Boo (Vintage Contemporaries)
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 080417136X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Do you ever wonder, dear Mother and Father, what kind of toothpaste angels use in heaven? I will tell you. . . . This book I am writing to you about my afterlife will be your nitty-gritty. One day I hope to discover a way to deliver my story to you.
It is the first week of school in 1979, and Oliver "Boo" Dalrymple—ghostly pale eighth grader; aspiring scientist; social pariah—is standing next to his locker, reciting the periodic table. The next thing he knows, he finds himself lying in a strange bed in a strange land. He is a new resident of a place called Town—an afterlife exclusively for thirteen-year-olds. Soon Boo is joined by Johnny Henzel, a fellow classmate, who brings with him a piece of surprising news about the circumstances of the boys’ deaths.
In Town, there are no trees or animals, just endless rows of redbrick dormitories surrounded by unscalable walls. No one grows or ages, but everyone arrives just slightly altered from who he or she was before. To Boo’s great surprise, the qualities that made him an outcast at home win him friends; and he finds himself capable of a joy he has never experienced. But there is a darker side to life after death—and as Boo and Johnny attempt to learn what happened that fateful day, they discover a disturbing truth that will have profound repercussions for both of them.
Hilarious and heartwarming, poignant and profound, Boo is a unique look at the bonds of friendship in what is, ultimately, a book about finding your place in the world—be it this one, or the next.
that I have a keen interest in science. “Maybe you could use an assistant,” she suggests. “Science?” Peter Peter says. “Well, do I have a treat for you!” He asks Thelma and me to wait for him while he goes to his office on the other side of the hall to fetch something. After he trots off, we notice that the visitors who were giggling around a nearby showcase have dispersed, and the object within is now revealed. Thelma edges toward the showcase. “Is that what I think it is?” she says. The
“Afflicted with?” Esther’s eyes bulge. “What the hell kind of talk is that?” “I am having trouble recalling the types of dwarf—” Thelma cuts in: “He’s a newbie, Esther.” “I don’t give a fig if he’s a newbie or an old boy. That question was plain rude.” She turns to me. “We don’t say ‘dwarf’—we say ‘little person.’ You got that, kid?” I nod my head. Esther reaches for her glass of punch on the side table and then heads off into the crowd of do-gooders in her bowlegged gait. “I guess I made
and cries, “Hup, two, three, four! Hup, two, three, four!” Thankfully, he never attempts to touch us. No pats on the shoulder. No hugs. I think he, too, dislikes being touched. A nurse named Francine, who used to be hard of hearing in America and now still talks too loudly, once laid a hand on his back and he cringed. Dr. Schmidt died in a school-bus accident. He and three other townies killed in the accident keep in touch and sometimes get together to play Mille Bornes in the games room. He is
in America, he said. Rover was a bug, he claimed, but in the sense of a listening device that transmitted the voices of those around his hospital bed. Only he could hear those voices. I did not believe him. He was a half-deader, but I thought him half-mad. Patients in long comas often wake forgetting their past. Has Johnny forgotten his? Has he forgotten all about Town? All about me? I step closer to the terrariums, my face between the gecko tank and the lizard tank. I remove my Cubs cap and
reply. I glance back inside the locker. It is empty once again. All my belongings are gone, including the paper bag. I close the locker door. I arrange for the punk rocker to deliver No. 106 to Curios later in the week. I ask him the time now, and he says five to eleven. I was away for several hours. I pick up my rock-filled flashlight and shuffle back to the Guy Montag Library. Coming up the library’s walkway, I hear a yapping, and Pierre clambers out of the bushes that grow alongside the