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Just One Year Paperback – September 30, 2014
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Picking up where Just One Day ended, Just One Year tells Willem's side of the story. After spending an amazing day and night with Allyson in Paris that ends in separation, Willem and Allyson are both searching for one another. His story of their year of quiet longing and near misses is a perfect counterpoint to Allyson’s own as Willem undergoes a transformative journey, questioning his path, finding love, and ultimately, redefining himself.
* “The complexity of Willem’s character, the twisting plot, and far-flung settings (including the Netherlands, Mexico, and India) create an alluring story that pushes beyond the realm of star-crossed romance.”— Publishers Weekly starred review
“As much a travelogue as it is a romance, this novel will appeal to fans of the movie Before Sunrise or Maureen Johnson's 13 Little Blue Envelopes (HarperCollins, 2005).”—School Library Journal
“As [Willem] becomes engaged personally and professionally, readers will find their interest quickening, right up to the satisfying denouement.”—Kirkus Reviews
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSpeak
- Publication dateSeptember 30, 2014
- Grade level9 - 12
- Reading age14 - 17 years
- Dimensions1 x 5.4 x 8.2 inches
- ISBN-100142422967
- ISBN-13978-0142422960
- Lexile measureHL680L
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Review
* “The complexity of Willem’s character, the twisting plot, and far-flung settings (including the Netherlands, Mexico, and India) create an alluring story that pushes beyond the realm of star-crossed romance.”— Publishers Weekly starred review
“As much a travelogue as it is a romance, this novel will appeal to fans of the movie Before Sunrise or Maureen Johnson's 13 Little Blue Envelopes (HarperCollins, 2005).”—School Library Journal
“As [Willem] becomes engaged personally and professionally, readers will find their interest quickening, right up to the satisfying denouement.”—Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
One_________AUGUSTParis_________
It’s the dream I always have: I’m on a plane, high above the clouds. The plane starts to descend, and I have this sudden panic because I just know that I’m on the wrong plane, am traveling to the wrong place. It’s never clear where I’m landing—in a war zone, in the midst of an epidemic, in the wrong century—only that it’s somewhere I shouldn’t be. Sometimes I try to ask the person next to me where we are going, but I can never quite see a face, can never quite hear an answer. I wake in a disoriented sweat to the sound of the landing gear dropping, to the echo of my heart beating. It usually takes me a few moments to find my bearings, to locate where it is I am—an apartment in Prague, a hostel in Cairo—but even once that’s been established, the sense of being lost lingers.
I think I’m having the dream now. Just as always, I lift the shade to peer at the clouds. I feel the hydraulic lurch of the engines, the thrust downward, the pressure in my ears, the ignition of panic. I turn to the faceless person next to me—only this time I get the feeling it’s not a stranger. It’s someone I know. Someone I’m traveling with. And that fills me with such intense relief. We can’t both have gotten on the wrong plane.
“Do you know where we’re going?” I ask. I lean closer. I’m just about there, just about to see a face, just about to get an answer, just about to find out where it is I’m going—
And then I hear sirens.
I first noticed the sirens in Dubrovnik. I was traveling with a guy I’d met in Albania, when we heard a siren go by. It sounded like the kind they have in American action movies, and the guy I was traveling with commented on how each country had its own siren sound. “It’s helpful because if you forget where you are, you can always close your eyes, let the sirens tell you,” he told me. I’d been gone a year by then, and it had taken me a few minutes to summon the sound of the sirens at home. They were musical almost, a down-up-down-up la, la, la, la, like someone absentmindedly, but cheerfully, humming.
That’s not what this siren is. It is monotonous, a nyeah-nyeah, nyeah-nyeah, like the bleating of electric sheep. It doesn’t become louder or fainter as it comes closer or gets farther away; it’s just a wall of wailing. Much as I try, I cannot locate this siren, have no idea where I am.
I only know that I am not home.
I open my eyes. There is bright light everywhere, from overhead, but also from my own eyes: tiny pinprick explosions that hurt like hell. I close my eyes.
Kai. The guy I traveled with from Tirana to Dubrovnik was called Kai. We drank weak Croatian pilsner on the ramparts of the city and then laughed as we pissed into the Adriatic. His name was Kai. He was from Finland.
The sirens blare. I still don’t know where I am.
The sirens stop. I hear a door opening, I feel water on my skin. A shifting of my body. I sense it is better to keep my eyes closed. None of this is anything I want to witness.
But then my eyes are forced open, and there’s another light, harsh and painful, like the time I spent too long looking at a solar eclipse. Saba warned me not to, but some things are impossible to tear yourself away from. After, I had a headache for hours. Eclipse migraine. That’s what they called it on the news. Lots of people got them from staring at the sun. I know that, too. But I still don’t know where I am.
There are voices now, as if echoing out from a tunnel. I can hear them, but I cannot make out what they’re saying.
“Comment vous appelez-vous?” someone asks in a language I know is not mine but that I somehow understand. What is your name?
“Can you tell us your name?” The question again in another language, also not my own.
“Willem de Ruiter.” This time it’s my voice. My name.
“Good.” It is a man’s voice. It switches back to the other language. French. It says that I got my own name right, and I wonder how it is he knows this. For a second I think it is Bram speaking, but even as muddled as I am, I realize this is not possible. Bram never did learn French.
