Spontaneous , livre ebook

Canongate Books - Aaron Starmer

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177 pages

English

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'Truly the smartest and funniest book about spontaneous combustion you will ever read' JOHN GREEN, #1 bestselling author of THE FAULT IN OUR STARSA TIME magazine Top 10 YA Book of 2016!Mara's senior year is proving to be a lot less exciting than she'd hoped, until the day - KABAM! - Katelyn Ogden explodes during third period. Katelyn is the first, but she won't be the last senior to explode without warning or explanation. The body count grows and the search is on for a reason, while the students continue to pop like balloons. But if bombs or terrorists or a government conspiracy aren't to blame, what is? With the help of her oldest friend, her new boyfriend, a power ballad and a homemade disco ball, will Mara make it to graduation in one piece? It's going to be one hell of a year, where the only test is how to stay alive and where falling in love might be the worst thing you can do . . .

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Children's

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Publié par	Canongate Books
Date de parution	04 mai 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781786890627
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0320€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Aaron Starmer is the author of numerous novels for young readers, including The Only Ones and The Riverman. Spontaneous is his first YA novel, and is being developed into a film. He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.
@AaronStarmer
AARON STARMER
Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
www.canongate.co.uk
This digital edition first published in 2017 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Aaron Starmer, 2016
First published in the USA in 2016 by Dutton Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
The moral right of the author has been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 061 0 eISBN 978 1 78689 062 7
To the ones who feel like it could all come apart at any moment . . . and to the ones who comfort us and keep us together
Call the death by any name Your Highness will,
attribute it to whom you will,
or say it might have been prevented how you will.
It is the same death eternally—inborn, inbred,
engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself,
and that only—Spontaneous Combustion,
and none other of all the deaths that can be died.
charles dickens
Bleak House
Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
How it started
Let’s be clear
How you feel
Sorry
What was wrong with us
In case you were wondering
Other stupid things that were done
As you might have guessed
You’ve got a friend
A trilogy
Back to the action
Fun and games
The thing about comebacks
And wouldn’t you know it?
What we were dealing with
It will come as no surprise
Again, sorry
A little further in the future
Drugs
What to do on a second date
You’re probably wondering
The benefits of cyberstalking
Another part of the story
A meeting of minds
Hate to break it to you
At the edge of dodge
What you have to understand
Sorry, not sorry
Because of that
At 10:31
Where our world was headed
The calm
The storm
Making an impression
What they did to us
Before we knew it
The showdown
The revelation
Just so you know
Thankful
Even more honesty for you
All the feels
What we did
Phew
Passing time
Well, not all of them
Let’s stop right now
Marigold and memoreasi
If only
Party hardy
How we got home
How we got it done
School redux
Evolution
Picture day
A stranger comes to town
The benefits of cyberstalking, part 2
Infotainment
The next morning
This is what happens
Fallout
That’s right
What I did next
Out of hand
Let’s not forget
What I didn’t know
Pregame
Oh, what a night
Livin’ on a prayer
The weather
I’ll come running to see you again
Start your electric motors
To be honest
How things got to this point
This. this. this!
Wrap it up, short stuff
Acknowledgments
how it started
W hen Katelyn Ogden blew up in third period pre-calc, the janitor probably figured he’d only have to scrub guts off one whiteboard this year. Makes sense. In the past, kids didn’t randomly explode. Not in pre-calc, not at prom, not even in chem lab, where explosions aren’t exactly unheard of. Not one kid. Not one explosion. Ah, the good old days.
Katelyn Ogden was a lot of things, but she wasn’t particularly explosive, in any sense of the word. She was wispy, with a pixie cut and a breathy voice. She was a sundress of a person—cute, airy, inoffensive. I didn’t know her well, but I knew her well enough to curse her adorable existence on more than one occasion. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true. Doesn’t mean I wanted her to go out the way she did, or that I wanted her to go out at all, for that matter. Our thoughts aren’t always our feelings; and when they are, they rarely last.
On the morning that Katelyn, well, went out , I was sitting two seats behind her. It was September, the first full week of school, an absolute stunner of a day. The windows were open and the faraway drone of a John Deere mixed with the nearby drone of Mr. Mellick philosophizing on factorials. Worried I had coffee breath, I was bent over in my seat, digging through my purse for mints. My POV was therefore limited, and the only parts of Katelyn I saw explode were her legs. Actually, it’s hard to say what I saw. Her legs were there and then they weren’t.
Wa-bam!
