Verwandte Artikel zu Averil Offline

Averil Offline - Hardcover

Parks, Amy Noelle

 
9780593618646: Averil Offline
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593618645 ISBN 13: 9780593618646
Verlag: Nancy Paulsen Books, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A fun, fast-paced story about a girl determined to cut the cord with her helicopter parents.

Twelve-year-old coder Averil can't do anything without her parents knowing. That’s because her mom uses the Ruby Slippers surveillance app to check where she is, who she texts, and even what she eats for lunch. Averil wonders how she’s ever going to grow up if she’s not allowed to learn from mistakes. When she learns that Ruby Slippers is about to become even more invasive, she teams up with Max, a new kid at school dealing with overbearing parents of his own. Together they figure out an almost foolproof way to ditch their parents and run away to the college campus that’s home to the quirky Ruby Slippers creator. It’s an extreme challenge just getting to meet with him—but the two kids cleverly figure out a series of puzzles and get their meeting. What they find gives them pause—and gets them thinking about the value of honesty in a new light. After all, isn’t trust at the heart of their parents' need to know?

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Amy Noelle Parks (amynoelleparks.com) also wrote the middle grade novel Summer of Brave, as well as the young adult novels Lia and Beckett’s Abracadabra and The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost-Kiss. A professor of elementary education at Michigan State University, she helps future teachers recover from the trauma inflicted on them by years of school mathematics. Social media still scares her, but she’s working on it.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

My sister, Delia, who thinks she’s funny, taped one of those chocolate wrappers with the sappy messages to the empty cereal box. This one said, “Embrace the unexpected.”
     I snorted. If Delia had left some cereal for me, that would have been unexpected.
     Still, after eating my whole wheat toast and brushing my teeth, I went back to the kitchen to claim the foil square so I could tape it in my notebook. I liked projects, and tracking the unexpected could be a good one.
     My first bit of unexpectedness was pretty small—­my red ribbon had gone missing. This was odd since Delia was the one who lost things. Mostly, I found them.
     “Hurry up, Averil. You’re going to be late,” Mom called.
     I tied a green ribbon around my ponytail. At the front door, I grabbed my backpack from Mom and kissed her cheek. “See you later.”
     “Text me at lunch.”
     I took a step onto the porch. “Of course.”
     “And wear your sweatshirt home. It’s not summer yet.”
     “You bet,” I called, running down the steps.
     At the end of my block, I came upon my second un­expected happening: an empty spot where Priya was supposed to be. I turned slowly in a circle. Her house was right down the road. If she was coming, I would see her.
     Each day, we took the same path to school, and if either of us got sick or if it rained, our moms would exchange a flurry of texts so neither of us was left stranded.
     But here I was.
     Stranded.
     Only I didn’t feel stranded. I felt autonomous. In Tech last week, I’d learned that an autonomous program ran on its own to find a solution. It made me wonder what an autonomous girl would do.
     I could text Priya to find out what was going on, but Mom would see that, and she’d order me right back home. I wasn’t allowed to walk alone to school. Which was ridiculous, since I was twelve. Nothing was going to happen on the short gravel path that ran through the pine forest—­well, large cluster of trees, really, but I liked to think of it as a forest. And by the time I got out to the sidewalk, dozens of kids would be there taking the exact same route to our small-­town middle school.
     But since Mom couldn’t see me—­thank goodness—­she’d never know I was alone. She would assume I’d met Priya like always, as long as the little dot that represented me on her Ruby Slippers app kept moving along the path to school.
     Maybe I even had time to stop by my secret circle. A few months ago, I’d found a ring of bushes beyond the pine trees, and when I’d pushed through them, I’d discovered a private green space with a fallen tree trunk in the middle. The wide trunk curved a little so it looked like a bridge, and it was the most perfect spot in the world to sit or draw or think. I’d told no one about it—­not even Priya.
     Carefully, I put my phone on the side of the path. Mom would definitely panic-­text if her phone showed me moving off into the woods, but maybe if my dot stayed on the path—­even if it was frozen in place for a minute or two—­she wouldn’t notice.
     As I pushed through the bushes, I tried to remember the last time I’d been alone.
     For real.
     Not by myself in my room with Mom in the kitchen and Dad in his office and Delia across the hall. But really, truly by myself. I had no idea.
   Beep! Beep! Beep!
     Oh no.
     I spun back toward the path as the alarm got louder and louder, and ran, even though branches scratched against my face. Of course Mom had noticed my phone wasn’t moving. If I didn’t answer soon, she might even call 911.
     I pushed out of the forest and scooped up my phone. Ruby Slippers had turned the whole screen red, and the noise was so loud, I couldn’t think, but I couldn’t turn it off. Mom was totally in control.
     I hit the Respond button, and within seconds, Mom, fear in her voice, said, “Averil?”
     “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay,” I said. “Turn it off.”
     “What? Oh! Thank goodness.”
     And then wonderful, wonderful quiet.
     “What happened?” Mom asked.
     “Nothing. I just stopped to . . . ah . . . tie my shoes.”
     “That’s why I tell you to double-knot them.”
     Really? This was what she wanted to talk about—­my shoelaces?
     “Why did you hit the panic button? It’s so loud. Why not just text?” It wasn’t that Mom had never done this, but usually, standing still for a little too long meant a text, not sirens.
     “Mrs. Adani called to say Priya fell running down the stairs this morning, and she hurt her wrist, so they’re taking her to urgent care before she goes to school, and so I checked on you and—­”
     “I wasn’t moving.”
     I sighed. I knew pointing out that Mom shouldn’t always leap to the worst possible conclusions was a waste of time. And the thing was, I got it. Bad things happened, and she wanted to know we were safe. I just wished . . . I don’t know . . . that she didn’t need quite so much proof that we were okay.
     “I’m getting in the car now,” she said. “I’ll pick you up.”
     “You don’t have to do that.” Maybe I could still get ten minutes on my own.
     “You’ll be late otherwise,” she said.
     I checked the time. She was probably right.
     When I got back to the start of the path, her car was already waiting. I got in, fastened my seat belt, and looked out the window. I wouldn’t make a fuss, but I wasn’t ready to be all cheerful.
     Mom stayed quiet while she drove, but when she pulled into the car line, she said, “You know I only worry because I love you.”
     I turned and made myself smile. Because I did know, and I also knew that if I didn’t make this right, it would eat away at me all during school.
     “I’m always careful.”
     “I know. But sometimes careful isn’t enough.”
     It always came back to this. Mom had done everything right when she was pregnant with Delia and then with me, but even so, we’d both been born early. Like really early. Two months for Delia. Almost three for me. We’d been in the hospital for a long time, and we’d both almost died.
     But we were fine now, and we definitely didn’t remember any of it. But Mom did. It was like she thought she’d failed us right at the beginning and was determined never to let that happen again, even if it meant never letting us out of her sight—­electronically, at least.
     “Thanks for the...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Nancy Paulsen Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593618645
ISBN 13 
9780593618646
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
208
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchpark GmbH
gpsr@buchpark.de

Krügerweg 1
Trebbin
Brandenburg
14959
Deutschland