Looking for Alaska

LOOKING FOR ALASKA JOHN GREEN Pages 18–19 and 155: Excerpt from The General in His Labyrinth, by Gabriel García Márquez Page 85: Poetry quote from “As I Walked Out One Evening,” by W. H. Auden Page 89: Poetry quote from “Not So Far as the Forest,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay SPEAK Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published in the United States of America by Dutton Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2005 Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2007 This Premium edition published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2008 Copyright © John Green, 2005 All rights reserved THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DUTTON EDITION AS FOLLOWS: Green, John. Looking for Alaska / John Green.—1st ed. p. cm. Summary: Sixteen-year-old Miles’ first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash. ISBN: 1-4295-2699-8 [1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Boarding schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Death—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.G8233Lo 2005 [Fic]—dc22 2004010827 Designed by Irene Vandervoort The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content. To my family: Sydney Green, Mike Green, and Hank Green “I have tried so hard to do right.” (last words of President Grover Cleveland) b e f o r e o n e h u n d r e d t h i r t y - s i x d a y s b e f o r e THE WEEK BEFORE I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party. To say that I had low expectations would be to underestimate the matter dramatically. Although I was more or less forced to invite all my “school friends,” i.e., the ragtag bunch of drama people and English geeks I sat with by social necessity in the cavernous cafeteria of my public school, I knew they wouldn’t come. Still, my mother persevered, awash in the delusion that I had kept my popularity secret from her all these years. She cooked a small mountain of artichoke dip. She festooned our living room in green and yellow streamers, the colors of my new school. She bought two dozen champagne poppers and placed them around the edge of our coffee table.