The Most Dangerous Place on Earth: A Novel - Softcover

Johnson, Lindsey Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812987128 ISBN 13: 9780812987126

Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

An unforgettable cast of characters is unleashed into a realm known for its cruelty—the American high school—in this captivating debut novel.

The wealthy enclaves north of San Francisco are not the paradise they appear to be, and nobody knows this better than the students of a local high school. Despite being raised with all the opportunities money can buy, these vulnerable kids are navigating a treacherous adolescence in which every action, every rumor, every feeling, is potentially postable, shareable, viral.

Lindsey Lee Johnson’s kaleidoscopic narrative exposes at every turn the real human beings beneath the high school stereotypes. Abigail Cress is ticking off the boxes toward the Ivy League when she makes the first impulsive decision of her life: entering into an inappropriate relationship with a teacher. Dave Chu, who knows himself at heart to be a typical B student, takes desperate measures to live up to his parents’ crushing expectations. Emma Fleed, a gifted dancer, balances rigorous rehearsals with wild weekends. Damon Flintov returns from a stint at rehab looking to prove that he’s not an irredeemable screwup. And Calista Broderick, once part of the popular crowd, chooses, for reasons of her own, to become a hippie outcast.

Into this complicated web, an idealistic young English teacher arrives from a poorer, scruffier part of California. Molly Nicoll strives to connect with her students—without understanding the middle school tragedy that played out online and has continued to reverberate in different ways for all of them.

Written with the rare talent capable of turning teenage drama into urgent, adult fiction, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth makes vivid a modern adolescence lived in the gleam of the virtual, but rich with sorrow, passion, and humanity.

Praise for The Most Dangerous Place on Earth

“Alarming, compelling . . . Here’s high school life in all its madness.”—The New York Times
 
“Unputdownable.”—Elle
 
“Impossibly funny and achingly sad . . . [Lindsey Lee] Johnson cracks open adolescent angst with adult sensibility and sensitivity.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
“[A] piercing debut . . . Johnson proves herself a master of the coming-of-age story.”—The Boston Globe
 
“Entrancing . . . Johnson’s novel possesses a propulsive quality. . . . Hard to put down.”—Chicago Tribune
 
“Readers may find themselves so swept up in this enthralling novel that they finish it in a single sitting.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lindsey Lee Johnson holds a master of professional writing degree from the University of Southern California and a BA in English from the University of California at Davis. She has served as a tutor and mentor at a private learning center, where her focus has been teaching writing to teenagers. Born and raised in Marin County, she now lives with her husband in Los Angeles.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2016 Lindsey Lee Johnson

THE NOTE

Cally Broderick lingered in the doorway of the resource office, waiting to be noticed.

She would have been easy to overlook. She was short and skinny, and her dirty-blond hair had begun that year to wave and shine with oil. Her hazel eyes were pretty, though too wide-set, her nose thin but too long. Every four weeks her face produced a constellation of pimples that loomed and gleamed when she turned her cheek to the mirror, disgusting and enthralling her. Her face was a question she considered daily, widening her eyes in the mirror on the inside of her locker, sucking the flesh of her cheeks between her teeth. Her mother said—or used to say—that Cally was “striking looking,” a description Cally rejected: it was not only vaguely violent sounding but also patently untrue.

She was a restless girl, anxious to rewind her life or jump it forward. In service of the latter goal, she’d made a list of skills to learn before adulthood—how to swallow pills without gagging, to buy tampons without blushing, to shake the hands of her father’s friends without giggling and glancing away. But as the years passed, the list only grew longer: life presented more questions as she lived it, more and more doors to unlock. These questions she didn’t share with anyone. She wrote them in a battered journal, then stuffed the journal in a pillowcase and shoved it under her mattress lest someone—her brother

Jake—find it and expose her. She would not even show it to Abigail Cress, her best friend. Prior to Abigail, Cally would have said her best friend was her mother, but that was now impossible, for a multitude of reasons too complex to explain. In fact there was little about her life that Cally Broderick could explain, to herself or to anyone else. She was a girl in middle school. She was thirteen years old.

The resource office at Mill Valley Middle School was small and dim—the resource teacher, Ms. Flax, had a moral objection to fluorescent lights, preferring to squint in the amber glow of a ceramic lamp— and stank of mold, and of the pesto pasta that steamed at the teacher’s elbow as she marked papers at her desk.

