aggressive mosquitos, who showed absolutely zero restraint and drank my blood in swarms at every possible opportunity (shame on you).)
  Finally, to my family: for endless support, and endless love, and endless a-million-other-things it's difficult to write succinctly about. I'm more lucky than I even really understand, I think. But I'm trying. I'm trying.