A Problematic Paradox - Hardcover

Sappingfield, Eliot

 
9781524738457: A Problematic Paradox
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 152473845X ISBN 13: 9781524738457
Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Guardians of the Galaxy meets The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in this wild, warm-hearted, and hilarious sci-fi debut about a brainy young girl who is recruited for a very special boarding school.

"It's like Harry Potter, but with science instead of magic. Nikola is exactly the smart female protagonist that the sci-fi genre needs." --HelloGiggles

Nikola Kross has given up on living in harmony with classmates and exasperated teachers: she prefers dabbling in experimental chemistry to fitting in. But when her life is axially inverted by a gang of extraterrestrials who kidnap her dad and attempt to recruit her into their service, she discovers he's been keeping a world of secrets from her--including the school for geniuses where she's sent for refuge, a place where classes like Practical Quantum Mechanics are the norm and where students use wormholes to commute to class. For Nikola, the hard part isn't school, it's making friends, especially when the student body isn't (entirely) human. But the most puzzling paradox of all is Nikola herself, who has certain abilities that no one understands--abilities that put her whole school in greater danger than she could have imagined.

*"A glorious cacophony of wildly inventive gadgets, gags, and action." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review

*"An amazing and often hilarious world that feels like a blend of A Series of Unfortunate Events and Harry Potter, but with futuristic inventions rather than magic." --School Library Connection, starred review

"Smart, energetic, and original . . . Readers will willingly jump with Nikola into the nearest wormhole and next adventure." --School Library Journal

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Eliot Sappingfield was last seen wearing a blue shirt and khaki pants in the vicinity of his home in Missouri. He is known to appreciate stories, science, and various other geeky things. He may or may not be accompanied by his wife, his two daughters (when they don't have anything better to do), or a goofy basset hound. He is considered unarmed and not terribly dangerous. This is his first novel.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One

Miss Hiccup and the Beef Mailbox

As I sat beneath a cat poster in her tiny, sparse office, I wondered if Miss Hiccup’s real smile resembled the painted grimace she wore around students. No adult human can be that chipper all the time. Maybe it was the poster. She had one of those motivational posters, with a cat hanging from a branch and the caption hang in there! below it. I’ve always wondered if anyone was actually inspired by that kind of thing. Maybe Miss Hiccup was one of the fortunate few who gazed at that cat and thought, You know, if that cat can hang in there, so can I! It would explain a lot about why she and I didn’t exactly get along.

Miss Hiccup was pretty, in an institutional kind of way. She was a thin woman who wore pencil skirts and had long golden hair that was only a little dry and frazzled. I could relate—my hair always looked like I dried it with a high-voltage power line. Her face was not unkind. I could even imagine that she had a sense of humor hidden behind her big, fashionably nerdy glasses. Despite that, there were moments when I could swear there was an absolute, searing hatred of the entire world in those eyes.

It was my favorite thing about her.

My second-favorite thing about Miss Hiccup was the hiccuping. That was where I’d gotten my personal name for her. She had an actual legal name, but “Miss Hiccup” was more fitting and more fun because she seemed to have a permanent case of the hiccups that got worse when she was stressed, which was all the time, in my observation.

When Miss Hiccup cornered me on my way to the bus, she ruined the best part of my day. Instead of boarding the bus to freedom, I had to trudge back to the counseling office for a few minutes and then kill time till the late bus arrived to collect the stragglers, detention inmates, and band kids.

Miss Hiccup spent some time just sitting there, smiling and making eye contact. It’s the oldest trick in the book when you want someone to open up. Most people hate uncomfortable silences, so they tend to talk in order to fill them. I’m not most people.

A minute later, Miss Hiccup hiccuped, twitched, and said, “Is your backpack okay?”

Of course she wanted to talk about backpack-in-the-toilet incident #74. It was a new thing as far as she was concerned. The only reason she knew about it this time was because whoever had stolen it had really stomped it in good, and I wasn’t able to get it out on my own. The counseling office is directly across from the bathrooms, so I figured they could help, since I was a taxpayer and all.

I made a mental note to ask the gym teacher next time. He was good at overlooking that kind of thing.

“My backpack is fine,” I said. “I switched to a waterproof one a while ago, so it doesn’t even smell. It’s antimicrobial.”

“Smart thinking,” she said with a warm smile that was almost, but not quite, sympathetic. “I thought we could talk about fitting in . . .”

“Why don’t I start?” I offered.

“Do you have something you—hic!—you’d like to talk about, Nikola?” she said, sounding like she was in desperate need of a drink of water.

“No,” I said. “But you said you wanted to talk about fitting in. I feel like I should address that. I do have trouble fitting in, but I’m in a good place with it at the moment. Not a lot of angst going on here. Nothing to concern yourself with.”

This was mostly true. I’d been looking forward to attending West Blankford Middle School about as much as I was counting the days until my next trip to the dentist, and the fact that my classmates were as horrible as they had been the previous year wasn’t exactly a shock. I wasn’t having a blast, but I wasn’t disillusioned. Kids are usually mean to people who are different, and people don’t come any more different than me.

My name is Nikola Kross, and I’m a weirdo. A freak, if you prefer. I’m a peanut butter and sardine sandwich in a vending machine full of candy. I’m a twitching platypus curled up in the corner of a cardboard box of puppies. I’m off track. You should probably get used to that. Let’s back up a bit.

I’m a thirteen-year-old girl attending middle school in North Dakota. It’s not my looks that make me odd. Well, that’s not the main thing. I’m no taller or shorter, bigger or smaller than the median range for those characteristics. I have a nose that is a bit above the normal width and length, but not to the point where it becomes remarkable. I have a few freckles here and there, and my eyes are brown. I wear glasses with shatterproof lenses and an embedded digital display that I designed myself and is currently broken. My hair is very curly, long, brown, and a bit mane-like. It’s always a mess, but I don’t care enough to spend the time to tame it when that time could be better used sleeping in. That’s what I look like. Do me a favor and remember it, because I hate describing myself.

What makes me weird is that I’m a genius. Most people who say that are bragging and are about to pull out their Mensa card in an effort to impress you. I’m not bragging. I really am a certified genius, and it shouldn’t impress anyone. Talking about how smart you are is like boasting about how big the engine is in your car: you still have to obey the speed limit, and what really matters is where you drive to, not how much noise you can make on the way.

High intelligence runs in my family like a genetically transmitted disease. My dad is an amateur scientist (he prefers the term research hobbyist). He spends his days running our home particle accelerator, experimenting with exotic metamaterials, or just trying to remember where he left his shoes. Mom was an experimental poet, but she disappeared when I was a toddler. Dad says she’s dead now, or might as well be dead, since we’ve certainly seen the last of her. Sensitive guy, my dad.

In case I haven’t lost you completely, we’re also fabulously wealthy. Back in the midnineties, Dad patented some interesting semiconductor designs as well as those plastic hooks that stick to your wall without tearing up the paint. Those inventions, along with a few dozen more, fill the bank account monthly. If it helps, that doesn’t mean I ride in limousines drinking sparkling cider. As soon as the deposits clear, Dad blows all the money on home improvements. That might be nice, but our home is a big lab, so for us, a “home improvement” doesn’t mean a new hot tub; it means a new supercooled cloud chamber or a few upgrades on our personal supercomputer cluster.

To a degree, I blame my parents for my outcast status, and not just on a genetic level. Dad is distant and terminally distracted. Instead of toys, I got circuit boards and soldering irons for Christmas so I could make my own. When I was little and asked for a bedtime story, he’d narrate the schematics for a microwave oven before giving me a firm yet loving bedtime handshake. When I had trouble sleeping, he’d describe how people die from sleep deprivation. I like to imagine my mom might have been a bit more . . . parental, but if she and my dad fell for each other at some point, then I have to assume that she was every bit as eccentric. Some people just stink at being parents. It happens.

It’s not all their fault, though. I’ve made some bad decisions. If you want to make friends in school, it’s not a good idea to bring an untrained robotic...

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Verlag
G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2018
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
152473845X
ISBN 13 
9781524738457
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
352
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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