One hundred twenty-eight days before it happens, Miles arrives at Culver Creek Preparatory School, learns that Florida heat prepares him for nothing, and meets the cast of characters that’ll shape his experience there. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Looking For Alaska.
one hundred twenty-eight days before
Florida was plenty hot, certainly, and humid, too. Hot enough that your clothes stuck to you like Scotch tape, and sweat dripped like tears from your forehead into your eyes.
Look, okay. I lived in Southern California for nineteen years. It gets hot there. Riverside in particular would always shoot above 100 degrees in the summer for weeks at a time, and it was also an oppressive, dry heat, one that made all physical movement unbearable and simply out of the question. During the Great Ginny Slutshame War of 2010, I went hiking at the end of summer in the Grand Canyon. Even though I left for the hike very, very early in the morning down into the canyon, the ascent back up was one of the most miserable things I’ve ever experienced. (STILL UNBELIEVABLY PRETTY AND AMAZING, but holy god why is my skin on fire.)
I have been to Florida both times. Both times, I turned into that guy who is rude and completely gross about his complaints regarding the heat. I insulted my friends who lived there. I whined constantly. I begged for a swift end. I told random strangers that this was clearly God’s forgotten land. At no point did I ever attempt to be reasonable or thankful that things weren’t worse. I was, straight up, a complete asshole about it and I do not regret a second of it.
HOW DO PEOPLE SURVIVE IN THAT. I genuinely do not understand that! When you start sweating profusely after being outside for thirty seconds, THERE IS SOMETHING DEEPLY WRONG WITH EVERYTHING. oh god i am the worst, i swear.
I’ve only managed to be in the South during the winter, though once I was at the Atlanta airport for two hours in July. It was pleasantly crisp in that air-conditioned place and I was told that outside your skin would blister if sunlight touched it, so I stayed indoors while waiting for my connecting flight. So this is where I depart from understanding Miles at all, and I just gleefully hope I don’t ever come to know what that sort of heat is like. The humidity is what killed me about Florida because you swear you can feel it, like the air is full of invisible giants wearing wool sweaters and hugging you over and over again in their huge arms. What Miles describes in Alabama sounds more like your skin being burnt off. I mean:
…the sun burned through my clothes and into my skin with a vicious ferocity that made me genuinely fear hellfire.
NOOOO NOT HELLFIRE THAT WORD HAS SUCH SPECIFICÂ CONNOTATIONS FOR ME. Because that word is used so much in Catholicism and whatever non-denominational Christian belief my mom forced upon me. That sort of burning is supposed to be the worst. Did John Green just inadvertently convince me to never go to Alabama? omg WHAT HAVE YOU DONE.
Despite that I went to public high school, it’s easy for me to think about how much Miles’s experience arriving at Culver Creek reminds me of arriving at Cal State Long Beach for college. My parents weren’t there (my friend Jason drove me with everything I owned packed into his parents’ van), but I remember having the same expectation for the dorms and then being fairly disappointed by what reality actually was. But, like it is for Miles, it was a new beginning for me; I think for a lot of us who went to a school so far away from where we grew up or spent a lot of time, there is something appealing about getting to decide how to present yourself, or who to make friends with. I mean, you also understand that I came to college from a horrifically homophobic environment where I got outed, and suddenly I was at a school with over 30,000 people who knew nothing about me. And that wasn’t overwhelming or terrifying to me; instead, it made me feel like I had a chance to be whatever it is I wanted to be. (I hadn’t figured that out yet, but that took time as well.)
Miles sends his parents off with an awkward goodbye and a lot of hugging. Oh, lord, his parents are so awkward that they just start being adorable, I swear. And this is how Miles’s new life begins: not with a bang, but with a slow, impenetrable crawl. He doesn’t have the right thing to say. He has to imagine perfect introductions that don’t happen. He doesn’t make the friends he imagines, and nothing occurs in the way he expected.
