2010, ISBN: 9780140245158

Speak. Good. 0.9 x 8.4 x 5.5 inches. Paperback. 2010. 320 pages. Cover worn.<br>The critically acclaimed, bestselling n ovel from Gayle Forman, author of Where She Went, Just One Da… More...

Speak. Good. 0.9 x 8.4 x 5.5 inches. Paperback. 2010. 320 pages. Cover worn.<br>The critically acclaimed, bestselling n ovel from Gayle Forman, author of Where She Went, Just One Day, a nd Just One Year. Soon to be a major motion picture, starring Ch loe Moretz! In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen ­year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being ta ken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put togethe r the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make. Heartwrenchingly be autiful, this will change the way you look at life, love, and fam ily. Now a major motion picture starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Mia' s story will stay with you for a long, long time. Editorial Revi ews Review Beautifully written.--Entertainment Weekly A beautif ul novel.--Los Angeles Times A do-not-miss story of love, friend ship, family, loss, control, and coping.--Justine Magazine The b rilliance of this book is the simplicity.-- The Wall Street Journ al A touching and thought-provoking novel.--Romantic Times Abou t the Author Gayle Forman is an award-winning, internationally be stselling author and journalist. Her #1 New York Times bestsellin g novel If I Stay was adapted into a film starring Chloë Grace Mo retz. Gayle is also the author of several other bestselling novel s, including Where She Went, I Was Here, the Just One series, I H ave Lost My Way, and Leave Me. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, w ith her husband and daughters. CONNECT WITH GAYLE: Website: Gayle Forman com Twitter: @GayleForman Instagram: @GayleForman Facebook : Facebook com/GayleFormanAuthor Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permiss ion. All rights reserved. 7:09 A.M. Everyone thinks it was becau se of the snow. And in a way, I suppose that's true. I wake up t his morning to a thin blanket of white covering our front lawn. I t isn't even an inch, but in this part of Oregon a slight dusting brings everything to a standstill as the one snowplow in the cou nty gets busy clearing the roads. It is wet water that drops from the sky-and drops and drops and drops-not the frozen kind. It i s enough snow to cancel school. My little brother, Teddy, lets ou t a war whoop when Mom's AM radio announces the closures. Snow da y! he bellows. Dad, let's go make a snowman. My dad smiles and t aps on his pipe. He started smoking one recently as part of this whole 1950s, Father Knows Best retro kick he is on. He also wears bow ties. I am never quite clear on whether all this is sartoria l or sardonic-Dad's way of announcing that he used to be a punker but is now a middle-school English teacher, or if becoming a tea cher has actually turned my dad into this genuine throwback. But I like the smell of the pipe tobacco. It is sweet and smoky, and reminds me of winters and woodstoves. You can make a valiant try , Dad tells Teddy. But it's hardly sticking to the roads. Maybe y ou should consider a snow amoeba. I can tell Dad is happy. Barel y an inch of snow means that all the schools in the county are cl osed, including my high school and the middle school where Dad wo rks, so it's an unexpected day off for him, too. My mother, who w orks for a travel agent in town, clicks off the radio and pours h erself a second cup of coffee. Well, if you lot are playing hooky today, no way I'm going to work. It's simply not right. She pick s up the telephone to call in. When she's done, she looks at us. Should I make breakfast? Dad and I guffaw at the same time. Mom makes cereal and toast. Dad's the cook in the family. Pretending not to hear us, she reaches into the cabinet for a box of Bisqui ck. Please. How hard can it be? Who wants pancakes? I do! I do! Teddy yells. Can we have chocolate chips in them? I don't see wh y not, Mom replies. Woo hoo! Teddy yelps, waving his arms in the air. You have far too much energy for this early in the morning , I tease. I turn to Mom. Maybe you shouldn't let Teddy drink so much coffee. I've switched him to decaf, Mom volleys back. He's just naturally exuberant. As long as you're not switching me to decaf, I say. That would be child abuse, Dad says. Mom hands me a steaming mug and the newspaper. There's a nice picture of you r young man in there, she says. Really? A picture? Yep. It's ab out the most we've seen of him since summer, Mom says, giving me a sidelong glance with her eyebrow arched, her version of a soul- searching stare. I know, I say, and then without meaning to, I s igh. Adam's band, Shooting Star, is on an upward spiral, which, i s a great thing-mostly. Ah, fame, wasted on the youth, Dad says, but he's smiling. I know he's excited for Adam. Proud even. I l eaf through the newspaper to the calendar section. There's a smal l blurb about Shooting Star, with an even smaller picture of the four of them, next to a big article about Bikini and a huge pictu re of the band's lead singer: punk-rock diva Brooke Vega. The bit about