John Green - Paper Towns

“Nothing,” said Radar. “We’re certainly not looking at your eyebrows.” Chuck flicked Radar off, slammed an open palm against the locker next to me, and walked away.

“You did that?” Ben asked, incredulous.

“You can never tell anyone,” I said to both of them. And then quietly added, “I was with Margo Roth Spiegelman.”

Ben’s voice rose with excitement. “You were with Margo Roth Spiegelman last night? At THREE A.M.?” I nodded. “Alone?” I nodded. “Oh my God, if you hooked up with her, you have to tell me every single thing that happened. You have to write me a term paper on the look and feel of Margo Roth Spiegelman’s breasts. Thirty pages, minimum!”

“I want you to do a photo-realistic pencil drawing,” Radar said.

“A sculpture would also be acceptable,” Ben added.

Radar half raised his hand. I dutifully called on him. “Yes, I was wondering if it would be possible for you to write a sestina about Margo Roth Spiegelman’s breasts? Your six words are: pink, round, firmness, succulent, supple, and pillowy .”

“Personally,” Ben said, “I think at least one of the words should be buhbuhbuhbuh .”

“I don’t think I’m familiar with that word,” I said.

“It’s the sound my mouth makes when I’m giving a honey-bunny the patented Ben Starling Speedboat.” At which point Ben mimicked what he would do in the unlikely event that his face ever encountered cleavage.

“Right now,” I said, “although they have no idea why, thousands of girls all across America are feeling a chill of fear and disgust run down their spines. Anyway, I didn’t hook up with her, perv.”

“Typical,” Ben said. “I’m the only guy I know with the balls to give a honeybunny what she wants, and the only one with no opportunities.”

“What an amazing coincidence,” I said. It was life as it had always been — only more fatigued. I had hoped that last night would change my life, but it hadn’t — at least not yet.

The second bell rang. We hustled off to class.

I became extremely tired during calc first period. I mean, I had been tired since waking, but combining fatigue with calculus seemed unfair. To stay awake, I was scribbling a note to Margo— nothing I’d ever send to her, just a summary of my favorite moments from the night before — but even that could not keep me awake. At some point, my pen just stopped moving, and I found my field of vision shrinking and shrinking, and then I was trying to remember if tunnel vision was a symptom of fatigue. I decided it must be, because there was only one thing in front of me, and it was Mr. Jiminez at the blackboard, and this was the only thing that my brain could process, and so when Mr. Jiminez said, “Quentin?” I was extraordinarily confused, because the one thing happening in my universe was Mr. Jiminez writing on the blackboard, and I couldn’t fathom how he could be both an auditory and a visual presence in my life.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Did you hear the question?”

“Yes?” I asked again.

“And you raised your hand to answer it?” I looked up, and sure enough my hand was raised, but I did not know how it had come to be raised, and I only sort of knew how to go about de-raising it. But then after considerable struggle, my brain was able to tell my arm to lower itself, and my arm was able to do so, and then finally I said, “I just needed to ask to go to the bathroom?”

And he said, “Go ahead,” and then someone else raised a hand and answered some question about some kind of differential equation.

I walked to the bathroom, splashed water on my face, and then leaned over the sink, close to the mirror, and appraised myself. I tried to rub the bloodshotedness out of my eyes, but I couldn’t. And then I had a brilliant idea. I went into a stall, put the seat down, sat down, leaned against the side, and fell asleep. The sleep lasted for about sixteen milliseconds before the second period bell rang. I got up and walked to Latin, and then to physics, and then finally it was fourth period, and I found Ben in the cafeteria and said, “I really need a nap or something.”

“Let’s have lunch with RHAPAW,” he answered.

RHAPAW was a fifteen-year-old Buick that had been driven with impunity by all three of Ben’s older siblings and was, by the time it reached Ben, composed primarily out of duct tape and spackle. Her full name was Rode Hard And Put Away Wet, but we called her RHAPAW for short. RHAPAW ran not on gasoline, but on the inexhaustible fuel of human hope. You would sit on the blisteringly hot vinyl seat and hope she would start, and then Ben would turn the key and the engine would turn over a couple times, like a fish on land making its last, meager, dying flops. And then you would hope harder, and the engine would turn over a couple more times. You hoped some more, and it would finally catch.

Ben started RHAPAW and turned the AC on high. Three of the four windows didn’t even open, but the air conditioner worked magnificently, though for the first few minutes it was just hot air blasting out of the vents and mixing with the hot stale air in the car. I reclined the passenger seat all the way back, so that I was almost lying down, and I told him everything: Margo at my window, the Wal-Mart, the revenge, the SunTrust Building, entering the wrong house, SeaWorld, the I-will-miss-hanging-out-with-you.

He didn’t interrupt me once — Ben was a good friend in the not-interrupting way — but when I finished, he immediately asked me the most pressing question in his mind.

“Wait, so about Jase Worthington, how small are we talking?”

“Shrinkage may have played a role, since he was under significant anxiety, but have you ever seen a pencil?” I asked him, and Ben nodded. “Well, have you ever seen a pencil eraser?” He nodded again. “Well, have you ever seen the little shavings of rubber left on the paper after you erase something?” More nodding. “I’d say three shavings long and one shaving wide,” I said. Ben had taken a lot of crap from guys like Jason Worthington and Chuck Parson, so I figured he was entitled to enjoy it a little. But he didn’t even laugh. He was just shaking his head slowly, awestruck.

“God, she is such a badass.”

“I know.”

“She’s the kind of person who either dies tragically at twenty-seven, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, or else grows up to win, like, the first-ever Nobel Prize for Awesome.”

“Yeah,” I said. I rarely tired of talking about Margo Roth Spiegelman, but I was rarely this tired. I leaned back against the cracked vinyl headrest and fell immediately asleep. When I woke up, a Wendy’s hamburger was sitting in my lap with a note. Had to go to class, bro. See you after band.

Later, after my last class, I translated Ovid while sitting up against the cinder-block wall outside the band room, trying to ignore the groaning cacophony coming from inside. I always hung around school for the extra hour during band practice, because to leave before Ben and Radar meant enduring the unbearable humiliation of being the lone senior on the bus.

After they got out, Ben dropped Radar off at his house right by the Jefferson Park “village center,” near where Lacey lived. Then he took me home. I noticed Margo’s car was not parked in her driveway, either. So she hadn’t skipped school to sleep. She’d skipped school for another adventure — a me-less adventure. She’d probably spent her day spreading hair-removal cream on the pillows of other enemies or something. I felt a little left out as I walked into the house, but of course she knew I would never have joined her anyway — I cared too much about a day of school. And who even knew if it would be just a day for Margo. Maybe she was off on another three-day jaunt to Mississippi, or temporarily joining the circus. But it wasn’t either of those, of course. It was something I couldn’t imagine, that I would never imagine, because I couldn’t be Margo.