Looking for Alaska

Table of Contents

 

 

Everybody was sitting on sleeping bags, Alaska smoking with flagrant disregard for the overwhelming flammability of the structure, when the Colonel pulled out a single piece of computer paper and read from it.

“The point of this evening’s festivities is to prove once and for all that we are to pranking what the Weekday Warriors are to sucking. But we’ll also have the opportunity to make life unpleasant for the Eagle, which is always a welcome pleasure. And so,” he said, pausing as if for a drumroll, “we fight tonight a battle on three fronts:

“Front One: The pre-prank: We will, as it were, light a fire under the Eagle’s ass.

“Front Two: Operation Baldy: Wherein Lara flies solo in a retaliatory mission so elegant and cruel that it could only have been the brainchild of, well, me.”

“Hey!” Alaska interrupted. “It was
my
idea!”

“Okay, fine. It was Alaska’s idea.” He laughed. “And finally, Front Three: The Progress Reports: We’re going to hack into the faculty computer network and use their grading database to send out letters to Kevin et al.’s families saying that they are failing some of their classes.”

“We are definitely going to get expelled,” I said.

“I hope you didn’t bring the Asian kid along thinking he’s a computer genius. Because I am not,” Takumi said.

“We’re not going to get expelled, and
I’m
the computer genius. The rest of you are muscle and distraction. We’re just, you know, wreaking a little havoc.”

Pages 18-19 and 155: Excerpt from
The General in His Labyrinth
, by Gabriel García Márquez

Page 85: Poetry quote from “As I Walked Out One Evening,” by W. H. Auden

Page 89: Poetry quote from “Not So Far as the Forest,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

SPEAK
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First published in the United States of America by Dutton Books,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2005
Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2007
This Premium edition published by Speak,
an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2008

Copyright © John Green, 2005

All rights reserved

Summary: Sixteen-year-old Miles’ first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.

eISBN : 978-1-101-43420-8

[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Boarding schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Death—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.G8233Lo 2005 [Fic]—dc22 2004010827

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

“I have tried so hard to do right.”

USING SMALL TYPE that does not reflect the size of my debt, I need to acknowledge some things:

First, that this book would have been utterly impossible if not for the extraordinary kindness of my friend, editor, quasi-agent, and mentor, Ilene Cooper. Ilene is like a fairy godmother, only real, and also better dressed.

Second, that I am amazingly fortunate to have Julie Strauss-Gabel as my editor at Dutton, and even luckier to have become her friend. Julie is every writer’s dream editor: caring, passionate, and inarguably brilliant. This right here, her acknowledgment, is the one thing in the whole book she couldn’t edit, and I think we can agree it suffered as a result.

Third, that Donna Brooks believed in this story from the beginning and did much to shape it. I’m also indebted to Margaret Woollatt of Dutton, whose name contains too many consonants but who is a really top-notch person. And thanks as well to the talented Sarah Shumway, whose careful reading and astute comments were a blessing to me.

Fourth, that I am very grateful to my agent, Rosemary Sandberg, who is a tireless advocate for her authors. Also, she is British. She says ���Cheers” when she means to say “Later.” How great is that?

Fifth, that the comments of my two best friends in the entire world, Dean Simakis and Will Hickman, were essential to the writing and revision of this story, and that I, uh, you know, love them.

Sixth, that I am indebted to, among many others, Shannon James (roommate), Katie Else (I promised), Hassan Arawas (friend), Braxton Goodrich (cousin), Mike Goodrich (lawyer, and also cousin), Daniel Biss (professional mathematician), Giordana Segneri (friend), Jenny Lawton (long story), David Rojas and Molly Hammond (friends), Bill Ott (role model), Amy Krouse Rosenthal (got me on the radio), Stephanie Zvirin (gave me my first real job), P. F. Kluge (teacher), Diane Martin (teacher), Perry Lentz (teacher), Don Rogan (teacher), Paul MacAdam (teacher—I am a big fan of teachers), Ben Segedin (boss and friend), and the lovely Sarah Urist.

