My Cousin's Keeper

The Last New Start and My Cousin's Keeper are two halves of a story being written by Angel for NaNoWrMo 2021.

The two books tell the same story from different perspectives, although they each have separate plot threads as well. The main story is focused around a teen girl, Tess, moving in with her older cousin Gabby after her parents leave the country.

Characters

Common

• Tess Naylor - POV character for The Last New Start; a teenage girl
• Gabby Noel - Tess's cousin, caretaker, and bully; POV character and narrator for My Cousin's Keeper. Ffrances calls her Gabrielle as a joke sometimes; it isn't her real name.

My Cousin's Keeper only

• Ffrances Jones (Gabby's gf; a hypnotherapist)

The Last New Start only

• Spike Torrance - Tess's boyfriend, in the year below. Seems to know everyone in school
• Tess's friend group. Her parents think of Chloe and Kim as her best friends
  • Chloe
  • Liz - her brother Delain has a half dozen exercise machines in the garage, because he doesn't have the motivation to work out but always thinks that a new type of machine will somehow make him fit
  • Kim - full name 'Pocahontas Rainbow-Child Kim'. Parents were hippies; all her friends use her surname only. Moves silently without realising; her friends are used to being startled because she starts talking before they even realised she was there.
• Other school friends and classmates
  • Tami - a new friend, who lives in Palmerston. Tess starts talking to him on the bus because she doesn't know anyone else on that route. His body language and appearance suggest he doesn't quite fit in; Tess initially thought he was from some exotic country, maybe the middle east. But he moved with his family three years ago, coming from the town of Mule Butte, Nebraska.
  • Ashli Vance - Tami's gf. In Tess's history class. Says she is really bad at the subject, but does well on tests through determination and hard work. She's one of the girls cute enough that every guy notices her, but she's so wrapped up in her own little world that she barely acknowledges anyone's attention.
• Alice - Tess's imaginary friend. She spent some time imagining this girl, who might have been the previous owner of all the toys in Gabby's house. Tess imagined that Alice and her three little sisters had left almost everything behind when they had to move. She speculates that Alice might be one of her classmates at school, as she knows next to nothing about her, but there's no way she could find out.

Minor Characters / Mentioned but not seen

• Tess's parents (John and Trish Naylor) - Moved to San Lorenzo after chapter 3.
• Aunt Mary - the only one of Tess's dad's family to stay in touch with him after some big argument years ago (possibly because Trish insisted in getting married at a church that's a different denomination to theirs)
• Grandma Forton - an old lady who doesn't really understand email. Maternal grandmother to Doug and Gabby. No longer talks to Doug because she had a huge quarrel with Trish. Wants to hear from Tess, but only with Mary passing messages between them
• Mr Draper - one of Mr Naylor's workmates. They went on a two-week ski trip together last spring, and trusted Tess to look after herself at home
• Malcolm - Gabby's friend. Does interior decorating (decorated the nursery)
• Jenny - Works with Gabby. Might have kids; recommended a 'classic' movie that Gabby and Tess hadn't seen
• Gabby's parents - when she started at university, they didn't help much. She had to rent a truck to handle moving in at her first independent home, because her mum couldn't drive (disability) and her dad decided that if she's moving out of their home she's no longer his responsibility. She's barely spoken to him since.
• Miss MacManus - Tess's music teacher, who really likes her and wouldn't object if she was late
• Mindy Ciertowczki - wannabe-popular girl at school. In Spike's class, and has a crush on him. Tries to increase her own popularity by picking on people she sees as less important, but very insecure.
• Mr Minchin - Tess's history teacher. Likes to continually grade his students, hanging a list on the notice board of who is at the 'top' and 'bottom' in his classes. At the start, Tess is second from bottom, Chloe is at the top, and Ashli has just managed to reach the top half of the list

Locations

• San Lorenzo - a Mediterranean location that has a lot of tourists (not clear if SL is an island, a country, or a city)
  • Orange Quarter - part of the city that's kind of upper class. Modern art installations on every street corner. Where the Naylors live
  • Marble Quarter - a "Golden parachute drop zone", where American billionaires go to retire. Responsible for causing some economic problems, and pushing the cost of living in San Lorenzo way up

• Raybridge High - Tess's school
  • There's a little block of cheap apartments opposite
• Palmerston - a trashy new-build estate 'north of Pine Ridge', right on the edge of the Raybridge school district. Gabby lives here
  • From Gabby's house to the nearest school bus stop is fifteen minutes walk
  • There's also a "Palmerston, Oregon", setting of the TV series Live From Palmerston. No details about the show given yet; or whether Palmerston, Oregon really exists. But there's a pop culture meme thing, any time someone mentions Palmerston the default response is "Palmerston, Oregon?" regardless of whether someone is talking about the show or a real place by that name
• Pine Ridge - somewhere between Raybridge and Palmerston.
  • Pine Ridge Municipal Care Trust - A large cluster of red brick buildings which is a weird combination of a hospital and retirement home. Ffrances works there as a therapist. The back gate leads to a bit of scrubby ground studded with randomly-planted pine trees, where Ffrances and Gabby sometimes hang out on her breaks. Local kids also hang out there sometimes.
    • One of the streets going past is Brock Street

References

• Project page on NaNoWriMo website
• The initial idea in my 'ideas book' on Wattpad
• The Last New Start on Wattpad
• My Cousin's Keeper on Wattpad