them basically says that local band Shooting Star is openi ng for Bikini on the Portland leg of Bikini's national tour. It d oesn't mention the even-bigger-to-me news that last night Shootin g Star headlined at a club in Seattle and, according to the text Adam sent me at midnight, sold out the place. Are you going toni ght? Dad asks. I was planning to. It depends if they shut down t he whole state on account of the snow. It is approaching a blizz ard, Dad says, pointing to a single snowflake floating its way to the earth. I'm also supposed to rehearse with some pianist from the college that Professor Christie dug up. Professor Christie, a retired music teacher at the university who I've been working w ith for the last few years, is always looking for victims for me to play with. Keep you sharp so you can show all those Juilliard snobs how it's really done, she says. I haven't gotten into Juil liard yet, but my audition went really well. The Bach suite and t he Shostakovich had both flown out of me like never before, like my fingers were just an extension of the strings and bow. When I' d finished playing, panting, my legs shaking from pressing togeth er so hard, one judge had clapped a little, which I guess doesn't happen very often. As I'd shuffled out, that same judge had told me that it had been a long time since the school had seen an Ore gon country girl. Professor Christie had taken that to mean a gua ranteed acceptance. I wasn't so sure that was true. And I wasn't 100 percent sure that I wanted it to be true. Just like with Shoo ting Star's meteoric rise, my admission to Juilliard-if it happen s-will create certain complications, or, more accurately, would c ompound the complications that have already cropped up in the las t few months. I need more coffee. Anyone else? Mom asks, hoverin g over me with the ancient percolator. I sniff the coffee, the r ich, black, oily French roast we all prefer. The smell alone perk s me up. I'm pondering going back to bed, I say. My cello's at sc hool, so I can't even practice. Not practice? For twenty-four ho urs? Be still, my broken heart, Mom says. Though she has acquired a taste for classical music over the years-it's like learning to appreciate a stinky cheese-she's been a not-always-delighted cap tive audience for many of my marathon rehearsals. I hear a crash and a boom coming from upstairs. Teddy is pounding on his drum k it. It used to belong to Dad. Back when he'd played drums in a bi g-in-our-town, unknown-anywhere-else band, back when he'd worked at a record store. Dad grins at Teddy's noise, and seeing that, I feel a familiar pang. I know it's silly but I have always wonde red if Dad is disappointed that I didn't become a rock chick. I'd meant to. Then, in third grade, I'd wandered over to the cello i n music class-it looked almost human to me. It looked like if you played it, it would tell you secrets, so I started playing. It's been almost ten years now and I haven't stopped. So much for go ing back to sleep, Mom yells over Teddy's noise. What do you kno w, the snow's already melting. Dad says, puffing on his pipe. I g o to the back door and peek outside. A patch of sunlight has brok en through the clouds, and I can hear the hiss of the ice melting . I close the door and go back to the table. I think the county overreacted, I say. Maybe. But they can't un-cancel school. Hors e is already out of the barn, and I already called in for the day off, Mom says. Indeed. But we might take advantage of this unex pected boon and go somewhere, Dad says. Take a drive. Visit Henry and Willow. Henry and Willow are some of Mom and Dad's old music friends who'd also had a kid and decided to start behaving like grown-ups. They live in a big old farmhouse. Henry does Web stuff from the barn they converted into a home office and Willow works at a nearby hospital. They have a baby girl. That's the real rea son Mom and Dad want to go out there. Teddy having just turned ei ght and me being seventeen means that we are long past giving off that sour-milk smell that makes adults melt. We can stop at Boo kBarn on the way back, Mom says, as if to entice me. BookBarn is a giant, dusty old used-book store. In the back they keep a stash of twenty-five-cent classical records that nobody ever seems to buy except me. I keep a pile of them hidden under my bed. A colle ction of classical records is not the kind of thing you advertise . I've shown them to Adam, but that was only after we'd already been together for five months. I'd expected him to laugh. He's su ch the cool guy with his pegged jeans and black low-tops, his eff ortlessly beat-up punk-rock tees and his subtle tattoos. He is so not the kind of guy to end up with someone like me. Which was wh y when I'd first spotted him watching me at the music studios at school two years ago, I'd been convinced he was making fun of me and I'd hidden from him. Anyhow, he hadn't laughed. It turned out he had a dusty collection of punk-rock records under his bed. W e can also stop by Gran and Gramps for an early dinner, Dad says, already reaching for the phone. We'll have you back in plenty of time to get to Portland, he adds as he dials. I'm in, I