Again Again Read online

  ALSO BY E. LOCKHART

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  We Were Liars

  Fly on the Wall

  Dramarama

  The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

  The Ruby Oliver Quartet

  The Boyfriend List

  The Boy Book

  The Treasure Map of Boys

  Real Live Boyfriends

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by E. Lockhart

  Cover art copyright © 2020 by Jeff Östberg

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Lockhart, E., author.

  Title: Again again / E. Lockhart.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2020] | Audience: Ages 12 up. | Summary: Rising high school senior Adelaide Buchwald grapples with a family catastrophe and romantic upheaval while confronting secrets she keeps, her ideas about love, and the weird grandiosity of the human mind.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019041060 (print) | LCCN 2019041061 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-385-74479-9 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-375-99185-1 (library binding) | ISBN 978-0-385-39139-9 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-593-30539-3 (intl. tr. pbk.)

  Subjects: CYAC: Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | Secrets—Fiction. | Boarding schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Dogs—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.L79757 Ag 2020 (print) | LCC PZ7.L79757 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780385391399

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  For Daniel

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by E. Lockhart

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part I

  Chapter 1: A Love Story

  Chapter 2: The Weird Grandiosity of the Human Mind

  Chapter 3: A Philosophical Party

  Chapter 4: Adelaide’s Brother

  Chapter 5: The Precarious Nature of New Love

  Chapter 6: Mikey Double L, a Love Story in Only One Universe

  Chapter 7: A Terrible Spiral

  Chapter 8: The Egg Yolk of Misery

  Chapter 9: Bacon Is Definitely Meaningful

  Chapter 10: The Attractions of Tragedy

  Chapter 11: I’m Not Trying to Make You into Something You’re Not

  Part II

  Chapter 12: It Begins with Dogs

  Chapter 13: The Inside of a Mind, Made with Mirrors

  Chapter 14: Why Stories Matter

  Chapter 15: Identity Is Rarely Fixed

  Chapter 16: What the Light Does to the Canvas

  Chapter 17: Soul Mates as a General Concept

  Chapter 18: Shall We Pretend I Was Never?

  Chapter 19: How to Love Someone

  Chapter 20: Am I the Person?

  Part III

  Chapter 21: Mikey Double L in Multiple Universes

  Chapter 22: Oscar, Terrance, Perla, and the M&M’s

  Chapter 23: Adelaide’s Brother, a Story in Twelve Steps

  Chapter 24: Fool for Love in Several Possible Worlds

  Part IV

  Chapter 25: A Mauling, in a World Not Yet Encountered

  Chapter 26: The Philosophical Party, Revisited

  Chapter 27: A Rogue Game of Cards

  Chapter 28: A Miniaturist

  Chapter 29: You Could Let That Imaginary Version Go

  Chapter 30: A Battle of Surpassing Ridiculousness

  Chapter 31: The Wave of Love

  Chapter 32: Someday, or in Another Universe

  Chapter 33: Things She Could Not Express with Words

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  It was the third day of Adelaide Buchwald’s summer job, the summer after her junior year at boarding school.

  That summer she would fall in and out of love more than once,

  in different ways

  in different possible worlds.

  In every world, she was consumed with the intense contradictions of her heart.

  Adelaide wanted to be rescued and

  she wanted independence.

  She was inclined to laziness,

  curiosity, and

  magical thinking.

  She was all charm and yet deeply miserable. She was a liar and she hated liars. She loved both truly and wrongheadedly. She appreciated beauty.

  Her job was to walk five dogs, morning and night. They belonged to teachers who were on summer vacation.

  EllaBella,

  Lord Voldemort,

  Rabbit,

  Pretzel, and

  the Great God Pan.

  Those were the dogs. The morning she met Jack, Adelaide took them all to the dog run on the Alabaster Preparatory Academy campus. The run was a sandy space, fenced in and surrounded by trees. Looking through the leaves, she could see the spire of the Alabaster clock tower. She unleashed the dogs and sat on a bench while they frolicked. She listened to podcasts about stupid celebrities she didn’t even care about, trying to stop thinking about Mikey Double L.

  Adelaide threw balls for the dogs. She threw sticks. She collected poop in small plastic bags, then threw them in the trash.

  EllaBella said, You’re a gentle human. Can I lean on you? And Adelaide let the dog lean. She stroked EllaBella’s shaggy head.

  She texted her mom about the breakup with Mikey. She had already told her dad the little she thought he needed to know.

  Adelaide and her father, Levi Buchwald, had moved to Alabaster Prep for her junior year of high school. Adelaide lived in a dormitory, and Levi in Alabaster faculty housing. His new home was a small wooden house on the edge of campus. It was furnished with flea-market buys and overloaded with books. He was an English teacher.

  Adelaide’s mother, Rebecca, and her little brother, Toby, had spent the year together in a rental house in Baltimore. Toby was very sick. Rebecca was taking care of him.

  Rebecca was a knitter. She used to own a store called the Good Sheep Yarn Shop, where she taught classes. Much of her home was dedicated to wicker baskets overflowing with skeins of yarn. And plants, which she tended semi-o
bsessively. Rebecca was a person who focused very intently on the people, plants, and yarn in front of her.

  She texted Adelaide back immediately about Mikey:

  Oh blergh. I’m sorry. You okay?

  Adelaide lied.

  Yeah.

  What happened?

  The last thing Adelaide wanted to do was tell her mother the story of Mikey Double L.

  …

  …

  Well, I’m here if you want to talk. Hug! .

  Rebecca often used the fat, spouting whale emoji. Adelaide had no idea what it was meant to symbolize. She wrote back.

  Breakup was probably for the best anyway.

  I was sad. But I slept it off and had eggs for breakfast, and now I’m feeling much better.

  You’re very mature.

  * * *

  —

  Adelaide was not at all mature. And the breakup wasn’t for the best. But she didn’t want her mother to spiral into anxiety. That was something Rebecca was inclined to do, with Adelaide off at boarding school. She wanted to hear that Adelaide ate well, stayed hydrated, got regular exercise, and slept enough.

  When Rebecca spiraled into worry, the result was a series of phone calls filled with urgent requests for reassurance and connection that ended in Adelaide yelling at her mother, so Adelaide had devised a plan of regular texts giving evidence of those desirable behaviors.

  “But I slept it off and had eggs for breakfast, and now I’m feeling much better” was what Rebecca needed to hear. Not

  “I’m puffy and dehydrated from crying and

  for breakfast I ate two Hershey bars and

  truthfully I feel

  unlovable

  and ugly,

  stupid

  and broken.

  I wish I could get a giant injection that would turn off my thoughts.

  I would let a creepy doctor with a secret basement lab shoot a

  random glowing substance into my ear if I knew it would stop me from feeling the way I do.

  Last night, I tried binge-watching baking shows and then

  I tried binge-watching zombie shows and then

  I tried listening to happy music and

  putting on a ton of makeup. So much makeup. Then my

  eyebrows (with their makeup) looked scary and

  their scariness made me depressed.

  I was depressed by my own eyebrows.

  I would have tried smoking cigarettes if I’d had any, and

  I would have drunk Dad’s booze if he had any, but no luck on mind-altering substances, so

  I passed out at three a.m. and when I woke up

  I felt even worse and

  my pillowcase was stained with lipstick.”

  No. She couldn’t say that to her mother.

  Adelaide just sent the text about the good breakfast and the night’s sleep. She added a zebra emoji for good measure, thinking Rebecca would like it. Then she put her phone in her pocket.

  The Great God Pan lay on the ground, releasing gas.

  EllaBella stayed close, pressing against Adelaide’s leg. I am thinking you have dog treats in your pocket, she said sweetly.

  Lord Voldemort and Pretzel played chase. Rabbit growled at something on the other side of the fence.

  And suddenly, a boy appeared. He was already in the run when Adelaide saw him, standing under a tree. He had a fluffy white dog on a leash.

  Adelaide recognized the dog. It was B-Cake. B-Cake belonged to Sunny Kaspian-Lee.

  A beat later, Adelaide recognized the boy as well, though she was sure she’d never seen him at Alabaster. He had a sweet V-shaped face and full lips. He was broad in the shoulders, with a narrow nose, smooth-shaven face, delicate ears. His light brown hair was wavy and a little wild. He was the sort of person you’d see immortalized in Roman statuary, his skin a warm Mediterranean olive, his chin and neck strong. He wore a light cotton jacket, a blue T-shirt, loose jeans, and green suede sneakers with blue stripes. The sleeves of the jacket were rolled up. His hands had the slight squashy look of leftover baby fat.