Did Miles expect a pool of his own sweat to collect on his body? Did he expect the shower to be a disaster? Did he expect to meet his roommate while only wearing a towel? No, of course not, but I like to think that Miles was prepared for all of this. From what little indication I’ve gotten of him from this book, he’s not the smoothest character in the world. Like his parents, it’s as if he brings awkwardness with him like a companion stuck to his side.
To be fair, it doesn’t help that Chip Martin, Miles’s roommate, doesn’t exactly make that easy. He combines being eccentric and confident at the same time, so both things confuse Miles over and over again. It’s sort of that thing when you feel like a person is operating on an entirely different astral plane than you, that you can’t seem to quite grasp where they’re headed or what they mean. Still, Miles, quite the industrious man, manages to find something to offer his new roommate: his ability to remember people’s last lines before death. (Well, not so sure that’s an ability as much as it is just a neat thing he does.)
I don’t know if that’s what seals the deal for Chip or if it was just convenience, but I liked how open Chip was with Miles from this point on. It’s still like Chip is on a different wavelength than Miles–and some of that is definitely due to the fact that Chip has experience at Culver Creek–but he largely seems wonderfully welcoming to his new roommate. Perhaps it’s just practical at this point; he’s going to have to live with Miles for the next year, so why not start things off on a good note?
Chip did not believe in having a sock drawer or a T-shirt drawer. He believed that all drawers were created equal and filled each with whatever fit.
I have a sock drawer, y’all. ALL DRAWERS ARE NOT EQUAL. I WILL FIGHT YOU ON THIS ONE.
But that niceness I spoke of isn’t extended to everything, and Chip sets clear boundaries about what sort of role he is and is not going to take as a roommate. This will not include being his entrée into the social life at the school, though he does quickly disseminate the crucial dichotomy the school splits into: the students who attend regularly, and those who attend only on the weekdays before going home to their parents’ air-conditioned houses on Weekday. They are the WEEKDAY WARRIORS, a brilliantly appropriate term, I might add. Oh, and they are the cool kids, and Miles should be seen with Chip if he wants to be cool. Oh, and Chip is really The Colonel. And Miles is Pudge. And what.
It’s here that we rather quickly meet Alaska properly for the first time. We get another list from Miles (MORE LISTS ALL OF THE TIME) before he meets–his words, by the way–“the hottest girl in all of human history.” That’s what Alaska is to him. And I wasn’t with him until this:
“…then I’m in the middle of a sentence about analogies or something and like a hawk he reaches down and he honks my boob. HONK. A much-too-firm, two- to three-second HONK. And the first thing I thought was Okay, how do I extricate this claw from my boob before it leaves permanent marks? and the second thing I thought was God, I can’t wait to tell Takumi and the Colonel.”
Yeah, hot or not, I want to be friends with this girl. On top of that ALL OF THE BOOKS. I LOVE PEOPLE WHO OWN LOTS OF BOOKS. I noticed that Miles spotted this, too (though not after spending far too much time looking at her body ew); I’M CALLING IT. IT WILL BE IMPORTANT. Well, this chapter already seems to be setting up Miles’s unending crush on Alaska and her fascinating relationship with him. I like using that word: she fascinates me. I obviously can’t figure her out because I’ve just met her, but, like the Colonel, she has no real reason to be friendly to Miles.
These two new characters both talk with Miles out by the school’s lake, and I am picking up the ways in which they sort of slowly begin to pull him into their group. I think the cigarettes are one of those starts, a way for Chip to keep coming back, a sign that socializing with him is just fine…to an extent.
Alaska, on the other hand, is far more open and receptive of him, though Miles doesn’t really see any of her more subtle attributes or actions, distracted by her beauty. The two talk of last words, in this case about Simón BolÃvar, and her interest in him isn’t ironic or patronizing. Which is not to say he likes her or is in like with her, obviously. But she does say he is cute; and she does offer to get him laid; and they do run home in an acknowledgment of the absurd fear of walking alone at night. And what I get from this is that perhaps these two might never end up together in any romantic sense, but that Miles just met the two perfect people at this school to help him find that Great Perhaps. They’re interesting, weird, and mischief always sounds good to them. Far away from home, that idea is a whole lot more enticing to Miles than anything else.
