The Unstoppable Bridget Bloom


 
 
 
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Contents
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 three
 four
 five
 six
 seven
 eight
 nine
 ten
 eleven
 twelve
 thirteen
 fourteen
 fifteen
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 twenty-five
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 thirty
 thirty-one
 thirty-two
 thirty-three
 thirty-four
 thirty-five
 thirty-six
 Epilogue
 I Orbit Venus
 Sandwiches
 Author’s Note
 Acknowledgments
 Books by Allison L. Bitz
 Back Ad
 About the Author
 Copyright
 About the Publisher
 
 
 
 
 
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 iv
 
 
 
 Guide
 
 Cover
 Contents
 one
 
 
 
 
 
 Dedication
 
 
 To my grandparents, including the OG Socks and June
 
 
 
 
 
 one
 
 Two things are immediately apparent: dorm rooms bear a remarkable resemblance to jail cells, and they smell like Grandma Evelyn’s
 basement but with zero homey nostalgic vibes. I flip-flop into the middle of the joint, doing a full one-eighty.
 
 
 “Bridget? What’s wrong?” Dad snakes a suntanned arm across my shoulders and hugs me to him.
 
 My long lashes are fanning away, working hard to keep my eyes from overflowing. “It’s, um. Small.”
 
 Dodge, my other dad, chuckles. Which makes sense. The system with my parents is that Dad comforts me, Dodge toughens me. “C’mon,
 kiddo. You knew this was the size of the room.”
 
 
 “Reading on a website that a shared room is fifteen-by-fifteen and then seeing it in person are two very different things.”
 
 The cinder-block walls are a god-awful shade of light blue, like someone threw a bad Insta filter over a perfectly fine cloudless sky. There’s a gross tile abomination underfoot, and the trim is black rubber of some kind, I think. All of this is a far cry from my comfy farmhouse room back in Lynch, with its gleaming wood floors,
 original oak trim, and massive picture windows. Dad is an antique-loving contractor, and our house is his second baby (I’m
 number one, of course).
 
 
 The state of this room is confusing, really, because Richard James Academy in Chicago is the boarding school of my dreams.
 It’s extremely prestigious. Rigorous. Everyone who goes here is effing brilliant, so I’ll fit right in. Best of all, it’s
 very, very far away from my backward rural hometown in Nebraska, where I have always stuck out like a glittering emerald in
 a sea of shale. But I suppose I forgot to account for the fact that it’s also old, and old doesn’t always mean “cool vintage vibe.” Sometimes old just means shabby—hence, this dorm room.
 
 
 Just as I’m about to throw myself onto my unmade mattress in despair, I’m hit with inspiration—a Bridget Bloom specialty.
 This room isn’t at all like my bedroom, but it is like Lynch. Drab and dingy and too small for the likes of me. I’ll do to it what I’ve been doing to my hometown for the entirety
 of my sixteen years—I’ll make it fabulous. I grab the garment bag I’d slung over the school-provided desk chair, unzipping
 with gusto, but not too much gusto. Its innards are sacred. Carefully, I draw out a prized possession: my mermaid costume.
 
 
 My dads fought me on bringing this. “Why in the world would you need that at boarding school, B?” said Dodge, ever the practical dad. But I knew—just knew from some deep place in my soul—that I needed it by my side. A talisman, maybe. A reminder of who I am. A Halloween costume,
 if worse comes to worst.
 
 
 And, in the case of this shit dorm room—wall decor.
 
 “Help me. I’m hanging this up,” I say.
 
 “I’m confident in your ability to wield a clothes hanger. On your own,” says Dodge, shaking his head.
 
 “No, I mean—I’m hanging this up here. Over my bed. Like a mural.” Because it’s perfect. It’s green and purple