2. If this were a video game, you could just break everything in this room and a bunch of money would come out of it, and you wouldn’t even have to pick it up, you would just walk into it and suddenly it would be in your bank account.
3. If I were to talk like the lead singer of some old-school rock band, like for example Pearl Jam, everyone would think I literally had a severe head injury. So how come the guy from Pearl Jam was allowed to do it?
These are all great things to talk about when you’re friends with someone, but not when you’re just trying to make polite conversation. And somehow I just never got to the friendship stage. By the time I got to high school, and figured out how to talk to other people a little better, I had decided I didn’t really want to be friends with anyone. Other than Earl, who like I said was really more of a coworker.
And girls? Forget about girls. There was never any chance, with girls. For reference, please refer to chapter 3, “Let’s Just Get This Embarrassing Chapter Out of the Way.”
So, to conclude, we never showed the films to anyone.
Mr. McCarthy is one of the only reasonable teachers at Benson. He’s on the young side and seems somehow immune to the life-crushing qualities of high school. Many of the young teachers at Benson cry at least once a day; a few others are just sort of dumb and tyrannical, in the conventional mold; but Mr. McCarthy is his own kind of guy.
He’s white, but he has a shaved head, and his forearms are covered in tattoos. Nothing gets him more fired up than facts. If anyone in class cites a fact of any kind, he pounds his chest and yells, “TRUE FACT,” or sometimes, “RESPECT THE RESEARCH.” If the fact is wrong, this becomes “FALSE FACT.” He drinks Vietnamese soup out of a thermos, all day, and he refers to drinking soup as “consulting the oracle.” On rare occasions when he gets really excited, he pretends to be a dog. Most of the time he’s insanely easygoing, and sometimes he teaches barefoot.
Anyway, Mr. McCarthy is the only teacher I have anything close to a kind of friendship with, and he lets me and Earl eat lunch in his office.
Earl is always morose during this time. He takes remedial courses, and his classmates are nitwits. Also, all remedial classrooms are on the B floor, which is below the surface of the earth.
By the way, Earl is smart enough to place into any classes he wants. I have no idea why he takes remedial courses, and Earl’s decision making is a thing that would need like twenty books to explore, so I’m not going into it here. The point is that by seventh period, he’s been exposed to four hours of grinding stupidity, and he wants to slit his wrists. For the first ten minutes of lunch, he shakes his head angrily at everything I say. Then eventually he snaps out of it.
“So you been spending time with this girl now,” he said the day after my ill-advised lunch in the cafeteria.
“Yeah.”
“Your mom still making you.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“She gonna die or what.”
“Uhhh,” I said. I didn’t really know what to say about this. “I mean, she’s got cancer. But she doesn’t think she’s gonna die, so I feel sort of bad when we’re hanging out, because the whole time I’m thinking, you’re gonna die you’re gonna die you’re gonna die.”
Earl was stony-faced. “Everybody dies,” he said. Actually, he said “Irrybody dies,” but that looks stupid written out somehow. How does writing even work? I hate this.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You believe in the afterlife?”
“Not really.”
“Nuh, you do.” Earl sounded pretty sure about this. “No, I don’t.”
“You can’t not believe in no afterlife.”
“That’s uh—that’s a triple negative,” I said, to be annoying. Which was stupid because you shouldn’t practice being annoying.
“Man, fuck you. Think you’re too good for the afterlife.”
We ate. Earl’s lunch was Skittles, SunChips, cookies, and Coke. I was eating some of his cookies. “You can’t wrap your head around not living. You can’t actually believe that you’re not gonna be alive.”
“I have a very powerful brain.”
“I’m bout to kick that brain in the head,” said Earl, stomping the ground a little bit for no reason.
Mr. McCarthy entered.
“Greg. Earl.”
“Sup, Mr. McCarthy.”
“Earl, that lunch is garbage.” Mr. McCarthy was maybe one of four people in the world who could say this to Earl without him freaking out.
“Least I ain’t drinkin no funky seaweed-lookin . . . tentacle soup out of no thermos.”
