Paper towns john green. Read Full Paper Cities Online - John Green - MyBook

Quentin (Kew) Jacobsen has been in love with his neighbor Margot Roth Spiegelman since childhood. Once the children were friends, but with age, their characters and interests began to change. Margot and Kew were too different, their paths went their separate ways. The main character is still in love, but does not dare to renew communication.

Prom is approaching, and Kew is not going to attend. A few weeks before this event, the young man's life had changed dramatically. One day, Margot comes into his room through the window. The girl asks for help to take revenge on her enemies. Kew readily agrees. The next day, it becomes known that Margot has disappeared. Neither friends nor parents know what caused her disappearance. Only Quentin finds some messages left by his friend, and goes to look for her.

Most of the book is devoted to finding the main character. For many readers, the final chapter turned out to be a mystery. Only one thing remains clear - Q and Margot are too different to tie their fates.

Kew Jacobsen

The author notes that the main characters once had some similarities, which allowed them to be friends. Gradually, Kew turned into a boring young man, busy exclusively with his studies. To emphasize the difference between the characters, the author makes Kew exaggeratedly positive. A shy teenager lives an uninteresting gray life, monitors his progress in school, refuses to participate in social events. His only entertainment was computer games.

Quentin never stopped loving Margot. In his fantasies, he sees himself next to this girl. At the same time, the main character does not insist on making his dreams come true. His fantasies are more like a feature film, where the story ends with a union of lovers. Further life remains somewhere behind the scenes.

Seeing no future with Margot, Q tries to imagine his life without her. He will certainly receive a decent education at a prestigious college and become a lawyer. Quentin will marry a decent girl and live like hundreds of other middle-class Americans. The adventure, which Margot persuades him, becomes the hope that life can still flow in a different direction. However, having gone a long way of searching, Kew realizes that his beloved girl was completely different from what he imagined her to be. Quentin attributed to Margot qualities that she did not have, ignoring what really was. He loved the image, not the real person.

Despite some disappointments, Kew's little adventure isn't useless. The girl he loved made him see life outside the usual world and understand that not everything can be planned. Improvisations make our life brighter and richer.

The main character appears to those around her as a bright, attractive and most popular girl in her school. She loves to break the rules, because she believes that no rules really exist. They were invented by people in order to somehow streamline their everyday life. Rules are only needed to justify your routine. Their observance is proof that a person lives "like all normal people."

Even in childhood, Margot thought a lot about life. The reality surrounding her seems to her to be on paper. Parents, acquaintances, relatives and friends seem to be running in circles. Life is too fleeting to waste on boredom. But nobody wants to stop and think.

The main character is not just an individualist. She is a real egocentric. She sees everyone around her as stereotyped, as if they came off the assembly line. They all want the same thing. Men dream of their own home, car, exemplary family and dizzying careers. Young girls want to successfully marry in order to shift the concern for financial well-being onto the shoulders of their husbands. Margot considers herself not like everyone else. She is special and does not intend to devote her life to a routine. The girl is taking radical steps to rid herself of a gray future.

main idea

The author tries to question the generally accepted rules of "real" life. Do you really need to adjust your life to the general concepts of happiness? There are probably some alternatives. To find your way, you need to follow the call of your heart.

The novel "Paper Cities", a summary of which tells about the transformation of the inner world of the heroes, is called by many readers a book for teenagers. However, this is not entirely true.

Reader audience
American teenagers became the main characters of the novel. But we should not forget that exactly the same people with similar thoughts can live in other countries. Plus, they don't have to be teenagers. Every man in his thirties and every woman in his forties was once an eighteen-year-old boy and girl.

Probably, they were also unhappy with the world and tried to build their lives so that it would not be similar to the life of their parents. As they get older, young people begin to understand that things are not as simple as they once thought. Probably, the parents also dreamed of more, but could not achieve it.

Kew and Margot are equally dissatisfied with reality, the city in which they live. But each of them struggles with their own discontent in their own way. Q is trying to be a "good boy." Realizing the impossibility of building his own happiness with Margot, he imposes dreams on himself: studying at a prestigious college, a stable, although not very interesting job, a home. Quentin ignores the inner emptiness and discontent that he experiences, playing the series of his future life in his mind.

