Lose You to Find Me

Contents Also by Erik J. Brown Title Page Copyright Dedication Chapter One Prologue Chapter One (again) Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four Chapter Forty-Five Chapter Forty-Six Chapter Forty-Seven Acknowledgments Read on for an extract of BookTok favourite All That’s Left in the World About the Author Also by Erik J. Brown All That’s Left in the World HODDER CHILDREN’S BOOKS First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Hodder & Stoughton First published in the United States in 2023 by Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Text copyright © Erik J. Brown, 2023 Cover illustration by © Joe Stansbury, 2023 The moral right of the author has been asserted. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. eBook ISBN 978 1 444 97003 6 Hodder Children’s Books An imprint of Hachette Children’s Group Part of Hodder & Stoughton Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DZ An Hachette UK Company www.hachette.co.uk www.hachettechildrens.co.uk For My Grandparents Margaret Keels Ann Brown Aaron Keels John Brown Sunset Estates sounds like a cool name, until you realize it’s an old folks’ home and ‘sunset’ represents their lives. That’s some dark shit. Sorry, it’s not an ‘old folks’ home’ – I shouldn’t call it that. In fact, our manager, Natalie, yells at us if we do. It’s a retirement community. And not like those ones you always see in movies or TV where there are a bunch of hundred-plus-year-olds drooling in wheelchairs wishing for death. Most of the people who live here are in great health, somewhere between sixty and a hundred and one ‘years young’ – yes, management says that to their faces, if you can believe it. Some wake up early and live active lives outside the community; others haven’t left the complex in years. There’s a structure and routine to how things run at Sunset Estates. Saturday night is movie night, birthday night is the second Wednesday of every month, and dinner is always from four p.m. to seven p.m. It’s what I liked about the job. It was structured and everything made sense. But then Gabe De La Hoya started working there and ruined it. Wait, no, that’s not when everything got messed up. It started way before then. I met Gabriel De La Hoya in day camp the summer between fifth and sixth grade. He came up to me on our first morning with his dimpled smile and an Avengers lunch bag. He pointed at the brown paper bag in my hand. ‘What did you bring?’ he asked. He was taller than me, so I’d assumed he was going to beat me up and take my lunch. I figured giving it to him would probably be less painful, so I handed it over. He tilted his head but took it, then sat down on the curb next to me and opened the paper bag. He removed everything, one by one, and as he held up each item I told him what it was – the smoked turkey salad sandwich on brioche with lettuce (no tomato), the plastic baggie of homemade potato chips sprinkled with Trader Joe’s Everything but the Elote seasoning, a bruised peach, and a piece of raspberry chocolate chip banana bread wrapped in tinfoil. ‘Whoa, is your mom, like, a super chef or something?’ ‘My dad.’ His mouth quirked at that, and he looked back at his own lunch bag. ‘I was hoping you’d want to trade, but I don’t really have anything good.’ He opened the bag and pulled out what looked like a PB&J on white bread – no way I was giving up my dad’s turkey salad for that – an apple, a pudding cup, and … Oh. ‘Are those Takis?’ I asked. ‘Yeah.’ My mouth watered and my cheeks seemed to tighten as I remembered the spicy, sour taste of the Takis I’d had at Steven Simmons’s ninth birthday party. I had been the only one who’d eaten them, but they were amazing. ‘I’ll trade you my chips for those.’ He held up the potato chips, scrutinizing them, and I realized I still didn’t know his name. ‘What’s on them?’ he asked. ‘Everything but the Elote seasoning.’ His eyebrows jumped up. I expected him to ask what that was, but he didn’t. ‘How about the chips and the banana bread?’ I must have shown how much I wanted the Takis. My dad always tried to make everything in our house from scratch, so I rarely got to indulge in processed foods. ‘Chips, half of the banana bread, and if you bring more Takis tomorrow I’ll ask my dad to pack a second piece for you.’ He jumped up, holding out his hand. ‘Deal! I’m Gabe, by the way.’ ‘Tommy.’ We shook on it. After that my dad packed a second dessert for Gabe every day. Eventually, we went from swapping lunches to just sharing them. He picked me first when he