“Willem, we are going to sit you up now.”
The back of my bed—I think I’m on a bed—tilts forward. I try to open my eyes again. Everything is blurry, but I can make out bright lights overhead, scuffed walls, a metal table.
“Willem, you are in the hospital,” the man says.
Yes, I was just sussing that part out. It would also explain my shirt being covered in blood, if not the shirt itself, which is not mine. It is gray and says SOS in red lettering. What does SOS mean? Whose shirt is this? And whose blood is on it?
I look around. I see the man—a doctor?—in the lab coat, the nurse next to him, holding out an ice compress for me to take. I touch my cheek. The skin is hot and swollen. My finger comes away with more blood. That answers one question.
“You are in Paris,” the doctor says. “Do you know where Paris is?”
I am eating tagine at a Moroccan restaurant in Montorgueil with Yael and Bram. I am passing the hat after a performance with the German acrobats in Montmartre. I am thrashing, sweaty, at a Mollier Than Molly show at Divan du Monde with Céline. And I’m running, running through the Barbès market, a girl’s hand in mine.
Which girl?
“In France,” I manage to answer. My tongue feels thick as a wool sock.
“Can you remember what happened?” the doctor asks.
I hear boots and taste blood. There is a pool of it in my mouth. I don’t know what to do with it, so I swallow.
“It appears you were in a fight,” the doctor continues. “You will need to make a report to the police. But first you will need sutures for your face, and we must take a scan of your head to make sure there is no subdural hematoma. Are you on holiday here?”
Black hair. Soft breath. A gnawing feeling that I’ve misplaced something valuable. I pat my pocket.
“My things?” I ask.
“They found your bag and its contents scattered at the scene. Your passport was still inside. So was your wallet.”
He hands it to me. I look at the billfold. There are more than a hundred euros inside, though I seem to recall having a lot more. My identity card is missing.
“We also found this.” He shows me a small black book. “There is still quite a bit of money in your wallet, no? It doesn’t suggest a robbery, unless you fought off your attackers.” He frowns, I assume at the apparent foolishness of this maneuver.
Did I do that? A low fog sits overhead, like the mist coming off the canals in the morning that I used to watch and will to burn off. I was always cold. Yael said it was because though I looked Dutch, her Mediterranean blood was swimming in me. I remember that, remember the scratchy wool blanket I would wrap myself in to stay warm. And though I now know where I am, I don’t know why I’m here. I’m not supposed to be in Paris. I’m supposed to be in Holland. Maybe that explains that niggling feeling.
Burn off. Burn off, I will the fog. But it is as stubborn as the Dutch fog. Or maybe my will is as weak as the winter sun. Either way, it doesn’t burn off.
“Do you know the date?” the doctor asks.
I try to think, but dates float by like leaves in a gutter. But this is nothing new. I know that I never know the date. I don’t need to. I shake my head.
“Do you know what month it is?”
Augustus. Août. No, English. “August.”
“Day of the week?”
Donderdag, something in my head says. Thursday. “Thursday?” I try.
“Friday,” the doctor corrects, and the gnawing feeling grows stronger. Perhaps I am supposed to be somewhere on Friday.
The intercom buzzes. The doctor picks it up, talks for a minute, hangs up, turns to me. “Radiology will be here in thirty minutes.” Then he begins talking to me about commotions cérébrales or concussions and temporary short-term memory loss and cats and scans and none of it is making a lot of sense.
“Is there someone we can call?” he asks. And I feel like there is, but for the life of me, I can’t think who. Bram is gone and Saba is gone and Yael might as well be. Who else is there?
The nausea hits, fast, like a wave I had my back to. And then there’s puke all over my bloodied shirt. The nurse is quick with the basin, but not quick enough. She gives me a towel to clean myself with. The doctor is saying something about nausea and concussions. There are tears in my eyes. I never did learn to throw up without crying.
The nurse mops my face with another towel. “Oh, I missed a spot,” she says with a tender smile. “There, on your watch.”
On my wrist is a watch, bright and gold. It’s not mine. For the quickest moment, I see it on a girl’s wrist. I travel up the hand to a slender arm, a strong shoulder, a swan’s neck. When I get to the face, I expect it to be blank, like the faces in the dream. But it’s not.
Black hair. Pale skin. Warm eyes.
I look at the watch again. The crystal is cracked but it’s still ticking. It reads nine. I begin to suspect what it is I’ve forgotten.
I try to sit up. The world turns to soup.
The doctor pushes me back onto the bed, a hand on my shoulder. “You are agitated because you are confused. This is all temporary, but we will need to take the CT scan to make sure there is no bleeding on the brain. While we wait, we can attend to your facial lacerations. First I will give you something to make the area numb.”
The nurse swabs off my cheek with something orange. “Do not worry. This won’t stain.”
It doesn’t stain; it just stings.
“I think I should go now,” I say when the sutures are done.
The doctor laughs. And for a second I see white skin covered in white dust, but warmer underneath. A white room. A throbbing in my cheek.
“Someone is waiting for me.” I don’t know who, but I know it’s true.
“Who is waiting for you?” the doctor asks.
“I don’t remember,” I admit.
“Mr. de Ruiter. You must have a CT scan. And, after, I would like to keep you for observation until your mental clarity returns. Until you know who it is who waits for you.”
