Book Title: GLITCH GIRL!
Character Name: J—
How would you describe your family or your childhood?
Hi! I’m J— and I just turned 12 on December 9, 2005! My name is crossed out like that because it doesn’t feel like me anymore, but I haven’t thought of a better one yet!
Last night I had a dream that I wrote down after! Here’s what I wrote:
A dark ocean, like a sphere, that’s just hanging in the air, the air is neon colored, the colors are slowly changing, and there’s these WORLD-sized clear glass cups, one above the ocean (just poured out) and one below it (empty for now). It was the only time I think I ever had a dream with no people in it, at all. Well, sort of. Birds were coming out from the ocean’s water sometimes. They lived in there. The birds were blue and had my face mostly. My face but with long long long long hair and pretty makeup! I don’t know if birds with faces count as people. Sometimes the birds had Junie’s face. Garrison’s even. And Mama’s and Papa’s faces too.
But I’m getting off track. I’m sorry!
So, about my family! I’ve been playing computer games my whole life, and sometimes Papa plays with me! But sometimes it’s more fun when I play alone, because he doesn’t let me make any decisions. Games are fun! When I’m really into a game, I feel like I’m inside it, and I don’t exist anywhere else. Then it’s kinda weird to feel my body, the way I can feel my body typing these words, and reading them as well. Can you feel your body like that, right now? Like, it’s distant? Not belonging to you, really? Like your body is the thing you’re outside of, and the screen where you really live?
Mama and Papa help me have fun. Junie and Garrison too, at school. But all of them are normal, except for Junie, who’s kind of weird like me, and I don’t think I’ll ever be normal!...
Like, one time I saw a cloud that looked like me, but it changed. So then I got extremely sad at first, like everything in the world was going to be bad and sad forever. But then, a whole minute later, I wasn’t sad anymore. I was happy, and I skipped all the way home, but I tripped and fell in dirt and broke a special tiny statue in my backpack that Mama gave me to bring to school for show and tell, it was really old and from her life in Russia and stuff, and I didn’t mean to break the statue. I got very punished. Sometimes I’m really bad, but I don’t mean to be! Mama and Papa and my schoolteachers all say punishments will help me learn, but I think they’re wrong. I think punishments just make everything harder and worse. I wish everyone understood that!
Mama and Papa get mad at me a lot for being bad, having ADHD and stuff, so I don’t know if they really love me as me! They maybe love the boy they think I am. But I’m not a boy! I’m a girl, and also all the dream stuff I wrote above, that also feels like me sometimes! Stuff that doesn’t make sense, except when you look at it under special light, like the sticky stretchy rubber bug things I got once (and then lost) to stick on windows that glow in the dark after you put them out in the sun. They glow green. Like, alien green, but from a long time ago. And faded!
What was your greatest talent?
I wish I was better at Coaster Boss. That’s my favorite computer game! It’s about making roller coasters and not getting your park shut down. You can try to make money, but it’s really hard, because you think you’re making the best rollercoasters ever, but the Guests hate a lot of the rides and it makes them throw up. Sometimes you forget to test the rides, or you forget to finish the track and the coaster flies off and all the Guests die!
Significant other?
Well, I like Junie so much! I think she’s very significant. And I’m pretty sure she likes me too! She isn’t mean to me! She has the prettiest laugh and hair and eyes!
Biggest challenge in relationships?