say. It isn't the lure of BookBarn, or the fact that Adam is on tour, or that my best friend, Kim, is busy doing yearbook stuff. It isn't even that my cello is at school or that I could stay home and wa tch TV or sleep. I'd actually rather go off with my family. This is another thing you don't advertise about yourself, but Adam get s that, too. Teddy, Dad calls. Get dressed. We're going on an ad venture. Teddy finishes off his drum solo with a crash of cymbal s. A moment later he's bounding into the kitchen fully dressed, a s if he'd pulled on his clothes while careening down the steep wo oden staircase of our drafty Victorian house. School's out for su mmer . . . he sings. Alice Cooper? Dad asks. Have we no standard s? At least sing the Ramones. School's out forever, Teddy sings over Dad's protests. Ever the optimist, I say. Mom laughs. She puts a plate of slightly charred pancakes down on the kitchen tab le. Eat up, family. 8:17 A.M. We pile into the car, a rusting B uick that was already old when Gran gave it to us after Teddy was born. Mom and Dad offer to let me drive, but I say no. Dad slips behind the wheel. He likes to drive now. He'd stubbornly refused to get a license for years, insisting on riding his bike everywh ere. Back when he played music, his ban on driving meant that his bandmates were the ones stuck behind the wheel on tours. They us ed to roll their eyes at him. Mom had done more than that. She'd pestered, cajoled, and sometimes yelled at Dad to get a license, but he'd insisted that he preferred pedal power. Well, then you b etter get to work on building a bike that can hold a family of th ree and keep us dry when it rains, she'd demanded. To which Dad a lways had laughed and said that he'd get on that. But when Mom h ad gotten pregnant with Teddy, she'd put her foot down. Enough, s he said. Dad seemed to understand that something had changed. He' d stopped arguing and had gotten a driver's license. He'd also go ne back to school to get his teaching certificate. I guess it was okay to be in arrested development with one kid. But with two, t ime to grow up. Time to start wearing a bow tie. He has one on t his morning, along with a flecked sport coat and vintage wingtips . Dressed for the snow, I see, I say. I'm like the post office, Dad replies, scraping the snow off the car with one of Teddy's pl astic dinosaurs that are scattered on the lawn. Neither sleet nor rain nor a half inch of snow will compel me to dress like a lumb erjack. Hey, my relatives were lumberjacks, Mom warns. No making fun of the white-trash woodsmen. Wouldn't dream of it, Dad repl ies. Just making stylistic contrasts. Dad has to turn the igniti on over a few times before the car chokes to life. As usual, ther e is a battle for stereo dominance. Mom wants NPR. Dad wants Fran k Sinatra. Teddy wants SpongeBob SquarePants. I want the classica l-music station, but recognizing that I'm the only classical fan in the family, I am willing to compromise with Shooting Star. Da d brokers the deal. Seeing as we're missing school today, we ough t to listen to the news for a while so we don't become ignoramuse s- I believe that's ignoramusi, Mom says. Dad rolls his eyes an d clasps his hand over Mom's and clears his throat in that school teachery way of his. As I was saying, NPR first, and then when th e news is over, the classical station. Teddy, we will not torture you with that. You can use the Discman, Dad says, starting to di sconnect the portable player he's rigged to the car radio. But yo u are not allowed to play Alice Cooper in my car. I forbid it. Da d reaches into the glove box to examine what's inside. How about Jonathan Richman? I want SpongeBob. It's in the machine, Teddy s houts, bouncing up and down and pointing to the Discman. The choc olate-chip pancakes dowsed in syrup have clearly only enhanced hi s hyper excitement. Son, you break my heart, Dad jokes. Both Ted dy and I were raised on the goofy tunes of Jonathan Richman, who is Mom and Dad's musical patron saint. Once the musical selectio ns have been made, we are off. The road has some patches of snow, but mostly it's just wet. But, Speak, 2010, 2.5, New York, NY Penguin Books, 1996. Paperback First Ed thus; First Printing indicated. First Ed thus; First Printing indicated. Near Fine in Wraps: shows only the most minute indications of use: just a hint of wear to extremities; touch of wear at the head and heel of the backstrip. Binding square and secure; text clean. Very close to 'As New'. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo. 164pp. Introduction by Dave Barry. Trade Paperback. I bought this book right after I got dumped last summer. I was looking for something to cheer myself up. The first time I read it, It made me laugh and I stopped crying. The second time through, I started saying "wow, so true!" at least once every three pages. The third time I read it, I had everything in perspective and didnt feel so bad anymore. It still makes me laugh, I reccomend it to everyone. Its the only "advice" book that ever gave me really good advice, or made me feel any better. Even if you arent "lonelyhearted" you WILL laugh your head off!, Penguin Books, 1996., 0<