We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman (read aloud txt) 📕

be unobstructed.

“Life is strange, ain’t it?” Chad asks. “Who woulda thunk it when I saw you at that first show at the Outhouse we’d end up living together, or that I’d end up a partner in a bookstore, where rock stars apparently shop. Living our best lives now, aren’t we?”

“Yeah, Chad. I think we are.”

“Hey, I keep forgetting to tell you. I finally read the dinosaur book you were so obsessed with.”

“The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs? Did you like it?”

“Yeah. It was totally not boring. The thing I don’t get is how you read that book like a hundred times and still missed the point.”

I sigh. One of the drawbacks of selling my stake to Chad is that he now feels no compunction whatsoever to lecture me about books. “How exactly did I miss the point?”

“Well, you’re always talking about the dinosaurs being extinct. Did they know? How did they feel? Blah blah blah. But they’re not really extinct.”

“I think you’re confusing the Brusatte with Jurassic Park.”

“Nah, dawg. I’m not. Because right at the end, he talks about the new breed of flying dinosaurs. They were smaller, bat-sized, able to fly, so when the asteroid hit, these new guys were somehow able to survive. And eventually they . . .” He trails off.

“They evolved,” I finish.

He reaches an arm around me and pulls me toward him, knocking me on the head as if to tell me what I already know. That I’m dense. And he loves me. And he knows I love him too.

“And what did they evolve into?” he asks, pointing up.

I look to the flock of bluebirds Amanda painted on the ceiling, and then I turn to Chad and answer his question once and for all.

“They evolved into birds.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books referenced or referred to in We Are Inevitable.

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro

Modern Life by Matthea Harvey

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie

Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal

Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Rules by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz

Batgirl, Volume 1: The Darkest Reflection (The New 52) by Gail Simone

Batgirl, Volume 2: Family Business by Cameron Stewart and Brendan Fletcher

Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Emma by Jane Austen

The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis

The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis

The Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan

Ways to Make Sunshine by Renée Watson

The Unicorn Rescue Society series by Adam Gidwitz

Wonder by R. J. Palacio

The Track series by Jason Reynolds

The Dog Man series by Dav Pilkey

Walter the Farting Dog by William Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murray, illustrated by Audrey Colman

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle

The Door by Magda Szabó

The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai

Just Kids by Patti Smith

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Stone Soup by Marcia Brown

The Scent of Desire by Rachel Herz

The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living by Meik Wiking

The Art of the Deal by Donald J. Trump and Tony Schwartz

War with the Newts by Karel Čapek

Goldmine Record Album Price Guide, 10th Edition by Dave Thompson

Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture by William Benzon

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting and Running a Coffee Bar by Susan Gilbert, W. Eric Martin, and Linda Formichelli

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Lost Horizon by James Hilton

Moneyball by Michael Lewis

Alcoholics Anonymous: The Big Book by Bill W.

The 2010 Rand McNally Road Atlas

His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman

A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis

My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid

“The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

ADDICTION NOTE

In We Are Inevitable Aaron repeatedly says that Sandy’s addiction is his own doing, that he chose his addiction over his family, that if he’d wanted to, he could’ve kicked the habit.

I want to start this note by emphatically debunking this idea, which has been proven untrue by scientists and substance-abuse experts. Addiction is not the fault of the addict. We authors often make characters say things we know to be untrue—and, spoiler alert, by the end of the book Aaron begins to realize that his blaming of Sandy is a way to shield himself from the pain of losing his brother.

The opioid addiction sweeping the country is not the fault of weak-willed addicts, lack of willpower, etc. If you feel the need to assign blame to for the crisis, one place to look is the pharmaceutical industry itself, notably companies such as Purdue Pharma that have knowingly heavily marketed products like oxycodone as non–habit forming even though these synthesized drugs’ chemical makeup is nearly identical to morphine, the highly addictive opiate from which heroin is derived. This is a travesty and a public-health nightmare, and if you’d like to read more about it, I highly recommend Sam Quinones’s Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic. An adult and a YA version is available.

Here’s what you need to know about addiction. It is a potent combination of physical and psychological dependencies, and if it were easy to kick, millions of people in this country would not be losing their livelihoods, homes, and lives to addiction.

And yet recovering from addiction is possible. For every Sandy, there are a hundred Hannahs.

If you believe you have a substance-abuse problem,