Be Good Be Real Be Crazy Read Free

distance, boomed. Thump. Thump. Thump.
    â€œSorry. What’d you ask?” Homer had to take his hand out of his pocket to shield his eyes as he looked up.
    â€œYou know, I’m turning twenty exactly three days after the world’s supposed to end. Einstein told me.” Mia raised her arms above her head, stretching them behind her and arching her back so that her T-shirt pulled against the round ball of her stomach. “December twenty-third, the date I officially become old.”
    â€œHow can you listen to Einstein’s rambling? It’s so depressing.”
    â€œI think it’s interesting.” Mia shrugged. “The Giant Atom Accelerator is a forty-thousand-ton cylinder, eighteen miles beneath the ground in a deserted corner of a vast continent. It’s capable of moving subatomic particles at . . . Ugh, I forget the word Einstein uses.”
    â€œI’m impressed you can recite that much.”
    â€œOh, wait. I know more.” Mia sat up straighter, one hand pressed to her temple as she continued. “Though this experiment is an extraordinary accomplishment for science, Dr. Az, the world’s foremost expert on existential risks and founder of the I-9 Institute for the Study of Probable Doom, Existential Risks, and Apocalyptic Possibilities, believes it could be a disaster for humanity. The chance that colliding atoms will cause a giant black hole to open over the Earth is significantly more probable than the chance that the Giant Atom Accelerator will successfully disprove Einstein’s theory of relativity by propelling atoms faster than the speed of light. . . .” She trailed off. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
    â€œNothing. It’s just crazy how much you remember.”
    â€œI can teach you the trick. Mrs. Candide, my second foster mom, said that when you’re trying to memorize stuff you don’t know, you should think of funny words you do know. Like when Einstein lists all the possible ways the world could end, I think of silly words, so Giant Atom Accelerator becomes ‘giant angry alligator.’ ‘Asteroid collision’ became ‘aardvark constipation.’” Mia stopped abruptly. “Holy Gouda.” She beckoned to Homer with one hand and pointed at the sky with the other. “Hurry, before he moves.”
    Homer moved to the side of the boat. With his shoulder pressed against the hull he could feel the wood vibrating from Mia’s kicking heels. “Plane?” He looked up, trying to follow the line from Mia’s pointed finger to the sky.
    â€œNo, silly.” Mia nudged Homer toward the bow, turning him so that her swinging feet fell on either side of him. Her vanilla lotion made her smell like a cookie. “See? There’s a sea turtle in the clouds.”
    Homer searched above. He saw white clouds and blue sky. But no turtle. “Wow. That’s. Yeah. A turtle. I see it. Cool.” Being around Mia had a way of reducing Homer’s vocabulary to one-syllable words.
    â€œIsn’t it?” Mia stopped swinging her legs. “Yesterday, I found a piglet and an orangutan. Madame Quixote told me that that meant . . . Oh, eggs and biscuits. I can’t remember.” Mia pressed her thumbs to her face. “It wasn’t a bad sign. It meant something good. Something lucky.”
    â€œIs Madame Quixote the one who tells fortunes by looking at the bottom of people’s feet?”
    â€œNo, silly. That’s Madame Avex. She’s next to the Dollar-a-Slice. Madame Quixote has a card table under the yellow awning by the bumper cars. She reads your palm and tea leaves. Since I’m avoiding caffeine these days, it was palm reading or nothing.” Mia looked down as she patted her stomach. “Right, Tadpole? You kick up a storm already. No use adding caffeine to the mix.”
    â€œI would miss coffee,” Homer said, adding lamely, “if I was