John Green - Paper Towns

“Thank God,” I said, sitting down next to her and catching my breath.

After looking at the bite and seeing that the bleeding had already stopped, she asked, “How was making out with my leg?”

“Pretty good,” I said, which was true. She leaned her body into mine a little and I could feel her upper arm against my ribs.

“I shaved this morning for precisely that reason. I was like, ‘Well, you never know when someone is going to clamp down on your calf and try to suck out the snake poison.’”

There was a chain-link fence before us, but it was only about six feet tall. As Margo put it, “Honestly, first garter snakes and now this fence? This security is sort of insulting to a ninja.” She scampered up, swung her body around, and climbed down like it was a ladder. I managed not to fall.

We ran through a small thicket of trees, hugging tight against these huge opaque tanks that might have stored animals, and then we came out to an asphalt path and I could see the big amphitheater where Shamu splashed me when I was a kid. The little speakers lining the walkway were playing soft Muzak. Maybe to keep the animals calm. “Margo,” I said, “we’re in SeaWorld.”

And she said, “Seriously,” and then she jogged away and I followed her. We ended up by the seal tank, but it seemed like there were no seals inside it.

“Margo,” I said again. “We’re in SeaWorld.”

“Enjoy it,” she said without moving her mouth much. “’Cause here comes security.”

I dashed through a stand of waist-high bushes, but when Margo didn’t run, I stopped.

A guy strolled up wearing a SEAWORLD SECURITY vest and very casually asked, “How y’all?” He held a can of something in his hand — pepper spray, I guessed.

To stay calm, I wondered to myself, Does he have regular handcuffs, or does he have special SeaWorld handcuffs? Like, are they shaped like two curved dolphins coming together?

“We were just on our way out, actually,” said Margo.

“Well, that’s certain,” the man said. “The question is whether you walkin’ out or gettin’ driven out by the Orange County sheriff.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” Margo said, “we’d rather walk.” I shut my eyes. This, I wanted to tell Margo, was no time for snappy comebacks. But the man laughed.

“You know a man got kilt here a couple years ago jumping in the big tank, and they told us we cain’t never let anybody go if they break in, no matter if they’re pretty.” Margo pulled her shirt out so it wouldn’t look so clingy. And only then did I realize he was talking to her breasts.

“Well, then I guess you have to arrest us.”

“But that’s the thing. I’m ’bout to get off and go home and have a beer and get some sleep, and if I call the police they’ll take their sweet time in coming. I’m just thinkin’ out loud here,” he said, and then Margo raised her eyes in recognition. She wiggled a hand into a wet pocket and pulled out one moat-water-soaked hundred-dollar bill.

The guard said, “Well, y’all best be getting on now. If I were you, I wouldn’t walk out past the whale tank. It’s got all-night security cameras all ’round it, and we wouldn’t want anyone to know y’all was here.”

“Yessir,” Margo said demurely, and with that the man walked off into the darkness. “Man,” Margo mumbled as the guy walked away, “I really didn’t want to pay that perv. But, oh well. Money’s for spendin’.” I could barely even hear her; the only thing happening was the relief shivering out of my skin. This raw pleasure was worth all the worry that preceded it.

“Thank God he’s not turning us in,” I said.

Margo didn’t respond. She was staring past me, her eyes squinting almost closed. “I felt this exact same way when I got into Universal Studios,” she said after a moment. “It’s kind of cool and everything, but there’s nothing much to see. The rides aren’t working. Everything cool is locked up. Most of the animals are put into different tanks at night.” She turned her head and appraised the SeaWorld we could see. “I guess the pleasure isn’t being inside.”

“What’s the pleasure?” I asked.

“Planning, I guess. I don’t know. Doing stuff never feels as good as you hope it will feel.”

“This feels pretty good to me,” I confessed. “Even if there isn’t anything to see.” I sat down on a park bench, and she joined me. We were both looking out at the seal tank, but it contained no seals, just an unoccupied island with rocky outcroppings made of plastic. I could smell her next to me, the sweat and the algae from the moat, her shampoo like lilacs, and the smell of her skin like crushed almonds.

I felt tired for the first time, and I thought of us lying down on some grassy patch of SeaWorld together, me on my back and she on her side with her arm draped against me, her head on my shoulder, facing me. Not doing anything — just lying there together beneath the sky, the night here so well lit that it drowns out the stars. And maybe I could feel her breathe against my neck, and maybe we could just stay there until morning and then the people would walk past as they came into the park, and they would see us and think that we were tourists, too, and we could just disappear into them.

But no. There was one-eyebrowed Chuck to see, and Ben to tell the story to, and classes and the band room and Duke and the future.

“Q,” Margo said.

I looked up at her, and for a moment I didn’t know why she’d said my name, but then I snapped out of my half-sleep. And I heard it. The Muzak from the speakers had been turned up, only it wasn’t Muzak anymore — it was real music. This old, jazzy song my dad likes called “Stars Fell on Alabama.” Even through the tinny speakers you could hear that whoever was singing it could sing a thousand goddamned notes at once.

And I felt the unbroken line of me and of her stretching back from our cribs to the dead guy to acquaintanceship to now. And I wanted to tell her that the pleasure for me wasn’t planning or doing or leaving; the pleasure was in seeing our strings cross and separate and then come back together — but that seemed too cheesy to say, and anyway, she was standing up.

Margo’s blue blue eyes blinked and she looked impossibly beautiful right then, her jeans wet against her legs, her face shining in the gray light.

I stood up and reached out my hand and said, “May I have this dance?” Margo curtsied, gave me her hand, and said, “You may,” and then my hand was on the curve between her waist and her hip, and her hand was on my shoulder. And then step-step-sidestep, step-step-sidestep. We fox-trotted all the way around the seal tank, and still the song kept going on about the stars falling. “Sixth-grade slow dance,” Margo announced, and we switched positions, her hands on my shoulders and mine on her hips, elbows locked, two feet between us. And then we fox-trotted some more, until the song ended. I stepped forward and dipped Margo, just as they’d taught us to do at Crown School of Dance. She raised one leg and gave me all her weight as I dipped her. She either trusted me or wanted to fall.

We bought dish towels at a 7-Eleven on I-Drive and tried our best to wash the slime and stink from the moat off our clothes and skin, and I filled the gas tank to where it had been before we drove the circumference of Orlando. The Chrysler’s seats were going to be a little bit wet when Mom drove to work, but I held out hope that she wouldn’t notice, since she was pretty oblivious. My parents generally believed that I was the most well-adjusted and not-likely-to-break-into-SeaWorld person on the planet, since my psychological well-being was proof of their professional talents.