Ok, first of all:
NEW HOPE, ALABAMA (Where the Colonel is from) IS A COMPLETELY REAL PLACE AND I HAVE BEEN THERE AND PERFORMED IN THEIR FOOTBALL STADIUM AND EXCUSE ME WHILE I FANGIRL.
Ahem.
Moving on: Thanks to my iron deficiency I am cold ALL THE TIME and therefore I laugh at people when they tell me how hot they are. The Alabama heat has no affect on me, except for the fact sometimes I forget it really is hot and I get burnt easily and BAM! LOBSTER!
But, to me, it still seems hotter in Florida.
And, I should just tell you: I am Chip/the Colonel. Small town kid (New Hope is REALLY small) who memorizes things for fun, because otherwise we'd be too bored and then we meet that one friend who turns us in to one of those weird kids who just like to get in trouble? Oh my Gods, you have no idea how much I can relate to that.
Ummm… I have mixed emotions about Alaska. I was hoping- really, really hoping -that she would be as cool as some of Green's other female characters but… I dunno. I feel like I've gone to school with her before. I've been her friend. She doesn't really feel as quirky as his other characters.
That makes me likes her more, but in a totally different way. Hmmm…
I'm just going to go ahead and call it: The labyrinth is probably life, right? I mean, what else would it be?
But can I just say: YES. YESYESYESYES. We've met two more Southern characters (one of them who, supposedly, lives a grand total of two hours away from me) and neither one of them are outrageous bigots.
Oh, John Green. I knew you wouldn't disappoint me!
John Green is from the south and he's not a bigot.
I am aware. I just feel that most writers (even the Southern ones) tend to focus on the fact that most of the people in the South are bigoted. I mean, it's not exactly a bald-faced lie, as history can obviously attest, but it does get rather annoying to those of us who know that not everyone is like that. Nor are we all innocent or stupid or whatever other stereotype you view us as.
It does help further the plot in some books, but most Southern writers forget to include the good as well as the bad, generally excluding the main character.
I should have known John Green was going to be better than that, of course, but I do tend to get worried about the disappointment of yet another book crushing my hopes for a decent portrayal of TRUE Southern life.
I mean, it's not exactly a bald-faced lie, as history can obviously attest, but it does get rather annoying to those of us who know that not everyone is like that. Nor are we all innocent or stupid or whatever other stereotype you view us as.
WORD, Aslee. *fistbump*
Well said, Aslee! <3
Yeah, the fact that I feel like I've met Alaska before or maybe even BEEN her makes me like her more, not less.
I completely agree in that his portrayal of the south is SO LIBERATING AND REFRESHING. I'm from New Orleans, which in a lot of ways isn't *really* the South, but my dad's from New Hope, Mississippi, so I feel like I can relate.
Anyway, I'm LOVING this book so far. WHY IS IT FINALS SEASON?!
i went to high school in bangkok and now i live in Death & Doom Cold of MD. i love the heat. that oppressive hellfire heat you loathe is what i continuously seek, even in the height of east coast humid summer.
i'm with you on sock drawers. there is a space for every article of clothing. mixing should not be allowed.
why do i feel like these characters are going to be mean to Miles?
Okay, as someone from Chicago (I also lived in Poland, which is often wonderfully cold) all of the kinds of heat discussed are unbelievably awful. Just, how can you differentiate the way that the sun is slowly burning the life out of you or slowly drowning you in humid heat? You're still dying. |:
Anyway, I like the Colonel. I know Alaska is supposed to be intriguing and all that jazz, she is, she sounds like a wonderful person, but I feel that there is more to the Colonel. We shall see~
Also, Miles, maps. I like you too.
I'm with the two people above me… always cold, love the heat. Still live in the mountains of Colorado, though, where the depressingly long and vicious winter is just beginning. Yuck. I dream of eating heat for breakfast this time of year. Okay, that didn't really make any sense, but I'm stickin' to it.
