But you’re not Unproductive Ted or Wrigley or any of the other Bubblegum Reaper characters. You are not Booker or Mr. Graves or June or your classmates or your parents or anyone you will meet in your future. You are Nanette O’Hare—and that’s okay, because this existence you’re making your way through is your story and no one else’s.
I wonder where Alex has gone. I pity him a little because his story has ended—or is he here somehow in spirit? I mean—if his dad was telling the truth about the ashes, Alex is literally in the water with me. And who knows for certain whether our story ends when we die here on this planet? Maybe Alex really is somewhere else. But where? These are dizzying thoughts—and so I try to concentrate on the pink-orange glow of the setting sun.
But just where did the rest of Alex go?
His personality?
His laugh?
His wild ideas?
His poetry?
His smile?
His gorgeous mane of hair?
His need for justice?
His concern for the weak?
His humanity?
His tragic stubbornness?
Maybe it all goes on along with me as I make my way through what’s left of my time, I think, and then I have another dizzying thought.
I’ll probably never know why Booker wrote The Bubblegum Reaper, but his writing that novel led to lives being changed and Booker being happy in love now with Sandra Tackett, which he never could have foreseen when he dreamed up Wrigley’s world. And so maybe it isn’t the motivating factors that matter so much as simply participating—thrusting your best true, authentic self into the universe with wild abandon. Maybe yielding to our true nature propels us forward into the great unknown, toward targets that we haven’t even dreamed up yet but exist nonetheless.
I’m waiting for the stars to pop through the black above, waiting for the future to wash over me like so many salty waves—some as turbulent as my thoughts and some as velvety as a good kiss.
What happens to Wrigley when he leaves the water—after the novel ends?
Answering that question really isn’t the point, I decide as I leave the ocean tonight.
I’ve got to find out what happens to Nanette O’Hare.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Part One Chapter 1: He Was an Adult and I Was Still a Kid
Chapter 2: Like the Story Wasn’t Finished
Chapter 3: You’ve Got to Meet Him Yourself
Chapter 4: A Hymn to the Noble Art of Quitting
Chapter 5: He Never Told Anyone Else What I Did
Chapter 6: Living in a Regularly Updated Catalog
Chapter 7: It Would Have Been Horrible to Say All This
Chapter 8: Speeding Up the Process a Bit
Chapter 9: Just to Get Rid of the Cannonballs
Chapter 10: Let’s Plug Our Phones In and Sleep Together
Chapter 11: The Sexual Tendencies of Teenage Boys
Chapter 12: Dozens of Deadly Laser Beams
Chapter 13: The Boy Can Be a Boy
Chapter 14: Shifted the Conversation Like a Knife Across My Throat
Chapter 15: This Broken-Family Club
Chapter 17: They Didn’t Run Away to Save Themselves but Sprinted Right into My Lava
Chapter 18: My Fist Rattling the Skull
Part Two Chapter 19: Kill the I
Chapter 20: Love Has Not Necessarily Won
Chapter 21: What Put Her in the Rocket Ship Headed to Wherever She Is Now
Chapter 22: Confident and Brash and Defiant
Chapter 23: A “Purple Pleasure Bondage Kit”
Chapter 24: There Is Always an Exit Window
Chapter 25: The Environment’s Health Is the Last Thing on Her Mind
Chapter 26: He Has Sort of Become a Concept
Chapter 27: How Do You Turn Tragedy into Something Positive?
Chapter 28: To Side with the Antigones of the World and Never the Creons
Chapter 29: The Shaved Hollows of Their Teenage Armpits
Chapter 30: So Good at Something She Doesn’t Enjoy
Chapter 31: In Love with a Fake Version
Chapter 32: He Smiles Like a Happy Wolf
Chapter 33: Coach Seems Very Pleased
Chapter 34: You Will Hate Yourself for It
Chapter 35: It Feels Like She’s Sitting on the TV Remote Control
Chapter 36: Squinting Out Her Rage
Chapter 37: I Truly Hope That Girl Will Be Perfect
Chapter 38: World Population Clock
Chapter 39: A Price to Pay for Pushing Beyond
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Matthew Quick
Cover art by Jon Gray
Cover design by Marcie Lawrence
Cover © 2016 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
lb-teens.com
Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
First ebook edition: May 2016
ISBN 978-0-316-37958-8
E3