For some reason Earl and I were both obsessed with tentacles during this time.
“Yeah, I was just coming in here to replenish the oracle.”
That was when we noticed the hot plate on his desk.
“They’re rewiring the teachers’ lounge,” explained Mr. McCarthy. “This, my boys, is the source of all wisdom. Gaze into the waters of the oracle.”
We looked into Mr. McCarthy’s huge vat of soup. Earl’s description was pretty much on the money; the noodles looked like tentacles, and there were a lot of soggy wispy green leafy things. Actually, it looked like an entire ecosystem in there. I was sort of expecting to see snails.
“It’s called pho,” said Mr. McCarthy. “Pho” is apparently pronounced “fuh.”
“Lemme try some,” said Earl.
“Nope,” said Mr. McCarthy.
“Dag,” said Earl.
“Can’t give you guys food,” apologized Mr. McCarthy. “It’s one of those things they really don’t like teachers doing. It’s a shame. Earl, I can recommend a particular Vietnamese restaurant for you if you want. Thuyen’s Saigon Flavor, over in Lawrenceville.”
“I ain’t eatin out in no Lawrenceville,” said Earl with disdain.
“Earl refuses to go to Lawrenceville,” I said. I found that sometimes with Earl and another person around, a fun thing to do was narrate Earl’s behavior, especially if it meant simply rephrasing things that he said. Basically, the premise was that he had some irritating personal assistant who actually wasn’t useful in any way.
“I ain’t got eatin-out money.”
“Earl has no money allocated for that purpose.”
“Tryna get some soup up in here.”
“Earl was hoping to have some of your soup.”
“Not gonna happen,” announced Mr. McCarthy cheerfully, closing the tureen of soup. “Greg, throw me a fact.”
“Uh . . . Like much Vietnamese cuisine, pho includes elements of French cooking, specifically the broth, which is derived from the consommé.” I’m embarrassed to say this, but that fact came from the Food Network.
“RESPECT THE RESEARCH,” barked Mr. McCarthy. “Greg, you beasted on that fact.” He flexed his right biceps, then punched it with his left fist. “Continue the dominance.” He was insanely fired up. He was actually snarling a little. I thought he was going to attack me. Instead, he turned to face Earl.
“Earl, if you change your mind, you can tell Thuyen to put it on Mr. McCarthy’s tab. All right?”
“Awright.”
“His pho is much better than mine anyway.”
“Awright.”
“Gentlemen.”
“Mr. McCarthy.”
As soon as Mr. McCarthy left, of course, we got some paper cups and macked on that soup. It tasted OK: like chicken soup, but with strange overtones that we couldn’t identify. Sort of garlicky and licoricey at the same time. Anyway, it wasn’t mind-blowing. At least, not at first.
I first started to feel funny when the bell rang at the end of the day. I stood up and all the blood rushed to my head and I got that brown fuzzy wall in front of my eyes that you sometimes get when the blood rushes to your head, and I had to stand there until it went away. Meanwhile, my eyes were still open, and apparently they were staring at Liv Ryan, the first girl at our school to get a nose job. Specifically, my eyes were staring at her boobs.
From behind the brown fuzzy w
all, Liv said some words. I could definitely hear the words, but for some reason I wasn’t able to put them together.
I had no idea what the fuck was going on.
“Greg, what’s your problem,” said Liv again, and this time I was able to determine what she was saying, and also her boobs slowly materialized.
“Blood,” I said. “My, uh, head.”
“What,” she said.
“Couldn’t see,” I said. It was hard to talk. Also, I had become aware that I looked and sounded like a moron. My voice sounded ridiculously nasal, like my face was about 80 percent nose.
“Blood rushed to my head and I couldn’t see,” I explained, although I may not have said all of those words correctly, or in that order.
“Greg, you don’t look so good,” someone else said.
“Can you just not look at me, please,” said Liv, and her words filled my heart with terror.
“I have to go,” I blurted. I realized that I needed to get my bag, and moved my feet for some reason.
