Be More Chill Read Free Page B

couldn’t
handle
anything else; it’s like this is the way the
world works for me and what do you know, it worked again. Failure justifies all my worrying and planning and strategizing. I was right. I couldn’t do it. It’s almost as if I got away
with something. My posture is back to being no good, my unslick peripheral vision has relaxed and I’m staring at the floor. I trudge to the bathroom to clean out my pocket.

Middle Borough has changed. While I was reading
Midsummer Night’s Dream
, industrious Student Union-ers were putting up announcements for the Halloween Dance, these
cardstock pumpkins. They look like they should have a Hallmark logo on them somewhere, taped to the walls, holding each others’ plump hands, dancing in circles. Pumpkins in love.
    I go into the guys’ bathroom. I stand in front of the sink and turn my right pocket inside out. It’s not so bad; most of the Shakespeare stayed in the foil. I lick my fingertips as I
remove it, soap up my hands and scrub the inner lining. It’s peaceful here: a cracked-open window, the click-clack of the soap dispenser.…It’s like that moment just after you leave
the doctor’s office, feeling all tingly and examined.
    The door clangs. I try not to look—it’s Rich, striding to the urinals and hitching up his pants like his penis is so huge, he has to take special precautionary measures getting it
out. “What up, bitch?”
    “Hey, Rich,” I say, not moving. I’ve got to stop this, this deer-in-the-headlights freeze state that I go into whenever I’m confronted with girls or guys or even actual
deer, or especially other guys’ penises.…
    “What’d you do, crap your pocket?” Rich asks over his shoulder as he pisses into the urinal. He’s here after school for some manly sport.
    “I don’t talk to people who are pissing,” I say. Only I don’t say that.
    Rich walks to the sink next to mine. He’s probably still dripping. “Seriously, dude. What is that? You got chocolate in your pants?” He seems concerned.
    “Yeah, well…”
    “I’m not even gonna say the obvious thing about you being a fudge packer.”
    “Uh…” I don’t really know what a fudge packer is, but when I think about it, it’s pretty clear. Meanwhile, Rich laughs and calls me a bitch again. He leaves without
washing his hands. I pull out my Humiliation Sheet and press it against the mirror with my wet wrist, scraping tally marks next to Laugh and Snotty Comment. It never ends with this school, and with
Rich; for every one of him there are mini-hims like George or Ryu, and sometimes I think about renaming all of them, about standing inside the front door of Middle Borough on a stepladder and
stamping their foreheads as they come in in the morning: Mouth Breather, Waste of Sperm, Ingrate, Troll, Skank, Retard, Pus Head, Junkie, Fetal Alcohol Casualty, Yellow Teeth, Stinky, Preggers,
Soon to Be Featured on
World’s Scariest Police Chases, whack, whack, whack
. I know them all so well.
    Then I think about how among these people, these afterthoughts of all races and creeds, some are Cool and some aren’t. How is that? It’s something I’ve been wondering
forever.
    See, because being Cool is obviously the most important thing on earth. It’s more important than getting a job, or having a girlfriend, or political power, or money, because all those
things are predicated by Coolness. They happen because of it. They depend on it. I mean, Saddam Hussein was Cool; not that he’s a good guy or anything, but he had to be pretty slick to get in
power and keep it for so long. Alexander the Great was Cool. Henry Kissinger. Ben Franklin. Rick James. O.J. Bill Clinton. I’m not. I don’t know why I’m not. I don’t know
how to change it. Maybe you’re born with it. Maybe it skips a generation, because my parents are pretty popular people; they host little parties every few months. (I used to love them as a
kid, hiding behind couches and stealing