She decided that to celebrate the release she was going to host a really neat blogfest. Since the two main characters of her book both turn 18 during the book, all participating bloggers are writing about the year they turned 18! (Or, if they haven't reached 18 yet, what they hope it will be like.)You can find out more about the blogfest here, and add the book to Goodreads here.
So without further ado, here is my post:
When I was 14 years old, my family packed up our house in Virginia, hopped on a 24-hour plane ride and moved to Singapore.
By about the first week, I knew what I wanted to do for my birthday: eat at Morton's steak house, the nicest and most delicious steakhouse on the island. Unfortunately, the food there costs a small fortune.
My parents adamantly refused. "Maybe next year," they said, "for your 16th birthday."
Well 16 came and went, and so did 17. By the time my 18th birthday approached, I had turned into a Morton's steak-craving zombie monster.
"But moooom! I just want a steak! It's all that I want in the whooole worrrllddddd."
Somewhere along the way, I managed to convince them that this would be a wonderful coming of age present. My parents decided that we would go out to eat on Saturday night, even though my birthday wasn't actually until Monday. They planned it all out-- my dad would take me to the restaurant bar before dinner started,and buy me my first-ever legal alcoholic drink. (In Singapore, the legal drinking age is 18. However, this does nothing to stop the crazy partying that goes on. Not that I was ever a participant of said parties...)
So, dressed in beautiful clothes, we walked through the fancy hotel lobby, over the fancy bridge of the fancy koi pond, and ascended the hotel in the fancy elevator.
Morton's bar was closed. They weren't open on Saturdays.
Feeling a tiny bit dejected (and at least for me, a tiny bit nervous, as I had never ordered an alcoholic drink before) we walked across to another bar where I nervously ate a bunch of snack mix and my dad ordered me my first ever "legal" Cosmopolitan.
The bartender didn't even look at me with a single ounce of suspicion on his face. (I came to the conclusion that this was because I was a master of deception. Clearly this meant I should become a spy.) I felt so freaking sophisticated there are no words to describe it. I was in a bar, with a real Cosmo in a super fancy-sophisticated Cosmo glass, and I only tripped over my heels once and also there was A KOI POND IN THE LOBBY and the Cosmo was surprisingly good and the bartender was cute and I turned 18 in two days and everything was awesome.
And that is the story of my first ever kind-of-maybe-sort-of-not-really-legal alcoholic drink on my almost-18th birthday. It was a good birthday.
So happy book-birthday to Cally! And happy (belated) Halloween, everyone!
Do you guys have any cool 18th birthday stories to share?
