Going Nowhere Faster Read Online Free

tried, it seemed like I did that a lot. Life kept getting in the way of being the person I was supposed to be.
    “You’re right,” I agreed. “Now go to sleep.”
    “But I’m not tired.”
    “Yes, you are.”
    I laid her down and scratched her back while she squirmed, then waited until her breathing became steady. As I tiptoed to the door, Chopper gave me a parting blast, a solid B-flat.
    “Classy,” I told him.
    He raised an eyebrow and then rolled over and went back to sleep. I considered opening a window, but the percentages were against it. It might open sideways. It might open to a pile of bricks. It might open to an alternate universe where Chopper lay in bed in his jammies and Olivia was curled up on the floor with a ham bone in her paws.
    I felt along the hallway, which narrowed and sloped downward, coming to a dead end, then retraced my steps, took a hard left, bent under a four-foot doorway, and found my room. I sat on the bed, trying to keep my balance. For some reason, it leaned to the left. The floor was level and the legs were all the same length. I’d measured them. Still, it leaned. It defied logic. My father defied logic. He’d also invented Bedsheets-on-a-Roll. There were a dozen sheets above the headboard, perforated like paper towels. Instead of washing your old sheets, you threw them away and just pulled out a new one. Was it environmentally friendly? Probably not. Maybe that’s why I was stuck with the prototype.
    I looked around the room and wondered what to do. There were the same books (either Nietzsche or
The Basketball Diaries
) on the shelf, the same records (either the Stones or Pavement) on the floor, the same posters (either Jean Harlow —
old school,
or Uma Thurman —
leather tracksuit
) on the wall, and the same smell of sweat-sock there always was.
    Boring.
    I could work on my script
. What script?
    I could work on my idea.
What idea?
    Anyway, I didn’t feel like it.
    I could go downstairs and talk to my father, except he was probably tinkering in his basement lab. Actually, there was no probably about it. He was definitely down there, inventing see-through earwax.
    I could go downstairs and talk to my mother, except she and Prarash were burning incense and having “book study,” which was supposed to mean discussing Buddhist texts, but really meant eating carob truffles and gossiping about people in town.
    I wondered what Keith was up to, which was dumb, since it was a near mathematical certainty he was lying on a couch gobbling candy and watching some sport, which allowed him to lie in one place for ridiculously long periods of time. It also gave him a reason to yell, loudly and repeatedly, “GO! STOP! TACKLE! HIT!” without his neighbors calling the cops.
    Then the phone rang, which hardly ever happened.
    My mother yelled “Stan? Phone?” which also hardly ever happened.
    I walked down(some)stairs, walked upstairs, took a hard right, ducked under a five-foot doorway, ended up near my father’s “laboratory” (there it was), and then walked to the old plastic receiver in the kitchen. I could hear soldering or the cranking of nuts and bolts. With any luck, the old man was inventing an ATM.
    “Hello?”
    “Yo, Stan-dog.”
    It was Miles, my best friend. (Yes, I have friends. Sort of.)
    “How many times have I told you not to call me ‘Stan-dog,’ Miles? Or, for that matter, attach the word ‘dog’ to anything, ever?”
    “Ha-ha,” he laughed, in his smooth and charming way. “Ha-ha.”
    Miles had a great name. Miles. Like Miles Davis or Miles Away from Home or I Can See for Miles. As a result, he was popular in a sort of goofy way that required no effort or forethought, and no one ever punched him. He wore the clothes he wanted to (odd colors and thrift-store — always clashing) and the hair he wanted to (long and curly and everywhere) and didn’t feel obliged to copy any style. He was always invited to parties, and when he walked in, everyone said