Mark, I think you hit the nail on the head with your description of Alaska…. she is just straight, pure, unadultered fascination bottled up inside a human body. I could spend most of my days hanging out with her and the Colonel and never get bored.
One more thing…. the other day I "stumbled upon" a list of people and their last words…. and I got really excited and wanted to tell Miles (PUDGE LOL) and see if he already knew them all and then I realized HE IS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER OHMYGOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME.
John Green has the same hobby as Miles 🙂
I, personally, am English–though with the luck to have travelled quite far abroad. Anything about 24 C and I begin to melt. I also have the unluck to be very, very fair so I spend hot days perpetually lobsterine, especially my rather large nose. I am actually physically incapable in the heat. If it gets too hot I can no longer think or walk straight and occasionally nearly fall down stairs in China and a stranger has to prop me up very politely and all the awful dear god
Alaska is one of my literary loves. Perhaps I wouldn’t like her, if I knew her, but her passion and everything that makes up her just leaps off the pages to me. All the characters in John Green’s books are powerful, they’re just so incredibly real. I side-eye the smoking because I am a smoking bigot–also I am fragile and cannot breathe around smokers, it is unfortunate–but I suppose it’s a symbol of his acceptance and a tie to his friends. In the form of a quarter of a million chemical substances. But hey, peer pressure and trying to look cool, especially as a new and confused student, are a massive part of being a teen for most, so I digress. It is very ~teenagery~
I'm side-eyeing the smoking too. I hate cigarette smoke, and the idea of actually sucking that into your lungs repulses me, so I've never tried. Yay for resisting peer pressure! I can be around smokers, but then I mostly pester them to stop smoking and tell them all the horrible things that could happen to them so I guess I'm a smoking bigot too.
Hi five for the smoking bigot corner! Let us pass judgement on all the things, and frown disapprovingly. And perhaps tut if we get round to it.
As someone allergic to smoke, I believe there is always time for tutting at smokers. Or coughing at them, choking, and falling over. >_>
I think Florida is the worst on the places it sucks to be in the summer list. But the rest of the southeast is pretty humid too. I remember vividly the first time I experienced heat without humidity. I was like “oh! This is WONDERFUL!”. Haha humidity is the worst.
The colonel is not the worst. The colonel is the best.
While I generally prefer the heat before cold, I have to say that I have never experienced that kind of heat (or extreme cold either, our weather is very moderate), so I wouldn't know what that's like.
So far, I'm liking this set of characters. I find them intriguing and well, yes, fascinating.
Also Alaska has a lot of books. That pretty much seals the deal for me. I can't dislike someone who owns lots of books.
Heat. I can sort of relate to it, in a distant sense. When I first moved to Asia when I was a little kid, the heat was oppressive. I thought things were bad, but that was before I'd even walked out the air-conditioned airport doors. Then I begged for a swift merciful death.
Real life took a different approach: acclimatization. At this point I've wandered around India in the middle of summer in jeans while doing manual labour. Heat holds no fear for me.
Y'know, I don't really look forward to the awkwardness of just getting a room-mate. I've been put in cabins/dorms with multiple people, I've had to bunk with friends and family, but I've never been placed in a double with a complete stranger. I…just don't know how I would interact. What if it wasn't the type of person I'd like? I mean, it can be difficult even living with a friend you genuinely like, if they have a different style to you!
Oh, ending up with a roommate you don't like is just awful. I had three different ones at university. One of them would wake me up far too early in the morning by playing music VERY loudly so that she could hear it when she was doing stuff in the bathroom area of the suite. I finally got pissed off one day because I was trying to sleep and she woke me up with Linkin' Park (they're not a horrible band, but I still don't want to wake up with their music blasting at me). So I went over to my computer and started blasting Rammstein. Not even a minute later, she came back to the room and turned down her music. And then I went back to sleep.
On the flip side, ending up with someone you like can be incredibly awesome. My first roommate after transferring schools is now one of my besties.
When I went to college they sent out a roommate questionnaire and they tried to match people up with relatively compatible people. It's mostly for stuff like, not matching smokers with non-smokers or early birds with night owls, but I think there were some personality questions on there too. Maybe your roommatey situation will be similar?
Well, I'm already at uni, and its unlikely I'll even have to get a random roomie: 80% of the rooms on campus are singles, and next year I'll probably get an apartment or cluster with some friends. So I've dodged that bullet.
But yes, I've seen those surveys. A bit basic, of course, but better than nothing.
I didn't have a TERRIBLE roommate freshman year of college, but it wasn't a pleasant experience either. About half of the freshman class attends some kind of outdoorsy bonding experience the school offers, but I couldn't attend, so the first day of college my roommate already had a group of friends and I had no one. She didn't reach out to me at all so I was completely alone the first week or so. I know she wasn't obligated to invite me to lunch or anything, but it's generally the nice thing to do. I guess in the long run it was better for me because I'm PAINFULLY shy and the first week of awkwardly asking strangers if I could sit with them was probably good for me. I also really didn't enjoy getting sexiled :/
but! In the end it almost always work out ok 🙂 no need to stress about it
Ha, Mark, the two times I've been in Florida, I did the same thing. I become an unbelievable asshole in that heat and can't seem to check myself enough to prevent myself from making everyone around me miserable, too. Actually, the first time I was there, I was staying with family and on our first day in their home, I put on some sunscreen and went out back to check out their pool. I came in an hour later so profusely sunburned that I could barely move for the entire rest of our visit. So yeah. I can relate to his descriptions of how hot it is because YES IT REALLY IS LIKE THAT.
I find this chapter so quirky and charming. I'm a sucker for that, so clearly this book is right up my alley. <3
So that part where Alaska talks about suddenly getting irrationally afraid when you're out at night and having to run home? Yup, I have totally done this. While taking out the garbage no less. And up until now I thought it was just me being dumb – oh look at the funny little girl who's afraid of spiders and being outside in the dark and probably her own shadow too – and then suddenly holy shit other people have had this happen. I love this book already.
I love the bit about the labyrinth, too. Mostly because my twelfth-grade English teacher would have been all over that, and my twelfth-grade English teacher was a BAMF in little-old-lady form. I got to the bit about the labyrinth and started thinking about what that represented and then realized oh my god I'm in Dr. E's class again. And that is a very very good place to be. 😀
Don't worry, I did the same when checking the mail one night.
Yeah, the running back home when it's dark thing?
I do it all the time. I'm 26 no less. No shame 😀
Ha, that's why we normally go to Florida for Thanksgiving so we New Englanders don't die in the heat! Though we may be doing something this Spring Break to make up for having to leave early this year and before my brother turns 18. My aversion to shorts is going to kill me. But even in November the heat can be really bad, and in Disney the water is $2.50 D:
lol im a florida girl, and i honestly dont notice the heat. unless im bike riding or walking or something…yeah the heat sucks
i also got that silly fear of walking at night, but its not so silly cause i grew up in a rather dangerous neighborhood.
I remember that this scary mega church that I used to attend used the term weekday warrior. Or was it weekend? Based on the context, I assumed that it meant people who are really devout during the weekend during church time, but when they go back to their other friends during the weekday, they turn into filthy little shits again.
Like take Jesus Camp for example. It was implied that those kids weren't in Jesus mode all the time. Before Becky started washing their hands with bottled water, she was talking about how they have double lives. In church, they're angels. Out of church, God forbid, they're normal kids. But I don't know. People like that are never truly clean enough anyway.
Um. Anyway, back to the book. I like the labyrinth quote.
Heat is always relative. I'm from Wisconsin, and my college roommate was from St. Louis, so by the time that it got cool enough for me to be comfortable, she was pulling out her winter coat, and when it was warm enough out for her, I was inside with the AC blasting.
