Chapters (39)
- Cover
- Dedication
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
“It’s just so typical.” I take off my woolly socks and flop back on the bed. “This place sucks.” I’m going to USC for college, in California, which everyone thinks is crazy, but I need to be somewhere completely new. I’m sick of Prescott—the snow, the ice, the wind so cold sometimes it feels like it’s actually eating you. All I know is I want to make movies, and Vermont is pretty bleak on that front. All we have are writers, snowboarders, and serial killers.
Hannah is going to NYU to study art, and Andrew is going to Johns Hopkins because even though he hides it well, he’s freakishly smart. Johns Hopkins is in Baltimore, which is 2,646 miles from Los Angeles, which is 2,777 miles from New York. I’ve looked it up. Next year, we’ll just be three distant dots on a map. That’s the scariest part. I’m ready to get the hell out of Prescott, but I’ll never be ready to leave them.
So we need to make the next few months count. All that’s left are the moments—the big memories we’ll look back on, the ones that will matter when we talk about high school twenty years from now. When school ends in June, the three of us have a plan to blast “Free Bird” from Andrew’s truck speakers and point our middle fingers to the sky as we zoom out of the parking lot—one final fuck you to everyone and everything else. I already have it planned out in my head, can picture the rest of the school year like the frames of a movie.
“Next year everything will finally be different,” Hannah says. “I can’t wait to get out of here.” Hannah is Korean—one of only three Asian kids in the entire school—and I know it’s part of the reason she’s excited to move to New York. Her parents actually met at NYU and then moved here from the city when she was five, and she’s been talking about going back ever since, living in some bohemian artist loft. I mean, I get it. New York is vibrant and exciting and diverse. Vermont is one big bowl of crunchy white granola.
“Prescott is the most depressing place on Earth,” I say. “But I’m glad you’re stuck here with me.”
“I’m so happy you were born, birthday girl,” Hannah says. “And I’m happy Andrew exists too. He’s one of the good ones. He gave us this room.”
I laugh. “I’ve just been using him for his bed this whole time.”
“I actually don’t think Andrew would mind you using him for his bed,” Hannah says, waggling her eyebrows.