Another First Chance - Hardcover

Couch, Robbie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1665935308 ISBN 13: 9781665935302

Verlag: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

They Both Die at the End meets You’ve Reached Sam, in this “superb…thought-provoking” (Booklist, starred review) speculative young adult novel from New York Times bestselling author Robbie Couch that explores all the different ways love can live on after tragedy.

It’s been one year since eighteen-year-old River Lang’s best friend died in a car accident. And every day since, he’s had to pass by the depressing billboard that appeared as a result: a texting and driving PSA that reduces Dylan to a cautionary tale. Dylan was so much more than a statistic, though, and River hates that everyone in town seems to have forgotten.

When he’s caught improving (a.k.a. vandalizing) Dylan’s billboard, River is blackmailed into joining the Affinity Trials—a research study that’s observing teens who are “struggling socially.” As soon as he arrives though, River is thrown together with the last person he wants to spend an entire week with: his ex-best friend and Dylan’s former girlfriend, Mavis, who’s the only one who knows the truth about the night Dylan died.

During the Trials, River befriends a charming quarterback named Nash, and it doesn’t take long for romantic feelings to start bubbling to the surface. But bizarre developments within the Trials make him wonder what the researchers are actually studying as they monitor his every move. And when suspicions lead him to a bombshell discovery, River will have to decide just how far he’s willing to go for another chance at first love.

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Robbie Couch is the New York Times bestselling author of If I See You Again Tomorrow, in addition to Just the Good Parts, Blaine for the Win, and Another First Chance. Originally from small-town Michigan, Robbie now calls Los Angeles home. 

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Chapter 1: River—Monday, June 3, 2024 1 RIVER—MONDAY, JUNE 3, 2024
I drive by the billboard displaying my dead best friend’s photo, just like I do every day. It looms above our town’s pet groomer’s on my route to school, the worst line in advertising history spanning its surface in bold, all-caps letters: DON’T DREXT LIKE DYLAN DID.

“Drext,” if it isn’t clear, is a combination of “drive” and “text.” I’m not sure which Michigan Department of Transportation staff member invented that moronic marketing term believing that they’re clever, but if our paths ever cross, I’ll make sure to correct their thinking.

Dylan wore his favorite shirt that picture day. I bet even his parents don’t know that, let alone the strangers who barely glance at the gigantic teenager staring down at them as they speed by with their drive-through coffees. But I do. They won’t realize that the polo is bright red, not depressing gray, because the campaign decided to desaturate the photo.

I mean, I get it. A black-and-white photo is sadder and more ominous than one filled with color, and sad and ominous is exactly what these billboards are going for. Dylan Cooper was the exact opposite of sad and ominous, though. He was happy and magnetic, inspiring and optimistic. He was exactly what every kid should be striving to be more like—not the poster child of reckless teen driving.

My mom overheard me call the billboard “stupid as hell” to our neighbor the week it went up and lectured me on why I shouldn’t say things like that out loud to people. They’d think I’m “strange,” or “insensitive,” or not dealing with Dylan’s death in the “right way.”

Joke’s on her, though, because they’d be correct on all three counts.

Today I don’t mind driving by it like I usually do, though, because Dylan’s billboard got an upgrade overnight: a Mario mustache, freshly spray-painted right above his big, grinning lips. And while some people might call it vandalism, I’m certain Dylan would be dying of laughter if only he weren’t already dead.

Plus, the mustache looks great on him, with his square jaw, dark eyes, and even darker hair thick enough that running a comb across his scalp could have been an Olympic sport (one he never came close to medaling in). He was the type of handsome that would steal your attention from across the room. Add a mustache, and you’d never get it back.

Still, I manage to tear my eyes away and spot that my gas gauge is almost on empty in time to pull into the one station between my house and school. I haven’t even set down my can of vanilla-flavored coffee at the register when Roy asks, “Did you see it?”

Roy went to my high school a couple years ago. He used to be our school’s mascot before he got busted for selling weed brownies to eighth graders under the bleachers in his Timber Wolf costume. He dropped out a week later and got a job at this gas station, where he still sells weed brownies illegally from behind the register, just not to middle schoolers or dressed as a wolf.

“Are you talking about the billboard?” I ask, as if I don’t already know the answer.

Roy nods. “Who fucks up a dead kid’s photo? And today?”

He has a point. Because everyone in town would’ve been upset by the mustache regardless of when it showed up, but the fact it appeared on Dylan’s one-year deathiversary will incite enough rage to ensure it’s the top-trending topic in Teawood.

Clearly, the vandal wants to send a message.

“I think the mustache is kind of funny,” I say, responding to Roy with the exact kind of comment that my mom wishes I’d keep to myself.

Roy stares at me with his big, bloodshot eyes, surprised. “But weren’t you two close?”

I nod. “I knew him better than anyone.”

Roy scans the gas station to make sure we’re alone and leans closer. “Did Dylan have any enemies working at Puparazzi-Ready?”

I open and close my mouth, confused. “Not that I know of. Why?”

Roy’s eyes narrow on mine, suspicious that I know more than what I’m willing to share. “It’s weird that the billboard just happens to be above the pet groomer’s, don’t you think?”

I stare back, unsure if Roy is attempting to make a joke or if he genuinely doesn’t realize most roadside billboards have nothing to do with whatever business happens to be nearby. Is he suggesting Dylan was really mauled by a freshly shampooed Goldendoodle or something? If so, the staff at Puparazzi-Ready pulled off the cover-up of the century.

“I think Dylan’s wrecked car confirms it was a tree on the side of the road that killed him,” I sigh, “not a pampered puppy named Spot, if that’s what you’re implying.”

I push cash across the counter and turn to leave.

“To be fair, a tree didn’t kill him,” Roy mutters with a soft snort. “Drexting did.”

I freeze in place, drink in hand, as a bubble of anger rises in my chest.

See? One split-second mistake behind the wheel and a shaming billboard gets to define Dylan for the rest of eternity. A mistake that wasn’t even entirely his fault, either.

My mind goes into overdrive concocting the perfect insult that somehow combines cannabis, middle schoolers, and mascots, but before I can get it out, Roy sees the look on my face and regrets going there.

“Bro, I’m sorry,” he says sheepishly, “I’m just messing around—”

But I’m gone before he can finish his apology.

I blast off toward school, swallowing my frustrations with my first sip of overpriced canned caffeine. After parking in the student lot, I start walking toward the main entrance of Teawood High School for the fifth to last time, hopefully ever. It’s a sprawling, brown brick building perched on a hill, covered in ivy, and filled with Dylan memories that still make every day I have to spend inside difficult.

I feel a pair of eyes glue onto me the second my shoes hit the pavement, and glance up to locate the source of the staring. Jacob Lewis, a quiet gamer who’s leaning against the hood of his car, is inexplicably tracking my every move.

He loves comics, as evidenced by the Marvel-themed T-shirts he wears every day, but that’s pretty much all I know about Jacob Lewis. His glaring would have weirded me out if it happened before last year, but I’ve gotten used to people reacting to me in strange ways since Dylan died. Especially after the billboard went up.

In theory, it was supposed to honor Dylan’s legacy while encouraging Teawood teens to drive safely. But I think it mostly just keeps the tragic nature of his death fresh in our heads. Instead of remembering him for who he was, the billboard has turned my best friend into a statistic, prompting a wave of speculative questions about his death. Some of the curiosity has resulted in outlandish bullshit—like conspiracy theories involving villainous pet groomers—but even the more grounded questions have been unhelpful at best, slowly turning Dylan the Person into Dylan the Tragedy with each hallway whisper. And as the Best Friend of the Dead Kid at School, I’ve been roped into the spectacle through no choice of my own.

If the ambulance arrived sooner, would Dylan have survived?

It must have been bad if the Coopers chose to have a closed casket,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1665935308
• ISBN 13: 9781665935302
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: webstar; casetta@mondadori.it; ; Via Mondadori 1,; Segrate Milano; 20090; Italien