Margot doesn't want to put up with the inevitable routine. She must get rid of her by any fate. The girl constantly tries to stand out from the crowd, behaves extravagantly, and sometimes even indecent. But even this is not enough for her to be different from others. Margot leaves home to find herself, again become the center of attention and distinguish herself from her peers. This is how the path of many famous people began.

Very briefly A high school student who is in love with a neighbor who has run away from home is looking for a girl in the footsteps that she left behind. Having found her, the guy learns that the neighbor did not want to be found.

The story in the first two parts of the novel comes from the perspective of high school student Quentin Jacobsen. The last part is written in the third person.

Prologue

Quentin Jacobsen's parents moved to Orlando, Florida when the boy was two years old. They made friends with the neighbors, and Quentin sometimes played with their daughter Margot. When the children were nine years old, they found the corpse of a man on the playground - he was sitting under a huge oak tree in a pool of his own blood.

Quentin's parents, psychotherapists, called the rescue service, but their son was forbidden to look at the cars. At night, Margot knocked on Quentin's window. She investigated and learned that the deceased's name was Robert Joyner. He was a thirty-six-year-old lawyer and killed himself because his wife left him.

Margot was very excited. She was a rock that Joyner had "all the threads in his soul broke," so he killed himself. This childhood memory is cut off by Quentin when Margot asks to close the window, and then they look at each other through the glass for a long time. The neighbor became a mystery girl for him.

Part one. Strings

Time has passed. Quentin was finishing his senior year. He did not communicate with Margot Roth Spiegelman for a long time - the girl had her own company, in which losers and nerds were not accepted.

Quentin had two best friends. Ben Starling was called Bloody Ben by everyone. Due to a kidney infection, he had blood in his urine, but Becca Errington, Margot's best friend, started gossip around school that Ben was constantly masturbating, and therefore urinated with blood. Now the girls shied away from Ben, and he could not find a companion for the prom he dreamed of going to.

Quentin's second friend, a tall black guy named Radar, a computer-obsessed creator of an online encyclopedia - Multipedia, was embarrassed by his parents, who owned the world's largest collection of black Santa Clauses. The whole house was filled with figures of black Santa, and Radar could not bring his girlfriend there.

Quentin's last girlfriend left him for a baseball player, and he had no one to go to prom, and he was not drawn to this event. He was a calm and intelligent guy, studied well and prepared for college. He considered Margot Roth Spiegelman perfect and admired her from afar. Quentin had no real chance - Margot was dating Jace Worthington, the coolest guy in school.

Margot was a legendary person. She was not afraid of anything and ran away from home many times. Each time, her parents searched for her with the police all over the country.

Margot came to Quentin one night. Jace cheated on her with Becca, and the girl decided to take revenge on them, but her parents took the car key from her. She wanted Quentin to help her, and he agreed.

Today, dear, we will compensate for a lot of the evil done by others, and we ourselves will inflict a little harm on these others. The first will be the last, the last will be the first, and the meek will inherit a little land.

After purchasing everything they needed, they set off to carry out Margot's eleven-point plan.

First of all, Margot found Jace's car, put a lock on the steering wheel, and took the key with her. They then went to Becca's and told her father by phone that his daughter was currently having sex with Jace in the basement of their house. When half-naked Jace jumped out of the basement window, Quentin managed to photograph him. Sneaking into the basement, they stole Jace's clothes, left a carcass of raw fish in the closet, and Margot inked the letter M on the wall.

Putting a bouquet of tulips on the porch of her friend, whom she had undeservedly offended, Margot went to Jace and threw the second fish through his bedroom window. The third fish went to Lacey Pemberton, who did not warn her friend about the betrayal - Margot put her under the seat of her ex-girlfriend's car.

The ninth point was a respite in the business center, where the familiar security guard Margot let them in. They looked at the city from the 25th floor. Quentin liked the city, but Margot thought it was fake, as if it had been cut out of paper.

Paper people live in paper houses and heat them with their own future.

Margot said that cheating cut the last thread in her soul that connected her with this paper life. At that moment, Quentin believed that an affair would begin between them.

The sacrifice for the tenth point, according to Margot's plan, was to be chosen by Quentin. She made an indecisive guy take revenge on the stupid big Chuck, who harassed and humiliated Quentin. Sneaking into the sleeping Chuck's bedroom, they shaved off one eyebrow with depilatory cream. The victim woke up and chased the accomplices, but they had previously smeared the doorknobs with Vaseline, and it was impossible to turn them.

