Prepped - Hardcover

Mangle, Bethany

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1534477500 ISBN 13: 9781534477506

Verlag: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

For fans of Jeff Zentner and Katie Henry comes a thrilling and funny debut about a teen raised in a doomsday community who plots her escape with the boy from the bunker next door.

Always be ready for the worst day of your life.

This is the mantra that Becca Aldaine has grown up with. Her family is part of a community of doomsday preppers, a neighborhood that prioritizes survivalist training over class trips or senior prom. They’re even arranging Becca’s marriage with Roy Kang, the only eligible boy in their community. Roy is a nice guy, but he’s so enthusiastic about prepping that Becca doesn’t have the heart to tell him she’s planning to leave as soon as she can earn a full ride to a college far, far away.

Then a devastating accident rocks Becca’s family and pushes the entire community, including Becca’s usually cynical little sister, deeper into the doomsday ideology. With her getaway plans thrown into jeopardy, the only person Becca can turn to is Roy, who reveals that he’s not nearly as clueless as he’s been pretending to be.

When Roy proposes they run away together, Becca will have to risk everything—including her heart—for a chance to hope for the best instead of planning for the worst.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bethany Mangle is the author of the Prepped, All the Right Reasons, and Conditions of a Heart. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys spoiling her dogs, playing video games, and spending time with her unbearably nerdy husband. She moves too much to put a location in her bio ever again. Visit her at BethanyMangle.com.

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Chapter 1

1
EVEN THE CHILDREN COME TO watch us drown. Four of us line the banks of the duck pond in insulated clothes, shivering through alternating spikes of adrenaline and fear. Rays of waning sunlight speckle the black surface of the water, punctuated by ripples of movement from the fish unfortunate enough to reside here.

Dad waits for the entire community to assemble before launching into his usual pre-training speech. He adjusts the collar of his fleece-lined jacket and clears his throat against the side of his fist. “Our focus today is cold-water survival. We don’t know if we’ll ever fall through ice or have to wade across a river to search for food.”

“Right on!” someone shouts.

The cheer electrifies the rest of the group. They surge forward, as if eager to watch my misery up close. From the rear, a woman’s voice calls out our unofficial motto: “Always be ready for the worst day of your life!”

Dad shoots a withering glare in the direction of the speakers. Our neighbors shrink away, chastened. “As I was saying, disaster can strike at any time, folks. That means winter. That means tougher hunting. That means walking farther and working harder to stay alive.” He turns to us, gesturing at the colorful flotation devices piled by the bank. “During this scenario, your objective is to don a life preserver and conserve your body heat for ten minutes. The water is forty-one degrees.”

I glance at my sister as she peeks out from around my mother’s waist. When no one’s looking, she mouths, Always be ready, complete with a dramatic eye-roll and a sassy wobble of her head. My jaw tenses with the effort of restraining a laugh. Katie’s small mockeries make this tolerable.

As soon as Dad’s finished grandstanding, she rushes over with my neon-orange life vest and presses a kiss against the collar. “For good luck!” she chirps as she tosses the vest into the water. After watching it partially submerge and then bob to the surface, she prods me with her elbow. “Why do we call this the duck pond if it’s full of geese?”

I suck in a ragged breath as I untie my shoelaces and kick my boots into a nearby bush. Thick muck squelches between the toes of my athletic socks. “I’ll tell you later,” I mutter, distracted by the slow drift of unidentifiable brown goop across the pond.

“I was just wondering.”

“Line up for your safety inspection,” Dad barks.

I shuffle into position and pat my pockets to make sure they’re empty. My watch is water-rated. The life preservers are already in the water. All set.

Dad pauses next to the boyfriend he chose for me, giving him a firm handshake and a smile that shows more teeth than affection. In my family, that’s practically a French kiss.

“Really excited for training, sir,” Roy says. “Been looking forward to it all week.”

I resist the urge to smack my palm against my forehead. Not for the first time, I wonder what is so moving about my father that could make a teenage boy into such a programmed robot. Maybe Roy shouldn’t go in the water after all. It might ruin his circuits.

Dad gives me a curt nod as he examines my clothing choices. Finding nothing else to comment on, he continues down to assess Heather and Candace. At thirteen, they’re the only others old enough to participate in this particular task. Or young enough. The adults hold their cold-water survival in the river, having graduated from Doomsday Prepper 101 under the direction of my grandparents. By blood, I guess that makes me a third-generation misfit.

Dad nudges our shoulders as he returns to the far bank to observe. “Take off any extra layers or you’re wearing them in the water. The scenario begins in thirty seconds.”

I’m not sure if there’s anything as embarrassing as having a parentally selected boyfriend, but stripping down to skintight leggings in front of all our neighbors has to come close. I avert my eyes as Roy peels off his jeans and folds them into a precise square. He tries to help me out of my sweatpants, but I hop away, glaring. “Don’t even think about it.”

At Dad’s cue, the scream of a whistle pierces the quiet aura of anticipation hovering over us. Like swimmers launching from their starting blocks, Roy and the girls execute expert dives and plunge into the deepest part of the pond. I will my legs to move, but my muscles betray me.

It’s only two months until I can run away to college and leave all of this behind. Somehow, knowing the wait is nearly over makes it harder to endure this nonsense, no matter how much I’m conditioned to expect it by now. At least I’ll have a great conversation starter at freshman orientation. Hi, I’m Becca. I occasionally hurl myself into duck ponds and eat grubs for dinner. Want to be roomies?

Another few seconds pass and I still can’t conjure the mental fortitude required to willingly leap into a cesspool. The longer I look at the water, the more disgusting it appears. I haven’t even touched it and I’m already yearning for my custom-molded earplugs and anti-fog goggles.

“Becca’s a chicken!” Katie shouts. She bends her arms into mock wings and prances in circles, pecking at the air. “Bawk! Bawk! Bawk!”

“I am not!” My sister always knows what to do, what to say, to make all of this into a silly game. There’s no malice in her jokes, unlike the jeering and heckling that rises from the crowd. Dad is silent, probably considering how he’ll punish me for my hesitation.

I set the timer on my watch and jump, refusing to give the onlookers the satisfaction of hearing me scream. My skin pulls taut over my body, the shock of the sudden cold worse than any chemical paralytic. The glowing face of my waterproof watch taunts me as I sink. It takes nine seconds for overwhelming panic to seize my heart at the sight of the black, lethal nothingness surrounding me.

Driven by pure instinct, I fight to the surface and scan for a splotch of orange somewhere in the mayhem. The weight of my clothes threatens to pull me under as I break into a sloppy, one-armed sidestroke. I consider stripping off my water-logged socks, but they’re my only defense against the sticks and stones lining the bottom of the pond.

Candace and Heather float by in their life preservers, breathless and pale from the exertion of retrieving them. I clench my teeth in anger. Anyone tiny enough to wear extra-small safety equipment should not be subjected to this insanity, regardless of their age. They belong in floaties, with pool noodles and inflatable sharks, not forty-one-degree water deep enough to swallow them whole.

I flop toward my life preserver and lunge for the strap. It slips between my fingers, but I manage to keep a grip on the buckle. I hold it steady with my hand as I dip below the surface and emerge beneath it, stuffing my head and arms through the appropriate holes. I don’t breathe again until the straps are secure.

Roy swims to my side, his hair plastered over his forehead like a sheepdog at bath time. He opens his mouth to speak, but he’s cut off by the sound of Heather’s sudden crying. Our heads whip around in unison to find her sinking in her life preserver, her thin torso slipping...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Margaret K. McElderry Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1534477500
• ISBN 13: 9781534477506
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande