Be More Chill: Chapters 35–49

The door could be open or it could be closed; I can't tell because it's teeming with teenage male life.

My leg hurts like it got pegged with a girder, but the other guy landed on his back; you can really mess yourself up landing on your back.

"He totally just started acting really weird a week ago. Like, he had layers to him. On the outside he seemed like a very confident high-school magnate, you know? You know what a magnate is?"
"Yes. Like a business guy."

There are liquor bottles strewn around and dents in the walls and ash and cigarette burns.

"I'm not happy I can't dance! I just can't! It's like a birth deficit! I mean defect!"

SO YOU WANT A COMPLETE PARADIGM SHIFT.

DON’T WORRY. YOU’LL FIND HIM MORE DOCILE NOW. HE WON’T HIT YOU.

Brock's ponderous bulk nicely shadows Chloe's small curvaceousness.

Brock and Chloe keep kissing, but that doesn't stop Brock from sticking his hand out for me to slap it, a gesture of solidarity.

I move closer to her. NO. DON’T BE SALACIOUS. I move away.

We do a random room check, opening doors on kids lying in their own puke, crying...sleeping or playing Kill All People in a sedentary frenzy.

It seems like a lot of kids (and a special contingent of Michaels) are staying at the Finderman house tonight—Jason Finderman's parents must really be in Barbados.

I get a flash of calm, burly men inside and watch in the mirror as the red lights fade to a distant spot.

"When you call me you'd better actually know how to drive," she seethes, wisely picking a sentence with no s's.

I say cordial good-byes to her and Brock (Chloe kisses my cheek; Brock slaps my hand); then Michael and Nicole space out in back, lounging for the final leg of the trip.

Ford Crown Victoria. One of the heaviest, most gluttonous vehicles ever constructed.

I ask the squip for help and it drops my synapses off into sleep, but it can't control my dreams: Rich all charred up, making fun of me, with no face, holding his head out for me to slap it like a hand, with a pill swimming in alcohol inside.

"O-o-o-kay. You were out very late," she admonishes.

I...drop the keys nonchalantly by the toilet and rush back to my room.

I write a bold note with a Sharpie and tack it to my door (DO NOT DISTURB—THE MANAGEMENT), slide into bed (it hits me all at once—I'm even more tired than last night), pick up the phone and sheepishly dial the number that I have stored in my pocket.

She lilts her voice in an exceedingly pleasant manner.

I crumble into a subordinate chair at the dining room table.

Mom and Dad are centurions, in established positions. She's at the head of the table and he's behind her, sitting on a radiator in a Godfather-type pose.

Mom looks at me plaintively.

I check out people's faces, not just their positions and the way they arrange themselves into social strata, which is what I'm used to doing.

"I can't validate you, Jeremy."
"What's ‘validate'?"
"That's when you make someone feel real and accepted by talking to them."

Everybody leaves their positions by the flowered lockers, wipes their eyes and moves quickly to class, with that keep-on-the-right shuffling gait that I've seen since I was six.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream was going to have two performances, but because Jake Dillinger is recovering, and his understudy, Ron, is unavailable for the second show since he got cast in Junior Real World, and Mr. Reyes is spending time on a fund to help the Findermans, and there's so much local media attention (TV stations will cover New Jersey teenager party debauchery for about five days), we have only one show, on the second-to-last Friday in the term.

Christine makes a few appearances backstage, but she's Puck—the star—so she's never without an entourage.

Ron stands next to me with morbid posture from morbid pressure; he's got to fill the shoes of a guy who was impressive and loved even before he got put in the hospital.

I squeeze my eyes tight on the ground and beg and plead and snivel for the squip, but it doesn't come, so I just lie there losing and losing the only thing I ever wanted.

My mind is an amazing blank of shame and I mangle my Lysander lines.

I wish I had some comeback, something to say, but I don't have the squip now to come up with comebacks; it's silent or broken or gone, maybe, gone like it was never there.

I wonder who's going to be me for the rest of the play—I never had an understudy.

I hand him my pants, shirt, doublet, pantaloons, whatever the hell the stupid Shakespeare costumery is called.

Michael starts laughing, a loud laugh, not one of derision.

I'M FAULTY, it says. I’M BADLY PROGRAMMED. GET VERSION 4.0 WHEN IT COMES OUT. I'M DEPRECATED.

THAT WAS AN UNPRECEDENTED FAILURE. I HAD TO DO A TEMPORARY SHUTDOWN.

"I mean, my thoughts are kinda garbled. Don't you have to clean them up a little?"

KEEP IT LESS CRASS, WORK WITH THE CURSING A LITTLE...