Going Nowhere Faster Read Online Free Page A

“Miles!” and even the blond soccer girls liked him, although he’d had the same girlfriend since second grade, Cari Calloway, and everyone knew, even then, that the two of them would grow up and be married and be smart and funny and wise adults and have a nice house with a library full of rare leather books and a pool shaped like a martini glass. They were also destined to produce any number of painless-labor, bright-eyed, smart and funny and wonderful children who would invariably go to eastern colleges and be on prestigious committees and serve selflessly as volunteers in African republics and wear comfy sweaters and come home regularly to help Dad rake the leaves.
    You could see it all just by looking at him. Why in God’s name he put up with me was still a mystery.
    “Sorry, Dick Nixon,” he apologized. “I keep forgetting you’re DJ-phobic. Anyway, you wanna go to a party?”
    Miles had the habit of constantly referring to me as someone else, usually some celebrity or historical figure, depending on the situation. He did it without thinking. All the girls thought it was cute. I thought it was annoying as hell. Also, I definitely, absolutely, completely did not want to go to a party.
    “NO PARTIES!” my mother yelled from the living room. We had only one phone and she was hundreds of feet away. There was no possibility she could have overheard.
    “How does she do that?” Miles laughed.
    “Psychic hotline,” I said. “She’s really a Jamaican priestess.”
    “Anyway, Bob Marley,” he said, “party?”
    “I can’t.”
    “Ellen’s gonna be there.”
    My throat constricted. My brow furrowed. My cliché clichéd.
    Her name was actually Eleanor, but everyone called her Ellen and there were many, many nights that I lay on the carpet in my room and said her name over and over and over again until it was one long yogic chant. I’d been crazy about her for a year, and she absolutely didn’t notice or care. Plus, she was so beautiful it made my teeth hurt. Pale, with a small nose and small hands and small feet. She had a way of smiling, almost a smirk, that drove me crazy, one lip up and showing her teeth like
I know something you don’t.
She wore sweaters with necklaces dangling outside of them and jeans with a tiny butt inside of them and she had slender, tapered fingers, like they were made for something more important than just fitting into gloves.
    There was
one
other thing. No big deal, really. Just sort of a minor obstacle. A hiccup. Like your grandmother might smile after you broke her favorite candy dish and say, “It’s okay, sweetie, life’s full of little problems.”
    Ellen was Chad Chilton’s girlfriend.
    Or ex-girlfriend. Depended who you asked.
    “Um . . . ,” I said. “Ummm . . .”
    Miles laughed. “You have absolutely
no
poker face, you know that, Johnny Chan? Absolutely none.”
    “You can tell over the phone?”
    “Yes.”
    “Ummm . . . ,” I said again. Ellen. Every single inch of me ached.
    “Meet me at the bridge in fifteen minutes,” Miles commanded. (He refused to come to my house on the off chance that he might run into my mother, or even worse, Prarash.)
    “What are you afraid of?” I goaded.
    “Man, is that Prarash dude there?”
    (Was he ever
not
here?)
    “Nope,” I lied.
    “You’re lying, Benedict Starnald, I can practically smell him over the phone.”
    I laughed. “Okay, okay.”
    “Dude smells
funky,
you know it? And he’s always smiling, too. His leg could be on fire and he’d be smiling away, telling you how blessed he was to be warm.”
    “Yeah,” I sighed.
    “I don’t know how you stand it,” Miles said ruefully.
    “I guess since I have no choice, it’s pretty easy.”
    “True,” he admitted. “Now hurry up and pedal over, Lance Armstrong, and I’ll pick your Casanova butt up.”
    “Wait!” I said. “Holy crap, Miles, I forgot to tell you how someone almost ran me over, and . . .”
    I stopped explaining when I realized the line