Seventh, that I attended high school with a wonderful bunch of people. I would like to particularly thank the indomitable Todd Cartee and also Olga Charny, Sean Titone, Emmett Cloud, Daniel Alarcon, Jennifer Jenkins, Chip Dunkin, and MLS.

THE WEEK BEFORE
I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party. To say that I had low expectations would be to underestimate the matter dramatically. Although I was more or less forced to invite all my “school friends,” i.e., the ragtag bunch of drama people and English geeks I sat with by social necessity in the cavernous cafeteria of my public school, I knew they wouldn’t come. Still, my mother persevered, awash in the delusion that I had kept my popularity secret from her all these years. She cooked a small mountain of artichoke dip. She festooned our living room in green and yellow streamers, the colors of my new school. She bought two dozen champagne poppers and placed them around the edge of our coffee table.

And when that final Friday came, when my packing was mostly done, she sat with my dad and me on the living-room couch at 4:56 P.M. and patiently awaited the arrival of the Good-bye to Miles Cavalry. Said cavalry consisted of exactly two people: Marie Law-son, a tiny blonde with rectangular glasses, and her chunky (to put it charitably) boyfriend, Will.

“Hey, Miles,” Marie said as she sat down.

“Hey,” I said.

“How was your summer?” Will asked.

“Okay. Yours?”

“Good. We did
Jesus Christ Superstar
. I helped with the sets. Marie did lights,” said Will.

“That’s cool.” I nodded knowingly, and that about exhausted our conversational topics. I might have asked a question about
Jesus Christ Superstar,
except that
1.
I didn’t know what it was, and
2.
I didn’t care to learn, and
3.
I never really excelled at small talk. My mom, however, can talk small for hours, and so she extended the awkwardness by asking them about their rehearsal schedule, and how the show had gone, and whether it was a success.

“I guess it was,” Marie said. “A lot of people came, I guess.” Marie was the sort of person to guess a lot.

Finally, Will said, “Well, we just dropped by to say good-bye. I’ve got to get Marie home by six. Have fun at boarding school, Miles.”

“Thanks,” I answered, relieved. The only thing worse than having a party that no one attends is having a party attended only by two vastly, deeply uninteresting people.

They left, and so I sat with my parents and stared at the blank TV and wanted to turn it on but knew I shouldn’t. I could feel them both looking at me, waiting for me to burst into tears or something, as if I hadn’t known all along that it would go precisely like this. But I
had
known. I could feel their pity as they scooped artichoke dip with chips intended for my imaginary friends, but they needed pity more than I did: I wasn’t disappointed. My expectations had been met.

“Is this why you want to leave, Miles?” Mom asked.

I mulled it over for a moment, careful not to look at her. “Uh, no,” I said.

“Well, why then?” she asked. This was not the first time she had posed the question. Mom was not particularly keen on letting me go to boarding school and had made no secret of it.

“Because of me?” my dad asked. He had attended Culver Creek, the same boarding school to which I was headed, as had both of his brothers and all of their kids. I think he liked the idea of me following in his footsteps. My uncles had told me stories about how famous my dad had been on campus for having simultaneously raised hell and aced all his classes. That sounded like a better life than the one I had in Florida. But no, it wasn’t because of Dad. Not exactly.

“Hold on,” I said. I went into Dad’s study and found his biography of François Rabelais. I liked reading biographies of writers, even if (as was the case with Monsieur Rabelais) I’d never read any of their actual writing. I flipped to the back and found the highlighted quote (“NEVER USE A HIGHLIGHTER IN MY BOOKS,” my dad had told me a thousand times. But how else are you supposed to find what you’re looking for?).

“So this guy,” I said, standing in the doorway of the living room. “François Rabelais. He was this poet. And his last words were ‘I go to seek a Great Perhaps.’ That’s why I’m going. So I don’t have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.”

And that quieted them. I was after a Great Perhaps, and they knew as well as I did that I wasn’t going to find it with the likes of Will and Marie. I sat back down on the couch, between my mom and my dad, and my dad put his arm around me, and we stayed there like that, quiet on the couch together, for a long time, until it seemed okay to turn on the TV, and then we ate artichoke dip for dinner and watched the History Channel, and as going-away parties go, it certainly could have been worse.