The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You Blog Tour

Welcome to the next stop in The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You Blog Tour. Woohoo! Today, I will be sharing an excerpt from the novel but first, for those who haven't heard of this book yet, let's do a bit of a background check!

"Trixie Watson has two very important goals for senior year: to finally save enough to buy the set of Doctor Who figurines at the local comic books store, and to place third in her class and knock Ben West--and his horrendous new mustache that he spent all summer growing--down to number four.

Trixie will do anything to get her name ranked over Ben's, including give up sleep and comic books--well, maybe not comic books--but definitely sleep. After all, the war of Watson v. West is as vicious as the Doctor v. Daleks and Browncoats v. Alliance combined, and it goes all the way back to the infamous monkey bars incident in the first grade. Over a decade later, it's time to declare a champion once and for all.

The war is Trixie's for the winning, until her best friend starts dating Ben's best friend and the two are unceremoniously dumped together and told to play nice. Finding common ground is odious and tooth-pullingly-painful, but Trixie and Ben's cautious truce slowly transforms into a fandom-based tentative friendship. When Trixie's best friend gets expelled for cheating and Trixie cries foul play, however, they have to choose who to believe and which side they're on--and they might not pick the same side."

Published: May 17th 2016 by St. Martin's Griffin

There's a reason everyone is raving about this book, and I think all it'll take is for your to check out the first chapter to see why. Are you ready? Let's do it!


CHAPTER ONE

Ben West spent summer vacation growing a
handlebar mustache.

Seriously.

Hovering over his upper lip—possibly glued
there—was a bushy monstrosity that shouted, “Look out,
senior class, I’m gonna tie some chicks to the train tracks
and then go on safari with my good friend Teddy
Roosevelt. Bully!”

I blindly swatted at Harper with my comic book,
trying to alert her to the fact that there was a mustachioed
moron trying to blend in with the other people entering
campus.

“I know I should have made flash cards for the
poems that Cline assigned,” she said, elbowing me back
hard, both acknowledging that she wasn’t blind and that
she hated when I interrupted her monologues about the
summer reading list. “But I found Mrs. Bergman’s
social inguistics syllabus on the U of O website and I’m
sure she’ll use the same one here.”

The mustache twitched an attempt at freedom, edging
away from West's ferrety nose as he tried to shove past a
group of nervous looking freshmen. It might have been
looking at me and Harper, but its owner was doing
everything possible to ignore us, the planter box we were
sitting on, and anything else that might have been east of
the wrought iron gate.

“So,” Harper continued, louder than necessary
considering we were sitting two inches apart. “I thought
I’d get a head start. But now I’m afraid that we were
supposed to memorize the poems for Cline. He never
responded to my emails.”

Pushing my comic aside, I braced my hands against
the brick ledge. The mustache was daring me to say
something. Harper could hear it too, as evidenced by her
staring up at the sun and muttering, “Or you could, you
know, not do this.”

“Hey, West,” I called, ignoring the clucks of protest
coming from my left. “I’m pretty sure your milk mustache
curdled. Do you need a napkin?”

Ben West lurched to a stop, one foot inside of the
gate. Even on the first day of school, he hadn’t managed
to find a clean uniform. His polo was a series of baggy
wrinkles, half tucked into a pair of dingy khakis. He
turned his head. If the mustache had been able to give me
the finger, it would have. Instead, it stared back at me
with its curlicue fists raised on either side of West’s thin
mouth.

“Hey, Harper,” he said. He cut his eyes at me and
grumbled, “Trixie.”

I leaned back, offering the slowest of slow claps.

“Great job, West. You have correctly named us. I,
however, may need to change your mantle. Do you prefer
Yosemite Sam or Doc Holliday? I definitely think it
should be cowboy related.”

“Isn’t it cruel to make the freshmen walk past you?”
he asked me, pushing the ratty brown hair out of his eyes.

“Or is it some kind of ritual hazing?”

