Paper Towns pdfdrive com

Roscoe, New York, is a hamlet in New York State, which according to a
recent census contains 261 households.

---

Agloe, New York, is a fictitious village created by the Esso company in
the early 1930s and inserted into tourist maps as a copyright trap, or paper
town.
I clicked on the link and it took me to the full article, which continued:
Located at the intersection of two dirt roads just north of Roscoe, NY,
Agloe was the creation of mapmakers Otto G. Lindberg and Ernest
Alpers, who invented the town name by anagramming their initials.
Copyright traps have featured in mapmaking for centuries. Cartographers
create fictional landmarks, streets, and municipalities and place them
obscurely into their maps. If the fictional entry is found on another
cartographer’s map, it becomes clear a map has been plagiarized.
Copyright traps are also sometimes known as key traps, paper streets, and
paper towns [see also fictitious entries]. Although few cartographic
corporations acknowledge their existence, copyright traps remain a
common feature even in contemporary maps.
In the 1940s, Agloe, New York, began appearing on maps created by
other companies. Esso suspected copyright infringement and prepared
several lawsuits, but in fact, an unknown resident had built “The Agloe
General Store” at the intersection that appeared on the Esso map.
The building, which still stands [needs citation], is the only structure
in Agloe, which continues to appear on many maps and is traditionally
recorded as having a population of zero.
Every Omnictionary entry contains subpages where you can view all the
edits ever made to the page and any discussion by Omnictionary members about
it. The Agloe page hadn’t been edited by anyone in almost a year, but there was
one recent comment on the talk page by an anonymous user:
fyi, whoever Edits this—the Population of agloe Will actually be One
until may 29th at Noon.
I recognized the capitalization immediately. The rules of capitalization are so

---

unfair to words in the middle of a sentence. My throat tightened, but I forced
myself to calm down. The comment had been left fifteen days ago. It had been
sitting there all that time, waiting for me. I looked at the clock on the computer. I
had just under twenty-four hours.
For the first time in weeks, she seemed completely and undeniably alive to
me. She was alive. For one more day at least, she was alive. I had focused on her
whereabouts for so long in an attempt to keep me from obsessively wondering
whether she was alive that I had no idea how terrified I’d been until now, but oh,
my God. She was alive.
I jumped up, let the towel drop, and called Radar. I cradled the phone in the
crook of my neck while pulling on boxers and then shorts. “I know what paper
towns means! Do you have your handheld?”
“Yeah. You should really be here, dude. They’re about to make us line up.”
I heard Ben shout into the phone, “Tell him he better be naked!”
“Radar,” I said, trying to convey the importance of it. “Look up the page for
Agloe, New York. Got it?”
“Yes. Reading. Hold on. Wow. Wow. This could be the Catskills spot on the
map?”
“Yes, I think so. It’s pretty close. Go to the discussion page.”
“. . .”
“Radar?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I know, I know!” I shouted. I didn’t hear his response because I was pulling
my shirt on, but when the phone got back to my ear, I could hear him talking to
Ben. I just hung up.
Online, I searched for driving directions from Orlando to Agloe, but the map
system had never heard of Agloe, so instead I searched for Roscoe. Averaging
sixty-five miles per hour, the computer said it would be a nineteen-hour-and-
four-minute trip. It was two fifteen. I had twenty-one hours and forty-five
minutes to get there. I printed the directions, grabbed the keys to the minivan,
and locked the front door behind me.
“It’s nineteen hours and four minutes away,” I said into the cell phone. It was
Radar’s cell phone, but Ben had answered it.
“So what are you going to do?” he asked. “Are you flying there?”
“No, I don’t have enough money, and anyway it’s like eight hours away from

---

New York City. So I’m driving.”
Suddenly Radar had the phone back. “How long is the trip?”
“Nineteen hours and four minutes.”
“According to who?”
“Google maps.”
“Crap,” Radar said. “None of those map programs calculate for traffic. I’ll
call you back. And hurry. We’ve got to line up like right now!”
“I’m not going. Can’t risk the time,” I said, but I was talking to dead air.
Radar called back a minute later. “If you average sixty-five miles per hour, don’t
stop, and account for average traffic patterns, it’s going to take you twenty-three
hours and nine minutes. Which puts you there just after one P.M., so you’re
going to have to make up time when you can.”
“What? But the—”
Radar said, “I don’t want to criticize, but maybe on this particular topic, the
person who is chronically late needs to listen to the person who is always
punctual. But you gotta come here at least for a second because otherwise your
parents will freak out when you don’t show when your name is called, and also,
not that it is the most important consideration or anything, but I’m just saying—
you have all our beer in there.”
“I obviously don’t have time,” I answered.
Ben leaned into the phone. “Don’t be an asshat. It’ll cost you five minutes.”
“Okay, fine.” I hooked a right on red and gunned the minivan— it had better
pickup than Mom’s but only just barely— toward school. I made it to the gym
parking lot in three minutes. I did not park the minivan so much as I stopped it in
the middle of the parking lot and jumped out. As I sprinted toward the gym I saw
three robed individuals running toward me. I could see Radar’s spindly dark legs
as his robe blew up around him, and next to him Ben, wearing sneakers without
socks. Lacey was just behind them.
“You get the beer,” I said as I ran past them. “I gotta talk to my parents.”
The families of graduates were spread out across the bleachers, and I ran
back and forth across the basketball court a couple times before I spotted Mom
and Dad about halfway up. They were waving at me. I ran up the stairs two at a
time, and so was a little out of breath when I knelt down next to them and said,
“Okay, so I’m not going [breath] to walk, because I [breath] think I found Margo
and [breath] I just have to go, and I’ll have my cell phone on [breath] and please
don’t be pissed at me and thank you again for the car.”
And my mom wrapped her hand around my wrist and said, “What? Quentin,

---

what are you talking about? Slow down.”
I said, “I’m going to Agloe, New York, and I have to go right now. That’s the
whole story. Okay, I gotta go. I’m crunched for time here. I have my cell. Okay,
love you.”
I had to pull free from her light grasp. Before they could say anything, I
bounded down the stairs and took off, sprinting back toward the minivan. I was
inside and had the thing in gear and was starting to move when I looked over and
saw Ben sitting in the passenger’s seat.
“Get the beer and get out of the car!” I shouted.
“We’re coming with,” he said. “You’d fall asleep if you tried to drive for that
long anyway.”
I turned back, and Lacey and Radar were both holding cell phones to their
ears. “Gotta tell my parents,” Lacey explained, tapping the phone. “C’mon, Q.
Go go go go go go.”

---