The John Green Collection Read Free Page A

arsenal of high-powered fans, because I hadn’t packed even one, and I could already feel my sweat pooling on the vinyl mattress, which disgusted me so much that I stopped thinking and got off my ass to find a towel to wipe up the sweat with. And then I thought, Well, before the adventure comes the unpacking .
    I managed to tape a map of the world to the wall and get most of my clothes into drawers before I noticed that the hot, moist air made even the walls sweat, and I decided that now was not thetime for manual labor. Now was the time for a magnificently cold shower.
    The small bathroom contained a huge, full-length mirror behind the door, and so I could not escape the reflection of my naked self as I leaned in to turn on the shower faucet. My skinniness always surprised me: My thin arms didn’t seem to get much bigger as they moved from wrist to shoulder, my chest lacked any hint of either fat or muscle, and I felt embarrassed and wondered if something could be done about the mirror. I pulled open the plain white shower curtain and ducked into the stall.
    Unfortunately, the shower seemed to have been designed for someone approximately three feet, seven inches tall, so the cold water hit my lower rib cage—with all the force of a dripping faucet. To wet my sweat-soaked face, I had to spread my legs and squat significantly. Surely, John F. Kennedy (who was six feet tall according to his biography, my height exactly) did not have to squat at his boarding school. No, this was a different beast entirely, and as the dribbling shower slowly soaked my body, I wondered whether I could find a Great Perhaps here at all or whether I had made a grand miscalculation.
    When I opened the bathroom door after my shower, a towel wrapped around my waist, I saw a short, muscular guy with a shock of brown hair. He was hauling a gigantic army-green duffel bag through the door of my room. He stood five feet and nothing, but was well-built, like a scale model of Adonis, and with him arrived the stink of stale cigarette smoke. Great , I thought. I’m meeting my roommate naked . He heaved the duffel into the room, closed the door, and walked over to me.
    “I’m Chip Martin,” he announced in a deep voice, the voice of a radio deejay. Before I could respond, he added, “I’d shake your hand, but I think you should hold on damn tight to that towel till you can get some clothes on.”
    I laughed and nodded my head at him (that’s cool, right? the nod?) and said, “I’m Miles Halter. Nice to meet you.”
    “Miles, as in ‘to go before I sleep’?” he asked me.
    “Huh?”
    “It’s a Robert Frost poem. You’ve never read him?”
    I shook my head no.
    “Consider yourself lucky.” He smiled.
    I grabbed some clean underwear, a pair of blue Adidas soccer shorts, and a white T-shirt, mumbled that I’d be back in a second, and ducked back into the bathroom. So much for a good first impression.
    “So where are your parents?” I asked from the bathroom.
    “My parents? The father’s in California right now. Maybe sitting in his La-Z-Boy. Maybe driving his truck. Either way, he’s drinking. My mother is probably just now turning off campus.”
    “Oh,” I said, dressed now, not sure how to respond to such personal information. I shouldn’t have asked, I guess, if I didn’t want to know.
    Chip grabbed some sheets and tossed them onto the top bunk. “I’m a top bunk man. Hope that doesn’t bother you.”
    “Uh, no. Whatever is fine.”
    “I see you’ve decorated the place,” he said, gesturing toward the world map. “I like it.”
    And then he started naming countries. He spoke in a monotone, as if he’d done it a thousand times before.
    Afghanistan.
    Albania.
    Algeria.
    American Samoa.
    Andorra.
    And so on. He got through the A ’s before looking up and noticing my incredulous stare.
    “I could do the rest, but it’d probably bore you. Something I learned over the summer. God, you can’t imagine how boring New Hope,