The eleventh point was the entry into the Sea World water park. At first, Quentin resisted - he had already done a lot for Margot that night. But the girl said that she could do everything alone. She chose Quentin to shake him, to get him out of the paper world.

On the way to the water park, Quentin remembered Margot's old words about the man who had died in the park. Then she also talked about the broken threads. Laughing, Margot announced that she did not want to be found in the park on Saturday morning.

Making their way to the "Sea World", the guys soaked in a ditch with stinking water, then Margot had to pay the guard who caught them, after which they wandered around the night water park for a long time and danced to the music pouring from the loudspeakers.

Part two. Grass

From lack of sleep, Quentin spent the whole next day as if in a dream, and by evening rumors spread around the school that Margot Roth Spiegelman had disappeared. The next day, the guys from her company began to press the defenseless nerds. It turned out that Margot had forbidden them to do this.

Quentin threatened Jace that he would post a picture of him half-naked on the Internet. The repression has stopped.

Margot never came back. One day, her parents came to Quentin's house, accompanied by a black detective. They wanted to know if Quentin knew anything about the girl's whereabouts. This was her fifth escape. The Spiegelmans decided to abandon their daughter and change the locks on the door.

Left alone with the detective, Quentinn told him about their nightly adventure. The detective believed that the Spiegelmans were not capable of raising children, and Margot was freedom-loving.

Such children are like balloons filled with helium, tied by a string. And this thread is constantly taut. And then something happens that it breaks, and they can fly away.

Since Margot is already an adult, they will not be looking for her. But after each escape, she left a "trail of bread crumbs" - a series of cryptic hints. She hoped that her parents would stop thinking only about themselves and try to find her on these tracks.

A little later, Quentin looked out the window and saw a poster of a folk singer, who had not been there before, on the back of the blinds in Margot's room. Quentin decided that this was the first trail left by Margot, and was determined to find her. He thought that the girl had chosen him again, and was hoping for a big prize.

After waiting for the Spiegelmans to leave, Quentin, Ben and Radar entered Margot's room. On one of the vinyl records, which Margot had a lot, they found an image of the singer from a poster. The title of the disc - "Walt Whitman's Niece" - has been circled. Soon friends found a collection of the poet Walt Whitman, where in the poem "Song of Myself" Margot underlined several lines.

On Monday, before lessons, Quentin was approached by a frustrated Lacey Pemberton and said that Margot had nothing to take revenge on her for - she did not know about Jace's betrayal. Because of all this, she lost her best friend, broke up with a guy who knew about Jace's affair, and now she has no one to go to prom. Lacey assumed that Margot had left for New York and would be back soon, as she had left her belongings in the school locker. Ben seized the moment, suggested Lacy go to prom together, and the girl agreed.

Ben suggested that the lines underlined by Margot in the poem "Get out the locks from the doors! / And the very doors out of the jambs" are a direct guide to action. First, the friends removed the door to Margot's room from its hinges, but found nothing. A few days later, Quentin removed the door to his room from its hinges and found a scrap of newspaper with an address in Margot's handwriting. Based on Multipedia, this was the address of a shopping center.

The next day, skipping classes, the friends went there and found that the mall was just a dilapidated barn with boarded up windows. Quentin remembered the underlined lines in Whitman's poem that spoke of death, and decided that Margot had chosen this abandoned place to die.

Inside the building, friends found new "bread crumbs" - an inscription on the wall "you go to a paper city and never come back" and a rectangular track with holes from the buttons. Going to Multipedia, Quentin found out that paper cities are unfinished settlements, ghost towns that exist only on maps.

Undersetting! You go there and never come back.

Even more firmly convinced that Margot decided to kill herself and wants him to find her body, Quentin decided to go around all the under-settlements in the district, and found the addresses of five paper cities.

From a literature teacher, Quentin learned that The Song of Myself is not about death, but “about interconnection — that we all have common roots, like grass.” The guy tried to read the poem, but could not - it turned out to be too difficult.

Quentin toured all five under-settlements, found nothing, returned to an abandoned mall and found the place where Margot had spent several nights. Quentin decided to stay here for the night, because his parents thought he was at prom. He realized that none of them knew the real Margot, who was hiding behind the "cover" of the holiday girl. Finally, having mastered the poem, Quentin realized - before looking for Margot, you need to understand what kind of person she is - "each of us is the same as Margot, and each is more a mirror than a window."

