I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to be Your Class Read Free Page B

made me late, throwing off Mom’s delicate timing. I try to cheer her up by smacking my lips as I bite in, even though it tastes like I’m eating Elmer’s glue slathered between charred rubber mouse pads.
     
    I allow her to hug me, then I give her the feeble description of my school day that she finds so thrilling. (“It was fine. I got a D on my geometry quiz. Somebody puked in the library.”) She laps it up, 17 chin still propped in hands, as she watches me consume my sandwich and tomato juice. Lollipop stands sentinel at my feet, waiting for me to drop something.
     
    Descriptions are in order. Mom, as I’ve mentioned, is fat, bad-haired, big-breasted. She wears tentlike sweaters and corduroy skirts, which she buys at a store that hides in a dark corner of the mall, next to Hickory Farms. Her hair is long and stringy and tainted with ugly veins of natural gray.
     
    Lollipop is another type of creature entirely. Long, lean, lithe, she is a pit bull mix who is very, very muscular and very, very striped. She has teeth like ivory daggers, legs like dappled stalactites, and eyelashes both more beautiful and more delicate than fairy wings ( see plate 4 ).
     
    Currently, I like my mother slightly more than I like my dog. Both Lollipop and Mom share a slavish devotion to me, and both tend to drool when they’re happy. But Lollipop can’t make grilled-cheese sandwiches. 18
     
    Mom is talking: “. . . and then I saw Mrs. Albers at the No Frills Supermarket. She was buying eggs and food coloring so she could make Easter eggs. She said Ferdinand is going to have some little friends over to roll them on the front lawn, and she was wondering if you wanted to come. Isn’t that wonderful?”

    PLATE 4: Lollipop is another type of creature entirely.
Long, lean, lithe, she is a pit bull mix who is very, very
muscular and very, very striped. She has teeth like ivory daggers,
legs like dappled stalactites, and eyelashes both more
beautiful and more delicate than fairy wings.
     
    Ferdinand Albers is five years younger than myself. He is morbidly obese, has bright red ears and yellow hair that smells like tuna salad. If I show up for his egg roll, I’ll likely be the only “little friend” who does. Still, maybe I should go; it would be a good cover. And it would make Mom happy.
     
    I think what’s comforting about my mother is that she would love me even if I were as dumb as I pretend to be. She genuinely believes I am the boy who couldn’t tie his own shoes until he was ten—and yet she still thinks the sun and moon revolve around me! Call it what you will—stupidity, hormones, self-delusion. I call it Mom.
     
    Her devotion stands in stark contrast to some other parents I could name.
     
    “And your father just called. He’s going to be home early.”
     
    “Yippee for him,” I say, perhaps a trifle unenthusiastically, and with maybe— maybe —a slight roll of my eyes.
     
    That was a slip. Mom looks at me a little funny. There’s a question on her lips. I save the situation by suddenly slapping my hands together like a seal and giving a moronic grin. “Yay, Daddy! Yay!” I dance in a little circle, hopping from foot to foot, with Lollipop barking at my heels. Mom smiles, all doubts erased. “Ollie loves Daddy!” I scream, like a brain-damaged baby, then I skip— skip —like a happy fairy in a shiny green forest, out of the kitchen with its peeling, urine-colored linoleum floor, down the hallway with its turdly brown carpeting, and into my room, with its delightful brown and yellow color scheme. Lollipop gambols happily beside me.
     
    As soon as my bedroom door hisses shut behind me, the cretinous smile leaves my face. I walk past the shelves full of broken toys and ripped-up Archie comics, past the bed shaped like a race car and the posters of cute kittens, and reach for the framed photograph of my father shaking Ralph Nader’s hand. I give the nail from which it hangs three swift tugs. Silently, the