The Most Dangerous Place on Earth - Couverture rigide

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2016 Lindsey Lee Johnson

THE NOTE

Cally Broderick lingered in the doorway of the resource office, waiting to be noticed.

She would have been easy to overlook. She was short and skinny, and her dirty-blond hair had begun that year to wave and shine with oil. Her hazel eyes were pretty, though too wide-set, her nose thin but too long. Every four weeks her face produced a constellation of pimples that loomed and gleamed when she turned her cheek to the mirror, disgusting and enthralling her. Her face was a question she considered daily, widening her eyes in the mirror on the inside of her locker, sucking the flesh of her cheeks between her teeth. Her mother said—or used to say—that Cally was “striking looking,” a description Cally rejected: it was not only vaguely violent sounding but also patently untrue.

She was a restless girl, anxious to rewind her life or jump it forward. In service of the latter goal, she’d made a list of skills to learn before adulthood—how to swallow pills without gagging, to buy tampons without blushing, to shake the hands of her father’s friends without giggling and glancing away. But as the years passed, the list only grew longer: life presented more questions as she lived it, more and more doors to unlock. These questions she didn’t share with anyone. She wrote them in a battered journal, then stuffed the journal in a pillowcase and shoved it under her mattress lest someone—her brother

Jake—find it and expose her. She would not even show it to Abigail Cress, her best friend. Prior to Abigail, Cally would have said her best friend was her mother, but that was now impossible, for a multitude of reasons too complex to explain. In fact there was little about her life that Cally Broderick could explain, to herself or to anyone else. She was a girl in middle school. She was thirteen years old.

The resource office at Mill Valley Middle School was small and dim—the resource teacher, Ms. Flax, had a moral objection to fluorescent lights, preferring to squint in the amber glow of a ceramic lamp— and stank of mold, and of the pesto pasta that steamed at the teacher’s elbow as she marked papers at her desk.

Ms. Flax, over thirty but under fifty, had an apple-shaped body that she wrapped in hippie scarves and tunics and long mud-colored skirts. She was not pretty, Cally decided, but prettyish, with featherweight hair and deep brown eyes that turned down at the corners, making her look on the verge of tears even when she laughed. Across from her sat Tristan Bloch, who flipped through a stack of shiny colored papers on the desk. He was fat and pale with blond hair buzz-cut so close she saw bits of scalp through the glistening bristle; on sunny days at recess his head would glow as if on fire.

Everyone at Mill Valley Middle School knew that Tristan spent hours in Ms. Flax’s office, during homeroom, study hall, sometimes recess and lunch. No one knew what they did in there for all that time. Probably she helped him with his work, but it seemed just as likely that he helped her with hers.

“Ms. Flax?” Cally said. “I got this note? You wanted to, like, see me?” Ms. Flax started and looked up. “Oh, yes,” she said, shifting her weight, and the chair cushion squeaked and farted beneath her. This embarrassed Cally. And it happened every time—pushing hair out of her face, Ms. Flax would pretend not to notice the noises as she begged Cally to change her ways, as if Cally’s “applying herself ” would determine the course of Ms. Flax’s own sad life. “Come in, please. Have a seat.”

“No thanks,” Cally said. She knew what Ms. Flax was like: to step inside, to sit, was to condemn oneself to an inquisition.

“Cally, please.”

Seeing no way out, Cally relented, stepping into the room and taking the seat next to Tristan Bloch’s.

“Mr. Hoyt says you’ve been copying algebra homework,” Ms. Flax said. “You are an extremely bright girl, Calista Broderick. Why would you do this?”

“I don’t know,” Cally said. She looked to see if Tristan was listening, but he did not react. Hunched over the desk, he was folding a sheet of silver paper again and again. All the while he tongued the corner of his mouth. His white T-shirt was tucked into the oversized sweatpants he wore every day, in colors that seemed chosen to assault the eyes: apple red, lime green, and even, horror of horrors, yellow. He wore yellow now. Fruit punch stained his thigh, the splash darkened to a sick bluish gray. Cally’s mother would have told her it was rude, but she couldn’t stop staring at that spot. It was like one of those inkblots psychiatrists showed you to see what kind of crazy you were.

Everyone knew that Tristan didn’t have a father, only a dumpy mother with his same squinty eyes and an aura of frizzed red hair. She’d find any excuse to come panting through the halls, bringing Tristan homework assignments, sweatshirts, Slurpees. At least once a week she’d stride into the front office, hot cheeked, indignant, to yell at Principal Falk about Tristan’s special academic accommodations. Then she’d trudge down to the resource room to conspire with Ms. Flax, as if they would be able to turn Tristan into a normal human being just because they wanted to. But Cally knew what Tristan’s mother didn’t—she was only making his situation worse, she was exactly as weird as her son, what he needed most in life was to get away from her.

