1. What prompted you to write a love story? 

Jason Reynolds: The real question is, perhaps, what prompted me to write something that seems explicitly about love, and the answer is because people, specifically teenaged boys in this case, are having emotional experiences and we adults act like they don’t. We act as though boys are feral animals, but in reality they also have emotional chambers and interior lives simply because they’re human beings first and foremost. This book is also being qualified as a love story, which I think is better than calling it a romance. Not because there’s anything wrong with romance, but because I think the story has more to do with Neon’s communication, primarily with himself as it pertains to this big moment in his life and how he feels about this young lady. Sure, it’s romantic in terms of the way that he treats her and how he feels about her. But the truth is this is about a young man who is trying to understand who he is, in particular as it pertains to this moment and context. 

2. Why did you tell this story backward — and when you were drafting, did you start where the book starts or somewhere else? 

JR: I started the story exactly where it starts in the book — I wrote the whole story backward. I knew the story had to begin at the moment Neon was just about to take his first step into his sexual relationship with his girlfriend. I knew we had to start there, primarily because that’s the juicy bit. It catalyzes the reading experience. The other thing is, I have no desire to write about teenagers having sex, at least in terms of writing them actually having it. I like the idea of writing about all the things that lead up to that moment — all of the emotional hurdles one jumps through before losing their virginity — but I had no desire to write “it” simply because I’m a grown man. That has to be handled with an enormous amount of dexterity and deftness and responsibility. Not to mention, the story isn’t even about them having sex. It is about everything else happening in their lives. And so the story moving backward and unfolding before the reader’s eyes is also sort of parallel to us watching this young man unfold at the same time. 

3. The book is a really personal story about one couple, but their family members are so fully realized. When did you determine how involved the families would be? 

JR: We (writers for young people) often like to tell stories about young people in this strange way where we put them in a vacuum, and we find ways to erase the parents and adults. I get it from the standpoint of creating a world where young people live amongst themselves — that’s really cool. But in reality, and also just from a space of intellectual health and even literacy for that matter, I think it’s important that young people are aware that there are adults in their lives who actually do care about them. And that adults are still flawed human beings — messy, messy people — who are doing the best they can to make sure that they put young people in position to be less of a mess. Adults are older, yes, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have worlds of their own they are dealing with. Worlds that spill out into young people’s lives. But to assume that life, even the part of it sparking teenage sexuality, is void of adults, I would argue is part of the problem as it pertains to the way that we talk about it. The idea that adults shouldn’t be engaged in these discussions, even in fiction, is mimicked in the way adults aren’t involved in these conversations in real life, leaving young people to fend for themselves in a very strange wilderness that actually could be more of a paradise with a bit more adult/child communication. 

4. How did you strike a balance between seriousness and humor? 

JR: Honestly, sex is one of those things — like most things, by the way — that’s both serious and funny. If we were to highlight that more, then we could try to take it off a particular pedestal and humanize it. Perhaps then more young people would have healthy relationships with themselves, their bodies, and their sexuality, instead of growing up full of shame and insecurity around it. My job is to say, “Actually this is awesome, and it is silly, and it does seem goofy and everything you feel — the ridiculousness of it all — is valid and true. And also this is a serious matter that requires responsibility, thought, intention, and protection — emotional protection, mental protection, physical protection — all the things.” 

5. This is such a vulnerable, sex-positive book about a boy’s insecurities about having sex for the first time — what do you most hope readers will take away? 

JR: That the boys are thinking a lot of the same things that their lovers and future lovers are thinking. That it’s okay for young men to admit that they don’t know and that they feel strange or they feel afraid or that they’re ready or not ready. It’s okay for them to stumble through it and tell the person they’re with that they don’t know. It’s one thing to tell your homeboy that you’re a little nervous, and it’s different to tell your partner sitting across from you, waiting for you to do all the things you’ve been lying about, that you’ve actually been dishonest and that you’re actually more scared and inexperienced than you’ve let on. I think if there were more transparency around this conversation, it would be safer and healthier for everybody.