Paper Towns Read online

Page 4

 

  “Let’s just please not get in trouble,” I said. “I mean, I want to have fun and everything, but not at the expense of, like, my future. ”

  She looked up at me, her face mostly revealed now, and she smiled just the littlest bit. “It amazes me that you can find all that shit even remotely interesting. ”

  “Huh?”

  “College: getting in or not getting in. Trouble: getting in or not getting in. School: getting A’s or getting D’s. Career: having or not having. House: big or small, owning or renting. Money: having or not having. It’s all so boring. ”

  I started to say something, to say that she obviously cared a little, because she had good grades and was going to the University of Florida’s honors program next year, but she just said, “Wal-Mart. ”

  We entered Wal-Mart together and picked up that thing from infomercials called The Club, which locks a car’s steering wheel into place. As we walked through the Juniors department, I asked Margo, “Why do we need The Club?”

  Margo managed to speak in her usual manic soliloquy without answering my question. “Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement. There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for planning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future, and so they spent more time thinking about it. About the future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future—you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college. ”

  It felt like Margo was just rambling to avoid the question at hand. So I repeated it. “Why do we need The Club?”

  Margo patted me in the middle of the back softly. “I mean, obviously this is all going to be revealed to you before the night is over. ” And then, in boating supplies, Margo located an air horn. She took it out of the box and held it up in the air, and I said, “No,” and she said, “No what?” And I said, “No, don’t blow the air horn,” except when I got to about the b in blow, she squeezed on it and it let out an excruciatingly loud honk that felt in my head like the auditory equivalent of an aneurysm, and then she said, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you. What was that?” And I said, “Stop b—” and then she did it again.

  A Wal-Mart employee just a little older than us walked up to us then and said, “Hey, you can’t use that in here,” and Margo said, with seeming sincerity, “Sorry, I didn’t know that,” and the guy said, “Oh, it’s cool. I don’t mind, actually. ” And then the conversation seemed over, except the guy could not stop looking at Margo, and honestly I don’t blame him, because she is hard to stop looking at, and then finally he said, “What are you guys up to tonight?”

  And Margo said, “Not much. You?”

  And he said, “I get off at one and then I’m going out to this bar down on Orange, if you want to come. But you’d have to drop off your brother; they’re really strict about ID’s. ”

  Her what?! “I’m not her brother,” I said, looking at the guy’s sneakers.

  And then Margo proceeded to lie. “He’s actually my cousin,” she said. Then she sidled up to me, put her hand around my waist so that I could feel each of her fingers taut against my hip bone, and she added, “And my lover. ”

  The guy just rolled his eyes and walked away, and Margo’s hand lingered for a minute and I took the opportunity to put my arm around her. “You really are my favorite cousin,” I told her. She smiled and bumped me softly with her hip, spinning out of my embrace.

  “Don’t I know it,” she said.

  4.

  We were driving down a blessedly empty I-4, and I was following Margo’s directions. The clock on the dashboard said it was 1:07.

  “It’s pretty, huh?” she said. She was turned away from me, staring out the window, so I could hardly see her. “I love driving fast under streetlights. ”

  “Light,” I said, “the visible reminder of Invisible Light. ”

  “That’s beautiful,” she said.

  “T. S. Eliot,” I said. “You read it, too. In English last year. ” I hadn’t actually ever read the whole poem that line was from, but a couple of the parts I did read got stuck in my head.

  “Oh, it’s a quote,” she said, a little disappointed. I saw her hand on the center console. I could have put my own hand on the center console and then our hands would have been in the same place at the same time. But I didn’t. “Say it again,” she said.

  “Light, the visible reminder of Invisible Light. ”

  “Yeah. Damn, that’s good. That must help with your lady friend. ”

  “Ex-lady friend,” I corrected her.

  “Suzie dumped you?” Margo asked.

  “How do you know she dumped me?”

  “Oh, sorry. ”

  “Although she did,” I admitted, and Margo laughed. The breakup had happened months ago, but I didn’t blame Margo for failing to pay attention to the world of lower-caste romance. What happens in the band room stays in the band room.

  Margo put her feet up on the dashboard and wiggled her toes to the cadence of her speaking. She always talked like that, with this discernible rhythm, like she was reciting poetry. “Right, well, I’m sorry to hear that. But I can relate. My lovely boyfriend of lo these many months is fucking my best friend. ”

  I looked over but her hair was all in her face, so I couldn’t make out if she was kidding. “Seriously?” She didn’t say anything. “But you were just laughing with him this morning. I saw you. ”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I heard about it before first period, and then I found them both talking together and I started screaming bloody murder, and Becca ran into the arms of Clint Bauer, and Jase was just standing there like a dumbass with the chaw drool running out of his stank mouth. ”

  I had clearly misinterpreted the scene in the hallway. “That’s weird, because Chuck Parson asked me this morning what I knew about you and Jase. ”

  “Yeah, well, Chuck does as he’s told, I guess. Probably trying to find out for Jase who knew. ”

  “Jesus, why would he hook up with Becca?”

  “Well, she’s not known for her personality or generosity of spirit, so it’s probably because she’s hot. ”

  “She’s not as hot as you,” I said, before I could think better of it.

  “That’s always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people would want to be around someone because they’re pretty. It’s like picking your breakfast cereals based on color instead of taste. It’s the next exit, by the way. But I’m not pretty, not close up anyway. Generally, the closer people get to me the less hot they find me. ”

  “That’s— ” I started.

  “Whatever,” she answered.

