You're an Animal by Jardine Libaire

A spiky, hopeful ode to the other and a tender portrait of four misfits on the run across Texas that speaks to those who are left out, those who opt out, and to the animal in us all

It’s springtime in Oklahoma and Ernie, an outcast in a group of outcasts, feels uneasy. The compound where he and his fellow oddballs are crashing has been on edge since the arrival of a teenager named Coral, unceremoniously dropped off from her family’s minivan one afternoon. Adding to the mystery, Coral doesn’t say a word. Ever.

When a drug lab explosion burns the compound to the ground, Ernie, Coral, and the hard-living couple Staci and Ray escape on a pair of motorcycles. Shaky with fear, and alive with a new surge of freedom, the four strangers find a rundown house in rural Texas: a place to stay, they tell themselves, for now. Yet to their surprise, over the course of card games and wild strawberries and target-shooting and late-night dancing to ZZ Top on the local radio, a quirky little chosen family forms. At the heart of their new home is Coral, whose silence only amplifies her strange, undefinable power and the sense that she found them for a reason.

But a threat is crystallizing, and whether it’s coming from inside or outside the house isn’t clear. All this crew knows is there’s now something at stake: an awkward kind of love, a bond forged with the firepower of both loneliness and joy.

Story Locale: rural Texas

Jardine Libaire is the author of White Fur and Here Kitty Kitty. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan MFA program and lives between Austin, Texas and Joshua Tree, California.

Author Residence: Austin, TX

Author Hometown: Long Island, NY