Читать книгу Be More Chill - Ned Vizzini - Страница 15

I almost forgot about the walking to school. I live very close to Middle Borough—there’s just one big field between it and my house, and a gravel driveway that no one minds if I walk across, and then seven trees and a pile of garbage and I’m there—so I walk.

It’s weird to walk to school in Metuchen. Nobody walks to school. If you’re a junior or a senior, you should absolutely have your own car and drive to school every day, and it had better be a shiny car with a multiple CD changer. If you’re a sophomore and you’re Cool then you should ride with one of the aforementioned juniors or seniors (it helps to have an older sibling—that’s like an automatic Cool Person); if you’re a dorky, weird or impaired sophomore, you ride with your parents. If you’re a freshman, you’re forgiven for riding with your parents, but it’s your job to find peers who will give you rides when you hit sophomore status. If you’re poor, you ride the bus.

I walk, though, this morning like every morning, and once I get inside, Christine is at her usual spot at the front of math. I give her a look as I pass by; in fact I stare openly at her, apologetic, terrified, but she doesn’t notice. I move to my seat.

Guess who Jenna is talking about today: “Then Elizabeth was like, ‘But I don’t know how to do it!’ And the guy was like, ‘all you do is take this resin and this chopstick—’”

“Be quiet,” I say. “Everybody is sick of hearing about ‘Elizabeth’.” Only I don’t say that. Instead, I sit silently and look at Christine all period.

“There he goes again,” Jenna says halfway through; I try not to notice.

“What?” Anne asks.

“The stalker, look at him,” she nods her head at me the smallest bit.

“Oh, yeah.” Anne turns around as if she’s trying to pop the joints in her back. She looks at Jenna; Jenna gives a smiling look back; Anne looks slightly sad and pleading for me; Jenna responds with a withering look. I didn’t realise girls could communicate like this, with their eyes, like evil monkeys.

“Don’t say anything, he’ll put it on one of his sheets,” Jenna says.

Jenna knows about the Humiliation Sheets?

Fuck. The pit that forms in my stomach stretches down quickly to suck/tear at my bladder. If Jenna knows about the Humiliation Sheets, thirty other people do too. Cool People are like termites: for every one you see, there are thousands back at the hive with the same basic nervous system and world view. I stare forward like I usually do in times of crisis, not daring to note this particular offence on my sheet. Not yet.