I talked to the real Beverly through email!
I emailed the real Beverly a few days ago saying how much I loved her book and I asked her a few questions and she gladly emailed me back and answered my questions. She was really nice! And she said that she was happy that I enjoyed the book.
Anyways, I asked her first off if she ever kept in contact with Ray after the book publication.
She told me that she paid him $1000 dollars for signing the paper thing to get her book published and that was the last time she ever saw or spoke to him. He died in 1996 of AIDS. By the way, his real name is Stephen.
She also told me that she and Jason did, in fact, go to his funeral, which I thought was sweet.
While on the subject of Ray, let me say that I feel bad for him. He is a total screw up and I have sympathy for him. He basically has a good heart...but it's just sad to see a character like him wake up in the morning already defeated by the struggle ahead. Life moved too fast for him to keep up and he just got completely lost along the way. It's so unfortunate and when I learned about his death I did feel a little sad.
Anyways, let's see...
I also asked her if she and Faye (Faye's real name is Hope, apparently) are still close friends. She said that they are still friends, but long distance, since Hope moved to the West Coast (the Arizona thing). She said that they talk a few times a year, but that's about it. They both have busy lives.
And I also asked her if she was satisfied with the movie adaption. She said she was for the most part, but the only thing that she wished had been done differently is that they showed that she did, in fact go to college. The real Beverly ended up getting a Masters Degree in Creative Writing once she pulled herself out of the mess she was in. She said that she wished they would have shown that, because the movie made it look like she was a high school dropout. But she said she adored Drew Barrymore and enjoyed the movie a lot.
So yea. The real Beverly was very nice! And she answered some questions I was curious about.