The Astonishing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl Read Online Free Page A
Author: Barry Lyga
never really expected to see something like concern in her eyes.
"I really don't know," I tell her. It's a bad lie, but it's the one I'm stuck with, so I have to work with it. "It wasn't there when I got home from school last night." A story pops into my head, complete and fully formed, as they often do: Blame the step-fascist. Tell her he hit me.
No. Too many details to come up with. Too many places to trip up.
"You don't know? Are you sure? Are you lying to me?"
"Why would I lie about something like this?" oh, the liar's best friend. Because, seriously, why
would
someone lie about something like this? I throw her a bone: "Maybe I bumped it against my nightstand when I was asleep."
As my dad would say, she's not buying it, but there's nothing else on the shelves. I get released from Interrogation and head for the prison showers.
The Panty Algorithm
The bus is, sadly, uneventful, Dina Jurgens's dad having evidently taken care of her car troubles.
In English, though, I get my semi-regular Glimpse of the Panties. Mrs. Hanscomb has our desks arranged in a U formation "so as to foster dialogue between students and discourage the class from becoming a simple lecture." Lisa Carter sits across the U from me, and on days when she wears a skirt she either A) forgets or B) doesn't care. She is no Dina Jurgens, no Senior Goddess, but she has nice legs and it's easy for me to look while pretending to be looking at my notes. To amuse myself, I keep track of the style and color of her panties, jotting down notes in a shorthand code I invented for the purpose. I might just try to work out some sort of database that tracks and predicts her underwear choices. I doubt there's an algorithm for this sort of thing, but it might be interesting to try it.
Lisa seems nice enough. She's a "school friend." We're nice to each other in school and she's never done anything particularly rotten to me, but we would never have any reason to talk outside of school. I feel sort of guilty and sleazy for looking up her skirt, but I do it anyway.
Once I almost told Cal about my visual explorations of Lisa Carter's inner thighs and the all-important Panty Algorithm experiment. He's in Hanscomb's English class, too (off to one side, bad angle for panty-viewing). But I never did because he would think it's pathetic and sad (which it is—at least I'm honest). Cal doesn't need to sneak peeks. When he's not talking to me or hanging out with the Jock Jerks, he's surrounded by freshman and sophomore girls—sometimes even juniors. He flashes that broad, easy grin, tosses out some faux street slang, and gets oohs and coos in response. "When I black it up, they love it," he told me once, and since it was just the two of us, it was OK to talk like intelligent human beings, and we pondered the social implications and origins of such behavior, finally deciding that it's just that South Brook girls are interested in anything that isn't the same old boring white bread.
If they knew that Cal was a secret comic book geek, would they ooh and coo so much?
No, there's no Carter Examinations for Cal. He's seen the real thing up close and personal, he let slip once, then looked embarrassed. While around the JJ, Cal has to play the Conquering Stud Muffin, but with me he's discreet and prefers not to discuss sex, which I find respectful, in a way.
And me? Shocking though it may be, I'm a virgin (no, it's true), but—God bless the Internet, cable TV, and convenience store clerks who don't ask for ID—I've seen enough to know that I want to see more.
A part of me wonders if Lisa knows. If she's some kind of exhibitionist. Is there a particular brand of kink that involves flashing the town geek?
A ball of cold lead forms in my throat and then drops down into my gut. Worse yet, is there a game that calls for getting the town geek hot and bothered with flashes of the Promised Land, then letting a bunch of Neanderthals in letter jackets pound the living crap out of him?
"I really don't know," I tell her. It's a bad lie, but it's the one I'm stuck with, so I have to work with it. "It wasn't there when I got home from school last night." A story pops into my head, complete and fully formed, as they often do: Blame the step-fascist. Tell her he hit me.
No. Too many details to come up with. Too many places to trip up.
"You don't know? Are you sure? Are you lying to me?"
"Why would I lie about something like this?" oh, the liar's best friend. Because, seriously, why
would
someone lie about something like this? I throw her a bone: "Maybe I bumped it against my nightstand when I was asleep."
As my dad would say, she's not buying it, but there's nothing else on the shelves. I get released from Interrogation and head for the prison showers.
The Panty Algorithm
The bus is, sadly, uneventful, Dina Jurgens's dad having evidently taken care of her car troubles.
In English, though, I get my semi-regular Glimpse of the Panties. Mrs. Hanscomb has our desks arranged in a U formation "so as to foster dialogue between students and discourage the class from becoming a simple lecture." Lisa Carter sits across the U from me, and on days when she wears a skirt she either A) forgets or B) doesn't care. She is no Dina Jurgens, no Senior Goddess, but she has nice legs and it's easy for me to look while pretending to be looking at my notes. To amuse myself, I keep track of the style and color of her panties, jotting down notes in a shorthand code I invented for the purpose. I might just try to work out some sort of database that tracks and predicts her underwear choices. I doubt there's an algorithm for this sort of thing, but it might be interesting to try it.
Lisa seems nice enough. She's a "school friend." We're nice to each other in school and she's never done anything particularly rotten to me, but we would never have any reason to talk outside of school. I feel sort of guilty and sleazy for looking up her skirt, but I do it anyway.
Once I almost told Cal about my visual explorations of Lisa Carter's inner thighs and the all-important Panty Algorithm experiment. He's in Hanscomb's English class, too (off to one side, bad angle for panty-viewing). But I never did because he would think it's pathetic and sad (which it is—at least I'm honest). Cal doesn't need to sneak peeks. When he's not talking to me or hanging out with the Jock Jerks, he's surrounded by freshman and sophomore girls—sometimes even juniors. He flashes that broad, easy grin, tosses out some faux street slang, and gets oohs and coos in response. "When I black it up, they love it," he told me once, and since it was just the two of us, it was OK to talk like intelligent human beings, and we pondered the social implications and origins of such behavior, finally deciding that it's just that South Brook girls are interested in anything that isn't the same old boring white bread.
If they knew that Cal was a secret comic book geek, would they ooh and coo so much?
No, there's no Carter Examinations for Cal. He's seen the real thing up close and personal, he let slip once, then looked embarrassed. While around the JJ, Cal has to play the Conquering Stud Muffin, but with me he's discreet and prefers not to discuss sex, which I find respectful, in a way.
And me? Shocking though it may be, I'm a virgin (no, it's true), but—God bless the Internet, cable TV, and convenience store clerks who don't ask for ID—I've seen enough to know that I want to see more.
A part of me wonders if Lisa knows. If she's some kind of exhibitionist. Is there a particular brand of kink that involves flashing the town geek?
A ball of cold lead forms in my throat and then drops down into my gut. Worse yet, is there a game that calls for getting the town geek hot and bothered with flashes of the Promised Land, then letting a bunch of Neanderthals in letter jackets pound the living crap out of him?
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