Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini Read Free Book Online Page A

is perfect for the Halloween Dance; it looks like a Scooby-Doo mansion inside. Fake cobwebs hang out with real ones. Streams of orange tissue paper buddy up with actual mold
on the ceiling. In the music room, a small platform has been constructed on which a DJ dressed as a wizard distributes choice R&B.
    “Ngukkk!”
someone yells as they fly by me swinging a sword. Samurai costume. The samurai stashes his weapon by a pipe and starts dancing as I make for the punch.
    “Welcome to the dance,” Ms. Rayburn says, ladling out a cup that has a piece of pineapple floating in it. “Nice mask, hope we get to see who you are later, huh?” Ms.
Rayburn smiles, she’s dressed as a librarian/secretary and is exceedingly hot. Then I take a look at the dance floor and get a whole new definition of exceedingly hot.
    Katrina, Stephanie, and Chloe are here! That accounts for the long line and characters like Rich—where the Hot Girls go, people follow. They’re in the center of the room, gyrating, a
mesmerizing Amazon bundle. Katrina is dressed as a French maid with the little skirt and feather duster, only her outfit is blue instead of black; Stephanie is a bondage Goth, which isn’t too
far away from her normal wear, just with a bigger collar; Chloe has on small orange cat ears and a tail like an impish tiger-girl. It’s Chloe I stare at most hungrily (sometime tonight
I’ve got to find pics on the Internet of girls with tails) as I slide up to a row of guys by the wooden Elks Club walls. They’re standing, doing exactly what I’m
doing—scoping the Hot Girls, bopping their heads in a range of millimeters to the R&B.
    I stand at the end of the line, next to a kid named Eric who was probably too stoned to bother with a costume; he just sports his huge eyebrow, which I know is natural. Next to Eric is Rodney,
dressed as a postal worker with a chainsaw, and toward the end of the line is Mark Jackson from math—he’s the only one who’d come as Game Boy SP.
    I pick my foot up and press the sole of my shoe flat against the wall. I should be as comfortable with my wallflower status as these guys are—the way they position their shoulders and
backs and hips is almost a dance of its own. I’m not there more than two minutes when Rich, in that strange tree costume, approaches.
    “Hey,” he actually says to me.
    I clench up inside my mask. What does he want? He stands with his back to the wall and keeps quiet, alternating sips of punch with sips from an old-timey hip flask stashed in one of his many
pockets.
    “Want some?” he asks, shrugging his flask in my direction. What the hell is this? Does he not know who I am? I turn toward him in my mask and he smirks at it. I take his flask, slip
it under my chin and suck down a big swig. Then another.
    “No way,” Rich says. “You’re like the alky ghost, dude.” I don’t know what’s in the flask, but it burns and cracks my throat as it goes down.
“Bleccch, jeez,” I gargle through my mouth hole.
    “Scotch,” Rich says.
    “Yecch.”
    Rich looks down. “So it’s Jeremy Heere under that mask, right?”
    “Yeah.” Uh-oh.
    “Is it true what I heard, Jeremy? You keep sheets of paper and write down all the shit that happens to you, like a list?”
    “Yeah,” I gulp. The Humiliation Sheets are out.
    “Well,” Rich says. “I’m sure I’m on them a lot.” He looks at me with open eyes, with some kind of understanding and humanity. Then he turns back to the dance
floor. “So which one would you get with?” He gestures to the Hot Girls.
    “Uh, Chloe,” I confide.
    “Bad choice, man. You gotta go with Katrina. I mean, she looks just like Barbie. I’ve wanted to fuck Barbie since I was
born
—”
    In the midst of this ridiculousness (Rich is drunk, I figure), I see Christine. Actually I see her head, shrouded by a Rapunzel-style red-and-gold princess hat, bobbing to the left of the Hot
Girl entanglement. As she moves into full view, I see that she’s