On a shelf in a shopping center abandoned in 1986, Quentin found the 1988 America's Roads Guide. The corners of some of the pages were folded.

At night, a drunk and happy Ben called Quentin and asked to pick him up from Becky's party, which he attended after graduation.

The next day, Quentin told his friends about his find, and they went to the mall, taking Lacey, who eventually became Ben's girlfriend. There they ran into two guys. In one, Quentin recognized the downtown security guard. The guys were fond of exploring abandoned buildings and knew Margot well. Having made her way into such a building, Margo did not photograph anything, but simply sat and wrote something in a black notebook. For Quentin, it was a new, unfamiliar Margot.

The next day, Radar's parents left and the friends threw a party. They agreed not to wear anything other than shoes and a robe for graduation. Friends sat for a long time and told each other "stories-windows and stories-mirrors."

Quentin read more and more into Whitman's poem - she helped him understand not only Margot, but also himself. And then he guessed: the rectangle with holes from the buttons on the wall of the shopping center is the trace of a map hanging there with pins stuck into it.

Friends went to the mall, found a stack of cards in the souvenir department, one of which was published in 1872. The map approached the footprint on the wall, but was torn in the places where the pins were stuck, and the guys were again at a dead end. Quentin began to think that they "got to the very end of the tangle, but never found anything."

Quentin successfully passed the exams, and his parents gave him a car - a Ford minivan. He was sure that Margot was gone forever, and did not plan to appear at the graduation ceremony.

You can only feel pure buzz if you give up something important ‹…›. You pull yourself out by the roots. But this can be done only when you have these roots.

Prior to the graduation ceremony, Quenntin found an article on Multipedia about Eeglo's under-settling, which left a comment stating that "there will be one person in Eeglo until noon on May 29th." Quentin knew from the way he capitalized the words in the middle of the sentence that Margot had left the comment.

Part three. Vessel

Friends assigned roles. Lacey was in charge of their meager assets, and Radar was calculating how fast to travel to get from Florida to New York State by noon on May 29. They all drove in turn. They had to stop and in six minutes had time to refuel the car and buy food and some clothes, because Ben and Radar had nothing but robes.

They spent almost a day in the minivan, and during this time the car became their home. On the way, Quentin nearly ran into two cows crossing the road. The situation was saved by Ben sitting next to him - he turned the steering wheel, and the minivan did not overturn. Soon the friends were on their way, and Lacy called Ben a hero. Quentin secretly dreamed that Margot would be happy to be found, throw herself on his neck and burst into tears.

Finally, the company arrived at Eeglo, which turned out to be an abandoned barn-like structure. There, behind a screen of two pieces of plexiglass, Margot Roth Spiegelman sat quietly and wrote something in her black notebook. Having finished writing, she looked at her friends with empty eyes, greeted politely and asked: "What for are you here?"

Margot immediately fell out with Lacey and Ben. The guys left, intending to go home in the morning. Quentin stayed - he had too many questions. It turned out that Margot really left forever and did not want to be found at all.

She said that at the age of ten she began writing in a black notebook a novel about herself "with a focus on magic." The heroine of the novel was in love with a boy named Quentin, had rich, loving parents and a talking dog, and was investigating the murder of Robert Joyner. Then, on top of what she had written, Margot began to draw up detailed plans for her escapes and other activities.

In high school, Margot was carried away by researching abandoned buildings and decided to run away forever. She included Quentin in her last plan, because she liked him as a child, and she hoped that this adventure would liberate him. Then Margot found out about Jason's betrayal and decided to leave immediately, without waiting for her diploma.

Early in the morning, getting ready to leave, Margot noticed that she missed Quentin and decided to "bequeath" her fascination with old buildings to him. The clues should have led him to an abandoned mall. The rest of the "bread crumbs" she left by accident, in a hurry, not having time to properly cover up her tracks. She didn't think Quentin would be able to find her, and went straight to Eeglo.

That night in the downtown area, Margot didn’t consider others as paper, but herself. She created the image of a paper girl that everyone liked, but could not believe in him. Margot hoped she would become herself in the paper town of Eeglo.

I know that there is deeper. Internal cracks. Splits of the inner world, where one does not converge with the other. ‹…› Like holes in a ship's hull. ‹…› And sooner or later you go to the bottom because of them.

