Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

by Jesse Andrews

  The note said: “I had to meet with Greg Gaines for five minutes. Please excuse his absence. He is a beast. Mr. McCarthy, 11:12 am.”

  Meanwhile, at home, Gretchen was going through this phase where she could not make it through an entire meal if Dad was at the table. This was in part because Dad was going through a phase of his own wherein he couldn’t stop pretending to be a cannibal. If we were eating anything with chicken in it, he would pat his stomach and announce, “Huma-a-a-a-an flesh. TASTE LIKE CHICKEN.” This caused Gretchen to burst into tears and stomp out of the dining room. Things only got worse when Grace started doing it, too, which was insane, because a six-year-old pretending to be a cannibal is one of the greatest things there is.

  So that’s what was going on at home. Actually, that’s not even relevant, but I wanted to write about the cannibal thing.

  And as for filmmaking, I dunno. Earl and I didn’t really end up doing the Two Poncy Dudes movie. We met up a few times to watch David Lynch films, and we knew that he kicked ass, but for some reason we were having trouble coming up with a script of our own. We’d kind of just sit around staring at the laptop screen. Then Earl would go outside for a cigarette and I would follow him. Then we’d come back and do more wordless staring.

  So you’re probably reading all this, and being like, “Wow, Greg was really sad about Rachel, to the point where his entire life was in this tailspin. That is sort of touching.” But honestly, that’s not accurate. It’s not like I was sitting in a room, with tears running down my face, clutching one of Rachel’s bedroom pillows and listening to harp music all the time. I wasn’t wandering any dewy meadows, ruefully meditating on the Happiness We Could Have Had. Because maybe you don’t remember this, but I really didn’t love Rachel at all. If she hadn’t had cancer, would I be spending any time with her at all? Of course not. In fact, if she were to make a miraculous recovery, would we stay friends after that? I’m not even sure if we would. This all obviously sounds terrible, but there’s no point in lying about it.

  So I wasn’t sad. I was just exhausted. When I wasn’t at the hospital, I felt guilty for not being at the hospital trying to cheer Rachel up. When I was at the hospital, most of the time I felt ineffective and useless as a friend. So either way, my life was deeply fucked up. But I also felt like a moron feeling sorry for myself, because I was not the one whose life was literally about to end.

  At least I had Earl some of the time to cheer me up.

  EXT. GAINES BACK PORCH — EVENING

  EARL

  suddenly

  So you can be a heterosexual, or a homosexual, and I feel like I understand that, like you’re a woman in a man’s body or some shit, but I been thinking about it and how the fuck can somebody call theyself a bisexual.

  GREG

  Uhh . . .

  EARL

  Man, ain’t nobody like, that fine-ass girl is making me hard right now. Oh wait, my mistake, that dude over there is the one that’s making me hard. That don’t make no goddamn sense.

  GREG

  I guess sometimes I also wonder about that.

  EARL

  Goddamn. If you’re seriously like, “For real, I’m a bisexual, any person can get me hard,” man, you must get a hard-on from all kinds of freaky shit.

  GREG

  I think, uh . . . I mean, some scientists think that everyone’s actually a little bit of both. Homo and hetero.

  EARL

  Naw. That don’t make any damn sense at all. You tellin me right now, you can look at some titties, get a hard-on, look at some dude’s funky dick, get another hard-on. You gonna tell me that for real.

  GREG

  I guess I can’t say that, no.

  EARL

  determinedly

  Dog taking a dump: hard-on. Wendy’s double cheeseburger: hard-on. Computer virus that destroy all your shit: hard-on.

  GREG

  Business section of the Wall Street Journal.

  EARL

  Big-ass hard-on for that shit.

  Contemplative silence.

  EARL

  Yo, I got a line for you. You wanna get with that girl, with the big-ass titties?

  GREG

  Yeah, give me a line.

  EARL

  You walk up to her, say, Girl, you might not a known this about me, but I’m a trisexual.

