Looking For Alaska

TWO WEEKS LATER, the Colonel returned from spring break with two notebooks filled with the minutiae of prank planning, sketches of various locations, and a forty-page, two-column list of problems that might crop up and their solutions. He calculated all times to a tenth of a second, and all distances to the inch, and then he recalculated, as if he could not bear the thought of failing her again. And then on that Sunday, the Colonel woke up late and rolled over. I was reading The Sound and the Fury, which I was supposed to have read in mid-February, and I looked up as I heard the rustling in the bed, and the Colonel said, “Let’s get the band back together.” And so I ventured out into the overcast spring and woke up Lara and Takumi, then brought them back to Room 43. The Barn Night crew was intact—or as close as it ever would be—for the Alaska Young Memorial Prank.

The three of us sat on the couch while the Colonel stood in front of us, outlining the plan and our parts in it with an excitement I hadn’t seen in him since Before. When he finished, he asked, “Any questions?”

“Yeah,” Takumi said. “Is that seriously going to work?”

“Well, first we gotta find a stripper. And second Pudge has to work some magic with his dad.”

“All right, then,” Takumi said. “Let’s get to work.”