The John Green Collection by John Green Read Free Book Online Page A

“You weren’t wearing much last night.” I just glared at her.
    “C’mon, Pudge. I’m teasing. You have to be tough here. I didn’t know how bad it was—and I’m sorry, and they’ll regret it—but you have to be tough.” And then she left. That was all she had to say on the subject.
She’s cute
, I thought,
but you don’t need to like a girl who treats you like you’re ten: You’ve already got a mom
.
    one hundred twenty-two days before
    AFTER MY LAST CLASS of my first week at Culver Creek, I entered Room 43 to an unlikely sight: the diminutive and shirtless Colonel, hunched over an ironing board, attacking a pink button-down shirt. Sweat trickled down his forehead and chest as he ironed with great enthusiasm, his right arm pushing the iron across the length of the shirt with such vigor that his breathing nearly duplicated Dr. Hyde’s.
    “I have a date,” he explained. “This is an emergency.” He paused to catch his breath. “Do you know”—breath—“how to iron?”
    I walked over to the pink shirt. It was wrinkled like an old woman who’d spent her youth sunbathing. If only the Colonel didn’t ball up his every belonging and stuff it into random dresser drawers. “I think you just turn it on and press it against the shirt, right?” I said. “I don’t know. I didn’t even know we
had
an iron.”
    “We don’t. It’s Takumi’s. But Takumi doesn’t know how to iron, either. And when I asked Alaska, she started yelling, ‘You’re not going to impose the patriarchal paradigm on
me
.’ Oh, God, I need to smoke. I need to smoke, but I can’t reek when I see Sara’s parents. Okay, screw it. We’re going to smoke in the bathroom with theshower on. The shower has steam. Steam gets rid of wrinkles, right?
    “By the way,” he said as I followed him into the bathroom, “if you want to smoke inside during the day, just turn on the shower. The smoke follows the steam up the vents.”
    Though this made no scientific sense, it seemed to work. The shower’s shortage of water pressure and low showerhead made it all but useless for showering, but it worked great as a smoke screen.
    Sadly, it made a poor iron. The Colonel tried ironing the shirt once more (“I’m just gonna push really hard and see if that helps”) and finally put it on wrinkled. He matched the shirt with a blue tie decorated with horizontal lines of little pink flamingos.
    “The one thing my lousy father taught me,” the Colonel said as his hands nimbly threaded the tie into a perfect knot, “was how to tie a tie. Which is odd, since I can’t imagine when he ever had to wear one.”
    Just then, Sara knocked on the door. I’d seen her once or twice before, but the Colonel never introduced me to her and didn’t have a chance to that night.
    “Oh. My God. Can’t you at least press your shirt?” she asked, even though the Colonel was standing in front of the ironing board. “We’re going out with my
parents
.” Sara looked awfully nice in her blue summer dress. Her long, pale blond hair was pulled up into a twist, with a strand of hair falling down each side of her face. She looked like a movie star—a bitchy one.
    “Look, I did my best. We don’t all have maids to do our ironing.”
    “Chip, that chip on your shoulder makes you look even shorter.”
    “Christ, can’t we get out the door without fighting?”
    “I’m just saying. It’s
the opera
. It’s a big deal to my parents. Whatever. Let’s go.” I felt like leaving, but it seemed stupid to hide in the bathroom, and Sara was standing in the doorway, one hand cocked on her hip and the other fiddling with her car keys as if to say,
Let’s go
.
    “I could wear a tuxedo and your parents would still hate me!” he shouted.
    “That’s not my fault! You antagonize them!” She held up the car keys in front of him. “Look, we’re going now or we’re not going.”
    “Fuck it. I’m not going anywhere with you,” the Colonel said.
    “Fine. Have a great