The classroom quaked and my face was suddenly warm and wet. It’s a disgusting way to say it, but it’s the simplest way to say it: Katelyn was a balloon full of fleshy bits. And she popped.
You can’t feel much of anything in a moment like that. You certainly can’t analyze the situation. At least not while it’s happening. Later, the image will play over and over in your head, like some demon GIF, like some creeper who slips into your bed every single night, taps you on the shoulder, and says, “Remember me, the worst fucking moment of your life up to this point?” Later, you’ll feel and do a lot of things, but when it’s actually happening, all you can feel is confusion and all you do is react.
I bolted upright and my head hit my desk. Mr. Mellick dove behind his chair like a soldier into the trenches. My red-faced classmates sat there in shock for a few moments. Blood dripped down the windows and walls. Then came the screaming and the obligatory rush for the door.
The next hour was insane. Hunched running, hands up, sirens blaring, kids in the parking lot hugging. News trucks, helicopters, SWAT teams, cars skidding out in the grass because the roads were clogged. No one even realized what had happened. “Bomb! Blood! Run for the fucking hills!” That was the extent of it. There was no literal smoke, but when the figurative stuff cleared, we could be sure of only two things.
Katelyn Ogden blew up. Everyone else was fine.
Except we weren’t. Not by a long shot.
let’s be clear
T his is not about Katelyn Ogden. She was important—all of them were—but she was also a signpost, a starting point on a path of self-discovery. I realize how corny and conceited that sounds, but the focus of this should be on me and what you ultimately think of me. Do you like me? Do you trust me? Will you still be interested in me after I say what I have to say?
Yes, yes. I know, I know. “It’s not important what people think of you, it’s who you are that counts.” Well, don’t buy into that crap. Perception trumps reality. Always and forever. Simply consider what people thought of Katelyn. Mr. Mellick once told Katelyn that she “would make an excellent anchorwoman,” which was a coded way of saying that she spoke well and, though it wasn’t clear if she was part black or part Asian or part Hispanic, she was pretty in a nonthreatening, vaguely ethnic way.
In reality, Katelyn Ogden was Turkish. Not part anything. Plain old Turkish. Her family’s original name was Özden, but they changed it somewhere along the line. Her dad was born right here in New Jersey, and so was her mom, but they both had full Turkish blood that went back to the early Ottoman Empire, which, as far as empires go, was a pretty badass one. Their armies were among the first to employ guns and cannons, so they knew a thing or two about things that go boom.
Katelyn’s dad was an engineer and her mom was a lawyer and they drove a Tahoe with one of those stick-figure-family stickers on the back window. Two parents, one kid, two dogs. I’m not entirely sure what the etiquette is, but I guess you keep the kid sticker on your window even . . . after. The Ogdens did, in any case.
I learned all the familial details at the memorial service, which was closed casket, for obvious reasons, and which was held in State Street Theater, also for obvious reasons. Everyone in school had to attend. It wasn’t required by law, but absences would be noted. Not by the authorities necessarily, but by the kids who were quick to label their peers misogynistic assholes or heartless bitches . I know because I was one of those label-happy kids. Again, I’m not necessarily proud of that fact, but I certainly can’t deny it.
The memorial service was quite a production, considering that it was put together in only a few days. Katelyn’s friend Skye Sanchez projected a slideshow whose sole purpose was to remind us how ridiculously effervescent Katelyn was. There was a loving eulogy delivered by a choked-up aunt. A choir sang Katelyn’s favorite song, which is a gorgeous song. The lyrics were a bit sexy for the occasion, but who cares, right? It was her favorite and if they can’t play your favorite song at your memorial service then when the hell can they play it? Plus, it was all about saying good-bye at the wrong moment, and at least that was appropriate for the occasion.
There’s a line in it that goes, “your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm …” Katelyn’s hair was short and dark, the furthest thing from sleepy and golden, but that didn’t matter to Jed Hayes, who had a crush on her going all the way back to middle school. That hair-upon-the-pillow line made him blubber so loud that everyone in the balcony felt obligated to nod condolences at the poor guy. His empathy seemed off the charts, but if we’re being honest with ourselves—and we really should be—then we have to accept that Jed wasn’t crying because he truly loved Katelyn. It was because her storm of hair never hit his pillow. Sure, it’s a selfish thing to cry about, but we all cry about selfish things at funerals. We all cry about “if only.”
• If only Katelyn had made it through to next year, then she would have gone to Brown. She was going to apply early decision and was guaranteed to get in. No question that’s partly why her SAT tutor, Mrs. Carbone, was sobbing. All those hours, all those vocab flash cards, and for what? Mrs. Carbone still couldn’t claim an Ivy Leaguer as a past student.
• If only Katelyn had scammed a bit more cash off her parents, then she would have bought more weed. It was well-known among us sen