Paper Towns

Quentin tells Radar about his idea concerning the thumbtacks, and the two agree to return to the strip mall. Ben refuses to get out of bed before noon, however, and so they go without him. On the way, Radar talks about how strange it is to fall in love with Angela when everything is about to end and they will go their separate ways.

Quentin and Radar search through the strip mall and find a box of maps and brochures. On one of the maps, Quentin finds holes made by thumbtacks in the corner and thinks they have found the right map. The map has tears in it, as though it has been torn off of the wall, and Quentin surmises that Margo had not intended for it to be left as a clue. They take it to the room and hang it on the wall, and then match up the holes as best they can. Given how small the writing is and how many cities are on the map, it is hard to pinpoint specific places. Though they cannot determine precise locations, they find holes in Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago and Washington D.C., as well as upstate New York, near the Catskill Mountains.

Back home, Quentin studies for his finals, and then chats with Lacey on instant messenger about Margo’s black notebook. They both agree that she must have used it to plan out her schemes and adventures. When Radar and Ben sign on, Radar tells them about his new theory: Margo will return in time for graduation and will be sitting in the audience. They start discussing their various theories about Margo, while Quentin tries to plot out possible routes for Margo based on the new evidence.

The next day at school, Radar tells Quentin that he has developed a new program for Omnictionary. The program allows users to search broad categories, like geographic locations, and then view up to a hundred first sentences from Omnictionary articles on the topic. When Ben meets up with them, he says that he and Lacey spent the night plotting various routes that Margo could have taken based on the five points they found on her map. He says they discovered that every trip takes almost twenty-three days, which is the actual time between the day Margo disappeared and graduation. Ben is now convinced that Margo will be in the audience for graduation, as Radar suggested. Quentin, however, still thinks that Margo is not the type of person to play a prank like this. Quentin goes over “Song of Myself” again that night, and notices that in all of his attempts to find Margo and connect to her, he has never been able to “become” her, as Whitman suggests doing in the poem.

Still obsessed with Margo, Quentin struggles through his finals. Surprisingly, he finds himself filled with nostalgia on the last day of school as he thinks about how many things he will never do again, like eating lunch with Ben and Radar. He thinks that Margo, too, must have left the place with some measure of sadness, because she did make a life for herself there to some degree. Quentin realizes that though the school itself might be artificial, his memories of his time there are authentic. After school, he cleans out his locker and is once more overwhelmed by the thought of all the things that he will never do again. He keeps one picture from his locker and throws everything else away without even looking at it. Instead of waiting for Ben and Radar to finish band practice, he walks home, feeling better.

As he walks, Quentin finds that the thought of leaving is difficult, but that the actual act of leaving feels amazing. In this instance, he realizes that Margo will never return to Orlando. Leaving feels too good and she would not want to return. Quentin is not sure what he should do with his feeling of excitement. Should he, like Margo, just keep leaving, place after place, for the rest of his life? At that moment, Ben and Radar catch up to him in RHAPAW, and he accepts a ride from them. Though they want to play “Resurrection,” Quentin declines, feeling that he is closer than ever to finding Margo. 

Quentin spends more time thinking about Margo’s plan, going over all the information he has gathered up until this point. On the morning of graduation, his parents give him a gift. It is a box similar to the one they gave him on his sixteenth birthday, and Quentin realizes that they are giving him a car key. This time, Quentin’s gift is his very own car. Though he is initially overjoyed, some of his excitement fades when he learns that they have bought him a minivan, like his mother’s. His parents assumed that, because he loves his mother’s car so much, a minivan was the perfect choice. Quentin eventually realizes that having a minivan is better than having no car at all and he tells his parents that he will drive himself to graduation.

Quentin tells Radar about his new car, and agrees to store the cooler filled with beer from the party in the minivan so that they can take it to Lacey’s graduation party. While getting ready for graduation, Quentin realizes that, with his own car, he can actually search for Margo on his own. After showering, Quentin logs on to his computer and uses the new program that Radar created. He searches for an area code near the Catskill Mountains. Among the results, he finds an article on a town called Agloe in New York. The article says that Agloe is a fictitious town that was created by the Esso Company and marked on maps as a method of guarding against plagiarism. If the town appeared on another map, the company would know that their map had been copied. The concept is known as a copyright trap, or, a “paper town.” Though the town is fictitious, since its appearance on the map, someone has built “The Agloe General Store” on the site where the town is supposed to stand, thereby making Agloe a real place.

Though the article on Agloe claims that the town has a population of zero, Quentin notices that, in the comments section, an anonymous user has written that there will actually be one person living in Agloe until May 29. Quentin immediately recognizes the unusual capitalization that characterizes Margo’s writing. He is sure that the comment was left by her. He discovers that driving from Orlando to Agloe will take 19 hours and four minutes. According to the comment left on the Agloe page, he has 21 hours and 45 minutes before the person he assumes is Margo leaves. Armed with this new information, he calls Ben and Radar, who are waiting for him at school where graduation is due to begin. Radar is astounded by the new information and reminds Quentin that it will take longer to get to Agloe due to traffic, more like 23 hours. Quentin realizes that in order to reach Margo in time, he will need to leave immediately.

Radar and Ben convince Quentin to at least stop by school to drop off the cooler of beer and explain to his parents why he will miss graduation. He reluctantly agrees, leaving the car running in the parking lot and hurriedly explaining his plans to his confused parents. When he returns to the car, he finds Lacey, Ben and Radar inside. They have all decided to skip graduation as well and go with him to find Margo in New York.