The Great American Whatever Read Online Free Page A

Geoff’s upper lip. “You’ve got something there, Geoffrey,” she says, and he pulls back and hops up to sit on our counter, where he attempts to say with a totally straight face: “It’s a mustache, Mrs. R.”
    But that just turns Mom into an instant giggle machine. It is so good to hear her feeling good about something.
    â€œSure it is, Geoffrey,” she says, winking at me. “Sure it’s a mustache.”
    I take off. “Geoff and I are hanging tonight”—backing out of the kitchen before she can put up a fight that I didn’t ask for her permission first—“so I’m gonna throw on a clean shirt.”
    Wait for it. Waaait for it.
    But she doesn’t put up a fight or say I can’t go. She just looks at Geoff and right away both of their eyes are watery, like it’s been their big secret plan all along to get me out of the house. Which, who knows, maybe it has been.
    â€œCall me if you’re going to be later than eleven!” Mom yells when I’m hopping up the stairs three steps at a time. Six months of inactivity have suddenly turned me into a well-rested iron man.
    â€œYou bet!” I yell back.
    Except my phone isn’t charged. It isn’t even plugged in. I don’t even know where it is, to be honest, because I sort of blocked that day out. I haven’t turned my phone on since the accident, when I figured out why Annabeth got into the accident to begin with, dying “instantly or nearly instantly,” as if the timing of somebody’s death matters. They’re dead. Roll the credits.
    I ransack Dad’s old closet to try and find his least offensive shirt. It’s a delicate proposition: This is my first college party, and I agreed to go only because it’s a group of people who don’t know anything about my past, and won’t look at me like I’m the only surviving seabird after a devastating oil spill.
    Also, there’s going to be beer.
    But the Asshole Formerly Known As Dad’s shirts always tended toward Hawaiian prints and polyester button-ups. These are not the shirts of a man who owns the area’s number-one car dealership or hugs his kids. These are the shirts of a shifty junior manager who walks out on his wife on her birthday. I’m stuck.
    I give up and go to Dad’s shelf in the medicine cabinet, grabbing some okay-looking Polo cologne and giving my T-shirt a solid five pumps, figuring three of them should mellow out by the time we show up to the party.
    â€œYou kids done catching up?” I say from the bottom step, rounding my way into the kitchen like everything’s normal again.
    But I don’t think they heard me, because they’re . . . whimpering? No—because they’re whimpering, period. Mom is holding Geoff and rocking him a little bit, each of them acting out the very scene I still haven’t had with her myself yet.
    I study my shoes and pull off a pretty good pretend cough. “Let’s go,” I say. “Before traffic gets bad.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    W e’re on the street outside Geoff’s sister’s place in Squirrel Hill, looking up at a couple of big-shot college kids who are leaning out a window, smoking. I had the bright idea to stop and pick up something “nice” for the party, so when someone finally buzzes us in and we trudge up the four floors (without an elevator), I count it as a minor setback when a girl in a fedora swings open the door, looks at what I’ve brought, and calls back to the group: “Great. Another hummus.”
    â€œDude, let’s go in,” Geoff says.
    The place is awesome. Like, I can’t believe in a couple of years I could actually live like this. You know, if I start doing my homework again and actually apply to college, ha.
    â€œWe don’t have to stay long,” Geoff says. Now we’re standing just inside his sister’s doorway, at the beginning