If Cally did end up motherless, she thought, at least she’d never have to worry about her dad trolling the halls of her school.

“This isn’t you,” Ms. Flax insisted.

Cally shrugged. Of course she could do the homework herself, but there were more interesting things in the world. There was her best friend, Abigail, and their afternoons behind closed blinds. There was Ryan Harbinger’s body as he stretched to field a ball, and the current that jagged through her in English when he palmed her bare right thigh under the desk, then squeezed it hard enough to bruise, grinning when she screamed. There was sprawling sideways on her bed with her head dangled over the edge, picturing velvety blood as it seeped to the top of her brain. Everything was more interesting than algebra, but she couldn’t say that to Ms. Flax, who had probably done all her own school assignments before her teachers even thought of them. And look at where it had gotten her—stuck in middle school for the rest of her life, with Tristan Bloch.

Tristan’s silver paper had transformed into something tiny, sharp, and shining—a spear, a crown, Cally couldn’t tell. His eyes narrowed to slits and his tongue worked its way to his top lip, sucking at it, revealing the pink gloss underneath.

“Oh, honey,” Ms. Flax said. “Talk to me. How are things at home?” “What?” Heat surged in Cally’s chest and face; she felt it making her ugly.

Ms. Flax shifted in her chair, began again. “Since your mother has been ill, I know it has been difficult. It’s all right to feel sad, even angry. I wish you would share your feelings, rather than acting out in this way.”

Cally thought, Abigail was right about Ms. Flax: she made you think she wanted to help, but underneath she was a total bitch. “Just because I don’t care about eighth-grade math doesn’t mean there’s a problem,” she said. “It’s not like it matters. None of this does.”

Ms. Flax’s eyes widened, and for a second it seemed she would cry. How awkward that would be. Unbearable. “Look,” she said, “I’m on your side here, Cally. But I can’t help if you refuse to be honest with me.”

Cally crossed her arms. Beside her, Tristan Bloch picked up his folded silver paper, pressed it to his lips, and blew. Then he set it on the desk—a tiny, perfect crane—and nudged it toward her.

This was when Cally made the mistake. She should have ignored him like most people did. But instead she reached forward and plucked the crane from the desk. She set it in her palm and raised her hand to her eyes. The bird had a sharp beak, a scissor neck and tail, two precise, glinting wings. It seemed to float in her palm. In that moment it seemed possible this tiny bird could fly—out of this stifling room, out of this school and this town and away. She smiled at Tristan then, and Tristan smiled back.

“What a lovely gift,” Ms. Flax said. “Calista, don’t you think you should say thank you?”

Mercifully, Cally’s iPhone buzzed in her pocket. Abigail always knew when she needed saving.

“Do I have detention or not?” she asked.

Ms. Flax sighed. “Three days. And you’ll make up the homework for Mr. Hoyt.”

“Fine.” Cally stood and turned to leave, the paper bird between her fingers.

That night, Cally curled on her narrow bed to text with Abigail.

Abigail never came over to Cally’s house. It was an unspoken agreement between them. It was partly because Cally’s room was small and plain, with a west-facing window that admitted scant light. Directly outside the window was her mother’s rose garden, which permeated the walls; no matter how emphatically Cally spritzed her own fruity perfumes, she could never quite cover the room’s damp soil smell. Be- yond the garden, the view swept across to Mount Tamalpais. Under the window was a small wooden desk that Cally rarely used. She preferred to do her homework on her bed, which she’d piled with pillows and pushed against the wall. The wall itself was papered in a pattern chosen for the child who had had the room before her: faded yellow balloons floating upward to the ceiling. In places, she had outlined the balloons with marker, had drawn on faces and hairstyles, torsos and hands. At the seam she’d scratched the paperback, exposing strips of ancient glue.

The walls of Cally’s house were thin, and the sounds were layered: as she lay there clutching her phone, she heard her dad shouting at the TV, her brothers fighting in the bedroom next door, the steady silence from her mom’s room on the other side. Since Cally’s mom had gotten sick, her dad had stayed home to care for her and fight with the insurance people, and now he camped out in the living room every day, his paperwork spread over the couch. He slept there too, TV blaring into the night. Cally barricaded herself with pillows but could not drown out the noise of the stupid late-night show, or her dad when he yelled at the commercials: “Oh right, sure, whose house looks like that? Ass- holes.”

Cally was hungry, but to get to the kitchen she’d have to pass her mother’s room. Her mother would be shrouded in bleached blankets, sleeping. A slight form sinking in the center of the bed. Cally’s dad would tell her, “Go on in, just sit with her, spend some time.” But whenever her mother woke, her eyes weren’t right and Cally didn’t want to see them. Her mother’s eyes were once a bright, unclouded hazel—like Cally’s own, but kinder—and this was the memory she wanted.