  GREG

  uncertainly

  OK.

  EARL

  Girl’s like, What the fuck?

  GREG

  Yeah.

  EARL

  You like, Yeah, trisexual.

  GREG

  OK.

  EARL

  She like, Whaaaaaat. You with me?

  GREG

  I’m with you.

  EARL

  Awright, she all confused. Then you drop the bomb, you’re like: trisexual, girl. Cuz I’ma try to have sex with you.

  GREG

  Ohhhhhh!

  EARL

  Try-sexual.

  GREG

  I’ll definitely use that.

  EARL

  Mack.

  All right. Now we’re reaching the part where my life really started accelerating toward the edge of a cliff. And actually, this part wasn’t even Mom’s fault! It was Madison’s. It’s definitely messed up that they played similar roles in my life. I’m trying not to think about this too hard, lest I never get a boner ever again.

  It was the beginning of November, and I was in the part of the hall where they had tacked up a bunch of vaguely terrifying pilgrim-and-turkey paintings by the ninth graders, when Madison appeared out of nowhere and grabbed my arm. Our skin was actually touching, specifically in the hand-to-arm format.

  Suddenly, I became terrified that I was going to belch.

  “Greg,” she said. “I have a favor to ask you.”

  It wasn’t like I felt a belch forming in my stomach. It was just that, in my mind’s eye, I could foresee myself belching at Madison. I saw this extremely vividly. Maybe there would be a small amount of barf in there.

  “So I promise I haven’t seen any of your movies,” she said, sort of a little impatiently, “but Rachel has, obviously, and she really likes them. And I just had this idea—you should make a movie for her.”

  I wasn’t really sure what this meant. Also, to distract myself from the Belch of Doom that was lurking in my esophagus, I was looking away at a picture of a turkey. It was not all that well drawn. For some reason it seemed to have blood shooting out of all parts of its body. It was probably supposed to be feathers, or rays of the sun, or something.

  “Huh,” I said.

  Meanwhile, Madison sounded confused by my unenthusiastic reaction to her idea.

  “I mean,” she said, and stopped. “Don’t you think she would love that?”

  “Hummmm.”

  “Greg, what are you looking at?”

  “Uh, sorry, I got distracted.”

  “By what?”

  I really couldn’t think of anything. It was like I was on drugs. In fact, that reminded me of the inexplicable badger picture that showed up in my head after Earl and I ate Mr. McCarthy’s pho. So I said, “Uh, there was just this badger picture in my head for some reason.”

  It goes without saying that the moment those words left my lips, I wanted to do serious injury to myself.

  “Badger,” Madison repeated. “Like the animal?”

  “Yeah, you know,” I said feebly. Then I added: “Just one of those badger head pictures you sometimes get.”

  I wanted to eat a power tool. Incredibly, however, Madison was able to ignore this and move on.

  “So I think you should make a movie for Rachel. She just really loves your movies so much. She watches them all the time. They make her so happy.”

  As if the badger thing weren’t enough, it had suddenly become time for me to say a second stupid thing. Actually, it was time for another episode of everyone’s least favorite show, Excessive Modesty Hour with Greg Gaines.

  “Th
ey can’t make her that happy.”

  “Greg, shut up. I know you have issues with being complimented. Just take a compliment for once, because it’s true.”

  Madison had actually observed and remembered one of my personality traits. This was so astonishing that I said, “Word,” completing a personal trifecta of Consecutive Inane Utterances That Will Prevent Sex from Ever Happening.

  “Did you just say ‘Word’?”

  “Yeah, word.”

  “Huh.”

  “Word, like, I agree.”

  Madison, crafty girl that she is, managed to turn this last one on its head.

  “So you agree! To make a movie! For Rachel!”

  What the hell could I possibly say to that? Except yes?

  “Uh, yeah. Yeah! I think it’s a good idea.”

  “Greg,” she said, with a huge lovely smile, “this is going to be amazing.”

  “Maybe it’ll be good!”

  “I know you are going to make something wonderful.”

  So I felt deeply conflicted here. On the one hand, basically the hottest nice girl in the entire school was telling me how great I was and how great of a film I was going to make. So that felt really good and was making me stand funny to hide a partial boner. On the other hand, though, I was agreeing to a project that I had grave doubts about. Actually, I didn’t even know what I was agreeing to.

  So I said, “Uh.”

  Madison waited for me to continue. The problem was I wasn’t even sure what to say.

  “One thing, though,” I said.

  “Mmmmm?”

  “What, uh. Uhhhmmmmm.”

  “What?”

  “It’s just, uh.”

  There seemed to be no way of asking this question without sounding like a moron.

  “What do you think,” I said carefully, “the film should be.”

  Madison now had kind of a blank look.

  “You should just make a movie,” she said, “that’s specifically for her.”

  “Yeah, but, uh.”

  “Just make the movie that you would want to get if you were Rachel.”

  “But what should it be, uh, about? D’you think.”

  “I dunno!” said Madison cheerfully.

  “OK.”

  “Greg, you’re the director. It’s your movie!”

  “I’m the director,” I said. I was really starting to lose focus. I felt the distant rumblings of a major freak-out coming on.

  “I have to run. I’m so happy you’re doing this!” she exclaimed.

  “Yeahhhh,” I said weakly.

  “You’re the best,” she said, hugging me. Then she ran away.

  “Burp,” I said, when she was out of earshot.

  The exploding turkey had an expression on his face, like: “Goddammit! I’m exploding again?”

  Earl had even less of an idea of how to do this project than I did. However, he was much better at articulating that.

  “The fuck,” he kept muttering as I was trying to describe the project to him.

  “Look,” he finally said. “You agreed to make a film for somebody. Now what the hell do that mean.”

  “Uh, I guess . . . It means . . . Huh.”

  “Yeah. You got no idea what the hell it mean.”

  “I feel like I sort of do.”

  “Well, spit it out, son.”

  We were in my kitchen and he was rummaging through our food, which put him in at least a neutral mood, if not a good one.

  “I mean, if we were painters, we could just paint a picture of something and give it to her as a gift. Right? So let’s just do the film version of that.”

  “Where the hell do Pa Gaines keep the salsa at.”

  “I think we’re out. Look—what if we just did a one-off film? And gave her the only copy? That works, right?”

  “Son, that don’t give oh, hot damn.”

  “What?”

  “What the hell is this.”

  “That’s—lemme look at it.”

  “This smell like a donkey’s hairy-ass dick.”

  “Ohhhh. This is goose-liver pâté.”

  “There ain’t no salsa, I’ma eat this shit.”

  As I’ve mentioned before, Earl gets very fired up about the occasionally gross animal-derived foods purchased and refrigerated by Dr. Victor Q. Gaines. I say “purchased and refrigerated” because Dad never eats them right away. He likes for them to spend a lot of time in the fridge, so that the rest of the family has a chance to become aware of them. It’s a habit that Gretchen may hate more than anything else in the world. However, Gretchen’s extreme dislike is balanced by the almost-as-extreme appreciation of Earl. Earl expresses his appreciation by talking about how disgusting the food is while eating it.

  “Son. We still have no idea what the film gonna be about.”

  “Yeah, that’s the hard part.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Uhhhh.”

  “Like, we could make the David Lynch film that we was gonna make, and just give it to Rachel, and that’s her film. But I don’t think we want to do that.”

  “No?”

  “Hell no. That’d be weird as hell. We’d be like, Yo, Rachel, watch this crazy-ass film about lesbians running around and hallucinating and shit. We made this film especially for you.”

  “Huh.”

  “Like at the beginning, it’s like, ‘For Rachel.’ It’s like we’re saying: Rachel, you love David Lynch. You love freaky-ass lesbians getting they freak on. So here’s a film about that shit. Nah. That don’t make no sense. Now what the fuck is this.”