Quentin invited Margot to live the summer with them, and then go to university, but she refused, fearing that she would be sucked in by "the right life - college, work, husband and kids and other nonsense." Quentin disagreed with her: he believed in the future, for him all of the above is a meaningful life. Margot was not worried about what would happen next - "then consists of many now."

After talking with Quentin, Margot called her parents, said that she was alive, but would not return back. The Spiegelmans were not upset. They believed that their daughter should please them, and when Margot rebelled, they threw her out of their lives.

Then they lay in the grass until they fell asleep. When they woke up, they dug a deep hole in which Margot decided to "bury" a black notebook with the story of Robert Joyner. Quentin said they only recognized each other when they started looking each other in the eye.

Before that, we saw only fictional images of each other ‹…›. And when a crack appears, light enters in. And the light also comes out.

Then they kissed, and Margot called Quentin with her to New York, but he refused and realized that their paths were completely different. Having thrown earth into the "grave" of Margot's past, they parted.

Thanks to Julie Strauss-Gable, without whom none of this would have happened.

Then we went out into the street and saw that she had already lit a candle; I really liked the face she carved out of the pumpkin: from afar it seemed that sparks sparkled in her eyes.

They say that a friend cannot destroy a friend.

What do they know about this?

My opinion is this: a miracle happens to every person in life. Well, that is, of course, it is unlikely that lightning will hit me or I will receive a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small people living on some island in the Pacific Ocean, or catch an incurable ear cancer in the final stage, or suddenly ignite spontaneously. But, if you look at all these extraordinary phenomena together, most likely, at least something unlikely happens to everyone. For example, I could get caught in a rain of frogs. Or land on Mars. Marry an English queen or hang out alone for several months on the verge of life and death. But something else happened to me. Among all the many residents of Florida, I was the neighbor of Margot Roth Spiegelman.

Jefferson Park, where I live, used to be a navy base. But then it became unnecessary, and the land was returned to the ownership of the municipality of Orlando, Florida, and a huge residential area was rebuilt on the site of the base, because this is how the vacant land is used now. And in the end, my parents and Margot's parents bought houses in the neighborhood as soon as the construction of the first objects was completed. Margot and I were two at the time.

Even before Jefferson Park became Pleasantville, even before it became a naval base, it really belonged to a certain Jefferson, more precisely, Dr. Jefferson Jefferson. In honor of Dr. Jefferson Jefferson, a whole school was named in Orlando, there is also a large charitable organization named after him, but the most interesting thing is that Dr. Jefferson Jefferson was not any "doctor": unbelievable, but true. He traded orange juice all his life. And then suddenly he became rich and became an influential person. And then he went to court and changed his name: he put "Jefferson" in the middle, and wrote down the word "doctor" as the first name. And try to argue.

So, Margot and I were nine each. Our parents were friends, so we sometimes played together with her, driving our bikes past dead-end streets to Jefferson Park itself - the main attraction of our area.

When I was told that Margot was coming soon, I was always terribly worried, because I considered her the most divine creature of God in the entire history of mankind. That very morning, she was wearing white shorts and a pink T-shirt with a green dragon, from which flames of orange sparkles burst from its mouth. Now it is difficult to explain why this T-shirt seemed so adorable to me that day.

Margot rode the bike standing up, with her straight arms gripping the steering wheel and hanging over it with her whole body, purple sneakers sparkled. It was in March, but the heat was already like in a steam room. The sky was clear, but there was a sour taste in the air, indicating that a storm might break out after a while.

At that time I fancied myself an inventor, and when Margot and I, having thrown our bikes, went to the playground, I began to tell her that I was developing a "ringolator", that is, a giant cannon that could shoot large colored stones by launching them circle around the Earth, so that we have here, as on Saturn. (I still think that would be cool, but making a cannon that will launch rocks into Earth's orbit turns out to be quite difficult.)

I often visited this park and knew every corner of it well, so pretty soon I felt that something strange was happening to this world, although I did not immediately notice what exactly had changed in it.

John Greene

Paper cities

Thanks to Julie Strauss-Gable, without whom none of this would have happened.

Then we went out into the street and saw that she had already lit a candle; I really liked the face she carved out of the pumpkin: from afar it seemed that sparks sparkled in her eyes.