  It struck me as somewhat unfair that an asshole like Jason Worthington would get to have sex with both Margo and Becca, when perfectly likable individuals such as myself don’t get to have sex with either of them—or anyone else, for that matter. That said, I like to think that I am the type of person who wouldn’t hook up with Becca Arrington. She may be hot, but she is also 1. aggressively vapid, and 2. an absolute, unadulterated, raging bitch. Those of us who frequent the band room have long suspected that Becca maintains her lovely figure by eating nothing but the souls of kittens and the dreams of impoverished children. “Becca does sort of suck,” I said, trying to draw Margo back into conversation.

  “Yeah,” she answered, looking out the passenger window, her hair reflecting oncoming streetlights. I thought for a second she might be crying, but she rallied quickly, pulling her hoodie up and taking The Club out of the Wal-Mart bag. “Well, this’ll be fun at any rate,” she said a
s she ripped open The Club’s packaging.

  “May I ask where we’re going yet?”

  “Becca’s,” she answered.

  “Uh-oh,” I said as I pulled up to a stop sign. I put the minivan in park and started to tell Margo that I was taking her home.

  “No felonies. Promise. We need to find Jase’s car. Becca’s street is the next one up on the right, but he wouldn’t park his car on her street, because her parents are home. Try the one after. That’s the first thing. ”

  “Okay,” I said, “but then we go home. ”

  “No, then we move on to Part Two of Eleven. ”

  “Margo, this is a bad idea. ”

  “Just drive,” she said, and so I just did. We found Jase’s Lexus two blocks down from Becca’s street, parked in a cul-de-sac. Before I’d even come to a complete stop, Margo jumped out of the minivan with The Club in hand. She pulled open the Lexus’s driver-side door, sat down in the seat, and proceeded to attach The Club to Jase’s steering wheel. Then she softly closed the door to the Lexus.

  “Dumb bastard never locks that car,” she mumbled as she climbed back into the minivan. She pocketed the key to The Club. She reached over and tousled my hair. “Part One—done. Now, to Becca’s house. ”

  As I drove, Margo explained Parts Two and Three to me.

  “That’s quite brilliant,” I said, even though inside I was bursting with a shimmering nervousness.

  I turned onto Becca’s street and parked two houses down from her McMansion. Margo crawled into the wayback of the minivan and returned with a pair of binoculars and a digital camera. She looked through the binoculars first, and then handed them to me. I could see a light on in the house’s basement, but no movement. I was mostly surprised that the house even had a basement—you can’t dig very deep before hitting water in most of Orlando.

  I reached into my pocket, grabbed my cell phone, and dialed the number that Margo recited to me. The phone rang once, twice, and then a groggy male voice answered, “Hello?”

  “Mr. Arrington?” I asked. Margo wanted me to call because no one would ever recognize my voice.

  “Who is this? God, what time is it?”

  “Sir, I think you should know that your daughter is currently having sex with Jason Worthington in your basement. ” And then I hung up. Part Two: accompli.

  Margo and I threw open the doors of the minivan and charged down the street, diving onto our stomachs just behind the hedge ringing Becca’s yard. Margo handed me the camera, and I watched as an upstairs bedroom light came on, and then a stairway light, and then the kitchen light. And finally, the stairway down to the basement.

  “Here he comes,” Margo whispered, and I didn’t know what she meant until, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a shirtless Jason Worthington wiggling out of the basement window. He took off sprinting across the lawn, naked but for his boxer shorts, and as he approached I jumped up and took a picture of him, completing Part Three. The flash surprised both of us, I think, and he blinked at me through the darkness for a white-hot moment before running off into the night.

  Margo tugged on my jeans leg; I looked down at her, and she was smiling goofily. I reached my hand down, helped her up, and then we raced back to the car. I was putting the key in the ignition when she said, “Let me see the picture. ”

  I handed her the camera, and we watched it come up on the screen together, our heads almost touching. Upon seeing the stunned, pale face of Jason Worthington, I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Oh, God,” Margo said, and pointed. In the rush of the moment, it seemed that Jason had been unable to get Little Jason inside his boxers, and so there it was, hanging out, digitally captured for posterity.

  “It’s a penis,” Margo said, “in the same sense that Rhode Island is a state: it may have an illustrious history, but it sure isn’t big. ”

  I looked back at the house and noticed that the basement light was now off. I found myself feeling slightly bad for Jason—it wasn’t his fault he had a micropenis and a brilliantly vindictive girlfriend. But then again, in sixth grade, Jase promised not to punch my arm if I ate a live earthworm, so I ate a live earthworm and then he punched me in the face. So I didn’t feel very bad for very long.

  When I looked over at Margo, she was staring at the house through her binoculars. “We have to go,” Margo said. “Into the basement. ”

  “What? Why?”

  “Part Four. Get his clothes in case he tries to sneak back into her house. Part Five. Leave fish for Becca. ”

  “No. ”

  “Yes. Now,” she said. “She’s upstairs getting yelled at by her parents. But, like, how long does that lecture last? I mean, what do you say? ‘You shouldn’t screw Margo’s boyfriend in the basement. ’ It’s a one-sentence lecture, basically. So we have to hustle. ”

  She got out of the car with the spray paint in one hand and one of the catfish in the other. I whispered, “This is a bad idea,” but I followed behind her, crouched down as she was, until we were standing in front of the still-open basement window.

  “I’ll go first,” she said. She went in feetfirst and was standing on Becca’s computer desk, half in the house and half out of it, when I asked her, “Can’t I just be lookout?”

  “Get your skinny ass in here,” she answered, and so I did. Quickly, I grabbed all the boy-type clothes I saw on Becca’s lavender-carpeted floor. A pair of jeans with a leather belt, a pair of flip-flops, a Winter Park High School Wildcats baseball cap, and a baby blue polo shirt. I turned back to Margo, who handed me the paper-wrapped catfish and one of Becca’s sparkly purple pens. She told me what to write: