Antsy Does Time by Neal Shusterman Read Free Book Online Page A

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    â€œActually, I did. We all had dinner together.” Ira and Howie were disappointed at how normal the whole thing was, considering. Still, it didn’t stop them from being envious that I actually got to eat a whole meal with Kjersten. I didn’t even have to exaggerate. The more I downplayed it, the more jealous they became.
    There’s something to be said about being the envy of your friends. They made some of the standard rude jokes friends will make about beautiful girls out of their reach—the same ones I was tempted to make myself, but didn’t. Then the conversation came back to the subject of death, which is just as compelling and almost as distant as sex.
    â€œWere they all religious and stuff?” Ira asked. “People always get that way when someone gets sick—remember Howie’s parents when they thought he had mad cow?”
    â€œDon’t remind me,” says Howie.
    I thought about it, but didn’t remember anything like that at the Ümlauts’. They didn’t say grace like we do at my house when someone remembers to. Ira was right—if Gunnar was my kid, I’d be saying grace all the time.
    â€œHis mom doesn’t talk about his illness at all,” I told them. “I guess that’s how they deal with it. It’s creepy, because there’s always, like, an elephant in the room.”
    Then Howie looks at me with those drowning-penguin eyes, and I know where this is going.
    â€œYou’re joking right? Is that even legal?”
    â€œYeah,” I tell him, without missing a beat. “It’s housebroken, too, and can paint modern art with its trunk.”
    â€œOkay,” Howie says, getting mad, “now you’re just making stuff up.”
    I could keep this going for hours, but Ira chimes in. “It’s an expression, Howie. When something’s completely obvious but everyone’s ignoring it, you say ‘there’s an elephant in the room’—because, just like an elephant, it’s big and fat, and hard to ignore.”
    Howie thinks about it and nods. “I get it,” he says. “Although that kind of weight gain could be glandular. Is it his mother?”
    This time Ira doesn’t even throw him a life preserver.
    Â 
 
That afternoon I had a second hallway encounter. It was one of those moments that gets burned into your brain like a cigarette on a leather couch. I’m convinced it left me with brain damage.
    It was just before last period. I was scrambling to get my math book out of my locker before the tardy bell when I heard a familiar voice behind me saying my name for the third time in as many days.
    â€œAntsy?”
    I turned to see none other than Kjersten Ümlaut behind me. Her eyes were all moist and shiny, and the first thing that struck my brain was that Kjersten was even more beautiful in tears.
    â€œI heard about what you did for Gunnar,” she said.
    I’m figuring maybe she’s gonna slap me for it, so I say, “Yeah, sorry about that. It was a dumb idea.”
    â€œI just wanted you to know how thoughtful it was.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œReally. And I wanted to thank you.”
    And that’s when it happened. She kissed me. I think maybe she meant to give me a little peck on the cheek, but I had just closed my locker and was turning, so the kiss landed a bull’s-eye on the mouth.
    Okay—now you’d think this would be the stuff of dreams and fireworks and time-stopping, Matrix -like special effects, right? The thing is, that only happens when you’re expecting it and have time to set the moment up. But this was sudden. It was kind of like overcranking a cold car engine. It just grinds instead of starting. And so, what should have been the kiss from heaven was instead the lip-lock from hell.
    See, I had just come back from phys ed, where we were running outside in the cold, so my nose was kinda stuffy and I was doing