A New York Times bestseller! “Smart and funny…warm and rewarding.” — Booklist (starred review) “A compelling and quirky tale of love and negotiating early adulthood in New York City.” — School Library Journal From the New York Times bestselling author of Emergency Contact , which Rainbow Rowell called “smart and funny,” comes a “captivating” ( The New York Times ) romance about how social media influences relationships every day. On paper, college dropout Pablo Rind doesn’t have a whole lot going for him. His graveyard shift at a twenty-four-hour deli in Brooklyn is a struggle. Plus, he’s up to his eyeballs in credit card debt. Never mind the state of his student loans. Pop juggernaut Leanna Smart has enough social media followers to populate whole continents. The brand is unstoppable. She graduated from child stardom to become an international icon, and her adult life is a queasy blur of private planes, step-and-repeats, aspirational hotel rooms, and strangers screaming for her just to notice them. When Leanna and Pablo meet at 5:00 a.m. at the bodega in the dead of winter it’s absurd to think they’d be A Thing. But as they discover who they are, who they want to be, and how to defy the deafening expectations of everyone else, Lee and Pab turn to each other. Which, of course, is when things get properly complicated. “Choi has a real gift for creating a character so real and complex that she can crack his psyche open like a melon and pick through all the gnarly seeds.” ― NPR “Captivating, with quotable one-liners pinging on every page.” ― The New York Times "Choi has penned a smart and funny read that is as much about finding your path as it is about falling in love...Choi’s specificity, realistic dialogue, and humor ensure that the personal and romantic journeys feel warm and rewarding, but never saccharine." ― Booklist, starred review "Choi provides a lively cast of characters...[and] the rising action—filled with conflict, captivating events, and authentic-sounding, often humorous dialogue—will win readers, and teens like Pablo, who are unsure who they want to be, will relate to his dilemmas." ― Publishers Weekly "Choi pulls from themes in her previous book, Emergency Contact , and has created a compelling and quirky tale of love and negotiating early adulthood in New York City." ― School Library Journal Mary H.K. Choi is the New York Times bestselling author of Emergency Contact , Permanent Record , and Yolk . She is the host of, Hey, Cool Job ! , a podcast about jobs and Hey, Cool Life ! , a micro-pod about mental health and creativity. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic , The New York Times ,and GQ . She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Follow her on Twitter @ChoitotheWorld. Permanent Record Chapter 1 I don’t care what any of the assholes I live with tell you. I don’t work at a bodega. It’s a health food store. Says right there on the sign: M&A JUICE BAR DELI ORGANIC GROCERY CORP. Whatever. It’s implied. In any case, it’s well lit, huge by New York standards, with a battalion of Vitamix blenders right up front—4K worth at least. Plus, we sell every type of rich-people fetish food. Are you in the market for organic, non-sulfur-treated goji berries at eighteen bucks a bag? We got you. Gluten-free, sugar-free, dye-free cake for your non-immunized kid’s next birthday? Yep. We even have cake mix with gluten that’s just as expensive because it’s ironic. See, we’re fancy, not at all a bodega, never mind that we’re open twenty-four hours a day, are owned by no-nonsense Koreans, and have a deli cat named Gusto. I’m telling you: Not. A. Bodega. Still, I just wish the damn health food store were a little closer to my apartment. Especially when the windchill mauls your face-meat to ribbons. I slide my MetroCard smoothly—quickly—bracing for the clang, that hip check of an expired pass, but the turnstile clicks me through. The reader flashes EXP 2/13. Great, so my card’s dying right at the stroke of midnight on the day I was born—Valentine’s Day. Good thing I’m not extremely superstitious and prone to crippling anxiety. (I am.) A can of Red Bull skitters on the tracks as a rat scurries past it. The fingers on my right hand are numb enough that watching them load up the shitty video on my phone is an out-of-body experience, as if I’m watching over someone else’s shoulder. How I got into Columbia with a free ride! I should shove my dead hand into my pocket, but I can’t. I have to know how she did it. Because here’s how I’m sick (everyone’s sick in their own special way; the variety on the flavors of crazy is pretty endless, but me?): I’m convinced that the next video in the autoplay is the answer. That it’ll be the antidote to my entire life. I believe (but would never admit) that watching the impossibly attractive, gap-toothed Black British chick reveal how she Instagram modeled her way into Columbia with a full scholarship will make that shi