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

dressed like a Persian prostitute/angel, with a gold halter top, glitter all over her belly, and puffy pink pants like Jasmine
in
Aladdin
(only Jasmine’s might not have been pink). The thing is, she has giant, golden wings affixed to her shoulders; they wreak havoc on her dancing. It’s such a mess, but
cute somehow; I picture her dressing up in her room and thinking how it would impress Jake.
    “…Now, the problem with Chloe is that she has no idea about how panties are supposed to be worn—” Rich continues, but I’m actually ignoring him, because Jake
Dillinger is on the floor with Christine. Damn. He’s not wearing any costume, just a tuxedo. He’s dancing the absolutely best way a white guy can, planting his feet and leaning back and
letting the girl rub herself all over him. And Christine rubs herself expertly. She rubs herself on him like she was trying to get barnacles off the backs of her upper thighs. The wings make Jake
flinch.
    “—And she had this threesome with the girls from
Friends
, but it wasn’t even a threesome, it was a
four
some—” Rich explains.
    Now Christine bends over, putting her butt right on the place where Jake’s no-doubt-impressive penis hoists on a likely nightly basis—
    “Hey, you wanna talk to that girl?” Rich asks.
    “Uh, what?”
    “C’mon, Jeremy, you’re not even paying attention to me. You want that girl?”
    “Well…” Why lie? Just say it. “Sure. Yeah. Of course I do.”
    “You realize I could walk right up to her right now and get her to fuck me?” Rich smiles. “Anytime.”
    “Um, actually I wouldn’t doubt that. You seem to do okay with the girls in our school.”
    “‘Okay?’” Rich looks offended by my very presence, which is a look I’m used to. “Okay my ass. Watch this.”
    Rich walks across the dance floor and starts talking to another girl named Samartha, a pretty hot one with punch in her hand standing by the opposite wall. After chatting for about three
minutes, he lounges on a nearby Ping-Pong table. Samartha comes over and kisses him. I watch intensely; Rich whispers in her ear and she begins to lick and suck his belly button with one
high-heeled foot bent behind her so the heel touches her butt cheek, which is blue, with stars. (She’s Wonder Woman.) After a minute of that, Rich gets up, kisses her, and walks back to
me.
    “You see?” he says. “That’s real pimpin’.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Real pimpin’, but not
natural
pimpin’. I had help.”
    “Uh…”
    “I got a squip, man.”
    “You’re quick?”
    “Not quick. A ‘squip.’”
    “Ohhh…” Flashes flash in my head. “The ‘script.’”
    “No, ‘squip.’”
    “I think I’ve heard of it—”
    “Not script. Squip.”
    “Wait. What?”
    “The squip,” Rich says, and the way he says it I kind of know that something is starting, something is happening, and I’m glad because anything would be better than me in this
mask not dancing with any girls, watching Rich get his belly button licked. “And
you
need a squip, man. You need it more than, like, anyone I know. You’re almost hopeless.
That’s why I’m telling you. You have to get squipped.”
    “Yeah, well, I think I heard about it from my friend,” I say carefully, not wanting to step on this and make it go away. “What is it?”
    “It’s a cool pill,” he says. “From Japan.”
    “Like, it makes you smarter I heard? I thought—”
    “You didn’t think nothing. Look.”
    Rich opens his fist and for the first time I realize what he’s dressed as—a giant weed leaf. Isn’t that great? I look down and there’s a gray oblong pill nestled like a
wart in the light creases of his palm. It looks like the acidophilus supplements Mom used to give me as a kid.
    “What’s it do?” I ask. “Is it drugs?”
    “Heh, no, it’s not drugs,” Rich says, closing his fist. “It’s better than drugs. It’s a supercomputer, a quantum nanotechnology CPU that fits in a