Excerpt from Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Your mother is shouting that it's time to leave for school. You suck in air and shout back: "Just a minute!" You are not going to school. She doesn't realize that, of course.

It turns out that, in high school, not painting your toenails is considered disgusting. You blow on your toes, little puffs. "So much for the freshman year perfect-attendance certificate," you tell yourself.

"What?" Your mother is standing in the doorway looking impatient.

"Nothing," you say.

She squeaks about your flip-flops, how it's February, but you tell her it's fine, it's not so cold, there's no gym today, and nobody cares.

Really you are just going to hang out in the park until she leaves for work. Then you will come back home.

Your feet are ice. The flip-flops were a stupid idea - what were you thinking? The playground swings are freezing and your hands ache but you hold on, walk yourself back a few steps, and let your body fly.

It feels wonderful.

The playground is deserted: It's too early for little kids to be out, especially in February, and everyone else is where you're supposed to be: At school. On your way to the park, you had to dodge Bridge Barsamian, struggling with a big cardboard box, those tatty-looking cat ears she's been wearing since September peeking over the top. You side-stepped into a bodega just in time.

You lean forward and swing back, lean back and swing forward.

Straight ahead of you is the big rock where you played when you were little. There's a divot in it, a crater where everyone dumped acorns, leaves, grass, those poison red berries if there were any. You poured them from your shirt-hammocks into the crater and poked the mess with sticks. "Dinner!" You'd all sit in a circle, and Vinny would dare everyone to lick their berry-stained fingers. She was always in charge - even then, before you understood it, her beauty was hard to look away from: glossy dark hair and full red lips. Snow White with a tan and a strut.


It's windy on the little platform at the top of the wooden climbing tower. The short walls are covered by messages scrawled in thick marker by whoever hangs out here at night, big sloppy hearts and dirty words. When you were small, you would swing yourself up legs-first, but now you have to stick your head through the opening in the floor and then hoist the rest. You certainly have grown, you tell yourself.

You sit on the rough plank floor and wedge your back into the nearest corner, the one that was always yours. You can almost see them, in their places: Vinny to the left, Zoe to the right. They're not your friends anymore. They're both other people now. The girls you can see, looking back at you, are gone. No one talks about these disappearances. Everyone pretends it's all right.



Remember the time you found a beer bottle up here? It was empty, but the three of you took turns holding it, staggering around and pretending to drink - though never touching it to your lips; that would have been disgusting. You felt almost drunk for real.



Vinny's father had been there that afternoon, seen you, and demanded that you all come down. He took the empty bottle with one hand and jerked Vinny's arm with the other, dragging her toward a garbage can. She tried to cover, acting like she was just walking along next to him, double-time.


You check your phone. Your mom was getting into the shower when you left. You wonder if she has left for work.

You can see the sun touching the tops of the buildings across the street, making its way through the neighborhood like someone whose attention you are careful not to attract. It's still shady in the playground. But aside from the loneliness, and the cold, it's all exactly the same. If you keep your own body out of sight, you could be nine years old again.

Excerpted from Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead. Copyright © 2015 by Rebecca Stead. Excerpted by permission of Wendy Lamb Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.