“Gotta scare them straight.” I gestured to my blonde
associate. “Besides, I’ve got Harper to soften the blow.
It’s like good cop, bad cop.”

“It is nothing like good cop, bad cop. We’re waiting
for Meg,” Harper said, flushing under the smattering of
freckles across her cheeks as she turned back to the
parking lot, undoubtedly trying to escape to the special
place in her head where pop quizzes—and student council
vice presidents—lived. She removed her headband,
pushing it back in place until she once again looked like
Sleeping Beauty in pink glasses and khakis. Whereas I
continued to look like I’d slept on my ponytail.

Which I had because it is cruel to start school on a
Wednesday.

“Is it heavy?” I asked Ben, waving at his mustache.

“Like weight training for your face? Or are you just trying
to compensate for your narrow shoulders?”
He gave a half-hearted leer at my polo. “I could ask
the same thing of your bra.”

My arms flew automatically to cover my chest, but I
seemed to be able to only conjure the consonants of the
curses I wanted to hurl at him. In his usual show of bad
form, West took this as some sort of victory.

“As you were,” he said, jumping back into the line of
uniforms on their way to the main building. He passed too
close to Kenneth Pollack, who shoved him hard into the
main gate, growling, “Watch it, nerd.”

“School for geniuses, Kenneth,” Harper called.

“We’re all nerds.”

Kenneth flipped her off absentmindedly as West
brushed himself off and darted past Mike Shepherd into
the main building.

“Brute,” Harper said under her breath.

I scuffed the planter box with the heels of my
mandatory Mary Janes. “I’m off my game. My brain is
still on summer vacation. I totally left myself open to that
cheap trick.”

“I was referring to Kenneth, not Ben,” she frowned.

“But, yes, you should have known better. Ben’s been
using that bra line since fourth grade.”

As a rule, I refused to admit when Harper was right
before eight in the morning. It would just lead to a full
day of her gloating. I hopped off of the planter and
scooped up my messenger bag, shoving my comic inside.

“Come on. I’m over waiting for Meg. She’s
undoubtedly choosing hair care over punctuality. Again.”
Harper slid bonelessly to her feet, sighing with
enough force to slump her shoulders as she followed me
through the front gate and up the stairs. The sunlight
refracted against her pale hair every time her neck
swiveled to look behind us. Without my massive aviator
sunglasses, I was sure I would have been blinded by the
glare.

“What’s with you?” I asked, kicking a stray pebble
out of the way.

“What? Nothing.” Her head snapped back to

attention, knocking her glasses askew. She quickly
straightened them with two trembling hands. “Nothing. I
was just thinking that maybe senior year might be a good
time for you to end your war with Ben. You’d have more
time to study and read comics and…”

Unlike the tardy Meg, Harper was tall enough that I
could look at her without craning my neck downward. It
made it easier to level her with a droll stare. Sometimes,
it’s better to save one’s wit and just let the stupidity of a
thought do the talking.

She rolled her eyes and clucked again, breezing past
me to open the door.

“Or not,” she said, swinging the door open and letting
me slip past her. “Year ten of Watson v. West starts now.
But if one of you brings up the day he pushed you off the
monkey bars, I am taking custody of Meg and we are
going to sit with the yearbook staff during lunch.”

“I accept those terms,” I grinned. “Now help me
think of historical figures with mustaches. Hitler and
Stalin are entirely too obvious. I need to brainstorm
before we get homework.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lily Anderson is an elementary school librarian and Melvil Dewey fangirl with an ever-growing collection of musical theater tattoos and Harry Potter ephemera. She lives in Northern California. THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN ME IS YOU is her debut novel.
AUTHOR LINKS:

Wesbite: http://mslilyanderson.com/about/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mslilyanderson
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ms_lilyanderson
Tumblr: http://mslilyanderson.tumblr.com/

PUBLISHER LINKS:

Website: www.griffinteen.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GriffinTeen?fref=ts
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GriffinTeen
Tumblr: http://griffinteen.tumblr.com/