High Before Homeroom

Losers, nowyoucan get the bad-boy rep the girls find positively irresistible! Unleash your dark side with the Doug Schaffer plan for drug addiction and rehabilitation! (Kids, don't try this at home.) At sixteen years old, Doug Schaffer knows two things for sure: 1. He is doomed to live in the shadow of his older brother, Trevor, a former high school football star who is stationed in Iraq. 2. Free-spirited Laurilee, the hot ear-piercing girl at the mall, only dates bad boys. Cue Doug's foolproof plan to tarnish his own unremarkable reputation. The first step is to develop a drug addiction. His mom's too preoccupied with organizing care packages for Mothers Support Our Troops Northwest Oklahoma City Chapter to stop him. Besides, he just needs to get hooked on meth long enough to come back from rehab a totally different person. Someone people notice. With the help of Trevor's strung-out former high-school buddy, drug addict Doug has the confidence that loser Doug never mustered. He stays out all night, scores girls, and stands up for himself. Then Trevor unexpectedly returns home with a dark secret of his own, and everything Doug thought was true is shattered. Soon the brothers find a common ground they never knew they shared as they discover the price of pleasing others is the freedom to be yourself.

Maya Sloan is an award-winning author with a MFA in creative writing from Boston University and a MFA in fiction writing from the University of Arkansas. She is the author of High Before Homeroom and the co-writer of Rich Kids of Instagram. She was born and raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.