Some Girls Do

**An unforgettable, achingly honest contemporary queer romance about what happens when you find your first love while you re still discovering who you really are.

Earnest, wistful, romantic, and real. Casey McQuiston, New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue

A thoughtful exploration of coming out and safety, a necessary conversation for those within the queer community. Culturess

**Can they go the distance together?

Morgan, an elite track athlete, is forced to transfer late in her senior year after it turns out being gay is against her private Catholic school s code of conduct.

Ruby loves nothing more than tinkering with her baby-blue 1970 Ford Torino, but most weekends she s stuck living out the dreams of her mother, a former beauty queen, by competing in local pageants.

Morgan and Ruby are drawn to each other, and when they re together, Ruby begins to envision a future for herself she never thought possible. But while Morgan out and proud, and determined to have a fresh start doesn t want to have to keep their budding relationship a secret, Ruby has never told anyone about the feelings she s denied herself for so long.

A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year
**A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection
An ALA Rainbow Book List Selection
**
“A smart, heartfelt teen romance.” —NPR

“Dugan returns to the sweet Sapphic vibes of Hot Dog Girl with this newest, about two girls with undeniable chemistry and one big obstacle to being together.” —BuzzFeed

“An empathetic, relatable love story, Some Girls Do might be Jennifer Dugan’s best novel to date.” —Bust

“Swoony romance with well-crafted multidimensional characters rarely seen in young adult literature, making for a fast-paced read you won’t want to put down . . . A thoughtful exploration of coming out and safety, a necessary conversation for those within the queer community.” —*Culturess

** “Heartfelt and thoughtful . . . An entertaining enemies-to-lovers romance.” —Shelf Awareness, starred review

“Succeeds in its portrayal of serious issues coupled with the giddy adrenaline rush of first love . . . Dugan nails the young adult voice. Morgan and Ruby are fully realized and age-appropriately flawed.” —School Library Journal

“A nuanced sapphic romance that guides its heroines as they struggle with their identities and discover their voices. A quietly powerful addition to the canon.” —Booklist

“Dugan gives each protagonist a distinct voice and compelling point of view, and readers will sympathize with their challenges as they find their ways to love . . . A complex and poignant queer romance.” —Kirkus Reviews

*“*A sweet novel that offers plenty of rough edges and no easy answers.” —BookPage

“An enjoyable romantic tale.” —*Publishers Weekly

*“Come for the joy of seeing the beauty queen get the girl; stay for the compassionate exploration of queer visibility in all its complexity. Some Girls Do is beautiful, necessary, and completely irresistible.” —Becky Albertalli, New York Times bestselling author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

“Earnest, wistful, romantic, and real, Some Girls Do captures butterflies-in-your-stomach, most-important-thing-ever first love and still finds room to explore the messiness of coming out and coming of age queer.” —Casey McQuiston, New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue
 
“Dugan’s best yet! Some Girls Do is bright and aching, with a beautifully rendered relationship at its heart.” —Rory Power, New York Times bestselling author of Wilder Girls

“Dugan delivers a story full of nuance, longing, and incredible growth. Some Girls Do is queer romance at its best.” —Isabel Sterling, author of These Witches Don’t Burn

Autorentext
Jennifer Dugan is a writer, a geek, and a romantic who writes the kinds of stories she wishes she’d had growing up. She’s the author of the graphic novel Coven, as well as the young adult novels Playing For Keeps, The Last Girls Standing, Melt With You, Some Girls Do, Verona Comics, and Hot Dog Girl, which was called “a great, fizzy rom-com” by Entertainment Weekly and “one of the best reads of the year, hands down” by Paste magazine. She lives in upstate New York with her family, their dog, a strange kitten who enjoys wearing sweaters, and an evil cat who is no doubt planning to take over the world. Follow her online @JL_Dugan.

Leseprobe

1

Ruby

There s an art to the extraction. First, I take Tyler s arm heavy across my stomach and slide my fingers beneath. I lift it slightly and move centimeter by centimeter to the right side of the bed. And when I m mostly free, I grab one of his pillows warmed by my own overthinking head and slip it under his arm. If I m lucky, he ll snuffle softly in the moonlight streaming into his messy bedroom, hug the pillow, and stay sleeping. If I m unlucky, he ll wake up and ask me where I m going: Ruby, just stay. Ruby, please. Ruby, it won t kill you to cuddle. I don t have the energy for that.

Tyler s messy brown hair falls into his face as he smiles in his sleep and hugs my pillow replacement a little tighter. I got lucky tonight in every sense of the word. I grab my boots, leftovers from one of the ten million Western-themed pageants I ve smiled my way through over the years, and creep out the front door barefoot, careful not to let the screen door slam and wake his parents.

The motion-sensor light clicks on as I shove my feet into my boots and make a beeline for my car, my soul, my lifeline: my baby-blue 1970 Ford Torino. Yes, it s old as hell, but it s the one thing in this world that s truly mine. I bought it, rusted and rotten, off my great-aunt Maeve s estate for three hundred bucks. I painstakingly put it back together, scavenging pieces from junkyards and flea markets. I restored it to its current state of splendor. Me. I did that.

Okay, so maybe I had a little help from Billy Jackson, the town s least-crooked mechanic, but still.

I climb inside and shift it into neutral, taking off the emergency brake and letting the car coast backward down Tyler s long hill of a driveway and into the street, where I finally flick the ignition. It rumbles to life, the sound closer to a growl than a purr. I resist the urge to rev the engine god, I love that sound and point my car toward home, feeling loose and boneless, relaxed and happy, content in the way one only can during that tiny glint of freedom between chores and obligations.

Not that Tyler is an obligation or a chore, for that matter. He s nice enough, our time together fun and consensual. In another universe, we d probably be dating. But we live in this one, and in this universe, I love exactly two things: sleep and my car.

Tyler is a great stress reliever, an itch to scratch, a good time had by all. Nothing else. We have an arrangement, a friends-with-benefits sort of thing. No strings. If he called me tomorrow and said he wanted to ask a girl out, I d say Go for it as long as it isn t me and I d mean it. I hope he d say the same. Which is why I m driving home from his house two hours after getting a text that simply said: big game tomorrow, you around?

Be still my heart.

But then, a couple weeks ago, I texted him: pageant in the AM, come distract me? And he was crawling through my window within minutes.

See, it s not an all-the-time thing; it s an as-needed thing. Some people get high; Tyler and I get twenty minutes of consensual, safe sex always use a …