Neck. Skin. Lips. Her fragile-strong hand over my heart. I touch my hand to my chest, over the green scrub shirt the nurse gave me after they cut off my bloody shirt to check for broken ribs. And the name, it’s almost right there.
Orderlies come to wheel me to a different floor. I’m loaded into a metal tube that clatters around my head. Maybe it’s the noise, but inside the tube, the fog begins to burn off. But there is no sunshine behind it, only a dull, leaden sky as the fragments click together. “I need to go. Now!” I shout from the tube.
There’s silence. Then the click of the intercom. “Please hold still,” a disembodied voice orders in French.
I am wheeled back downstairs to wait. It is past twelve o’clock.
I wait more. I remember hospitals, remember exactly why I hate them.
I wait more. I am adrenaline slammed into inertia: a fast car stuck in traffic. I take a coin out of my pocket and do the trick Saba taught me as a little boy. It works. I calm down, and when I do, more of the missing pieces slot into place. We came together to Paris. We are together in Paris. I feel her hand gentle on my side, as she rode on the back of the bicycle. I feel her not-so-gentle hand on my side, as we held each other tight. Last night. In a white room.
The white room. She is in the white room, waiting for me.
I look around. Hospital rooms are never white like people believe. They are beige, taupe, mauve: neutral tones meant to soothe heartbreak. What I wouldn’t give to be in an actual white room right now.
Later, the doctor comes back in. He is smiling. “Good news! There is no subdural bleeding. Only a concussion. How is your memory?”
“Better.”
“Good. We will wait for the police. They will take your statement and then I can release you to your friend. But you must take it very easy. I will give you an instruction sheet for care, but it is in French. Perhaps someone can translate it, or we can find you one in English or Dutch online.”
“Ce ne sera pas nécessaire,” I say.
“Ahh, you speak French?” he asks in French.
I nod. “It came back to me.”
“Good. Everything else will, too.”
“So I can go?”
“Someone must come for you! And you have to make a report to the police.”
Police. It will be hours. And I have nothing to tell them, really. I take the coin back out and play it across my knuckle. “No police!”
The doctor follows the coin as it flips across my hand. “Do you have problems with the police?” he asks.
“No. It’s not that. I have to find someone,” I say. The coin clatters to the floor.
The doctor picks it up and hands it to me. “Find who?”
Perhaps it’s the casual way he asked; my bruised brain doesn’t have time to scramble it before spitting it out. Or perhaps the fog is lifting now, and leaving a terrific headache behind. But there it is, a name, on my lips, like I say it all the time.
“Lulu.”
“Ahh, Lulu. Très bien!” The doctor claps his hands together. “Let us call this Lulu. She can come get you. Or we can bring her to you.”
It is too much to explain that I don’t know where Lulu is. Only that she’s in the white room and she’s waiting for me and she’s been waiting for a long time. And I have this terrible feeling, and it’s not just because I’m in a hospital where things are routinely lost, but because of something else.
“I have to go,” I insist. “If I don’t go now, it could be too late.”
The doctor looks at the clock on the wall. “It is not yet two o’clock. Not late at all.”
“It might be too late for me.” Might be. As if whatever is going to happen hasn’t already happened.
The doctor looks at me for a long minute. Then he shakes his head. “It is better to wait. A few more hours, your memory will return, and you will find her.”
“I don’t have a few hours!”
I wonder if he can keep me here against my will. I wonder if at this moment I even have a will. But something pulls me forward, through the mist and the pain. “I have to go,” I insist. “Now.”
The doctor looks at me and sighs. “D’accord.” He hands me a sheaf of papers, tells me I am to rest for the next two days, clean my wound every day, the sutures will dissolve. Then he hands me a small card. “This is the police inspector. I will tell him to expect your call tomorrow.”
I nod.
“You have somewhere to go?” he asks.
Céline’s club. I recite the address. The Métro stop. These I remember easily. These I can find.
“Okay,” the doctor says. “Go to the billing office to check out, and then you may go.”
“Thank you.”
He touches me on the shoulder, reminds me to take it easy. “I am sorry Paris brought you such misfortune.”
I turn to face him. He’s wearing a name tag and the blurriness in my vision has subsided so I can focus on it. docteur robinet, it reads. And while my vision is okay, the day is still muddy, but I get this feeling about it. A hazy feeling of something—not quite happiness, but solidness, stepping on earth after being at sea for too long—fills me up. It tells me that whoever this Lulu is, something happened between us in Paris, something that was the opposite of misfortune.
Two_________
At the billing office, I fill out a few thousand forms. There are problems when they ask for an address. I don’t have one. I haven’t for such a long time. But they won’t let me leave until I supply one. At first, I think to give them Marjolein, my family’s attorney. She’s who Yael has deal with all her important mail, and whom, I realize too late, I was supposed to meet with today—or was it tomorrow? Or yesterday now?—in Amsterdam. But if a hospital bill goes to Marjolein, then all of this goes straight back to Yael, and I don’t want to explain it to her. I don’t want to not explain it, either, in the more likely event she never asks about it.
“Can I give you a friend’s address?” I ask the clerk.
“I don’t care if you give me the Queen of England’s address so long as we have somewhere to mail the bill,” she says.
I can give them Broodje’s address in Utrecht. “One moment,” I say.