Halloween, Katrina Vandenberg, from Atlas.

They say that a friend cannot destroy a friend.

What do they know about this?

From the song of the Mountain Goats group.

My opinion is this: a miracle happens to every person in life. Well, that is, of course, it is unlikely that lightning will hit me or I will receive a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small people living on some island in the Pacific Ocean, or catch an incurable ear cancer in the final stage, or suddenly ignite spontaneously. But, if you look at all these extraordinary phenomena together, most likely, at least something unlikely happens to everyone. For example, I could get caught in a rain of frogs. Or land on Mars. Marry an English queen or hang out alone for several months on the verge of life and death. But something else happened to me. Among all the many residents of Florida, I was the neighbor of Margot Roth Spiegelman.

Jefferson Park, where I live, used to be a navy base. But then it became unnecessary, and the land was returned to the ownership of the municipality of Orlando, Florida, and a huge residential area was rebuilt on the site of the base, because this is how the vacant land is used now. And in the end, my parents and Margot's parents bought houses in the neighborhood as soon as the construction of the first objects was completed. Margot and I were two at the time.

Even before Jefferson Park became Pleasantville, even before it became a naval base, it really belonged to a certain Jefferson, more precisely, Dr. Jefferson Jefferson. In honor of Dr. Jefferson Jefferson, a whole school was named in Orlando, there is also a large charitable organization named after him, but the most interesting thing is that Dr. Jefferson Jefferson was not any "doctor": unbelievable, but true. He traded orange juice all his life. And then suddenly he became rich and became an influential person. And then he went to court and changed his name: he put "Jefferson" in the middle, and wrote down the word "doctor" as the first name. And try to argue.

So, Margot and I were nine each. Our parents were friends, so we sometimes played together with her, driving our bikes past dead-end streets to Jefferson Park itself - the main attraction of our area.

When I was told that Margot was coming soon, I was always terribly worried, because I considered her the most divine creature of God in the entire history of mankind. That very morning, she was wearing white shorts and a pink T-shirt with a green dragon, from which flames of orange sparkles burst from its mouth. Now it is difficult to explain why this T-shirt seemed so adorable to me that day.

Margot rode the bike standing up, with her straight arms gripping the steering wheel and hanging over it with her whole body, purple sneakers sparkled. It was in March, but the heat was already like in a steam room. The sky was clear, but there was a sour taste in the air, indicating that a storm might break out after a while.

At that time I fancied myself an inventor, and when Margot and I, having thrown our bikes, went to the playground, I began to tell her that I was developing a "ringolator", that is, a giant cannon that could shoot large colored stones by launching them circle around the Earth, so that we have here, as on Saturn. (I still think that would be cool, but making a cannon that will launch rocks into Earth's orbit turns out to be quite difficult.)

I often visited this park and knew every corner of it well, so pretty soon I felt that something strange was happening to this world, although I did not immediately notice that exactly it has changed.

Quentin, ”Margot said quietly and calmly.

She was pointing somewhere with her finger. It was then that I saw what not this way.

A few steps in front of us was an oak tree. Thick, gnarled, creepy old. He always stood there. There was a platform on the right. She, too, did not appear today. But there, leaning against a tree trunk, sat a man in a gray suit. He didn't move. Here I saw him for the first time. A pool of blood spilled around him. Blood flowed from his mouth, although the trickle was almost dry. The man opened his mouth in a strange way. Flies sat quietly on his pale forehead.

I took two steps back. I remember, for some reason it seemed to me that if I suddenly made any sudden movement, he might wake up and attack me. What if it's a zombie? At that age I already knew that they do not exist, but this dead man really looked like he could come to life at any moment.

And while I took these two steps back, Margot just as slowly and carefully took a step forward.

His eyes are open, - she stated.

I must return home, 'I replied.

I thought they were dying with their eyes closed, - she did not stop.

Margon will return home and tell her parents.

She took another step forward. If she stretched out her hand now, she could touch his leg.

What do you think happened to him? she asked. “Maybe drugs or something.

I did not want to leave Margot alone with the corpse, which at any moment could come to life and rush at her, but I was also unable to stay there and discuss the circumstances of his death in great detail. I plucked up my courage, stepped forward and grabbed her hand.

Margonado is home now!

Okay, okay, ”she agreed.

