Middle school is hard. In The Airless Year, we meet Kacee, a young Black queer girl who is struggling to find her path as a teenager. Her grades are failing and her parents are constantly on her case about doing better. Her crush doesn’t know she’s her crush, and her two best friends are their own kind of drama. Sometimes, the easiest thing to do is step away from it all, playing her bass, or drifting off into her own mind…
Written by Adam P. Knave and illustrated by Valentine Barker, with letters by Frank Cvetkovic, The Airless Year is an upcoming young adult graphic novel from Dark Horse Comics. Here, Eisner and Harvey Award-winning editor and writer Knave takes a moment to bring us into Kacee’s world.
“For Kacee, a queer black girl in middle school, everything feels like a struggle. Her parents are overly critical, middle school classes are a challenge, she has a secret crush, and her two best friends are always at odds. When a cancelled family trip proves to be the last straw for her, Kacee hits bottom—and ultimately begins to discover her own power and autonomy.”
“Just try.” “Buckle down.” Are these phrases that reflect challenges you faced when growing up?
Oh, you bet they were. I wasn’t the greatest student. For years I never really learned how to learn, if that makes sense. My school just expected me to magically know it, I guess. And when I did not know how to study, or how to take the best notes, etc, I was just told to try harder. As if that helped. Thankfully when I moved on to High School I had teachers there who understood and worked with me to make me a better student and taught me to love doing research, which, when writing, is a big part of my life.
Kacee’s parents put a lot of pressure on her and seem to represent many of the extreme pressures teenagers struggle with, on top of everything else that they have to deal with. Why the choice to present her parents in this way?
My parents weren’t the best to deal with when growing up. Neither were artist Valentine Barker’s. Or letterer Frank Cvetkovic’s. That doesn’t mean we don’t love our parents. It just means that realistically a lot of the way parents can pile on and make things worse may sort of/kind of come from real life. And please, to any of our parents reading this — don’t call us and be annoyed by this.
But sometimes parents with the best of intentions can just get it wrong. There’s no field guide to a lot of this that you’re given when you have a kid. You do what you can, and some people aren’t great at it. They may see their kid as a reflection of themselves, but also not manage to keep in mind that reflection is younger and needs guidance, not just harsh expectations laid down with no solutions for how to get down the road expected.
It’s just the reality of the world for a lot of people, and so we wanted to show that. We’re not saying Kacee’s parents are bad people or even bad parents. We’re saying they’re humans, and flawed, and those flaws can feel magnified when shone on a child.
Kacee learns to employ a number of different strategies to help her cope with school and life. What kind of organizational strategies help you get through your day-to-day tasks?
I keep a calendar and a to-do list. I check them both multiple times a day, if not once an hour. Just a glance even, helps recenter my brain. The to-do list is smaller really, the calendar is my main focus. If it is on my calendar, is it cemented in reality? I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t see it. It’s digital now, but I used to carry one of those day-at-a-glance, velcro-closure, 5×8 things that ruled my life. I need to write things down like that to keep me on track and remind me of where I am going next in my day, or week. Every phone call I need to make, social events, work stuff from meetings to just scheduled time to get things done, everything goes into it.
I need patterns and structure around me a lot, and that frees my mind to be creative in the spaces I make for creativity.
Kacee often slips off into her sci-fi headspace to escape her struggles and initially could find release playing her bass. What tools or escapes do you use to just get away from it all from time to time?
Fiddling around with guitar is one way, though I haven’t made enough time for it recently. Valentine does the same with bass. Music is a big thing in all three of our lives and either listening to it or making it (even badly) is something else we all have in common that crept into the book.
For me, outside of that, I will take breaks to just go sit on my couch and play with my cats. That gives my head a nice bit of breathing room. It took me years to learn that I needed to make time for (though I don’t put it in my calendar so make of that what you will) shutting my brain down. Playing with the cats, music, reading, just watching a movie — these are all things I need to do to live and give my brain some downtime to destress and process the day/week/world around me. That sort of thing, what I sometimes call “staring at a wall” is crucial, I truly believe, to navigating life.
Perfect for YA readers, The Airless Year will be available from Dark Horse Comics in June.
