The Astonishing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl Read Online Free Page B

That sounds more likely than anything else.
    I shiver just once before regaining control of myself. My hand automatically goes into my pocket, where the bullet waits with its almost narcotic touch.
    Mrs. Hanscomb is droning on and on about Poe, about opium, about alcohol, about
MEL-an-choly,
and Lisa Carter coughs, shifts in her seat, lets her legs open just a little bit more. More than ever before.
    I look, but I'm not happy about it.

Chapter Six
     
    O N THE WAY TO GYM CLASS , Cal catches up to me. There are no jocks around, so he's safe to pull out a comic he found on eBay. It got to his house yesterday.
    "How much?" I ask, looking at it. It's an old
Swamp Thing
comic, flimsy and stapled. I've got the collected editions, nice bound softcovers that contain multiple issues, and I think my dad has the originals, like this one, in his collection.
    "A bunch," he says, sighing. "Too much. Fifty bucks. But I couldn't resist. I love that Alan Moore stuff."
    "Dude, you can get the trade paperback for, like, fifteen bucks, and it's got all four parts, not just this one." I want to wave it in his face, but I'm mindful that he just laid down five Hamiltons for this sucker.
    "Yeah, yeah, I know." He shrugs as if to say,
Whaddayawantfromme?
Cal's a serious collector, a total nut for first editions and Mint conditions. Me, I just like the stories. with one exception, I don't care if they're printed on toilet paper and bound with bubblegum.
    "But this is how it first came out," he goes on. "This is how people like your dad first saw it and read it. Not all at once in some big collected edition with an introduction and stuff. They saw it one at a time, each month, waiting each month for the next installment. This is like..." He takes it back from me, opening it carefully, not wanting to crinkle the paper at the spine where the staples hold the whole thing together. "This is like an historical document."
    "No, it's not." Cal is great. Cal's smart. This is Cal at his best, when we're talking. Even when I disagree with him. I can't believe he wastes so much of his time on the football field and all of that nonsense. "It's not an historical document," I tell him. "It's just a comic book. It's the story that matters."
    "Yeah?" He grins the grin of someone who knows me
way
too well. "What about
Giant-Size X-Men
#1? In Mint condition?"
    He's got me there. "Come on, Cal. That's different. You know it. You know—"
    "Look." He holds the comic open for me. At the end of the story there's a page of tight, small text. "Letters page," he says with a note of triumph. "Back then, they used to publish letters in the back of each issue. From readers. And the editors and writers would answer them."
    "So? Like I've never read an old comic before. I know that."
    "So, they don't reprint the letters pages when they do the collected editions. All of that stuff is just gone, man. But when you go back and read them, you get to see how people reacted
when the comic came out.
You get to see what the fans were thinking while the story was developing. You get insight from the editor about what was going on. It's a window into the creative process."
    His eyes are shining as he says this, and it's a damn shame that, over Cal's shoulder, I see Vesentine and a few other guys heading toward us. My heart's actually racing. This is the kind of conversation I love to have. And Cal loves it, too. But any second now, he's going to have to put that comic book into his locker and, like a Durlan or a Skrull, he'll change.
    "Yeah, it's a window," I tell him, and start to turn away.
    "Hey. Where are you going?"
    "Gym," I remind him, then cut down the hall before I bear witness once again to the transformation of Cool Cal, Comic Book Guy and Friend into Distant Cal, He of the Unfortunate Friendships and Letter Jacket.
    It's the first time, I realize,
I've
ever turned away from
him
. Preemptive. Half of a really good friend, I guess, is better than no friend at all.

Chapter