Be More Chill: Chapters 1–20

In fact, when I think about it, Jenna never talks about her family, or TV, or when work is due, or the ins and outs of procuring concert tickets, like most girls.

I mean she's intelligent and sweet and everything else that a girl is supposed to be to offset her beauty, but even if she were idiotic and mean, she'd still be beautiful and I'd still be contorted.

The Humiliation Sheets have developed a lot over the years, with a host of different categories, but the current model has Snicker, Laugh, Snotty Comment, Refusal to Return a Head Nod (the standard form of greeting at Middle Borough High), Refusal to Return a Verbal Greeting, Refusal to Touch Hands, Public Denial of Formerly Agreed-Upon Opinion, Refusal to Repeat a Joke, and Mortification Event (a catch-all).

I keep going, and every time I come to a sweet line in the read-through (and you know Shakespeare—the sweet lines are really sweet), I direct it at her, tilting my head so my sound waves ruffle some molecules on her cheek and she reacts in some imperceptible way that I might be imagining.

I've got to (1) give her the chocolate Shakespeare and (2) be slick about it—like I'm her friend, but I could be more—and (3) leave the theater with a flourish.

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.

Wherever Cool is, anyway, I missed it, and now I'm stuck observing these machinations of sex and status and dancing and parties...

When I grow up, that had better be understood and I had better be compensated...

Theoretically, we're all able to date whoever we want, whether they have bad eyesight or they're prone to disease or whatever.

No natural selection is taking place. In that sort of 'flat' climate, scientists think that instead of survival of the fittest, it's just survival of whoever's out there and uninhibited, you know.

The Hottest Girls in School came to Middle Borough together in my grade and have been inseparable since, a force to be reckoned with...by the upper echelon of Middle Borough men.

(A girl named Jessica gets Mr. Reyes' Hot Pocket today, while we males construct a haphazard circle of chairs.)

"I heard about it on, uh, the Discovery Channel. We're totally evolutionarily stagnant."

There's conspicuous silence around the circle.

"I think," I pontificate, "that women are naturally selecting males who are more successful and rich, but that has not much to do with whether they're smart."

"You know what? I hate boys who are bad conversationalists." She shakes her head. "It's insurmountable."

Now she has her bag in her hands, but something's missing from it that perturbs her.

So now I do this thing: I look at houses and speculate about the people inside.

"Well, if you like your shirts, you might not want to date any girls. Girls are like the arch nemeses of shirts," Michael says.
"Really."
"Oh yeah. Shirts are their trophies. The last girl my brother went out with, she ended up with like three of his shirts..."

If you are actually platonic friends, don't put your heads in each other's laps and don't kiss each other on the lips.

Right now we are living in one of the first periods of human existence where young men and women can actually be friends without pending marriage or negotiations over which family has which tracts of land.

Then collectively you can make a decision on whether you want to continue the relationship, given your transgression.

I tilt my head back, feeling a witticism coming on.

Her body is poised to punch me again, but all I can see of her face is a twisted neck.

The Elks Club Lodge has a snaking line in front of it nine trees long, comprised of kids dressed as pro wrestlers, kids dressed as members of Slipknot, kids dressed as Fidel Castro...

"It's better than drugs. It's a supercomputer, a quantum nanotechnology CPU that fits in a pill."

"It's better than drugs. It's a supercomputer, a quantum nanotechnology CPU that fits in a pill."

Rich looks humble and reverent.

Christine has her arms around Jake's neck, Rapunzel hat leaning off to the side, wings akimbo.

Just as the Segway Human Transport system was introduced to the world as clandestine, heavily-funded “IT” technology, digital designers and futurists are now buzzing about “SQUIP” as the next great leap forward in human lifestyle enhancement.

SQUIP is said to be much smaller and easier to “install” due to the fact that it does not employ conventional microchip structure.

The quantum computer is of interest to researchers because of its staggering data-processing capabilities, exponentially surpassing those of current CPUs.

...the place is clogged with matted, shrill children sending balls down lanes whose gutters have been filled with blue balloons to prevent failure. Even with these giant bowling prophylactics, kids mess up, aiming for the space between pins 7 and 10 and the unprotected back gutter or ricocheting their balls slowly off the barriers until they kiss the pins for zero points.

He straightens up, gesticulates.

Back in the eighteen hundreds, any kid as surly as you...and that would be the end of it.

"Let's talk more about you not having a girlfriend."
"Let's not."
"My my. Testy testy."

Aunt Linda shakes her pole at me—I think it used to be part of an outdoor clothes-hanging apparatus.

I hope Aunt Linda doesn't notice any bear suicides from her kitchen window; I bet not; she's probably torturing Hiroshima with her pole/Jeremy goad.

Even if I don't find a squip at this Payless Shoes, at least I'll have wised up to the joys of sauntering around with lots of cash.

"Stop," Rack says, removing a totally nondescript Reebok box off the particular nondescript shelf we're at.