HERE

ANY
TH I NG
BUT
ORDI N
A RY
L A R A
A V E R Y
HYPER I ON
N E W YO R K
PROLOGUE
M
ost divers forget to see the space, the air. You
focus on your body—how to make it into a
thin board, or curl it up like a piece of spa-
ghetti and flatten it back out. You lift off and you barely have
time to think before you hit the water.
But Bryce, she would never forget where she was going
when she was about to jump. She would never forget the
small eternity between the stone platform and the deep blue
below.
“Bryce Graham,” reporters asked her, “only seventeen.
What’s your secret?”
1
L A R A AV E RY
She would usually say something easy, something written
on an inspirational T-shirt. “Concentration,” she would say.
“Focus.” Things that should be said into microphones. But
never: “Fear, Ted. Fear.”
That day, Bryce was carried up the stairs by the noise of
the crowd. They yelled louder for her than for anyone else.
This was her home, after all. Those were people from her high
school in the stands, though she didn’t know most of them.
The Tennessee fans wore little clothing and were red in the
face, yelling and yelling. The out-of-towners wore Olympic
Trials T-shirts and fanned their pale faces with programs.
One of them had become as red as anyone in Nashville, on
account of the heat. He had gone to the concession stand for
a soda, a Coke in a sweating plastic bottle.
He watched from his spot at the back of the building,
propping the exit door open with his foot. He sipped his
Coke, and a cicada landed on the bleachers. The crowd went
silent as Bryce crouched at the end of the platform, like a
cicada herself.
Bryce jumped. She was bending, coiled, and the insect
rubbed its legs together, calling out to any other cicada that
might be nearby.
She was bending, coiled, and the man from out of town
felt the breeze on his face.
2
A N Y T H I N G B U T O R D I N A RY
She was bending, coiled, in the small eternity between
block and blue.
She was only seventeen. What was her secret?
Space, Bryce answered, but there was less than she
thought, and her tight twist was an inch longer than it should
have been, and the inch happened to be on the curve of her
lovely head. Her skull jutted over the cement platform, and
the weight of her body went falling, falling into the empty
Tennessee air.
If you asked Bryce’s mama how long was a cicada, she
would answer, “About one inch,” and if you asked her daddy,
it’d be the same answer. Bryce Graham’s sister, too, and her
friends. Nashville people.
If you asked that man from out of town, he wouldn’t
know, but he could hear it calling out into the air, the moment
before a plume of blood colored the pool dark red.
3
Copyright © 2012 by Southpaw Entertainment and Alloy Entertainment
All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
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publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York,
New York 10011-5690.
Produced by Alloy Entertainment
151 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
“Upgrade U” by Angela Renee Beyince, Shawn C. Carter, Willie James Clarke,
Sean Garrett, Garrett R. Hamler, Beyoncé Gisselle Knowles, Solange Knowles,
Clarence Henry Reid, Makeba Riddick (Angela Beyince Music, B day Publishing,
Carter Boys Music, EMI April Music, EMI Blackwood Music, Inc., EMI
Longitude Music, Hitco Music, Janice Combs Music, Solange MW Publishing,
Team S Dot Publishing, Yoga Flames Publishing). All rights reserved.
“La Vie En Rose” by Mack David, Edith Giovanna Gassion, Luis Guglielmo
Guglielmi (Universal Polygram International Publishing, Inc., Warner Bros, Inc.
(Warner Bros Music Division)). All rights reserved.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (pseudonym
of Samuel Langhorne Clemens). All rights reserved.
First Edition
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
Designed by Liz Dresner
This book is set in Baskerville
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Avery, Lara.
Anything but ordinary / Lara Avery.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: A slight error left Olympic diving-hopeful Bryce Graham in a five-year
coma and now, at at twenty-two, she must adjust to a world that went on without
her and to visions that may or may not be real.
ISBN 978-1-4231-6386-2 (hardback)—ISBN 1-4231-6386-9
[1. Coma—Fiction. 2. Family life—Tennessee—Fiction. 3. Love—Fiction. 4.
Diving—Fiction. 5. Tennessee—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.A9515Any 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2012004424
Reinforced binding
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