When I was a little kid Mama and me were at an amusement park, Six Flags Great Adventure I think! And there was this ride I really wanted to go on, it was the coolest ride ever, an upside-down rollercoaster that went really fast, fast enough to go through the loop, and you wouldn’t even feel like falling out because of physics. But I knew I was really scared of going upside-down. I don’t know why! Maybe everything felt upside-down already, even then! So anyway, this time I was going to be really brave. Really, really brave. Mama and me waited in the line for two hours! We had so much fun, talking and being bored together, playing guessing games, and it was one of my favorite times we ever spent together! Then finally we were about to go on the ride and I felt extremely terrified all of a sudden. I mean I think I felt scared a little bit before that part, but I just tried not to think about it, like when you feel a bit nauseous, and you just keep swallowing because you think that will help. But it never does. But it maybe makes you forget how nauseous you are. Or something! So, I got really scared, and told Mama I didn’t want to go on the ride anymore. I was so embarrassed to tell her. She kind of didn’t believe me. She was surprised in a way that felt a little bit like she thought I was being bad. I was holding up the line, but I started crying—I couldn’t help it! I was so embarrassed. I begged her and begged her not to make me go on the ride. I just knew that if I went on the ride, it would destroy me! I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. But I knew she could force me to do it if she wanted to. But then, finally, she walked me back through the line, shaking and crying, until we could just get to a part where we could bend under the metal bars that made the shape of the line (like I liked to do a lot but was too distracted by crying this time to enjoy), and then we were out of the line. Mama was annoyed with me. I felt like the worst person ever. (And sad that Mama didn’t know that part of the fun was waiting in line.) Mama never wanted to wait in big lines with me again afterward, especially because this happened a few more times after this. It was always the same. Even with rides I went on before. But I always wanted to go on the ride. I want to go to the places I’m scared of going to. But I haven’t ever done it before. I wonder if becoming a girl would feel like that. Is that a thing that you can do? Just start out as a boy and then change to be a girl?
Where do you live?
I live in my room in my house in Ohio! I can’t remember the town name right now, but my brain is like that sometimes. It’s not that close to Cedar Point Amusement Park, but it’s close enough that Junie talks about going there sometimes, and how we should all ride the rides together!
Do you have any enemies?
I wonder if Garrison counts? I’m not sure, but I think he either like-likes Junie, or just doesn’t want me to be her friend. But sometimes Garrison feels like my friend.
I feel like my own enemy a lot. Like, the first time I went on Skull Mountain at Six Flags Great Adventure when we used to live in New Jersey, I was really excited about it! But the second time, I was too scared to go on. I don’t know why things are always scarier the second time! Mama and Papa forced me to go on it, and I didn’t have any fun because I was so so so so scared. It was horrible! I just got a dry feeling in my mouth and a feeling in my brain like a computer monitor turned off, or a zero shrinking and shrinking forever in a black space. While I heard other people screaming on the ride. Or a spiderweb torn apart.
How do you feel about the place where you are now? Is there something you are particularly attached to, or particularly repelled by, in this place?
I wish my computer monitor was bigger, but I don’t know if they make bigger ones! It would be cool to have one as big as a really really really big TV! Also I wish that the computer part with the power button wasn’t right under the desk, ‘cause I’m always accidentally turning it off kicking it with my toe.
Also, it would be really nice to have a mirror in my room, even though mirrors scare me sometimes. They’ve scared me ever since I’ve been little. Like, getting sucked into the mirror. Like having an evil twin. But then the twin lives in real life and you live in the mirror.
Like, being bad forever.
Oh my god. Wow. I wonder if I’m the bad twin. If the good J— disappeared into the mirror when we were five, before we ever had ADHD, and I was the one who came out, and that’s why I can’t remember anything before that. Oh my god. I think I’m the bad one. I’m the mirror monster.
Give me a sec.
I think I need at least a day before I finish answering your questions.
Do you have children, pets, both, or neither?
Okay, it’s been three days actually. I was really upset about being the bad one. But then I realized that maybe that’s also why I feel like a girl. And I like feeling like a girl, so it can’t be all that bad. And maybe the good me, the boy me likes being in the mirror? She, oh, I mean he, hasn’t tried to switch places with me ever ever ever. So that must mean I’m supposed to be out here. And maybe that means I’m supposed to try to become a girl? Hmmmm!
That was my thinking train that eventually made me feel good enough to keep writing answers to your questions! Okay, so:
I really want a pet! I’m so lonely! A pet would be so much fun. It would love me forever. I would love it forever, too!
What do you do for a living?
Well I’m twelve so I’m currently living without having to do anything. I guess I eat? But that doesn’t feel like work. I don’t need to drink water though. I can go a whole day without drinking any water! Other than the water Mama pours down my throat and onto my shirt and chest when she wakes me up in the morning to make me take my ADHD pill. And then the little dixie cup of water the nurse at school gives me to make me take my other ADHD pill. Oh! School is probably what you meant me to answer for this question. I go to school! And also, I drink two glasses of orange juice at breakfast! I love pulp!
