MORNING .in

MORNING

With a bag in each hand, I paused for a moment outside the van, staring at her. "Well, it was a helluva night," I said finally.

"Come here," she said, and I took a step forward. She hugged me, and the bags made it hard to hug her back, but if I dropped them I might wake someone. I could feel her on her tiptoes and then her mouth was right up against my ear and she said, very clearly, "I. Will. Miss. Hanging. Out. With. You."

"You don't have to," I answered aloud. I tried to hide my disappointment. "If you don't like them anymore," I said, "just hang out with me. My friends are actually, like, nice."

Her lips were so close to me that I could feel her smile. "I'm afraid it's not possible," she whispered. She let go then, but kept looking at me, taking step after step backward. She raised her eyebrows finally, and smiled, and I believed the smile. I watched her climb up a tree and then lift herself onto the roof outside of her second-floor bedroom window. She jimmied her window open and crawled inside.

I walked through my unlocked front door, tiptoed through the kitchen to my bedroom, peeled off my jeans, threw them into a corner of the closet back near the window screen, downloaded the picture of Jase, and got into bed, my mind booming with the things I would say to her at school.

PAPER TOWNS JOHN GREEN

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin and New York

First published in Great Britain in May 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY

First published in the USA in October 2008 by Dutton Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

This electronic edition published in May 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Text copyright ? John Green 2008 The moral rights of the author have been asserted

All rights reserved You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation

electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 4088 1162 7



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To Julie Strauss-Gabel, without whom none of this could have become real

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