Her brothers didn’t go in either. Erik was a sophomore at Tamalpais High and walked to school each morning with razor blades in his pockets. Jake, nineteen, should have been out of the house but wasn’t smart enough to go away to college, and in Mill Valley there wasn’t much for him to do but bus dishes at High Tech Burrito and smoke weed under the redwoods in the park. Jake was the one who came into her room to steal the allowance and birthday money she’d stashed under her jewelry box or rolled into the lace cups of her bras. She’d begged for a lock on her door, but her dad said it was “inappropriate,” a meaningless word adults used to shut down ideas they didn’t like. He just didn’t want to pay for it.

Cally turned over in bed, pulling the sheets over her shoulders. She and Abigail were discussing Ryan Harbinger, who sat next to Cally in English so he could squeeze her thigh under the desk, and copy what she wrote about the books he never read. For the past two weeks he’d been pursuing Cally in PE class, pulling her into the willow trees to make out while they were supposed to be running the mile at Bayfront Park.

OMG you slut, Abigail texted. Tell me more!!

What do u want to know?

U know. When’s he going to make you his gf?

???

Come on. U know u want it!

I think he likes Elisabeth Avarine

That bitch. No way

She’s so pretty I think

^ Obvi

Looks aren’t everything

U have to make him want u

How???

Hmm well u don’t want to be too clingy. U don’t want to be that girl.

No, Cally agreed. Definitely not!

Cally understood that Ryan was too busy to care about things like schoolwork or novels or the volatile feelings of girls. He was captain of the baseball team, and in the hot afternoons of late spring she and Abigail and Emma Fleed would go in their skinny-strap tank tops and miniskirts to watch him play, singeing their thighs on the bleachers. When Cally’s bra strap fell down her arm, she wouldn’t bother to hitch it up. She’d already been dress-coded three times that quarter, but she didn’t care. She would train her eyes on Ryan, tracing his body against the green blare of grass, and when she closed her eyes at night she’d be able to keep seeing him, an afterimage burned onto the insides of her eyelids, her very own personal beautiful thing.

The next afternoon, PE class was at the pool. Aquatics and Safety Training. Cally stood with the other girls in their ugly one-piece bat ing suits, squinting against the silver swimming pool, shifting on their feet and rubbing toes on calves. The boys were on the bleachers across the water.

Cally hugged her chest and looked around for Ryan Harbinger. Instead her eyes alit on Tristan Bloch, who emerged blinking from the locker room in blue trunks and white T-shirt. Cally became suddenly, intensely aware of her own semi-nakedness, how the spandex swimsuit molded to her nipples and cut into her thighs. She felt a vague, unsubstantiated panic about pubic hair. As Tristan scanned the pool deck, she ducked behind Abigail and Emma. She was hiding there when she heard Ryan’s voice at her back:

“Cally Broderick! You gotta go in!”

She turned and he was there, suntanned and bare-chested and grab- bing at her, trying to throw her in the pool.

“Ryan! No!” she shrieked, but he didn’t stop. Terror could sound exactly like joy. Cally ran forward, evading Ryan’s grasp; the other girls scattered like birds. She glanced over her shoulder just as Tristan Bloch knocked Ryan into the water and crashed in behind him, splashing her. Cally stopped short at the edge of the pool and rubbed the sting of chlorine from her eyes. She felt mascara smudging on her face and tried not to let it worry her.

Both boys surfaced.

“The fuck are you doing?” Ryan yelled across the water.

Tristan struggled to stay afloat, arms chopping. His T-shirt bubbled around his face and threatened to swallow him.

Ryan streamed through the water, rose, and barreled down on Tristan’s head, plunging him under. It happened so fast. It went on forever. Cally was steps away, conceivably she could do something, but it felt like watching TV. Everyone gathered around the pool and stood there, waiting to see how far Ryan Harbinger would go.

Finally Tristan pushed out from under Ryan’s hand, gulping the air, panicked, like a lost little kid. Abigail...

