More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera Read Free Book Online

Stretch here a much-needed assist.”
    â€œWhere you from?” Fat-Dave asks.
    â€œDown the block. Joey Rosa’s.”
    They all glance at one another. Sure, we’ve had some BS with Joey Rosa kids over the years, always getting into fights whenever they invite themselves over to our block, but I can tell Thomas isn’t like them.
    Skinny-Dave doesn’t care about the rivalry. “You know Troy? He still with Veronica?”
    â€œI know him, but I don’t like him,” Thomas answers. “My neighbor Andre was pissed at Troy for some reason and I overheard him asking Veronica what she saw in him and she had no idea what he was talking about.”
    â€œYES!” Skinny-Dave jumps. “I knew that fucker was lying. I should go call her.”
    Thomas scratches his head. “I hate to break it to you, but she’s seeing Andre now.” We all laugh at Skinny-Dave who falls back into his seat.
    â€œHow’d the rest of the manhunt game go?” he asks me. “You win?”
    â€œI got caught ten minutes later,” I say. I sit back down with Genevieve and hold her hand. She pulls away—and then I see why: she’s holding out her palm as a landing place for a firefly. It’s easy to forget it’s there when it’s not glowing, until all of a sudden it comes back and surprises you; it reminds me of grief.
    â€œDid you know fireflies glow for mating purposes?” Thomas says.
    â€œNope,” I say. “I mean, I believe you, I just didn’t know that.”
    â€œImagine if we could glow to attract a mate instead of spraying on cologne that chokes everyone in a fifty-foot radius,” he says, which is weird since I don’t think his cologne smells all that bad.
    â€œAaron and Genevieve know enough about mating,” Nolan throws out.
    Genevieve flips Nolan off, again. “Did you all know fireflies also glow to lure prey? It’s basically the equivalent of a girl who gets you to follow her into an alley with her great ass, and then eats you.”
    â€œWhat a crazy fun fact.” I wrap my arm around her shoulders in the hopes she’ll never eat my head off in an alley because I never realized girlfriends existed in the same predatory universe as hungry fireflies.
    Me-Crazy bullies Baby Freddy into going to Good Food’s to buy another handball since he knocked the other onto the roof earlier during the baseball match. They go back and forth for a while until Thomas reaches into his pocket, pulls out a dollar, and hands it to Me-Crazy. It’s a thank-you to everyone for letting him crash Family Day. Me-Crazy nods, doesn’t thank him, and hands it to Baby Freddy—who sucks his teeth, victorious enough that he didn’t have to buy another ball with his own money, but still enough of a loser that he has to go get it. When he returns from Good Food’s, he bounces the handball over to Me-Crazy.
    â€œNow what?”
    â€œSuicide,” Me-Crazy says in a low growl, which sounds fucking crazy even without the growl, but he’s not actually suggesting we all somehow use this handball to kill ourselves because that would be a) insensitive to me—not that he cares, I guess—and b) impossible.
    Genevieve looks up at me as if we’re all some cult run by Me-Crazy.
    â€œIt’s a game,” I tell her.
    How to Play Suicide: It’s every man for himself. Someone throws a handball against the wall, it bounces back, and if that ball touches the ground, someone else throws it. But if someone catches it, the original thrower has to race to the wall and shout “Suicide!” before anyone has a chance to bean them.
    â€œ . . . and the game goes on until you’re the last one standing,” Brendan explains to Genevieve.
    â€œSounds barbaric,” she says.
    â€œYou can opt out of a beaning,” Baby Freddy says.
    He’s right. There’s a rule we reserve for girls and younger