“Take your time, mon chéri.”
I lean on the counter and rifle through my address book, flipping through the last year of accumulated acquaintances. There are countless names of people I don’t remember, names I didn’t remember even before I got this nasty bump on my head. There’s a message to Remember the caves in Matala. I do remember the caves, and the girl who wrote the message, but not why I’m supposed to remember them.
I find Robert-Jan’s address right at the front. I read it to the clerk, and as I close the book it falls open to one of the last pages. There’s all this unfamiliar writing, and at first I think my eyesight must really be messed up, but then I realize it’s just that the words are not English or Dutch but Chinese.
And for a second, I’m not here in this hospital, but I’m on a boat, with her, and she’s writing in my notebook. I remember. She spoke Chinese. She showed it to me. I turn the page, and there’s this.
There’s no translation next to it, but I somehow know what that character means.
Double happiness.
I see the character here in the book. And I see it larger, on a sign. Double happiness. Is that where she is?
“Is there maybe a Chinese restaurant or store nearby?” I ask the clerk.
She scratches her hair with a pencil and consults a colleague. They start to argue about the best place to eat.
“No,” I explain. “Not to eat. I’m looking for this.” I show them the character in my book.
They look at each other and shrug.
“A Chinatown?” I ask.
“In the thirteenth arrondissement,” one replies.
“Where’s that?”
“Left Bank.”
“Would an ambulance have brought me here from there?” I ask.
“No, of course not,” she answers.
“There’s a smaller one in Belleville,” the other clerk offers.
“It is a few kilometers from here, not far,” the first clerk explains and tells me how to get to the Métro.
I put on my rucksack, and leave.
I don’t get far. My rucksack feels like it’s full of wet cement. When I left Holland two years ago, I carried a big pack with many more things. But then it got stolen and I never replaced it, instead making do with a smaller bag. Over time, the rucksacks kept getting smaller and smaller, because there’s so little a person actually needs. These days, all I keep is a few changes of clothes, some books, some toiletries, but now even that feels like too much. When I go down the stairs into the Métro, the bag bounces with each step, and pain knifes deep into me.
“Bruised, not broken,” Dr. Robinet told me before I left. I thought he was talking about my spirit, but he’d been referring to my ribs.
On the Métro platform, I pull everything out of the rucksack except for my passport, wallet, address book, and toothbrush. When the train comes, I leave the rest on the platform. I’m lighter now, but it’s not any easier.
The Belleville Chinatown begins right after the Métro stop. I try to match the signs from her character in my book, but there are so many signs and the neon lettering looks nothing like those soft ink lines she wrote. I ask around for double happiness. I have no idea if I’m asking for a place, a person, a food, a state of mind. The Chinese people look frightened of me and no one answers, and I begin to wonder if maybe I’m not really speaking French, only imagining I do. Finally one of them, an old man with grizzled hands clutching an ornate cane, stares at me and then says, “You are a long way from double happiness.”
I am about to ask what he means, where it is, but then I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a shop window, my eye swelling purple, the bandage on my face seeping blood. I understand he isn’t talking about a place.
But then I do glimpse familiar letters. Not the double happiness character, but the SOS letters from the mysterious T-shirt I was wearing earlier at the hospital. I see it now on another T-shirt, worn by a guy my age with jagged hair and an armful of metal cuffs. Maybe he’s connected to double happiness somehow.
It winds me to catch up with him, a half block away. When I tap him on the shoulder, he turns around and steps back. I point to his shirt. I’m about to ask him what it means when he asks me in French, “What happened to you?”
“Skinheads,” I reply in English. It’s the same word all over. I explain in French that I was wearing a T-shirt like his before.
“Ahh,” he says, nodding. “The racists hate Sous ou Sur. They are very anti-fascist.”
I nod, though I remember now why they beat me up, and I’m pretty certain it had little to do with my T-shirt.
“Can you help me?” I ask.
“I think you need a doctor, my friend.”
I shake my head. That’s not what I need.
“What do you want?” the guy asks me.
“I’m looking for a place around here with a sign like this.”
“What is it?”
“Double happiness.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What is it you’re looking for?”
“Maybe a store. Restaurant. Club. I don’t know, really.”
“You don’t know shit, do you?”
“I know that I don’t know shit. That counts for something.” I point to the egg on my head. “Things got scrambled.”
He peers at my head. “You should have that looked at.”
“I already did.” I point to the bandage covering the stitches on my cheek.
“Shouldn’t you be resting or something?”
“Later. After I find it. The double happiness.”
“What’s so important about this double happiness?”
I see her then, not just see her, but feel her, soft breath against my cheek as she whispered something to me just as I was falling asleep last night. I didn’t hear what she said. I only remember I was happy. To be in that white room. “Lulu,” I say.
“Oh. A girl. I’m on my way to see my girl.” He pulls out his phone and texts something. “But she can wait; they always do!” He grins at me, showing off a set of defiantly crooked teeth.
He’s right. They do. Even when I didn’t know they would, even when I’d been gone a long time, the girls, they waited. I never cared one way or another.
We take off, walking up and down the narrow blocks, the air thick with the smell of stewed organs. I feel like I’m running to keep up with him, and the exertion sets my stomach churning again.
“You don’t look so pretty, friend,” he tells me right as I retch bile into the gutter. He looks vaguely alarmed. “Are you sure you don’t want a doctor?”