Greatest disappointment?
I really wanted a green checkered dress like Junie had, but Mama thought I meant a green checkered dress shirt instead. She learned English when she was twenty and I learned when I was five, so she doesn’t understand me sometimes, but I’m also not very good at being understood. And I forgot Russian, so the only way that I can speak is with English words that are always just a little bit hard—like chicken and kitchen, which I always have to remind myself mean different things. One is a bird, and one is a place where you cook birds. Really, it feels like I should be speaking Russian, which was always easy, before I forgot it. But being able to speak Russian must have gotten lost in the mirror, with the good version of me. Lost forever?
And also, one time Mama also wouldn’t let me even ask for a girl’s haircut. I wanted to ask!!! But she just went right up to the haircutter and made her give me a buzz cut.
Greatest source of joy?
Junie’s smile.
What do you do to entertain yourself or have fun?
Oh I play so much Coaster Boss! It’s the greatest game of all time.
What is your greatest personal failing, in your view?
I think it’s that I’m probably bad, all the way inside, full of mud and worms.
What keeps you awake at night?
Coaster Boss! Except for when Mama and Papa restrict my time on it! Which they forget to do a lot! But sometimes I lie in bed and can’t sleep. It’s really hard. But somehow, I always do fall asleep. I know because I always wake up in the morning. And sometimes I remember my dreams. I’m not sure how I fall asleep in the first place though. I can’t stop thinking. I don’t even know what I’m thinking about. My thoughts fly around like flies, where you can hear them but not see them, and they keep coming in one after another, like my window screen that’s been ripped for years, but there’s nothing I can do about the rips.
What is the most pressing problem you have at the moment?
I don’t think I have any problems at all! Everything in my life is good and I’m very happy!
Is there something that you need or want that you don’t have? For yourself or for someone important to you?
Well, I would like to never have to grow up. Or if I do grow up, being a girl, a woman, instead of a man. I hate the word man. I’m really scared about getting hair on my legs. But don’t tell anyone, okay?
Why don’t you have it? What is in the way?
I don’t know. I wish I could snap my fingers like a wizard (I used to want to be a wizard!) and change everything. It’s like, my favorite movie, The Phantom of the Opera. It’s like: underneath the mask is the real me, but no one wants to see. If they wanted to see, maybe they could help me. Maybe they could ask me what’s wrong, and what I need, and what I would like. Maybe they could learn all about me and I wouldn’t feel lonely anymore. Maybe they could understand that I’m not bad! It’s not my fault I have ADHD! I’m a good person! They could understand completely that I’m not a boy. And maybe they could even help me figure out how to be a girl! Can you see me? Under the mask? Please?
A middle grade novel in verse about a young trans girl who uses a computer game to process an ADHD diagnosis, isolation, and her relationship to gender.
J—’s life is consumed by the roller coaster video game Coaster Boss, and by the power she exerts over the pixelated theme park attendees. Her life outside the game, however, is less controllable.
Me.
I’m such a big space. I break the universe, a glitch.
She's navigating ADHD, the loneliness of middle school, and an overwhelming crush on a girl named Junie. J— is convinced that Junie sees her as who she really is, a person who isn’t “bad” just because she doesn't stay quiet and sit still in class. As a person who is realizing that the name she's been given doesn’t really fit her. And that maybe boy doesn’t either.
Glitch Girl! follows J— from fifth to seventh grade, from the beginning to the end of her obsession with Coaster Boss, and to the start of a new friendship. When J— meets Sam, a nonbinary classmate, she begins to realize that it's okay to not fit into neat, pixelated boxes.
Childrens | LGBTQ [Kokila, On Sale: March 11, 2025, Hardcover / e-Book , ISBN: 9780593696514 / eISBN: 9780593696538]
Rainie Oet is a trans woman who writes fiction and poetry for adults and young readers. She is the author of the picture books Robin’s Worlds and Monster Seek (Astra). She received her MFA at Syracuse University, where she was awarded the Shirley Jackson Prize in Fiction. Glitch Girl! is her debut novel.
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