Love Is the Drug by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Author:Alaya Dawn Johnson [Johnson, Alaya Dawn]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Social Issues, Love & Romance, Alcohol, Drugs, Thrillers & Suspense, Juvenile Fiction, Substance Abuse, Science Fiction, Dating & Sex, Drugs; Alcohol; Substance Abuse
ISBN: 9780545417815
Google: 4j73oAEACAAJ
Amazon: 0545417813
Barnesnoble: 0545417813
Goodreads: 20894021
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Published: 2014-09-29T04:00:00+00:00

Fifty years ago, half of the students at Devonshire were boarders, but that number dwindled until the eighties, when it officially became a day school. The attic dorms were converted into a dance studio and study hall, but the room seems more at home jammed with narrow cots and dressers than it ever did with a ballet barre and stereo system. It remembers its old shape. A television is on at the far end of the room, beside porthole windows that overlook the rose garden and middle school. A reporter in a bulletproof vest and headphones is breathlessly explaining to the furrow-browed news anchor that he’s embedded with the marines, amassed on the Colombian–Venezuelan border, and engaged in a heavy firefight. The bombs have been going off for months, but Bird’s tried hard not to hear them, or think about what they might mean. Bombs don’t mean war anymore, not war war, they’re just tough foreign policy (she knows this means shit to the people blown up by them, but she carefully bifurcates her mind on this point). But a land invasion? That’s like when she was in fourth grade and her mother sat glued to the television, cheering when the sky lit up over Baghdad. It’s like her granddad, who always limped from the shrapnel he caught in his hip during Vietnam. First plague, then war. She swallows and tries to focus on her notebook, where she’s writing down theories about the email her past ghost sent her present self.

A trick of Roosevelt’s? A drug-induced delusion? One half of a clue, but I didn’t have time to leave myself the other?

Something thumps on the floor behind her. She spins around. It’s Charlotte, surprisingly, with a silk bandanna tied around her braids and flower-print pajamas.

“Mrs. Cunningham said this bed is free,” she says, kicking her duffel bag beneath it. “But I can find another if you want.”

“You’re welcome to it,” Bird says, intending sarcasm but achieving flat exhaustion. “But I’m surprised your parents are letting you bunk.” Charlotte’s mother is the smothering type, and hardly lets Charlotte out of the house for sleepovers.

Charlotte sits abruptly; the cot creaks beneath her sudden weight. She darts a glance at Bird’s face and then looks down again.

“Mom has a cough,” she says softly. “And a fever. They say it started this afternoon. The nurses here checked me out and I’m fine, but my parents have to stay under quarantine for now. I know it’s just a cold. I mean, the District’s practically a prison camp these days, how the hell could anyone catch the v-flu? But the house is locked up, so here I am.”

Bird puts down her notebook. The sight of Charlotte struggling back tears reminds her of the times they actually enjoyed each other’s company, of the friendship she was sad to lose when Felice finally grew tired of her.

“That sucks, Charlotte. I’m sure they’ll be okay.”

Charlotte nods jerkily and forces a smile. “Yeah, I know. Thanks.”

For a moment Bird thinks she might throw a rope across the chasm; that they might be friends without Felice between them.

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