Nowhere on Earth

Nowhere on Earth

From the Printz Award-winning author of Satellite comes a compelling new novel about a girl who must brave the elements to help a lost child with an otherworldly secret. Sixteen-year-old Emily is on the run. Between her parents and the trouble she's recently gotten into at school, she has more than enough reason to get away. But when she finds a little boy named Aidan wandering in the woods, she knows she needs to help him find his way home. But getting home is no easy matter, especially when Emily finds out that Aidan isn't even from Earth. When their plane crashes into the side of a snowy mountain, it's up to Emily to ensure Aidan and their pilot, Bob, make it off the mountain alive. Pursued by government forces who want to capture Aidan, the unlikely team of three trek across the freezing landscape, learning more about each other, and about life, than they ever thought possible. "I love Nick Lake's writing. I would read anything he wrote--grocery list, email, etc.--because his writing, always, is so real and brave. He takes on subjects other writers might avoid, and he writes the hell out of them." -- New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Niven on Nick Lake “An interesting exploration of individuality, family and how they often conflict. . . .  Exhilarating   YA science fiction. ” — Shelf Awareness, s tarred review "Starts off as an appealing survival story, then moves into an exploration of family and relationships, while maintaining its pace." — School Library Journal "The book opens with the plane crash and the pace never slows . . . . For all the action and thrills, though, there is a strong emotional center here." — The Bulletin “ The overall message about connecting and empathy is deeply felt , as is Emily's coming-of-age and understanding of her place in the universe as a young woman with her own voice.” — Kirkus Reviews “Deftly weaving elements of science fiction into a tale of survival and personal (re)growth, Lake takes on sexual assault, family discord, and what it means to rebuild in the face of trauma. Both completely alien and yet all-too-relatable, Emily and Aidan's story will help readers think more deeply about the world around them. ” — Booklist Nick Lake is the Michael L. Printz Award winner for In Darkness. His novel Hostage Three received three starred reviews and was named a Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and Boston Globe Best Book of the Year. Nick is also the publishing director for fiction at HarperCollins Children's Books UK. Follow him on Twitter at @nicklakeauthor. Chapter 1 Emily saw the mountainside only a moment before the small plane crashed into it. They were in thick fog; and then there was only whiteness, and noise, and pain. Before, Emily had always associated the color white with peace, with a kind of benign erasure. Snow smoothing out the angles of her lame little town. After that moment, she didn’t. She felt no fear. Her life did not flash in front of her eyes; she didn’t see the things most important to her parade past, perhaps because they had already been taken away. No: her body was simply flooded with adrenaline: fight-­or-­flight response—­though there was nothing for her to fight and nowhere to fly to, not anymore. There was: the screaming of metal on metal, the shock that emptied her lungs, the white snow breaking in through the windows, the impact of her head on something, perhaps the side of the plane. It was a De Havilland Otter fitted with floats. This, thought Emily, was the kind of useless information she would take to the grave. Not that she would necessarily have a grave. Even with modern technology, it was possible they would never be found. And then: the realization. Aidan. She panicked, flailed, tried to catch his hand—­the little boy, her brother. But her fingers closed on nothing. Then, after the whiteness, the blackness. Chapter 2 Emily blinked back into light. Part of a tree was sticking through the broken window; a cedar, she noticed uselessly. Her head was throbbing. She brought a hand up to it. Her temple and cheek were sticky with blood. “Emily!” said a voice. The voice of a young boy, from behind her, oddly muffled. “Emily!” Aidan. Instinctively, she rose to stand and was roughly pulled back. She wrestled with the buckle on her seat belt, but it was bent and twisted away from her in the strange, unrecognizable new contours of the plane. She looked around. There: on the seat next to her were shards of glass from the broken window. She picked one up and used it to saw at her belt. “Emily!” She cursed the restraint. The glass cut her—­not badly, but slippery blood loosened her grip on it. “Coming. Coming,” she said. Then the belt frayed and came apart. She lowered herself to the floor—­nothing in her body seemed broken, but she couldn’t be sure—­and crawled into the aisle. Aidan. Aidan was the priority. That was when she saw: the back of the plane was gone. There was only a vast round hole, the tears