It’s YA Scavenger Hunt Time — Spring Edition!!

Guest Post from Ginger Scott
A Gang Member and a Love Story

I had the idea for Cry Baby a little over a year ago. It was sparked by
a few things. Like a lot of themes I write into my fiction, some great
reporting inspired me here. I was listening to an in-depth piece on NPR
about a kid who had to run home after school and hide in his apartment
because he was avoiding joining the gang that ravaged his neighborhood.
If they saw you, and you were male and of the right age, you were in. It
was that simple. Or rather, that complex and horrifying. He couldn’t
hide at school, so he survived the torment there. I think about that boy
and his story often, wondering if he made it out alive, or if he was
sucked in.

The rest of my inspiration came from my world. I have this recurring
dream, and I had just had it for the first time in years right before I
started this book–it had maybe been a decade. Fair warning, my dreams
are a lot like my books sometimes, minus the HEA. The dream always goes
like this: Me and my dad are pulling out of a gas station that vaguely
resembles the one on the corner of the main street in my old
neighborhood. I’m always a young teen girl, twelve or thirteen, and my
dad is always in his forties. It flips to slow-motion, and both my dad
and I see a car slow down and begin to turn into the gas station, the
passenger-side windows facing us and two men leaning out the windows
with guns turned to the side and ready to fire. We’re just in the way,
but it doesn’t matter. They begin to shoot. Glass shatters. Sometimes my
dad is hit in his arm or his chest. He’s never killed, but we’re always
both terrified. He pulls me down and ducks above me, shouting at me to
push the gas because for some reason he’s no longer able. I always push
it with my hand while he turns the wheel, and sometimes I can feel our
car dip into the gutter and level out on the road back home. Sometimes
we crash. Sometimes, we just keep turning and driving, in circles while
bullets pierce our car. It goes on like this until I wake up.

It’s always the same dream. But this last time I woke up with a strange
feeling. I used to write the dream off to things I heard about at
school, to the gun shot sounds we could hear at night sometimes, or to
the boys I watched grow up in grade school only to read about their
incarceration or tragic death in high school or after graduation. This
time, though, I woke up thinking about Tristan. He had a name. He had a
backstory, and a tragic existence. He was trapped in the same dream I
was, and he was loud and demanding. His prologue flew out in minutes.
The rest of his story would take a lot longer.

I ruminated about Cry Baby for months, while I worked on other projects.
I began to save stories about MS13, the gang that’s made a lot of news
over the last few years. It’s become a political spotlight, of sorts.
The saddest part to me, though, is the kids the gang members all start
out as.

Kids like Tristan.

I began researching MS13 cases, and digging into old Bloods and Crips
articles. Some of the stories truly broke my heart, and every single
time, I thought about the young kids who didn’t have a choice. Choice is
tricky. If you’re only shown one thing when you’re young, it’s hard to
realize you have one. It’s harder still when you know that not falling
in line might mean torture and death.

This book is one of my greatest accomplishments. It was tough to write.
Honesty is that way, I think. I didn’t sugarcoat things. I gave my
readers the real world that some have to survive, and that others fall
to. I also hope I gave you characters to love, to root for, and to want
in your lives. Maybe people we all wish we were a little bit like, too.
Brave.

I hope you enjoy Cry Baby. I hope you feel it in your bones and let it
simmer in your soul. I hope it hits you like that NPR story hit me, and
I hope we all think about the ways we’re lucky for just a little while,
even though there are often ways we aren’t.

And yes, the kissy parts are pretty fucking fantastic, too.

Until next time.

XO
Ginger

Link to playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/user/thegingerscott/playlist/2JI0TaECnYdiV6KPRv22Lh?si=IpWF-WYSRGiHt_gPwkL8UQ