# Read the first page of Looking for Alaska by John Green Read the opening of Looking for Alaska by John Green free, no signup. A boy leaves for boarding school and falls for a reckless girl. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/looking-for-alaska-john-green - Genre: Young adult - Year: 2005 - ISBN: 9781101434208 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781101434208&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781101434208 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781101434208 ## The opening "Well, why then?" she asked. This was not the first time she had posed the question. Mom was not particularly keen on letting me go to boarding school and had made no secret of it. "Because of me?" my dad asked. He had attended Culver Creek, the same boarding school to which I was headed, as had both of his brothers and all of their kids. I think he liked the idea of me following in his footsteps. My uncles had told me stories about how famous my dad had been on campus for having simultaneously raised hell and aced all his classes. That sounded like a better life than the one I had in Florida. But no, it wasn't because of Dad. Not exactly. "Hold on," I said. I went into Dad's study and found his biography of François Rabelais. I liked reading biographies of writers, even if (as was the case with Monsieur Rabelais) I'd never read any of their actual writing. I flipped to the back and found the highlighted quote ("NEVER USE A HIGHLIGHTER IN MY BOOKS," my dad had told me a thousand times. But how else are you supposed to find what you're looking for?). "So this guy," I said, standing in the doorway of the living room. "François Rabelais. He was this poet. And his last words were 'I go to seek a Great Perhaps.' That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps." And that quieted them. I was after a Great Perhaps, and they knew as well as I did that I wasn't going to find it with the likes of Will and Marie. I sat back down on the couch, between my mom and my dad, and my dad put his arm around me, and we stayed there like that, quiet on the couch together, for a long time, until it seemed okay to turn on the TV, and then we ate artichoke dip for dinner and watched the History Channel, and as going-away parties go, it certainly could have been worse. 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. But it was only hot outside, and generally I only went outside to walk from one air-conditioned location to another. This did not prepare me for the unique sort of heat that one encounters fifteen miles south of Birmingham, Alabama, at Culver Creek Preparatory School. My parents’ SUV was parked in the grass just a few feet outside my dorm room, Room 43. But each time I took those few steps to and from the car to unload what now seemed like far too much stuff, the sun burned through my clothes and into my skin with a vicious ferocity that made me genuinely fear hellfire. Between Mom and Dad and me, it only took a few minutes to unload the car, but my unair-conditioned dorm room, although blessedly out of the sunshine, was only modestly cooler. The room surprised me: I’d pictured plush carpet, wood-paneled walls, Victorian furniture. Aside from one luxury—a private bathroom—I got a box. With cinder-block walls coated thick with layers of white paint and a green-and-white-checkered linoleum floor, the place looked more like a hospital than the dorm room of my fantasies. A bunk bed of unfinished wood with vinyl mattresses was pushed against the room’s back window. The desks and dressers and bookshelves were all attached to the walls in order to prevent creative floor planning. And no air-conditioning. I sat on the lower bunk while Mom opened the trunk, grabbed a stack of the biographies my dad had agreed to part with, and placed them on the bookshelves. “I can unpack, Mom,” I said. My dad stood. He was ready to go. ## Books with a similar feel - [Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon](https://uncovered.ink/read/everything-everything-nicola-yoon.md) - [Take Me With You When You Go by David Levithan](https://uncovered.ink/read/take-me-with-you-when-you-go-david-levithan.md) - [The White Guy Dies First by Terry J. Benton-Walker](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-white-guy-dies-first-terry-j-benton-walker.md) - [What If It's Us by Becky Albertalli](https://uncovered.ink/read/what-if-its-us-becky-albertalli.md) - [Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven](https://uncovered.ink/read/holding-up-the-universe-jennifer-niven.md) - [Cherry Baby by Rainbow Rowell](https://uncovered.ink/read/cherry-baby-rainbow-rowell.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.