That is when I fell down.
I probably don’t need to tell you that nothing is funnier at Benson, or any other high school, than when a human being falls down. I don’t mean witty, or legitimately funny; I’m just saying, people in high school think falling down is the funniest thing that a person can possibly do. I’m not sure why this is true, but it is. People completely lose control when they see this happen. Sometimes they themselves fall down, and then the entire world collapses on itself.
So I fell down. Normally, I would have been able to deal with it by getting up and bowing, or doing an ironic celebration or something. However, I wasn’t feeling normal. I couldn’t think straight. “Everyone is laughing at you,” my brain was telling me, instead of providing me with valuable information, or coming up with a plan. “It’s because you fell down like an idiot!” My brain was malfunctioning. I panicked. I grabbed my bag and actually lunged for the door, and in the process, fell down a second time.
People were close to throwing up from laughing so hard. It was truly a gift from the Comedy Gods: a chubby guy falling down, freaking out, lurching in the direction of the door, and falling down again.
Meanwhile, I scrambled out the door and into the hall, and somehow the hall was about three times longer than normal and just totally packed with people. I was swimming in a sea of human flesh, and trying not to completely freak out. Faces floated past and they all seemed to be staring at me. I was trying to be invisible, but I have never felt so conspicuous in my entire life. I was the Human Nose, as well as Fall-Down Boy.
It was probably five minutes, but it seemed like it took an hour to get outside, and it was an hour of hell. Then, as soon as I was through the school doors and onto the front steps, I got a text.
that soup had drugs .meet me in parking lot
It was Earl.
“McCarthy puts weed in that soup,” he hissed. This took a while to register with me.
“Man, he musta put a damn ton of weed in there,” continued Earl. “Cuz I didn’t even have that much. You had seconds, though. You must be done, son.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You look high as hell.”
“I fell down.”
“Damn,” said Earl. “Wish I’d seen that.”
So this was what it was like to get high. I had tried smoking marijuana once before at a party thrown by Dave Smeggers, but nothing happened. Maybe I hadn’t been smoking it right.
“Let’s go to your house and mack on some grub,” suggested Earl.
“OK,” I said, and we started walking. But actually, the more I thought about it, that sounded like a terrible idea. I looked high as hell! According to Earl! So when we got home: Mom and Dad would immediately know that I was on drugs! Fuck! Then we would have to talk about it! I wasn’t capable of talking about anything! I wasn’t really even capable of thinking with words! I had this badger image in my head for some reason! That badger was awesome!
Also, I would have to make something up because I didn’t want to get Mr. McCarthy in trouble. What was I going to say? That some random stoner kids forced us to get high? That was ridiculous, right? Where the hell was I supposed to tell them we had gotten high from? And maybe more importantly: How was I going to make it all the way to the bus without falling down again?
“Do McCarthy act stoned in class,” asked Earl. “Cuz this is lights out. I can’t wait to get my grub on. Damn.”
Earl was in an awesome mood. I was not. In addition to worrying about Mom and Dad, I felt that everyone on the street was staring at us with disapproval. We were two kids on drugs, just walking around! We were incredibly high! And my nose was like a blimp attached to my face! A blimp filled with mucus! How could we not be the center of attention? (Only in retrospect did I realize that, on the Can’t Stop Watching Scale of Interestingness, me and Earl walking down the street does not get a very high rating. [Ha ha! “High” rating! Get it? That’s truly hilarious. Just kidding, of course; that joke sucked. In fact, that type of joke is the reason most people hate stoners.])
“Do McCarthy act all stoned,” repeated Earl. “While he teaching.”
“He—not really,” I said. “Well, maybe. Sort of. I guess. You could, uh . . . Not exactly, uh. You know.”
I couldn’t even put a goddamned sentence together.
Earl was temporarily silenced by this display.
“Damn, son,” he said eventually. “Damn.”