Ms. Flax, over thirty but under fifty, had an apple-shaped body that she wrapped in hippie scarves and tunics and long mud-colored skirts. She was not pretty, Cally decided, but prettyish, with featherweight hair and deep brown eyes that turned down at the corners, making her look on the verge of tears even when she laughed. Across from her sat Tristan Bloch, who flipped through a stack of shiny colored papers on the desk. He was fat and pale with blond hair buzz-cut so close she saw bits of scalp through the glistening bristle; on sunny days at recess his head would glow as if on fire.

Everyone at Mill Valley Middle School knew that Tristan spent hours in Ms. Flax’s office, during homeroom, study hall, sometimes recess and lunch. No one knew what they did in there for all that time. Probably she helped him with his work, but it seemed just as likely that he helped her with hers.

“Ms. Flax?” Cally said. “I got this note? You wanted to, like, see me?” Ms. Flax started and looked up. “Oh, yes,” she said, shifting her weight, and the chair cushion squeaked and farted beneath her. This embarrassed Cally. And it happened every time—pushing hair out of her face, Ms. Flax would pretend not to notice the noises as she begged Cally to change her ways, as if Cally’s “applying herself ” would determine the course of Ms. Flax’s own sad life. “Come in, please. Have a seat.”

“No thanks,” Cally said. She knew what Ms. Flax was like: to step inside, to sit, was to condemn oneself to an inquisition.

“Cally, please.”

Seeing no way out, Cally relented, stepping into the room and taking the seat next to Tristan Bloch’s.

“Mr. Hoyt says you’ve been copying algebra homework,” Ms. Flax said. “You are an extremely bright girl, Calista Broderick. Why would you do this?”

“I don’t know,” Cally said. She looked to see if Tristan was listening, but he did not react. Hunched over the desk, he was folding a sheet of silver paper again and again. All the while he tongued the corner of his mouth. His white T-shirt was tucked into the oversized sweatpants he wore every day, in colors that seemed chosen to assault the eyes: apple red, lime green, and even, horror of horrors, yellow. He wore yellow now. Fruit punch stained his thigh, the splash darkened to a sick bluish gray. Cally’s mother would have told her it was rude, but she couldn’t stop staring at that spot. It was like one of those inkblots psychiatrists showed you to see what kind of crazy you were.

Everyone knew that Tristan didn’t have a father, only a dumpy mother with his same squinty eyes and an aura of frizzed red hair. She’d find any excuse to come panting through the halls, bringing Tristan homework assignments, sweatshirts, Slurpees. At least once a week she’d stride into the front office, hot cheeked, indignant, to yell at Principal Falk about Tristan’s special academic accommodations. Then she’d trudge down to the resource room to conspire with Ms. Flax, as if they would be able to turn Tristan into a normal human being just because they wanted to. But Cally knew what Tristan’s mother didn’t—she was only making his situation worse, she was exactly as weird as her son, what he needed most in life was to get away from her.

If Cally did end up motherless, she thought, at least she’d never have to worry about her dad trolling the halls of her school.

“This isn’t you,” Ms. Flax insisted.

Cally shrugged. Of course she could do the homework herself, but there were more interesting things in the world. There was her best friend, Abigail, and their afternoons behind closed blinds. There was Ryan Harbinger’s body as he stretched to field a ball, and the current that jagged through her in English when he palmed her bare right thigh under the desk, then squeezed it hard enough to bruise, grinning when she screamed. There was sprawling sideways on her bed with her head dangled over the edge, picturing velvety blood as it seeped to the top of her brain. Everything was more interesting than algebra, but she couldn’t say that to Ms. Flax, who had probably done all her own school assignments before her teachers even thought of them. And look at where it had gotten her—stuck in middle school for the rest of her life, with Tristan Bloch.

Tristan’s silver paper had transformed into something tiny, sharp, and shining—a spear, a crown, Cally couldn’t tell. His eyes narrowed to slits and his tongue worked its way to his top lip, sucking at it, revealing the pink gloss underneath.

“Oh, honey,” Ms. Flax said. “Talk to me. How are things at home?” “What?” Heat surged in Cally’s chest and face; she felt it making her ugly.

Ms. Flax shifted in her chair, began again. “Since your mother has been ill, I know it has been difficult. It’s all right to feel sad, even angry. I wish you would share your feelings, rather than acting out in this way.”

Cally thought, Abigail was right about Ms. Flax: she made you think she wanted to help, but underneath she was a total bitch. “Just because I don’t care about eighth-grade math doesn’t mean there’s a problem,” she said. “It’s not like it matters. None of this does.”

Ms. Flax’s eyes widened, and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0812987128
• ISBN 13: 9780812987126
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 305
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland