: A high school student in love with a neighbor who escaped from a house is looking for a girl in the footsteps that she left. Having found her, the guy finds out that the neighbor did not want to be found.
The narrative in the first two parts of the novel comes from the face of high school student Quentin Jacobsen. The last part is written from a third party.
Prologue
Quentin Jacobsen's parents moved to Orlando, Florida when he was two years old. They made friends with their neighbors, and Quentin sometimes played with their daughter Margot. When the children were nine years old, they found a man’s corpse on the playground - he was sitting under a huge oak tree in a pool of his own blood.
Quentin's parents, psychotherapists, called the rescue service, but his son was forbidden to look at the cars. At night, Quentin knocked on Margo's window. She conducted an investigation and found out that the deceased was called Robert Joyner. He was a thirty-six-year-old lawyer and killed himself because his wife left him.
Margo was very excited. She rocked that at Joyner “all the strings in the soul broke”, so he killed himself. This childhood memory ends with Quentin on the fact that Margot asks to close the window, and then they look at each other for a long time through the glass. A neighbor became a mystery girl for him.
Part one. Thread
Time has passed. Quentin was graduating from graduation class. He did not communicate with Margot Roth Spiegelman for a long time - the girl had her own company, in which losers and nerds were not accepted.
Quentin had two best friends. Ben Starling was all called Bloody Ben. Due to a kidney infection, he had blood in his urine, but Becca Errington, Margot's best friend, started gossiping around the school that Ben was constantly masturbating, so he urinated with blood. Now the girls shied away from Ben, and he could not find a companion for the prom he dreamed of going to.
Quentin's second friend, a tall black guy named Radar, a computer-obsessed creator of the online encyclopedia - Multimedia, was embarrassed by his parents, the owners of the world's largest collection of black Santa Clauses. The whole house was filled with black Santa figures, and Radar could not bring his girlfriend there.
Quentin's last girlfriend left him for a baseball player, and he had no one to go to the prom with, and he was not drawn to this event. He was a calm and smart guy, he studied well and was preparing to go to college. Margo Roth Spiegelman, he considered perfection and admired it from afar. Quentin did not have a real chance - Margot met with Jace Worzington, the coolest guy in school.
Margot was a legendary person. She was not afraid of anything and ran away from home many times. Each time, her parents searched for her with police across the country.
One night, Margot came to Quentin. Jace cheated on her with Becca, and the girl decided to take revenge, but her parents took her car key. She wanted Quentin to help her, and he agreed.
Today, dear, we compensate for a lot of evil done by others, and ourselves will do some harm to these others. The former will be the latter, the latter will be the first, and the meek will inherit a little land.
Having bought everything they needed, they went to implement the Margot plan of eleven points.
First, Margot found Jace’s car, put a blocker on the steering wheel, and took the key to it with her. Then they went to Becca and informed her father over the phone that his daughter was currently having sex with Jace in the basement of their house. When half-naked Jace jumped out of the basement window, Quentin managed to photograph him. Sneaking into the basement, they stole Jace’s clothes, left a carcass of raw fish in the closet, and Margo drew the letter “M” on the wall with paint.
Laying a bouquet of tulips on the porch of her friend, who undeservedly offended, Margot went to Jace and threw a second fish into the window of his bedroom. The third fish went to Lacy Pemberton, who did not warn her friend about the betrayal - Margot put her under the seat of her ex-girlfriend's car.
The ninth point was a respite in the business center, where they were passed by the familiar guard Margot. They looked at the city from the height of the 25th floor. Quentin liked the city, but Margo considered it fake, as if cut out of paper.
Paper little people live in paper houses and heat them with their own future.
Margo said that betrayal broke the last thread in her soul that connected her with this paper life. At that moment, Quentin believed that a romance would begin between them.
The sacrifice for the tenth point, according to the plan of Margo, was to be chosen by Quentin. She made the indecisive guy take revenge on the stupid big guy Chuck, who plagued and humiliated Quentin. Sneaking into sleeping Chuck’s bedroom, they shaved one eyebrow at him with a depilation cream. The victim woke up and chased accomplices, but they had previously smeared the door handles with petroleum jelly, and it was impossible to turn them.
The eleventh point was penetration into the water park "Sea World". At first, Quentin opposed - and so he did a lot for Margo tonight. But the girl said that she could do everything alone. She chose Quentin to shake him, pull him out of the paper world.
On the way to the water park, Quentin remembered Margot's long-standing words about a man who had died in the park. Then she also talked about broken threads. Laughing, Margot stated that she did not want to be found in the park on Saturday morning.
Making their way into the Sea World, the guys got soaked in a ditch with smelly water, then Margot had to pay the guard who caught them, after which they wandered around the night water park for a long time and danced to the music pouring from the reproducers.
Part two. Grass
Quentin spent the whole day from sleep deprivation as if in a dream, and by the evening rumors spread around the school that Margot Roth Spiegelman had disappeared. The next day, the guys from her company began to press defenseless little ones. It turned out that Margot forbade them to do so.
Quentin threatened Jace that he would post his photograph in the half-naked form on the Internet. The repression has stopped.
Margo did not return. Once, her parents came to Quentin's house, accompanied by a black detective. They wanted to find out if Quentin knew anything about the whereabouts of the girl. This was her fifth escape. The Spiegelmans decided to abandon their daughter and change the locks on the door.
Left alone with the detective, Quentinne told him about their nightly adventure. The detective believed that the Spiegelmans were not able to raise children, and Margot was freedom-loving.
Such children are like helium-filled balls tied by a string. And this thread is constantly stretched. And then something happens that it breaks, and they can fly away.
Since Margot is already an adult, they will not look for her. But after each escape she left a “trace of bread crumbs” - a series of mysterious hints. She hoped that parents would stop thinking only about themselves and try to find her in these tracks.
A little later, Quentin looked out the window and saw a poster of a folk singer, who had not been there before, on the back of the shutters in the room of Margo. Quentin decided that this was the first trace left by Margo, and firmly set out to find her. He considered that the girl chose him again, and hoped for a big prize.
After waiting for the Spiegelmans to leave, Quentin, Ben and Radar entered Margo's room. On one of the vinyl records, which Margot had a lot, they found the image of the singer from the poster. The title of the disc - "Walt Whitman's Niece" - was circled. Soon, friends found a collection of the poet Walt Whitman, where in the poem "Song of Myself" Margot emphasized several lines.
On Monday, before the lessons, Quentin was approached by an upset Lacy Pemberton and said that Margot had nothing to take revenge on; she did not know about Jace's betrayal. Because of all this, she lost her best friend, broke up with a guy who knew about Jace’s affair, and now she has no one to go to graduation with. Lacy assumed that Margo had left for New York and would be back soon because she had left her things in the school locker. Ben seized the moment, invited Lacy to go to the prom together, and the girl agreed.
Ben suggested that the lines of the poem “Mang the shutters off the doors! / And the doors themselves off the jambs” emphasized by Margo are a direct guide to action. At first, the friends removed the door to Margot’s room from the hinges, but found nothing. A few days later, Quentin unfastened the door in his room and found a piece of newspaper with the address written in Margot's hand. Judging by the Multimedia, it was the address of the shopping center.
The next day, having missed lessons, friends went there and found that the shopping center was just a dilapidated barn with boarded up windows. Quentin remembered the underlined lines in Whitman's poem that spoke of death, and decided that Margot chose this abandoned place to die.
Inside the building, friends found new “bread crumbs” - an inscription on the wall “you go to the paper city and you will never come back” and a rectangular footprint with button holes. Having visited Multipedia, Quentin found out that paper cities are unfinished settlements, ghost towns that exist only on maps.
Underpopulation! You will go there and you will never return.
Having become even more convinced that Margot decided to kill herself and wants him to find her body, Quentin decided to go around all under-settlements in the district, and found the addresses of five paper cities.
From a literature teacher, Quentin learned that the poem "A Song of Myself" is not about death, but "about the relationship - that we all have common roots, like grass." The guy tried to read the poem, but could not - it turned out to be too complicated.
Quentin traveled around all five under-settlements, found nothing, returned to the abandoned shopping center and found the place where Margot spent several nights. Quentin decided to stay here for the night, because his parents thought he was at graduation. He realized that none of them knew the real Margot, who was hiding behind the "cover" of the holiday girl. Having finally mastered the poem, Quentin understood - before looking for Margo, you need to understand what kind of person she is - "each of us has Margo, and each of us is more like a mirror than a window."
On the shelf of a mall abandoned in 1986, Quentin found the 1988 Roads of America guide. The corners of some pages have been folded.
Drunk and happy Ben phoned Quentin at night and asked him to pick him up from Becky’s party, which he got after graduation.
The next day, Quentin told his friends about his find, and they went to the mall, grabbing Lacey, who finally became Ben's girlfriend. There they stumbled upon two guys. In one, Quentin recognized a security guard from a business center. The guys were keen on exploring abandoned buildings and knew Margot well. Having got into such a building, Margot did not photograph anything, but simply sat and wrote something in a black notebook. For Quentin, it was a new, unfamiliar Margo.
The next day, Radar's parents left, and the friends had a party. They agreed not to wear anything other than shoes and robes for graduation. Friends sat for a long time and told each other "story-windows and story-mirrors."
Quentin read more and more into Whitman's poem - it helped him understand not only Margot, but also himself. And then he guessed: the rectangle with holes from the buttons on the wall of the shopping center is a trace from a card hanging there with pins stuck into it.
Friends went to the shopping center, found a stack of cards in the souvenir department, one of which was published in 1872.The map approached the trail on the wall, but was torn in places where pins were stuck, and the guys were again at a dead end. It began to seem to Quentin that they “reached the very end of the ball, but didn’t find anything.”
Quentin successfully passed the exams, and his parents gave him a car - a Ford minivan. He was sure that Margot left forever, and did not plan to appear at graduation.
You can feel a pure buzz only if you drop something important ‹...›. You pull yourself out with roots. But you can only do this when you have these roots.
Before graduation, Quentinth found an article on Eiglo's under-settlement in Multimedia, where a comment was posted stating that "there will be one person by Eeglo by noon on May 29." In a capitalized manner in the middle of a sentence, Quentin realized that Margo had left the comment.
Less than a day was left until May 29, and instead of the ceremony, friends went to Eeglo.
Part three. Vessel
Friends assigned roles. Lacy disposed of their wealthy property, and Radar calculated the speed with which to get from Florida to New York by noon on May 29. The car was driven in turn. They had to stop and have time to refuel the car in six minutes and buy food and some clothes, because on the Ben and Radar, except for the robes, there was nothing.
They spent almost a day in a minivan, and during that time the car became their home. On the way, Quentin nearly ran into two cows crossing the road. The situation was saved by Ben sitting nearby - he turned the steering wheel and the minivan did not roll over. Soon, friends were already on their way, and Lacy called Ben a hero. Quentin secretly dreamed that Margot would be happy that she was found, rush to his neck and burst into tears.
Finally, the company arrived in Eiglo, which turned out to be an abandoned building that looked like a barn. There, behind a screen of two pieces of plexiglass, Margot Roth Spiegelmann sat quietly and wrote something in her black notebook. As she finished writing, she looked at her friends with empty eyes, politely greeted and asked: "What the hell are you here for?"
Margo immediately quarreled with Lacy and Ben. The guys left, intending to go home in the morning. Quentin stayed - he had too many questions. It turned out that Margot really left forever and did not want to be found.
She said that at the age of ten she began to write a novel about herself “with a bias in magic” in a black notebook. The heroine of the novel was in love with a boy named Quentin, had rich, loving parents and a talking dog and investigated the murder of Robert Joyner. Then, on top of what was written, Margot began to make detailed plans for her shoots and other events.
In high school, Margot became interested in the study of abandoned buildings and decided to flee forever. She included Quentin in her last plan, because in her childhood she liked him, and she hoped that this adventure would liberate him. Then Margot found out about Jason's betrayal and decided to leave immediately, without waiting for a diploma.
Early in the morning, about to leave, Margo noticed that she missed Quentin and decided to “bequeath” him his passion for old buildings. Tips should have led him to an abandoned shopping center. She left the rest of the "breadcrumbs" by accident, in a hurry, not having time to properly cover up the tracks. She did not think Quentin could find her, and went straight to Eeglo.
That night in the business center, Margo considered paper not people around her, but herself. She created the image of a paper girl that everyone liked, but could not believe in him. Margo hoped she would become herself in the paper city of Eeglo.
I know there, deeper. Internal cracks. Splits of the inner world where one does not converge with the other. ‹...› Like holes in the ship's hull. ‹...› And sooner or later you are going to the bottom because of them.
Quentin suggested Margot to spend the summer with them and then go to university, but she refused, fearing that she would be sucked in "the right life - college, work, husband and kids and other nonsense." Quentin did not agree with her: he believed in the future, for him all of the above was a meaningful life. Margo, however, was not worried about what would happen next - “then consists of many now.”
After talking with Quentin, Margot called her parents, saying that she was alive, but would not return. The Spiegelmans were not upset. They believed that their daughter should please them, and when Margo rebelled, they threw her out of their lives.
Then they lay in the grass until they fell asleep. Waking up, they dug a deep hole in which Margot decided to "bury" a black notebook with a story about Robert Joyner. Quentin said that they recognized each other only when they began to look into each other's eyes.
Before that, we only saw fictional images of each other ‹...›. And when a crack appears, light enters. And the light also comes out.
Then they kissed, and Margot called Quentin with her to New York, but he refused and realized that their paths diverged completely. Throwing the “grave” of the past Margot, they parted.