John Green: Paper Towns

I reached into my pocket, grabbed my cell phone, and dialed the number that Margo recited to me. The phone rang once, twice, and then a groggy male voice answered, “Hello?”

“Mr. Arrington?” I asked. Margo wanted me to call because no one would ever recognize my voice.

“Who is this? God, what time is it?”

“Sir, I think you should know that your daughter is currently having sex with Jason Worthington in your basement.” And then I hung up. Part Two: accompli.

Margo and I threw open the doors of the minivan and charged down the street, diving onto our stomachs just behind the hedge ringing Becca’s yard. Margo handed me the camera, and I watched as an upstairs bedroom light came on, and then a stairway light, and then the kitchen light. And finally, the stairway down to the basement.

“Here he comes,” Margo whispered, and I didn’t know what she meant until, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a shirtless Jason Worthington wiggling out of the basement window. He took off sprinting across the lawn, naked but for his boxer shorts, and as he approached I jumped up and took a picture of him, completing Part Three. The flash surprised both of us, I think, and he blinked at me through the darkness for a white-hot moment before running off into the night.

Margo tugged on my jeans leg; I looked down at her, and she was smiling goofily. I reached my hand down, helped her up, and then we raced back to the car. I was putting the key in the ignition when she said, “Let me see the picture.”

I handed her the camera, and we watched it come up on the screen together, our heads almost touching. Upon seeing the stunned, pale face of Jason Worthington, I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Oh, God,” Margo said, and pointed. In the rush of the moment, it seemed that Jason had been unable to get Little Jason inside his boxers, and so there it was, hanging out, digitally captured for posterity.

“It’s a penis,” Margo said, “in the same sense that Rhode Island is a state: it may have an illustrious history, but it sure isn’t big.”

I looked back at the house and noticed that the basement light was now off. I found myself feeling slightly bad for Jason — it wasn’t his fault he had a micropenis and a brilliantly vindictive girlfriend. But then again, in sixth grade, Jase promised not to punch my arm if I ate a live earthworm, so I ate a live earthworm and then he punched me in the face. So I didn’t feel very bad for very long.

When I looked over at Margo, she was staring at the house through her binoculars. “We have to go,” Margo said. “Into the basement.”

“What? Why?”

“Part Four. Get his clothes in case he tries to sneak back into her house. Part Five. Leave fish for Becca.”

“No.”

“Yes. Now,” she said. “She’s upstairs getting yelled at by her parents. But, like, how long does that lecture last? I mean, what do you say? ‘You shouldn’t screw Margo’s boyfriend in the basement.’ It’s a one-sentence lecture, basically. So we have to hustle.”

She got out of the car with the spray paint in one hand and one of the catfish in the other. I whispered, “This is a bad idea,” but I followed behind her, crouched down as she was, until we were standing in front of the still-open basement window.

“I’ll go first,” she said. She went in feetfirst and was standing on Becca’s computer desk, half in the house and half out of it, when I asked her, “Can’t I just be lookout?”

“Get your skinny ass in here,” she answered, and so I did. Quickly, I grabbed all the boy-type clothes I saw on Becca’s lavender-carpeted floor. A pair of jeans with a leather belt, a pair of flip-flops, a Winter Park High School Wildcats baseball cap, and a baby blue polo shirt. I turned back to Margo, who handed me the paper-wrapped catfish and one of Becca’s sparkly purple pens. She told me what to write:

A message from Margo Roth Spiegelman: Your friendship with her — it sleeps with the fishes

Margo hid the fish between folded pairs of shorts in Becca’s closet. I could hear footsteps upstairs, and tapped Margo on the shoulder and looked at her, my eyes bulging. She just smiled and leisurely pulled out the spray paint. I scrambled out the window, and then turned back to watch as Margo leaned over the desk and calmly shook the spray paint. In an elegant motion — the kind you associate with calligraphy or Zorro — she spray-painted the letter M onto the wall above the desk.

She reached her hands up to me, and I pulled her through the window. She was just starting to stand when we heard a high-pitched voice shout, “DWIGHT!” I grabbed the clothes and took off running, Margo behind me.

I heard, but did not see, the front door of Becca’s house swing open, but I didn’t stop or turn around, not when a booming voice shouted “HALT!” and not even when I heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being pumped.

I heard Margo mumble “gun” behind me — she didn’t sound upset about it exactly; she was just making an observation — and then rather than walk around Becca’s hedge, I dove over it headfirst. I’m not sure how I intended to land — maybe an artful somersault or something — but at any rate, I spilled onto the asphalt of the road, landing on my left shoulder. Fortunately, Jase’s bundle of clothes hit the ground first, softening the blow.

I swore, and before I could even start to stand, I felt Margo’s hands pulling me up, and then we were in the car and I was driving in reverse with the lights off, which is how I nearly came to run over the mostly naked starting shortstop of the Winter Park High School Wildcats baseball team. Jase was running very fast, but he didn’t seem to be running anyplace in particular. I felt another stab of regret as we backed up past him, so I rolled the window halfway down and threw his polo in his general direction. Fortunately, I don’t think he saw either Margo or me, and he had no reason to recognize the minivan since — and I don’t want to sound bitter or anything by dwelling on this— I can’t drive it to school .

“Why the hell would you do that?” Margo asked as I turned on the lights and, driving forward now, began to navigate the suburban labyrinth back toward the interstate.

“I felt bad for him.”

“For him? Why? Because he’s been cheating on me for six weeks? Because he’s probably given me god-only-knows-what disease? Because he’s a disgusting idiot who will probably be rich and happy his whole life, thus proving the absolute unfairness of the cosmos?”

“He just looked sort of desperate,” I said.

“Whatever. We’re going to Karin’s house. It’s on Pennsylvania, by the ABC Liquors.”

“Don’t be pissed at me,” I said. “I just had a guy point a freaking shotgun at me for helping you, so don’t be pissed at me.”

“I’M NOT PISSED AT YOU!” Margo shouted, and then punched the dashboard.

“Well, you’re screaming.”

“I thought maybe — whatever. I thought maybe he wasn’t cheating.”

“Oh.”

“Karin told me at school. And I guess a lot of people have known for a long time. And no one told me until Karin. I thought maybe she was just trying to stir up drama or something.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Yeah. Yeah. I can’t believe I even care.”

“My heart is really pounding,” I said.

“That’s how you know you’re having fun,” Margo said.

But it didn’t feel like fun; it felt like a heart attack. I pulled over into a 7-Eleven parking lot and held my finger to my jugular vein while watching the: in the digital clock blink every second. When I turned to Margo, she was rolling her eyes at me. “My pulse is dangerously high,” I explained.