Paranoid Park

Table of Contents

 

On the freeway, I seriously began to lose it. My brain, my thoughts-they spun wildly in every direction. For the first time in my life, I understood how extreme stress could drive your brain to impossible places. It could warp your thinking, pointing you in dangerous directions, which seemed to make perfect sense at the time.

That’s how people kill themselves,
I thought.
They get twisted around in their brain.

I had to calm down. I tried the radio again and tuned in KKNR, the indie-rock station. A commercial was playing:
“I just saved a bunch of money on my car insur—.”
I turned it off. I looked at my fists where they gripped the steering wheel. I thought I saw blood on my hands.

That was too much. That was the last straw. I simply could not be doing this: driving like a maniac, losing my mind, swerving through traffic with blood on my hands.

But I was. That was the thing. I was.

 

978-0-14-240242-9

 

978-0-14-240574-1

 

978-0-14-240745-5

SPEAK

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First published in the United States of America by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2006

Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2008

Copyright © Blake Nelson, 2006

All rights reserved

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Nelson, Blake, date-
Paranoid Park / by Blake Nelson.
p. cm.

Summary: A sixteen-year-old Portland, Oregon skateboarder, whose parents are going through a difficult divorce, is engulfed by guilt and confusion when he accidentally kills a security guard at a train yard.

eISBN : 978-1-101-07771-9

[1. Guilt—Fiction. 2. Skateboarding—Fiction. 3. Murder—Fiction.

4. Conduct of life—Fiction. 5. High schools -Fiction.

6. Schools -Fiction. 7. Portland (Or.)—Fiction.]

I. Title. PZ7.N4328Par 2006 [Fic]-dc22 2006000277

 

Set in Excelsior

 

 

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Thanks: Catherine Frank, Regina Hayes, Nancy Brennan, Sharyn November, Jodi Reamer at Writers House.

“Young man,” he went on, raising his head again, “in your face I seem to read some trouble of mind.”

 

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

Dear __,

I’m here, at my uncle Tommy’s beach house. It’s about nine o’clock at night. I’m upstairs, by myself. I’ve got my pen, my spiral notebook....

I don’t know how to start. I don’t even know if I can do this. But I will try. It can’t make anything worse....

Outside it’s raining and dark. I can hear the surf crashing in the distance like little bombs going off.