“The characters in The Most Dangerous Place on Earth, Lindsey Lee Johnson’s alarming, compelling and coolly funny debut novel about the goings-on in and out of a high school in Marin County, Calif., spend most of their time spectacularly failing to see beneath one another’s surfaces. . . . Ms. Johnson’s characters are unpredictable, contradictory and many things at once, which make them particularly satisfying. . . . Here’s high school life in all its madness.”—Sarah Lyall, The New York Times

“Told through multiple perspectives, the novel offers a rich portrait of these characters’ experiences, laying bare their desires without demeaning the validity of their concerns. . . . [Lindsay Lee] Johnson proves herself a master of the coming-of-age story. . . . With a fearless compassion, Johnson artfully unwraps who these people truly are, as well as whom they claim to be.”—The Boston Globe

“In her stunning debut, Johnson . . . explores the fallout among a group of teens—an alpha girl turned stoner, a striving B student, an Ivy League wannabe—who prove, in the end, less entitled than simply empty and searching. An eye-opener.”—People (Book of the Week)

“Hard to put down. Johnson’s novel possesses a propulsive quality. . . . I read this book in one, long sitting. . . .  It is a particularly poignant message for today as we, as a nation, grapple with rising inequality and widespread questioning of the viability of the American dream. We ask, is it dead? But Johnson is asking a different question, a good one. She asks whether there is something fundamentally askew with this bedrock American idea. Her book seems to say, yes, there is something rotten amid the uneven splendor. Just look at the kids who should be the happiest on earth.”—Chicago Tribune

“If you are cruising for a quality read that’s also an unputdownable quickie, reach for Lindsey Lee Johnson’s debut novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth. It’s a high-wire high school drama.”—Elle

“Gripping . . . Each chapter offers a vignette into a more complicated interior life—ones that involve inappropriate student-teacher relationships, cheating on SATs, drugs, sex, and house parties. . . .  Lindsey Lee Johnson works a convincing assortment of different voices into her debut.”—GQ

“Johnson manages to intensify the perils of adolescence in the same vein as Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep and Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You.”—San Francisco Magazine

“These characters seem like typical teenagers, but beneath the surface is a dark incident that makes this chilling portrait of growing up in the digital age pretty unputdownable.”—PureWow

“A fascinating, often comic, and ultimately heartbreaking read . . . Like Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, Lindsey Lee Johnson’s The Most Dangerous Place on Earth ekes engaging drama out of an upper-crust high school’s social politics. . . . In its most insightful moments, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth also reminds us just how moving a teen drama can be.”—The Dallas Morning News

“A young high school teacher stumbles on buried secrets in this engrossing, multilayered drama.”—Cosmopolitan

“If you are cruising for a quality read that’s also an unputdownable quickie, reach for Lindsey Lee Johnson’s debut novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth. It’s a high-wire high school drama.”—Elle

“The characters in Lindsey Lee Johnson’s debut novel affected me in a way I can’t remember feeling since I binge-watched all five seasons of Friday Night Lights. . . . You’ll walk away feeling like you could revisit a hallway drama armed with bulletproof perspective.”—Glamour

“Engrossing . . . affluent students become embroiled in high-stakes drama with their teachers and, of course, each other.”—InStyle 

“In Johnson’s excellent debut, her sharp storytelling conveys an authentic sense of the perils of adolescence. . . . Johnson allows these dramas to unfold through various shifting perspectives. . . . She keeps the action brisk and deepens readers’ investment, culminating in a high school party that goes wrong. Readers may find themselves so swept up in this enthralling novel that they finish it in a single sitting.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Johnson’s polished debut novel puts a human face to the details of today’s daily headlines of teen life.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“In sharp and assured prose, roving among characters, Lindsey Lee Johnson plumbs the terrifying depths of a half-dozen ultraprivileged California high school kids. I read The Most Dangerous Place on Earth in two chilling gulps. It’s a phenomenal first book, a compassionate Less Than Zero for the digital age.”—Anthony Doerr, # 1 New York Times bestselling author of All the Light We Cannot See

“The Most Dangerous Place on Earth is a deftly composed mosaic of adolescence in the modern age, frightening and compelling in its honesty: a terrific debut, and one that I didn’t want to set down.”—Julia Pierpont, New York Times bestselling author of Among the Ten Thousand Things

“Lindsey Lee Johnson’s gripping debut novel leads us into the moral freefall of a group of privileged Marin County students following a dark incident in their shared past. Beautifully inhabited and written in supple, confident prose, this novel of adolescent violence and vulnerability is a knockout!”—Janet Fitch, author of Paint It Black and White Oleander

“An astonishing debut novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth plunges the reader into the fraught power dynamics between (and among) high school teachers and students with both nuance and fearlessness. With a stunning constellation of characters’ voices and a fiercely compelling story, it’s impossible to put down, or to forget.”—Megan Abbott, author of You Will Know Me and Dare Me

“In her superb first novel, Lindsey Lee Johnson deftly illuminates a certain strain of privileged American adolescence and the existential minefield these kids are forced to navigate. Elegantly constructed and beautifully written, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth reads like Jane Austen for this anxious era.”—Seth Greenland, author of I Regret Everything and The Angry Buddhist