I shake my head, wipe my mouth, my eyes.
“Okay. I think maybe I should take you to meet my girl, Toshi. She works in this area, so she might know this double happiness place.”
I follow him a few blocks. I’m still trying to find the double happiness sign, but it’s even harder now because I got some sick on my address book and the ink’s smeared. Also, there are black spots dancing before my eyes making it hard to see where the pavement really is.
When we finally stop, I almost cry in relief. Because we’ve found it, the double happiness place. Everything is familiar. The steel door, the red scaffolding, the distorted portraits, even the faded name on the facade, Ganterie, after the glove factory it must have once been. This is the place.
Toshi comes to the door, a tiny black girl with tight dreadlocks, and I want to hug her for delivering me to the white room. I want to march straight to the white room and lie down next to Lulu, to have everything feel right again.
I try to say this, but I can’t. I can’t even really get my legs to move because the ground beneath me has turned liquid and wavy. Toshi and my samaritan, whose name is Pierre, are arguing in French. She wants to call the police and Pierre says they have to help me find double happiness.
It’s okay, I want to tell him. I’ve found it. This is the place. But I can’t quite make the words come out straight. “Lulu,” I manage to say. “Is she here?”
A few more people crowd around the door. “Lulu,” I say again. “I left Lulu here.”
“Here?” Pierre asks. He turns to Toshi and points to his head and then to my head.
I keep repeating her name: Lulu, Lulu. And then I stop but her name continues, like in an echo chamber, like my pleas are traveling deep into the building and will bring her back from wherever it is she’s gone.
When the crowd parts, I think it really has worked. That my words dredged her up, returned her to me. That the one time I wanted one to wait, one did.
A girl steps out from the crowd. “Oui, Lulu, c’est moi,” she says delicately.
But that’s not Lulu. Lulu was willowy with black hair and eyes as dark. This girl is a petite china doll, and blonde. She is not Lulu. Only then do I remember that Lulu is not Lulu either. Lulu was the name I gave her. I don’t know her real name.
The crowd stares at me. I hear myself babbling about needing to find Lulu. The other Lulu. I left her in the white room.
They look at me with odd expressions on their faces and then Toshi pulls out her mobile phone. I hear her talking; she is requesting an ambulance. It takes me a minute to realize it’s for me.
“No,” I tell her. “I already have been to the hospital.”
“I would hate to see you before,” Wrong Lulu says. “Were you in an accident?”
“He got beaten up by skinheads,” Pierre tells her.
But Wrong Lulu is right. Accident—how I found her. Accident—how I lost her. You have to give the universe credit, the way it evens things out like that.
Three_________
I take a taxi to Céline’s club. The fare eats into the last of my money but it doesn’t matter. I just need enough to get back to Amsterdam, and I already have a train ticket. On the short ride over, I nod off in the backseat and it’s only when we pull up outside La Ruelle that I remember we left Lulu’s suitcase here.
The bar is dark and empty, but the door is unlocked. I hobble down to Céline’s office. It’s dark inside there, too, only the grayish glow of her computer monitor lighting her face. At first, when she looks up and sees me, she smiles that smile of hers, like a lion waking from a nap, refreshed but hungry. Then I click on the light.
“Mon dieu!” she exclaims. “What did she do to you?”
“Was she here? Lulu?”
Céline rolls her eyes. “Yes. Yesterday. With you.”
“Since then?”
“What happened to your face?”
“Where is the suitcase?”
“In the storage room, where we left it. What happened to you?”
“Give me the keys.”
Céline narrows her eyes with one of her looks, but she opens a desk drawer and tosses me the keys. I unlock the door, and there’s the suitcase. She hasn’t come back for it, and for a moment I feel happy because it means she must still be here. Still be in Paris, looking for me.
But then I think about what the woman from Ganterie said, the one who came downstairs after my vision went all black and Toshi threatened again to call an ambulance and I begged for a taxi instead. This woman said that she saw a girl race out of the doors when she unlocked them this morning. “I called after her to come back, but she just ran away,” she told me, in French.
Lulu didn’t speak French. And she didn’t know her way around Paris. She didn’t know how to get to the train station last night. She didn’t know how to get to the club, either. She wouldn’t know where her suitcase is. She wouldn’t know where I was—even if she wanted to find me.
I take the suitcase, search for a luggage tag, and find nothing: not a name tag or an airplane baggage claim. I try to open it, but it’s locked. I pause for all of a second before yanking off the flimsy padlock. As soon as I open the bag, I’m hit with the familiar. Not the contents—clothes and souvenirs I’ve never seen before—but the smell. I pick up a neatly folded T-shirt, put it to my face, and inhale.
“What are you doing?” Céline asks, suddenly appearing in the doorway.
I slam the door shut in her face and continue going through Lulu’s things. There are souvenirs, including one of those wind-up clocks like one we looked at together at one of the stalls on the Seine, some plug adapters, chargers, toiletries, but nothing that tracks back to her. There is a sheet of paper in a plastic bag, and I pick that up, hopeful, but it only contains an inventory of sorts.