While we were on the bus to my house, I got another text.
going in for chemo tomw. do u want 2 say goodbye 2 my hair? :)
I’m embarrassed to say that it took us the entire bus ride to decipher this message. First of all, we did not understand that “chemo tomw” were abbreviations. Instead, we thought they were nonsense words. We said them to each other.
“Tcheh-moe tom-wah.”
“Khee-moo tuh-moe.”
“Emu tomb.”
“Ha . . . ha . . . ha.”
“Heh heh.”
“No seriously, what, uh.”
“Heh.”
“Harf.”
Finally, as we were leaving the bus, Earl figured it out. “Chemotherapy,” he said.
“Ohhhh.”
“Your girl gonna lose all her hair.”
“What?”
“Chemotherapy. You get injected with a shitload of chemicals and all your hair fall out.”
This struck me as ridiculous, even though I sort of knew it was true. “Ohhhhh.”
“You basically get sick as hell.”
Well, I thought to myself, this is a pretty pickle. Then I started thinking about the phrase “pretty pickle.” Pretty soon I was envisioning a cucumber with Madison Hartner’s face and boobs. Somehow this was hilarious.
“Dude,” said Earl, who looked concerned.
“What?”
“Why you laughing.”
“Uhhh.”
“Chemotherapy is serious. You don’t want to be cracking up about no chemotherapy.”
“No, it was, uh . . . I was thinking about something else.” Jesus Christ, I was a mess.
“So you gonna text her back, tell her we’re coming.”
I wasn’t sure if this was a question. “Maybe?”
“Yeah, we gotta see your friend, dumbass.”
“OK. OK.”
“So write, yeah, me and Earl gonna come see you.”
This took forever to write, and I ended up with:
oaky sounds grea8~! but can i bring frined earl hes cool ul’l liek him ???/
Holy flame-throwing Jesuses. There are definitely kids out there who enjoy being on drugs, but I can promise you that Greg Gaines is not one of them.
Our first obstacle was Denise.
“Hello, Greg,” she said. She seemed preoccupied. She was also giving Earl the crazy eye, sort of like if I had showed up on her doorstep with a llama. “And who might this be?”
Earl and I said something at the same time.
“Sorry?”
“I’m Denise,” said Denise eventually.
“Earl Jackson,” said Earl, too loudly. I eyed him fearfully. When talking with adults, Earl often becomes brash and combative. I knew this was not going to go over well with Denise, so I started talking. This turned out to be a tactical error.
What not-on-drugs Greg would have said: “Earl’s a good friend of mine, and he wanted to wish Rachel well. Is she upstairs?”
What on-drugs Greg ended up saying: “Earl’s my best—Earl’s one of my best friends. And we were just hanging out together, you know, like, not really doing anything, you know, so it’s cool. So, uh. So we got this text, from Rachel, about the hair loss—which, I mean, hasn’t happened yet, obviously, so we wanted to see her hair. And hang out! Not just see the hair, because, you know, the hair, I can take it or leave it. I’m sure she’s gonna look great without hair. But we just wanted to hang out. Say what’s up, that sort of . . . thing.”
By the end of this monologue I was covered in sweat. Meanwhile, Earl was not even trying to hide his disgust. He had his face in his hands and said a word that I think was “Goddamn.”
“Oka-a-a-a-ay,” said Denise, sounding uncertain.
We were all silent for a while.
“So is Rachel upstairs?” I said eventually.
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” said Denise and waved us up, and we ran up there and away from Denise with extreme quickness.
Our second obstacle was Rachel’s mistrust of Earl, and also our record-setting drug-related weirdness.
“I wasn’t sure what your text message meant,” she said. She was eyeing Earl warily. I had the queasy feeling that she was mistrustful of him because he was black, although I also felt terrible for thinking that, because that would be accusing a girl of racism who is about to lose all her hair, and then probably die.
“Earl’s the man,” I said, as if this explained anything.
“Yeah, you guys send gross text messages to each other.”
It took me a long, uncomfortably silent time to remember that this was the only thing I had ever said to Rachel about Earl, and by the time I remembered that, Earl had already taken some initiative.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl Page 9