Point of View Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Translation copyright © 2019 by Françoise Bui

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in paperback in France as P.O.V. Point of View by Éditions SYROS, Sejer, Paris, and edited by Natalie Beunat, in 2018. Copyright © 2018 by Éditions SYROS, Sejer.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Bard, Patrick, author. | Bui, Françoise, translator.

  Title: Point of view : a novel / Patrick Bard ; translated from the French by Françoise Bui.

  Other titles: POV. English

  Description: First American edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2019] | Summary: From the first time he accidentally saw pornography online, Lucas, now sixteen, has been addicted and as he sets out on the road to recovery, he helps mend his family, as well.

  Identifiers: LCCN2018056576 | ISBN 978-1-9848-5176-5 (trade hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-9848-5177-2 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Pornography—Fiction. | Compulsive behavior—Fiction. | Family problems—Fiction. | Counseling—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B37057 Poi 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9781984851772

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Vanish

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Turning Point

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Make the Heart Pound

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Resources

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  BEGIN HERE

  You are about to meet Lucas. He is French, living in France, but he could be a boy of any nationality, living anywhere. His story is universal. And it’s a story that is happening every day.

  This novel is about addiction to pornography. The cyberporn issue is an uncomfortable one, and it’s easy to squirm when the topic comes up. But it needs to be talked about. It is alarming to note that there is a whole segment of cyberporn produced specifically for teenagers. And like a lot of adults, teenagers are ill-equipped to deal with the onslaught of pornographic images that hurtle at them. Paradoxically, the culture of porn has seeped into the everyday vocabulary of teens, where it has established a concept of sexuality based on the roles of the men and women in the videos. The result is that many girls begin to think that sex that runs counter to their innermost desires is normal. Likewise, boys end up with a fear of not measuring up to the performance of male porn stars.

  Point of View is meant for all readers: boys, girls, parents, educators, and health professionals. It can help put difficult things into words, especially on a topic where words have been sorely missing. Please read this universal story.

  PROLOGUE

  LÈVES, A SUBURB OF CHARTRES, IN FRANCE, SPRING 2017

  “Lucas, it’s time!”

  Lucas blinks and opens his eyes in the dim bedroom where the red power lights of his devices act like beacons.

  “Okay, Mom, getting up,” he mumbles back.

  The alarm didn’t go off. Or at least, he didn’t hear it. He stretches and gropes around until his fingers find his smartphone on the nightstand. He grips it and in one quick glide of his index finger swipes the touchscreen. Nothing happens. He frowns, brings the phone closer to his face, swipes again, still with no success. This time he sits up in bed and turns his side lamp on. He doesn’t remember forgetting to charge his phone, but considering his heavy-duty use of the device, a battery problem can’t be ruled out. He connects the charger to the phone and again attempts to revive it. Still nothing. He tries again and again, furiously pressing the On/Off button. He wipes his damp hands on his Serial Gamer T-shirt, pushes back the rumpled comforter emblazoned with an enormous DON’T WAKE ME UP!, and hops out of bed. Without bothering to sit down at his desk, he starts nervously tapping the trackpad of his laptop. There has to be a discussion board where someone will be able to tell him how to bring his blasted phone back to life. The computer screen comes up with the Blue Screen of Death and a frownie. That’s it. Lucas feels his legs go weak. It can’t be…

  This time he pulls the desk chair toward him and collapses into it, gripped by panic. A trickle of cold sweat drips down his spine. Soon he’s drenched in perspiration. It can’t be happening. Not this!

  He pushes the Power button and the laptop shuts off. He turns it on again and gets the same result: a big frownie. His mouth dry, his hands trembling, he attempts to power-cycle a good dozen times before giving up. He never thought this would happen to him. He’s heard about it, of course, but he always assumed stories about viruses were grossly exaggerated. He’s been at this for years. He’s encountered a few problems, some not that long ago, in fact, but he’s always worked them out. Only this time…

  He glances around his room to find a solution, but there isn’t one. He buries his tousled head in his fisted hands. After a few moments, he straightens up. Without his screens, he doesn’t even know what time it is. The house is nearly silent, except for the comings and goings of his mother. He hears her shout: “Hurry up, Lucas! I’m leaving! See you tonight!” The front door slams shut. His father ha
s already left.

  Shit and double shit! Tennis. Benjamin. He almost forgot.

  He starts to reach for his smartphone, then remembers. Oh well, he’ll get it fixed. He pulls off his T-shirt in favor of an XXXL sweatshirt with the words I Can’t, I’ve Got Tennis printed on the front and hops into sweatpants. He’s out of breath. He feels woolly from too little sleep and nearly as empty as if his own internal hard drive has crashed.

  Which isn’t far from the truth.

  VANISH

  1

  “Lucas? Are you listening to me? You’d already left when I showed up.”

  Lucas looks at his dinner plate. “Well, since you weren’t there,” he mumbles, “I came home from tennis with Benjamin.”

  “On his scooter?” his mother asks, annoyed. “Did you go there with him too? I’ve already told you that I don’t want you riding on those things. I promised to pick you up. I may have been a little late, but I gave you a heads-up. Didn’t you get my text?”

  Lucas shrugs. “My battery died,” he says.

  His father lets out an irritated sigh. “Why do we bother paying for your phone plan? It’s the fifth time this week that we’ve sent you a text, and each time you tell us that you didn’t receive it. Once, because your battery died; another time because you couldn’t remember where you’d put the phone. I don’t believe a word of it. You’re too hooked to that thing.”

  His father furrows his brows and realizes that it’s been a while since he’s seen Lucas with his cell phone in hand. It had escaped him until now because he’s just as guilty of checking Twitter at the dinner table. Like his son, he’s often present without really being there.

  “Say, where exactly is your smartphone?” he asks.

  Lucas makes grooves on the plate of mashed potatoes getting cold in front of him. All three of them are sitting in the dining room that opens onto the living area, where a giant flat-screen TV broadcasts soundless images of some war, from somewhere in the world.

  His father splatters a little sauce on the tablecloth that his mom took the trouble to spread over the Ikea table.

  “Could you be more careful, Sebastian! It’s going to get stained,” Marie snaps at him.

  “Sorry.” He considers Lucas and says, “Don’t tell me it was stolen again?”

  “Well…”

  This time Sebastian looks at his son closely.

  “What do you mean, ‘Well’? And stop thinking about how you’re going to answer me. Yes or no? It’s not complicated.”

  “It froze up. I need to reboot it.”

  “Now you tell us!” his mom says, rolling her eyes. “What took you so long? How have you lasted so many days without your precious phone? What an achievement!”

  Lucas lowers his fork next to the cold mashed potatoes.

  “Very funny, Mom,” he says.

  Sebastian bangs the table with his fist.

  “Please don’t use that tone to answer your mom. And you’re going to wipe your cell phone right after dinner. I’m not paying your bill for nothing.”

  “Come on, Dad. It’s not the end of the world. I think the phone’s dead. Might as well buy a new phone, or a tablet, since I don’t have one.”

  “Let’s try resetting it, right now,” Sebastian says, getting up from the table and nodding toward the stairs that lead to Lucas’s bedroom. “I’m really fed up with your lousy attitude.”

  “Can’t we finish eating?” Marie protests in vain.

  Lucas thinks he’s got caricatures of adults in front of him.

  It’s too late. The scene degenerates into a confrontation between an alpha male and a young wolf.

  “Let’s go!” his father commands.

  Annoyed, Lucas pushes his plate away. He follows his father, dragging his feet like a condemned man shuffling to the guillotine. Cuddles, the three-legged cat, limps after them. He purrs as he rubs himself against Lucas’s shins. Lucas’s look of guilt doesn’t escape his dad.

  “You’re hiding something from me,” Sebastian says as he opens the door of his son’s room.

  Aside from the general disarray, the sour-smelling room in no way resembles that of a typical teenager. There’s nothing at all on the walls. The wooden beams are painted white, just as Lucas wanted them. There’s merely an unmade bed, all topsy-turvy. Dirty socks strewn on the floor. Bunched-up clothes. Mismatched sneakers tossed every which way. Cuddles’s cat bed, which he scorns in favor of Lucas’s jumbled comforter, and onto which he hops with surprising agility for a maimed animal. His spotlessly clean litter box.

  A printer rests on the floor, along with a dresser, its open drawers overflowing with T-shirts and pants. There isn’t even enough tech equipment for it to be the bedroom of a geek. Only a lamp and school stuff and three empty bottles of Coke.

  “It stinks in here,” his dad says, frowning. “Don’t you ever open the windows?”

  He turns to Lucas and tousles the greasy hair plastered to his son’s head. Lucas immediately steps back.

  “And do you shower from time to time?” his dad asks. “You actually stink. Just because you spend hours in front of your laptop doesn’t mean that you don’t sweat.”

  His eyes suddenly rest on the table where the laptop lies dark, not even in screensaver mode.

  “Are you suddenly worried about the environment? Since when do you shut off your computer?”

  His father doesn’t like wasting electricity. It’s a matter of conviction. He’s ecology-minded and hates it when computers stay continually powered up.

  Without waiting for Lucas’s response, he adds: “Okay, let’s turn it back on.”

  Since his son doesn’t move, he steps purposefully toward the computer. The motion snaps Lucas out of his lethargy.

  “Wait, Dad. It crashed too,” he says.

  Sebastian freezes. “It’s like a plague. What exactly have you been doing?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know. It must have gotten a virus.”

  “Did you download movies on a streaming site recently?”

  “Well…maybe. I don’t remember.”

  The half confession gets a hint of a smile out of Sebastian. He puts a hand on his son’s shoulder. Lucas shakes it off in annoyance.

  “It’s not a big deal, Lucas. It happens to all of us. Even me. But you should be careful. You know what? Tomorrow, I’ll take your computer and smartphone to work. Jerome will fix whatever needs fixing and he’ll install a hacker-proof firewall. We should have done that long ago.”

  Sebastian goes to take the computer but Lucas blocks his way.

  “It’s not necessary, Dad. I can take care of it myself.”

  “So why haven’t you done that, then? You spend your nights in front of your computer, your days on your cell phone, and suddenly you’re not interested? What’s the problem?”

  “I already asked a friend. He’s really glad to help me. He’ll be disappointed if—”

  “That’s enough. I don’t work at a computer firm for nothing. Even if I’m only in sales, I’m not an idiot. For both your smartphone and computer to have crashed at the same time means there’s got to be a big bug. There are competent people at work who can deal with this. Jerome, for one, and he’ll be happy to help. End of discussion.” He goes around Lucas to grab hold of the laptop. “And give me your phone too.”

  2

  NEXT DAY. EUROSOFT ENTERPRISES

  Sebastian is feeling rather pleased. He just wrapped up a lucrative tech-equipment deal with a subsidiary of a major perfume company. The economic growth took off right after some cosmetics firms established offices in Chartres, so much so that the city is now known as Cosmetics Valley. The nickname changed the image of the town. Thanks to the booming economy, his wife found a job. Marie works in the accounting department of a perfume company located on the other side of town. They had to buy a sec
ond car, but their two incomes allow them enough to also pay the mortgage on the house, which they bought two years ago. Sebastian still remembers the exact wording of the real estate ad:

  Not to be missed! A steal at 190,000 euros, in the Eure Valley. Near schools, all main shopping, and train station—a charming two-story house, including living room, dining room, fully equipped kitchen with eat-in area, three bedrooms, bathroom, loft office. Fenced-in garden with shed and carport. On roughly a quarter acre.

  He quotes the ad whenever he tells someone about the first time they toured the house. He and his wife fell in love with it on the spot. Even his son was enthusiastic. The tennis club was nearby and he enrolled straight off, with lots of encouragement from his mother. The house is nothing like the noisy and cramped apartment where Lucas grew up in the Paris suburbs. They moved in during the dead of winter, under a snowfall. Sebastian popped open a bottle of champagne and he and Marie drank the bubbly surrounded by cardboard boxes. Sebastian is lost in the memory of it all when the phone on his desk rings. He startles and answers it quickly.

  “Hello, Sebastian Delveau. How may I help you?”

  “Seb? It’s Jerome.”

  “Jerome! Great, have you fixed Lucas’s devices?”

  “Uh, you need to come by….”