Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes Read Free Book Online Page A

light up, especially when he got off his lecture notes and just talked. The Budweiser company didn’t want people to drink beer half as much as Gratz wanted us to like poetry. But the poor guy just couldn’t shake his terrible fear that literature might be for fags.
    He finally said, “Far enough for today,” and made a pencil mark on his lecture notes so he’d know where to start the next day. “Paul, Cheryl, Karl (uh, Karl Shoemaker not Carl McGwinnick), Danny, Darla, and Marti , see me after class. It will just be a minute.”
    That was annoying. Us Madmen didn’t associate with each other in public. We didn’t need some dumbass football player or one of the jackoff smart kids to come up to us and make bibby-bibby noises with his finger and lip. Even though it was the seventies and like half the people you saw in movies were seeing a therapist, it was cool in the movies, but not in real life. Kind of like being black—every cheap bastard in Oakwood watched Flip Wilson, but you should have fucking heard them when they thought a black family was going to move in.
    We surrounded Gratz’s desk. Cheryl and Darla stood with arms wrapped around themselves, Paul looked at the floor, Danny leaned across Gratz’s desk and hung his head, as if to hide his face. Marti stood behind me.
    Gratz pulled a letter from his stack of paper and waved it like a summons. “It says here that Doctor Marston suggested that all of you should continue on in therapy this year, except for you, Marti, but your old school doctor recommended it.
    “Now, I know a lot of you kids hate therapy, and I don’t really like having six kids missing from class every other Monday. What I wanted to tell you all is that if you don’t want to go this year, I’m on your side. If you need me to write a letter or something, well, I’ll be happy to. Okay, that’s all.”
    We turned and had to struggle out through a bunch of sophomores coming in for Gen Am Lit. When Paul and me had both had Gratz for that class, we had called it “Read Like a Man.” Last year, that had become the nickname among all the kids a year younger than us; we were hoping “Read Like a Man” would stick this year, too, and eventually be what everyone called it. This is the sort of thing legends are made of, at least in places like Lightsburg.
    Cheryl and I had Hertz’s trig class next, over in the other wing, so we walked there together. “I can’t believe he did that,” Cheryl said. “Couldn’t he have just said ‘All the mental cases, please see me after class’?”
    “Gratz,” I agreed, “absofuckinglutely pure Gratz.”
    She made this growly, frustrated noise and shook out her thick mass of curly hair. It reminded me how pretty my friend was, and what a great body she had. Knowing how creeped out she’d be, I hated myself for noticing.
    “So is Gratz the biggest asshole in Ohio or just in Lightsburg?” Danny asked, behind us.
    We both laughed and Cheryl gave him five.
    “I don’t know if I’d want to do the research, checking out every other asshole in Ohio,” I pointed out.
    “Good point.” With Danny walking just behind us, I was reminded how big he was, and how tiny Cheryl was; it made me feel safe to have him standing over me and it made me feel like her protector to be standing next to her, and just then I didn’t give a shit that a normal guy wouldn’t be with the Madmen. Normal is still important, I’m still going to be normal, but normal isn’t everything . It was my new idea. I was going to stick to it like a fresh coat of paint; the old idea obviously was just the primer.
    Mrs. Hertz wasn’t really a pushover. No math teacher can be because they can see your bullshit too easy. But she was nice, and she hated to say “you’re wrong,” and best of all, she was as heavy a smoker as my mother, so between classes she was always charging down to the teachers’ lounge to suck down those nasty skinny brown almost-cigars, and it usually made her a