Extreme blessings to Kadeen and Suzie and Gaby and Erin and Cristina and the other Wednesday authors for all the texts and group chats and phone calls that have kept our writing brains sane; to my theater partners in crime JQ and David and Harry Styles, who has been oddly quiet in our group chat lately, even though we keep putting him in all the playlists; and to Lily, whom I have spent too many hours singing with and writing alongside to count in a lifetime, and whose brain I trust most.
A belated but very heartfelt thank-you to Reese’s Book Club for choosing You Have a Match for its Winter 2021 pick, and everyone in the community for being so kind and welcoming online. Of all the “holy guacamole” moments in my life, getting to be part of this lovely group is one of the best.
A brief thank-you to teenage me for being extremely melodramatic when I got rejected from all those musical theater schools. As cathartic as it was to listen to “The Climb” on repeat on my iPod shuffle and cry on the floor, like, twenty times that summer, it turns out it made much more sense to channel that emotion into learning how to write novels than how to dance more than eight counts without going “WHOOPS, SORRY” to whoever was on my immediate left. I might have spent a lot of years trying to reach my singing dreams anyway, but I’m grateful for them, both because it gave me nerves of steel and because it eventually taught me something important about life: sometimes you are just meant to do things for the sake of loving them. Sometimes the privilege of finding something you love that much is really the luckiest of all.
So thank you to my mom for planting all the singing seeds in our family with your own love for it; we have childhoods full of happy music memories, my favorite of which involves all of us screaming “Defying Gravity” in the minivan and likely terrifying people at traffic lights. Thank you for unquestioningly purchasing twelve-year-old me the soundtracks to Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods that first year I was really into showtunes and apparently just skipped straight to “fairy tale carnage and murder” (and thank you for all the other less murdery soundtracks we got into after that). Thank you to my dad for sitting (and occaaaaaasionally sleeping) through so many productions of Les Miserables between his three daughters that he could probably get onstage and play Valjean without even glancing at a script. But mostly thank you to my parents for always believing in me, whether it was when I wanted to be on Broadway or when I wanted to be a songwriter in Nashville or when I wanted to publish books in New York (third time’s the charm??). You have a lot of kids with moon-sized dreams, but you always have unshakable faith in them.
And with that, my last thank-you goes to Evan, Maddie, and Lily, who were my first and forever favorite singing partners. Our lives might take us very far away from one another sometimes, but we’ve got a whole lot of songs between us that can pull us right back.
Also by Emma Lord
You Have a Match
Tweet Cute
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
EMMA LORD is a digital media editor and writer living in New York City, where she spends whatever time she isn’t writing either running or belting show tunes in community theater. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a major in psychology and a minor in how to tilt your computer screen so nobody will notice you updating your fanfiction from the back row. She was raised on glitter, grilled cheese, and a whole lot of love. You can sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
St. Martin’s Press ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ten Months Later
Acknowledgments
Also by Emma Lord
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First published in the United States by Wednesday Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
WHEN YOU GET THE CHANCE. Copyright © 2021 by Emma Lord. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
Cover design by Kerri Resnick
Cover illustration by Mar Bertran
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Lord, Emma, author.
Title: When you get the chance / Emma Lord.
Description: First edition. | New York: Wednesday Books, 2022. | Audience: Ages 12-18
Identifiers: LCCN 2021035218 | ISBN 9781250783349 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250862129 (international, sold outside the U.S., subject to rights availability) | ISBN 9781250783356 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Self-realization—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.L676 Wh 2022 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021035218
eISBN 9781250783356
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First U.S. Edition: 2022
First International Edition: 2022