Tucked underneath a sweater is a travel journal. I finger the cover. I was on a train to Warsaw more than a year ago when my rucksack got nicked. I had my passport, money, and address book on me, so all the thieves got was a half-broken backpack with a bunch of dirty clothes, an old camera, and a diary inside of it. They had probably just thrown everything away once they’d realized there was nothing to sell. Maybe they got twenty euros for the camera, though it was worth a lot more to me. As for the diary, worthless; I prayed they tossed it. I couldn’t bear the idea of anyone reading it. It was the only time in the last two years I’d considered going home. I didn’t. But when I bought new things, I didn’t replace the diary.
I wonder what Lulu would think of me reading her journal. I try to imagine how I’d have felt had she read all my raw rantings about Bram and Yael from my stolen journal. When I do, it’s not the usual embarrassment or shame or the disgust that washes over me. Instead, it’s something quiet, familiar. Something like relief.
I open her journal, flipping through the pages, knowing I shouldn’t. But I’m looking for a way to contact to her, though maybe, I’m just looking for more of her. A different way to breathe her in.
But I find no scent of her. Not a single name or address: not hers, not anyone’s she met. There are only a few vague entries, nothing telling, nothing Lulu.
I flip to the end of the journal. The spine is stiff and cracks. Behind the back cover is a deck of postcards. I search them for addresses, but they’re blank.
I reach for a pen on one of the shelves and start writing my name, phone number, email address, and Broodje’s address for good measure, on each of the postcards. I write myself into Rome, Vienna, Prague, Edinburgh. London. All the while, I’m wondering why. Keep in touch. It’s like a mantra on the road. This act you do. But it rarely happens. You meet people, you part ways, sometimes you cross paths again. Mostly, you don’t.
The last postcard is of William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon. I’d told her to skip Hamlet and come see us instead. I’d told her the night was too nice for tragedy. I should have known better than to say a thing like that.
I flip Shakespeare over. “Please,” I begin. I’m about to write something else: Please get in touch. Please let me explain. Please tell me who you are. But my cheek is throbbing and my vision has gone all soft-focus again and I’m exhausted and weighted with regret. So I bookend the “please” with that regret. “I’m sorry,” I write.
I tuck all the postcards back in the bag and then back in the journal. I zip up the suitcase and put it back in the corner. I shut the door.
Product details
- Publisher : Speak; Reprint edition (September 30, 2014)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0142422967
- ISBN-13 : 978-0142422960
- Reading age : 14 - 17 years
- Lexile measure : HL680L
- Grade level : 9 - 12
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 1 x 5.4 x 8.2 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,168,230 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,088 in Teen & Young Adult Coming of Age Fiction
- #3,909 in Teen & Young Adult Social Issues
- #5,610 in Teen & Young Adult Contemporary Romance
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Award-winning author and journalist Gayle Forman has written several bestselling novels, including I Have Lost My Way, Leave Me, the Just One Series, and the #1 New York Times bestseller If I Stay, which has been translated into more than 40 languages and in 2014 was adapted into a major motion picture. Gayle’s essays and nonfiction work has appeared in publications like The New York Times, Elle, The Nation and Time. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and daughters.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers enjoy the engaging story and find the writing quality to be excellent. They appreciate the different perspective from Willem's point of view, which explores themes of self-discovery. The characters are portrayed as real and well-developed. Readers enjoy the travel aspect of the book, which takes them through different countries and cultures. They find the portrayal of love and heartbreak honest and realistic. Overall, customers appreciate the book's tie-up with the first book and how it seamlessly connects the two stories.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers enjoy the engaging story with its magical elements. They find the characters relatable and fascinating. The plot twists keep readers hooked. Overall, readers describe the book as a beautiful love story that is poignant and well-written.
"...But I'm being selfish. Truthfully, the ending was perfect, not because it was an ending, but because it was a beginning. And I loved it. So. So...." Read more
"...I love that this novel is a romance, but at the same time it's not. It is so much more than that...." Read more
"...'s side of the story ever since JUST ONE DAY, and I found it really fascinating. Willem's story sort of unfolded much more like a mystery to me...." Read more
"...The story always moving and alive...." Read more
Customers enjoy the writing quality of the book. They praise the author's skill for portraying a male perspective without idealizing their behavior. The words are put together in an artistic way, making the reading experience fun and easy.
"...Brilliant writing. Absolutely brilliant!..." Read more
"...Overall engaging and well written, I enjoyed it. It was a hard book to put down and a quick read...." Read more
"...What a beautiful and talented writer." Read more
"...The writing is beautiful as always...." Read more
Customers find the book's perspective interesting and engaging. They appreciate reading from Willem's point of view, which provides answers they were looking for after the first book. The story of growing, learning, and persevering despite all odds is well-received by readers.
"...discovery where a man learns to stop running away, and instead learns to embrace life and take from it what he deserves...." Read more
"...DAY and I really contribute that to the fact that it felt much more like a personal journey and much more of a personal struggle for Willem than it..." Read more
"...It clears so many things up and opens so many new doors. This book was no exception. I ship Will and Allyson so hard, and I'm glad they met again...." Read more
"...in an e-book short story "Just One Night." We loved all the confusing assumptions, twists and turns, and near misses worthy of the Bard..." Read more
Customers enjoy the character development. They find the characters engaging and love them.
