Solitaire
Page 24
Lucas shifts in the seat next to me. He is looking out of the window, at the trees zipping past, the blur of dark and green.
“This is supposed to be the best time of our lives,” he says.
Becky snorts into Lucas’s shoulder. “If this is the best time of my life, I might as well end it immediately.”
The car revs to get up the slope to the bridge, and then we’re sailing over the frozen river. The Earth spins a few hundred meters and the sun creeps a little closer toward our horizon, preparing to spread its dull winter light over what’s left of this wasteland. Behind us, a channel of smoke has leaked into the clear sky, blocking out the few remaining stars that had tried to make an impression.
Becky continues to mumble, as if speaking through a dream.
“I get it, though. All they wanted was to make us feel like we belonged to something important. Making an impression in the world. Because, like, we’re all waiting for something to change. Patience can kill you.” Her voice lowers to a near whisper. “Waiting . . . waiting for so long . . .”
She yawns.
“But one day it’ll end. It always ends.”
And there’s sort of a moment where everyone’s sitting and thinking, you know? Like that feeling when you finish watching a film. You turn off the TV, the screen is black, but the pictures are replaying in your head and you think, what if that’s my life? What if that’s going to happen to me? Why don’t I get that happy ending? Why am I complaining about my problems?
I don’t know what’s going to happen to our school and I don’t know what’s going to happen to us. I don’t know how long I’m going to be like this.
All I know is that I’m here. And I’m alive. And I’m not alone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SHOUT OUT TO my school! Without you, this book wouldn’t have happened. Thank you for making me somehow both hate you and love you and for keeping me always self-critical. You raised me well: with a contempt for authority and with valiant levels of pessimism and anxiety. You made me fight, goddammit.
I need to thank the incredible and unstoppable Claire Wilson for picking my manuscript out of the slush pile and not having any doubts when I turned up to your office and announced that I was only eighteen years old. I would not be living my dream without you. I would be a sad student writing essays on John Donne.
I must also thank my two wonderful editors: Lizzie Clifford and Erica Sussman. The energy and enthusiasm you put into this book has been one billion times greater than anything I expected, and the book wouldn’t even be one-tenth as good without your invaluable guidance. Thank you to the cover designers, especially to Erin, for being amazing. Thank you to Lexie and to everyone else in publishing who has helped me and contributed at RCW and HarperCollins. I’m grateful every day to have found myself in such a supportive and nerdy world.
Thank you to my family for always being more interesting and less grumpy than you think you are. Thank you to my writer pals for fangirling at 3 a.m. about book dream casts and all the other things we do to make us feel more normal. Thank you to Adam for being my first reader and for not thinking I’m totally insane (you’re wrong—I am insane).
Thank you to Emily, Ellen, and Mel for never giving up on me, for making school bearable and sometimes even enjoyable, and for being genuinely excellent people. To them and the rest of our lot—Hannah, Annie, Anna, Megan, Ruth—I love you, I love you, I love you. It baffles me how lucky I am to have met you.
Alice x
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Courtesy Alice Oseman
ALICE OSEMAN was born in 1994 in Kent, England. She is studying English at Durham University, probably due to the expectation of society, but mostly spends her time obsessing over fictional characters, drawing really dumb comics, and complaining about things on her Tumblr, www.chronicintrovert.tumblr.com. Hopefully, she’ll avoid having to get a real job for the rest of her life.
Alice wrote a book when she was seventeen. This is that book.
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CREDITS
Cover art and design © 2015 by Erin Fitzsimmons
COPYRIGHT
Pride and Prejudice film quote courtesy of Universal Studios Licensing LLC
Extract taken from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock © Estate of T. S. Eliot and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
Excerpt from Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut courtesy of Richard Kelly
“GARDEN STATE” © 2004 written by Zach Braff. Twentieth Century Fox.
All rights reserved.
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
SOLITAIRE. Copyright © 2015 by Alice Oseman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Oseman, Alice.
Solitaire / Alice Oseman. — First U.S. edition.
pages cm
Summary: “Tori Spring feels completely disconnected from her life—until she meets the relentlessly cheerful Michael Holden, and a series of schoolwide pranks starts to draw her out of her shell”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-233568-5 (hardback)
EPub Edition © February 2015 ISBN 9780062335708
[1. Love—Fiction. 2. Practical jokes—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.1.O84So 2015
2014026695
[Fic]—dc23
CIP
AC
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15 16 17 18 19 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST U.S. EDITION, 2015
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