The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To Read Free

says.
    I was trying to be dismissive because Eric being genuinely interested seems about as bad as Bret Embler or Carter Buehl being mock-interested. Here somebody across the room is staring at him like he blew up a bus, and I wonder if he has a reputation that I don’t know about that’s rubbing off on me just by being seen talking to him that will get me lots more attention from idiots. But I may have embarrassed myself just as much by using the word “doodling.” I look around, sort of like “does anyone know this kid? I don’t,” and see that Cecelia and her friends are still looking at Eric like, “That’s him, Officer, he’s the one who laughed when those kids who thought they were going to school went to Heaven instead.”
    â€œYou know that kid that always draws cartoon characters?” Eric says.
    â€œTony. Yeah.” He’s going to suggest Tony and I would make goodfriends since we both draw. Lindsay Skinner once told me Tony and I should be “drawing buddies.” Lindsay will never know what that remark cost her, and what it cost her was me asking her out, something I had been psyching myself up to do for weeks until the “drawing buddies” comment. So I didn’t get to stand in front of Lindsay’s locker and stutter out one of the eighty-five variations on “Do you wanna go do something sometime” I’d been weighing the pros and cons of, and Lindsay didn’t get to shoot me down.
    â€œDo you think he’s good?”
    â€œTony’s alright, yeah.”
    â€œOh,” Eric says, the same way he said it when I told him I wasn’t drawing a comic book. “I think he’s awful.”
    â€œReally?” I look around, this time to see if any of Tony’s friends are around. Then I realize Tony doesn’t really have friends, just what I like to think of as freak-show admirers.
    â€œYeah,” Eric says. “He never draws anything original. You originated these characters, right?”
    â€œI mean, they’re just … y’know … doodles, but yeah.”
    â€œI think that’s great,” Eric says. “I couldn’t draw anything, original or otherwise, if my life depended on it.”
    â€œYeah?” I say. “That sucks.”
    â€œIt does,” Eric says. He folds the sheet back up the way it was and gives it back to me.
    The bell rings. Eric hustles back to his seat to get his stuff. I throw my notebook and
The Great Gatsby
in my bag and I’m out the door when one of Cecelia’s friends, Jen, catches up with me.
    â€œHey,” Jen says. “Do you … talk to that kid?”
    I shrug. “I dunno,” I say. “Not really.”
    â€œOh,” she says, “never mind,” and starts off down the hallway.
    Eric comes out of the classroom, his backpack way too high on his back.
    â€œSee you tomorrow,” he says. “I know it’s not a comic, but you should consider trying your hand at one. Seems like you have the chops, drawing-wise, along with the originality to not just sketch other people’s copyrighted material plus drugs.”
    â€œIt’s not a comic, but, uhm,” I say. “It’s actually a movie trilogy and a series of novels.”
    â€œAwesome,” Eric says, breaking his weird stillness to hop just a little on his toes. It’s geeky but it’s pretty much the way I’d want somebody to react if they were the first person I told I was planning a movie trilogy and a series of novels. Eric is the first person. He says “awesome” again and we go off to fourth period in opposite directions.
    â€œWhat’s it about?”
    Eric is standing over me again the next day towards the end of third period. No “hi” or “what’s up” or anything, like our conversation from yesterday never ended.
    â€œThe movie trilogy and series of novels.”
    â€œIt’s sort