  “No, no, don’t eat that. That’s dried cuttlefish. That’s like Dad’s favorite. He likes to wander around with part of it sticking out of his mouth.”

  “I’ma take a little bite.”

  “You can like nibble it once, but that’s it.”

  “Mmm.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Man, this taste stupid. This taste like some kinda . . . undersea . . . urinal.”

  “Huh.”

  “It taste like dolphins and shit.”

  “So, you don’t like it.”

  “I did not say that.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, it’s like seventy-five percent dolphin scrotum, twenty-five percent chemicals.”

  “So you do like it.”

  “This is a dumb-ass piece of food.”

  I had to agree with Earl: We couldn’t just do any film. There had to be at least some kind of connection to Rachel’s life. But what connection could that be? We sat in the kitchen and we brainstormed a bunch of them. All of the ideas were stupid.

  They were really stupid. You’re about to see exactly how stupid. I mean, my God.

  “Are you done eating that?”

  “What?”

  “You shouldn’t finish that, Dad’s gonna want some.”

  “The hell he will.”

  “He will.”

  “It’s so nasty. Son, it’s so nasty.”

  “Then why are you finishing it?”

  “Takin a bullet.”

  I knew our first plan was a mistake when Jared “Crackhead” Krakievich waddled up to me in the hall and addressed me as “Spielberg.”

  “Hah yih doin, Spillberg,” he shouted, grinning hideously.

  “What?” I said.

  “I seen yer maykin’ a mewvie.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “I dinn know yih made mewvies.”

  “Just this one,” I said, probably too hastily.

  “I’m call yih Spillberg fruh now on.”

  “Great.”

  It was the first shot fired in a nightmarish barrage of attention that would continue all day.

  Mrs. Green, Physics 1 I.S.: “I think what you are doing is so . . . touching and . . . remarkable, and just really touching.”

  Kiya Arnold: “My cousin died of leukemia. I just want to say. I’m so sorry about your girlfriend. How long y’all been together?”

  Will Carruthers: “Hey f
aggot! Lemme be in your gay movie.”

  Plan A was: Get the well-wishes of everyone at school, synagogue, etc., and put them in a film, and have that be the film. A get-well film, basically. Simple, elegant, heartwarming. Sounds like a good idea, right? Of course it does. We were completely seduced by this idea. We were morons.

  First Problem: We had to get the footage ourselves, meaning we had to reveal ourselves as filmmakers to a hostile world. Originally, I asked Madison if she would get the footage herself, i.e., if she would hang out in a classroom with a camera instead of me and Earl. This led to me saying that I sort of didn’t want people knowing I was making a film for Rachel, which made her upset. That led to me saying that I didn’t want people to know about my feelings for Rachel, which made her upset in a different way that I did not, frankly, understand. Anyway, she insisted that I get the footage, and said “Oh, Greg” about seventy times until I quietly freaked out and ran away.

  So we made plans to film in Mr. McCarthy’s room after school, and reluctantly told a couple of teachers about it, and with disturbing speed all teachers had found out about it, and told their students, and also it made the morning announcements every day in a row for like a week.

  So yeah. This was possibly the death blow to the invisibility I had been cultivating throughout high school, and then gradually losing since becoming friends with Rachel. I used to be just normal Greg Gaines. Then I was Greg Gaines, Rachel’s Friend and Possibly Boyfriend.

  That was bad enough. But now I was Greg Gaines, Filmmaker. Greg Gaines, Guy with a Camera, Following People Around. Greg Gaines, Perhaps He Is Creepily Filming You Right Now Without Your Knowledge or Consent.

  Fuckbiscuit.

  Second Problem: The footage was not very good. The teachers all ran way too long, first of all. None of them said anything that could be edited down. A lot of them started talking about tragedies that had happened in their lives, which besides being unusable made things fairly awkward in the room after they were done recording.

  As for the students, 92 percent said some combination of these things:

  • “Get better.”

  • “I have to say I don’t know you that well.”