  She knew him. She was certain of it.

  He nodded at her, walked over, and draped himself onto the bench. There was something unusual going on with one of his legs. He walked with a roll of his left hip, and the fabric of his jeans flapped around that leg.

  She remembered his walk.

  The boy released the clip on the leash. B-Cake zoomed over to Rabbit and Rabbit exploded into the air with an anxious yip.

  The boy laughed, covering his mouth with his fist. “Poor puppy,” he said.

  * * *

  “Hey, do I remember you?” she asked.

  “Me? I don’t know.”

  “I’m pretty sure I do remember you,” she said. “From Boston. Two years ago. We met at a rooftop party when I was in ninth grade.”

  “A party on whose rooftop?”

  “I don’t know. A friend of my friend. It was cold and you let me wear your scarf. Remember?”

  The boy shook his head. “I have a radically terrible memory. Sorry.” Then he took out his phone. “ ’Scuse me, I’ve got to make a call.”

  * * *

  “Hey, do I remember you?” Adelaide asked.

  “Me?” he said. “I don’t know.”

  “I’m pretty sure I do remember you,” she said. “From Boston.”

  “I’ve never been to Boston,” he said.

  * * *

  “Hey, do I remember you?” Adelaide asked.

  “Me? I don’t know.”

  “I’m pretty sure I do remember you,” she said. “I’m

  pretty sure, in fact, that you took my number at a party two years ago and

  you never, ever texted me, is what I’m

  pretty sure of. I’m

  pretty sure you’re the kind of terrible human being who says

  Give me your number

  when he doesn’t actually want the number, and I’m

  pretty sure that’s not the kind of human being I need to talk to ever again,

  especially not right now, when Mikey Double L is off to Puerto Rico full of virtue and

  my entire sense of myself is

  quite frankly

  on the verge of liquidation.”

  “Okay then,” he said. “I don’t need to make conversation.”

  * * *

  “I’m pretty sure I do remember you,” Adelaide said. “From Boston. Two years ago. We met at a rooftop party.”

  “Really?”

  “You were writing in a notebook,” she explained. “We started talking.”

  “What was I writing?”

  Adelaide flushed. She

  wanted to tell the boy the answer, and also, she

  didn’t want to tell him.

  “We talked about dinosaurs, I think, and which ones we’d like to turn into.”

  “Velociraptor, obviously,” said the boy.

  “That’s what you said, but you’re one hundred percent wrong,” said Adelaide. “Pterodactyl.”

  “Oh, you’re right,” he said. “Pterodactyl is better. Flight is always better.”

  “I used to have a fear of plesiosaurs,” she told him. “Do you know about plesiosaurs? They were like, giant naked turtles with sea-monster necks.”

  He laughed.

  “At the rooftop party, you gave me your scarf,” continued Adelaide. “A red and black one. You said I could use it but to give it back, because it wasn’t even yours, it was your cousin’s.”

  “Was I wearing a terrible leather jacket? Like a trying-too-hard jacket?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it was me,” he said. “But I can’t remember.”
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  “My ride was leaving and I gave the scarf back to you, and you ripped a page from your notebook. You gave me the page and you had written me a poem:

  Cerulean dress and

  wide eyes, like a lion.

  A raging wave of disobedient hair.

  She contains

  contradictions.”

  “I wrote you a poem?”

  “You did.”

  Adelaide was sad he didn’t remember. Maybe he gave poems to a lot of girls. Or maybe he just couldn’t be expected to recall a party from two and a half years ago, when they would both have been only fourteen.

  “I think poems, sometimes,” she told him. “Often, actually. But I rarely write them down.”

  “Do you still have the one I wrote you?” he asked.

  It was in her wallet. “Maybe somewhere,” she told him.

  Adelaide had asked people if they knew a boy of his description, a boy with a roll of his hip, a poet, a boy with soft-looking wrists and golden skin and bitten nails. She had looked for him again and again as she sat in coffeehouses, as she waited in line for a burrito. At parties or ramen places, she looked for his sweet, full mouth. She was holding on to the chance that something good might happen.

  To Adelaide, the boy was a promise. He promised her that

  happiness could still exist,

  could still be hers.

  And that promise seemed even more important once the bad stuff started happening with Toby.