We ran to the bikes, it took my breath away, as if with delight, only it was not delight. We sat down, and I let Margot go ahead, because I burst into tears myself and did not want her to see it. The soles of her purple sneakers were stained with blood. His blood. This dead man.

And then we went home. My parents called 911, sirens sounded in the distance, I asked permission to look at the cars, my mother refused. Then I went to sleep.

My mom and dad are psychotherapists, so, by definition, I have no psychological problems. When I woke up, my mother and I had a pre-long conversation about the life expectancy of a person, about the fact that death is also part of the life cycle, but at the age of nine I don't have to think too much about this phase, in general, I felt better. Honestly, I have never been driven to this topic somehow. This says a lot, because, in principle, I know how to drive.

These are the facts: I bumped into a dead guy. A cute little nine-year-old boy, that is, me, and my even smaller and much nicer girlfriend found a dead man in the park, whose mouth was bleeding, and when we rushed home, my girlfriend's cute little sneakers were in his very blood. Very dramatic, of course, and all the cases, but what of that? I didn't know him. Every damn day, people I don't know die. If every misfortune that occurs in this world drove me to a nervous breakdown, I would have gone crazy long ago.

At nine in the evening I went to my room, getting ready to go to bed - on schedule. Mom tucked me a blanket, said that she loved me, I told her "see you tomorrow," she also told me "see you tomorrow," turned off the light and closed the door so that there was only a small gap.

Turning on my side, I saw Margot Roth Spiegelman: she was standing in the street, literally pressing her nose to the window. I got up, opened it, now we were separated only by a mosquito net, because of which it seemed that her face was in a small dot.

I've done an investigation, ”she said in a serious tone.

Although the mesh made it difficult to see it properly, I still saw in Margot's hands a small notepad and a pencil with denticles from the teeth near the rubber band.

She looked at her notes:

Mrs. Feldman of Jefferson Court said his name was Robert Joyner. And that he lived on Jefferson Road in an apartment at a house with a deli.I went there and found a bunch of police officers, one of them asked me what, from the school newspaper, I replied that we didn’t have our own newspaper at school, and he said that if I am not a journalist, he can answer my questions. It turned out that Robert Joyner was thirty-six years old. He is a lawyer. I was not allowed into his apartment, but I went to his neighbor named Juanita Alvarez on the pretext that I wanted to borrow a glass of sugar from her, and she said that this Robert Joyner shot himself with a pistol. I asked why, and it turned out that his wife wanted to divorce him and it upset him very much.

Paper Towns John Green

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Title: Paper Towns

About Paper Cities John Green

Where is the line, crossing which a teenager becomes an adult? Does the teen feel like he has crossed that line already? Answers to these questions can be found in John Green's novel Paper Cities, written in the style of a young adult.

Quentin (Kew) Jacobsen is the most ordinary teenager on the verge of final exams. A girl named Margot Roth Spiegelman lives next door to the guy. Quentin and Margot have known each other from an early age, and since childhood, Q has strong feelings for the girl. Years go by and their social circle, and outlook on life begins to change, but this does not affect Q's feelings in any way. The turning point comes when one evening Margot enters Quentin's room through the window and asks for help to take revenge on her enemies, namely her boyfriend and close friend, who were caught in the relationship. Kew is unable to refuse the person with whom he is in love. The next day, our hero learns that the girl has disappeared, but not without a trace. She leaves Quentin with little clues that should lead him to her. Q and three other friends go in search of Margot, finding more and more clues.

Although the book is written in the style of a young adult, it touches upon topics that will not leave indifferent not only adolescents, but also adults: money, social inequality, thirst for self-realization. The main characters, Q and Margot, do not want to obey social stereotypes, norms and rules. Each of them is dissatisfied with their lives and struggles with it in their own way.
Margot tries to get rid of routine with inappropriate behavior and constant escapes from home. Quentin, on the other hand, delves into dreams of a stable, albeit not bright future. She dreams of going to college, then finding a stable job, and generally tries to be a “good guy”.

The book has such a title, of course, for a reason. Margot herself in the book explains to Kew that people burn their dreams of the future in the oven in order to warm their present now, and she does not intend to do the same. The girl shares her views with him, but will it affect him? Will he understand what she means and how it will affect his life?

Paper Cities is the fifth best book by the New York Times, and in 2009 was awarded the Edgar Poe Prize. He certainly deserves attention.

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