"...I think most folks will enjoy the authentic characters and their true to life struggles." Read more
"...Willem was a super interesting character. Definitely unique...." Read more
"...There are solid friendships, characters, and plot twists as Willem figures out who he is, what he wants, and how determined should he be in his..." Read more
"...Her characters are so real and engaging. They are modern people in a modern world -- conflicts with parents, figuring themselves out...." Read more
Customers enjoyed the book's travel value. They found it transporting them to different countries and locations as if they were there. They also enjoyed learning the reason behind Willem's traveling, and the fact that he only has a small backpack.
"...Wilhem find some purpose for his life though and I enjoyed reading about his travels...." Read more
"...But just a great novel. Willem is a world traveler, and he travels both to try and find Lulu and also to try and just figure out himself and how..." Read more
"...I loved how the book took us through different countries, cultures, people. The story always moving and alive...." Read more
"...I especially enjoyed learning the reason behind his traveling, and the fact that he only has a small back-pack with his things in...." Read more
Customers appreciate the honest portrayal of college life and familial relationships in the novel. They find the book moving, realistic, and unique. The characters' struggles are described as true to life.
"...Just One Day gave such a realistic portrayal of love and heartbreak, and it took us through Allyson's (Lulu's) journey as she struggled to get over..." Read more
"...think most folks will enjoy the authentic characters and their true to life struggles." Read more
"...It's a novel with a very honest, if not shiny, depiction of college/new adult life. It has a wonderful cast of supporting characters...." Read more
"...the rights notes with this novel; travel, Shakespeare, unflinchingly honest characterizations, familial relationships – and my favorite – love that..." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's connection to the first book. They find the perspective good and the ending satisfying. However, some readers feel it is unrelated to the previous book.
"...But this perspective was SO good and tied everything together perfectly. LOVE!!" Read more
"...I love how it ties together with the first book and the ending... Yes!! I only wish there was a third...." Read more
"...I love reading stories from multiple perspectives and seeing the pieces fit together. This was perfection!" Read more
"...A great tie up to the first book, Just One Day." Read more
Customers enjoy the book's heartwarming and tender story about family relationships and friendships. They find it sweet, original, and a tender companion to Just One Day.
"...he is while giving us peeks into his past, family relationship, and friendships; we get a larger picture of this wanderer...." Read more
"...There are solid friendships, characters, and plot twists as Willem figures out who he is, what he wants, and how determined should he be in his..." Read more
"Beautiful, raw and tender companion to Just One Day..Just One Year is Wilhelm's evocative, emotional look at his life.. and the story from his..." Read more
"I loved this book and could not put it down once I started it. It made me smile and it made me cry. Gayle Forman is a great author!" Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2013Absolutely perfect. Absolutely beautiful. My words are not enough to give this wonderful book the justice it deserves. This is one of those books that you finish and then just sit with a smile on your face and a deep, resounding sigh of satisfaction. ... And then you turn around and start reading the series again, just so you can capture all of the emotion of this story again.
Just One Year tells the story of what was going on in Willem's life during the year that he was separated from Allyson. Typical stories retold with the boys point of view usually just tell the exact same story with a few added scenes thrown in for good measure. They are nice because we get to hear what was going on in the mind of boys we fell in love with in the main story, but they aren't really original. Same story, different viewpoint. This story is not that sort of story. We do not get to revisit the events of Just One Day as they are happening. Instead they are memories for Willem as he pieces together exactly what happened that day as he recovers from the brutal beating that kept him from returning to Allyson that day. Slowly, as his memories come back Willem, who up to this point was a love-em-and-leave-em kind of guy, suddenly realizes that this day meant more to him than he knew at the time. He needs to find this girl ... but who is she? He doesn't have a name. He doesn't have an address. He doesn't really know anything about her. But he HAS to find her. Thus begins a year-long journey that takes him all over the world, sometimes actually looking for his Lulu, but really finding himself.
This book is not really a book about a one day romance between a guy and a girl. If you are looking to find satisfying romantic moments between Allyson and Willem you will be unhappy with this story. Instead, this is a novel of self-discovery where a man learns to stop running away, and instead learns to embrace life and take from it what he deserves. Willem's journey was absolutely beautiful. There are lots of reasons that he behaves as he did for the events of Just One Day, and seeing him recognize his motivations, face his demons, and overcome the stings of his past made this book so satisfying as a reader.
Willem's journeys to find Allyson were so crazy. He was RIGHT THERE so many times. I kept wanting to insert myself into the story so that I could yell out and let him know how close he was to seeing her or getting the information he needed. SO CLOSE. I am so glad that I chose to re-read Just One Day right before I read this story. The events were fresh and I could see how parallel actions were going on in Allyson's and Willem's life at the same time. I really want to re-read the two books again, this time jumping back and forth between the books so I can see how this is happening in real time. Brilliant writing. Absolutely brilliant!
You should be warned that you aren't going to find a lot of interaction between Willem and Allyson in this book. If you are looking for a lot of sweetness between the two you will be disappointed. But if you read it as Willem's journey just as Allyson had her journey in the first book, I think you'll find a book that you will enjoy. I know that I did.