Finally, I’m reading a book right along with you, Mark! I just read (over the course of the last month or so) Mark Reads Twilight followed (thankfully) immediately by Mark Reads Harry Potter, and now I am so wrapped up in you and this little part of the internet world that it’s awesome to take part in it in real time.Â
Honestly, many of the books you’ve read post HP don’t really interest me. I do intend to read the Hunger Games trilogy but I want to be able to devote the time to reading them that they deserve, so that won’t happen until probably January at the earliest. So it’s nice to have this book until then.Â
Also, the introduction to the Nerdfighter world is pretty great. I could, and more than likely will, get totally immersed in that as well. Just that fact that I have tiny chicken disease, not just a cold, is reason enough for me to love Nerdfighteria.Â
Anyway, this begins to make up for all the chapters I wanted to comment on during HP but didn’t, figuring you probably don’t check them anymore. I look forward to reading this and probably An Abundance of Katherines along with you.Â
I thought this exposition of arriving at a boarding school and being randomly thrust with strangers was quite interesting, as I've never really known anything like this.
I like how Miles is just going along with everything, it seems healthy.
And I like Alaska already, first, because she just seems a bit badass and secondly, she has a lot of books. People with a lot of books will always be awesome to me.
People with no books weird me out.
I've never been in dry heat. I live in southeast TN and the humidity is awful. It can be 90 degrees, which is manageable, but with the humidity it will feel like it's 99 degrees or higher. My uncle who lived in GA or TN for his whole life is now living in AZ and he says that the heat there is nothing compared to it here. For one, you can actually breathe when you're outside. The sun really does penetrate your clothing, but doesn't it everywhere? I haven't been to FL in ages, so I don't really remember what the heat and humidity are like there. I think the South in general sucks in the summer.
I am so happy that Mark is reading a John Green book. While I haven't gotten too far into Nerdfighter culture, I love absolutely everything John Green has written. Looking for Alaska somehow ended up being the last one I read, and I can't honestly say how much I adored it. I think I may enjoy Paper Towns the most, but Looking for Alaska is great. I plan to pick up my copy and go chapter by chapter with Mark for the first time since Hunger Games (I had read all the other books before and recently enough that I didn't feel I needed to reread them like I do for Looking for Alaska – that's how good this book is!).
Florida Cracker here…
Heat ain't that bad if you're used to it. I spent the last few summers working outside all day and if you keep properly hydrated, it's easy to deal. For Me any way. YMMV.
Also, even though I lived in south florida (look at Ft Lauderdale, then directly west, I still wore parka's in the winter. I just couldn't get warm enough.
I'm not sure how I feel about Alaska yet. I have nothing against her personally, but she strikes me as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl and I generally hate that trope. Also, while I get that it's realistic for a teenage boy to fixate on such things, the constant reminder of her curves and how hot she is makes me a little uncomfortable.
I'm way too far ahead of you already. Alaska's aggressive smoking reminds me of (Discworld) Nqben Oryyr Qrneurneg. And, probably because I just finished reading Gur Gehgu, Miles' hobby of memorizing last words sorta reminds me of Jvyyvnz qr Jbeqr naq orvat "xrra" ba fbzrguvat nf n unovg bs gur hccre pynff. Vg'f abg ernyyl n fxvyy, ohg fbzrguvat gb ovqr lbhe gvzr. Vg'f sha, abg hfrshy. Naq Zvyrf vf n yvggyr qverpgvbayrff…
Since I've started down this road, the Colonel can be Gaius Baltar, what with being the short, smart Adonis who smokes, Gnxhzv vf Wrna-Enycuvb orpnhfr ur yvxrf gb enc, Xriva vf Ebff Tryyre orpnhfr bs gur unve try, naq Ynen vf…V qhaab. Fur unfa'g znqr na vzcerffvba ba zr, bgure guna orvat fhecevfvatyl haqrefgnaqvat nobhg ibzvg.
Yeah, not gonna lie, the writing of Alaska's alternately making me irritated and uncomfortable. Alaska is a textbook example of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, and the way Miles only ever fixates on her curves makes me wonder if any girl will have any role here other than "wank fodder".