While Allyson and Willem spend a good portion of Just One Day together, in this book Allyson is gone for almost the entire book. I'm so glad that I already knew that she would find him again because of the events of Just One Day. If I didn't know that I would have been freaking out for so much of this book, wanting to scream at Willem to stay strong and not give up on her yet. She finds him. Finally. And then it is over. Just like in the first book. My only complaint is that I did not want the story to end. I so, so want an epilogue. What happens to these two in the future? Where are they in five years? Ten years? Fifty years? Their story is EPIC, and I want to know more. But I'm being selfish. Truthfully, the ending was perfect, not because it was an ending, but because it was a beginning. And I loved it. So. So. Much. It was a perfect ending to a perfect set of books.
And ... Yay for bringing Shakespeare to life! Love that!
If you haven't read Just One Day, read that book first. I don't think that it is necessary to know the actions of that book in order to enjoy the story of this one, but it makes the book so much more satisfying when you understand exactly what Willem lost when he left that squat building in Paris and left Allyson behind. After reading this book I am convinced that their story would have had a horrible ending if he had stayed. He needed this year to process things, to understand exactly who he is and what he is capable of. Allyson needed that year as well. Now instead of being a story of a summer fling that went nowhere, this story is now an epic one, just like the love story of Willem's parents. I love everything about it. Five huge stars! This story has already become one of my all-time favorites. Read it!
- Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2013I absolutely loved Just One Day and was so excited to hear Wilhem’s side of the story. Well I definitely didn’t like this book as much as Just One Day. It was still engaging and well written, but the whole book made me like Wilhem a lot less.
When Wilhem wakes up in the ER after being attacked by Skinheads he knows he is forgetting something. Then he remembers what it is, Lulu. He spends the next year in an attempt to find Lulu. At times he is driven to find her, at others he kind of drifts around trying to find her. In the end what he really ends up finding is his own purpose.
This book is from Wilhem's perspective. Wilhem basically has lost any purpose to his life. His dad recently died and when his dad died his mother moved back to India. Apparently Wilhem’s mother wasn’t really the motherly type, and she pretty much left Wilhem to his own devices. Wilhem has money, but what he doesn’t have is any sort of direction. He seriously drifts, from country to country, from girl to girl. As soon as he starts having commitments to anything, he leaves and goes somewhere else.
I think this book made me like Wilhem a lot less, the boy is a total playboy and bounces from one girl to the next throughout the story. Wilhem has literally left a trail of broken hearts across the world. Every girl he visits loves him and tries to change him and get him to commit. Wilhem’s only redeeming quality is that he truly seems to be pining for the mysterious Lulu and he really misses her.
Wilhem is truly and completely lost both in an emotional and geographical sense throughout this book. I did enjoy reading about him trying to find a purpose to his life and I enjoyed reading about all the different places he traveled. It was also very nice to see Wilhem finally visit his mother and start to mend fences with her.
I think the biggest fascination I have with this book is how Wilhem lives his life. He has tenuous ties all over the world but no real ties anywhere. He travels wherever he wants and sleeps on couches and rooms with ex-girlfriends without a lot of thought to how his presence (or sudden absence) affects them.
Like, Just One Day, this book wraps up very abruptly and at a huge cliffhanger. It basically ends at the same scene as Just One Day does. I haven’t heard about another book in this series, but it would be nice to get some closure around Allyson and Wilhem. Of course, I would understand if we don’t. These two books seem more about the characters’ journey to find their purpose than about a journey for two characters to find each other.
Overall engaging and well written, I enjoyed it. It was a hard book to put down and a quick read. I will say I didn’t like this book as much as Just One Day. Wilhem is quite the player when it comes to the ladies and it made me think less of him as a character. I did enjoy watching Wilhem find some purpose for his life though and I enjoyed reading about his travels. Recommended to those who enjoy contemporary young adult, especially about traveling. I hope there is one more book in this series, it would be nice to have more closure about Allyson and Wilhem.
Top reviews from other countries
- SusanneReviewed in the United Kingdom on March 11, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars Just wonderful!
A great story, amazingly charismatic lead character, and interesting contexts and environments in which to play out Willem’s growing awareness. Tender and sparingly drawn insight into mother/son relationship. Brings real feel good factor to balance out the sorrow and longing. Great read.
- BrianReviewed in Canada on April 22, 2016
5.0 out of 5 stars Just One Year by Gayle Forman
Excellent Thank you
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KamillaReviewed in Brazil on February 20, 2015
5.0 out of 5 stars just one year
Assim que terminei de ler just one day quis loucamente ler just one year... O livro é fantástico!!! Mal posso esperar para ler o próximo!!
- jaspreet kaurReviewed in India on September 6, 2015
5.0 out of 5 stars but it was too good to find some unknown answers that were left in ...
Its not a sequel.. Its a companion novel to just one day from Willem's point of view that how he experienced that one year without ally...but it was too good to find some unknown answers that were left in just one day..
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valéReviewed in France on March 24, 2015
4.0 out of 5 stars Je l'ai lu d'une traite
J'ai acheté le premier livre "Just one Day" par erreur, je voulais acheter le livre "One Day" de David Nicholls (que je n'ai d'ailleurs toujours pas lu !). J'ai été captivée par ce roman et je l'ai lu en quelques jours. J'ai tout de suite voulu lire la suite "Just one Year" et je n'ai pas été déçue. C'est une romance qui se lit toute seule et qui fait du bien.
Je pense que ces deux romans plairont à toute âme romantique, quel que soit l'age (plutôt jeune adultes, mais ça fonctionne aussi avec les moins jeunes visiblement !).