“You know,” I say, leaning back against the side of her bed and looking at her bookshelves. “With as much reading as you do, you should try writing your own book.”
She studies me for a second as if she’s not sure whether I’m making fun of her.
“I’m serious,” I tell her. “I’ll bet you could write a science-fiction novel that’d sell a million copies.”
She sets her pen down and says real soft, “I don’t know about a million copies, but I am writing one. I’ve got about two hundred pages done, and it’ll probably end up being about six hundred pages long.”
I’m like, “Jesus. Six hundred pages?”
“Yeah,” she says. I’m beginning to see that her “yeahs” are almost always two syllables, one for “yes” and the other for “but I don’t know if anything will ever come of it.”
“That’s cool. What’s it about?” I ask, though I suspect I may be opening a can full of boring.
She’s like, “Do you really want to hear about it?”
And I’m, “Yeah.” One syllable.
She starts off telling me that this is just going to be the summary version, but it ends up getting pretty involved. And surprisingly it’s not boring at all. The basic idea is that there’s this teenage girl who gets beamed aboard a spaceship while she’s out throwing her paper route, and the crew—which consists of a race of genius horses—recruit her to help fly the ship back to its home planet. The twist is that it turns out the home planet is really Earth of the future, where genius horses and humans coexist on an equal level, and the girl—who is somehow really of Earthling descent—has been living among aliens on the planet Gracknack all along.
As she’s telling the story, it hits me—this is how she escapes. She runs away to her perfectly tidy room and disappears into faraway galaxies. I’ll bet it’s the same with her schoolwork because, from what I can tell, she gets no encouragement in that direction from her family.
Her brother and mother and Randy, the unemployed boyfriend, are Gracknackians. They’ll never understand her. And her best friend, Krystal Krittenbrink, is a big, type-A nerd who treats her like an employee in a Gracknackian geek factory. But this room is Aimee’s space capsule and she’s a long-distance galactic traveler, winning every battle along the way.
Or almost every battle. Right as she’s getting to the end of her story, a scratchy voice calls out from the next room, “Aimee! Hey, Aimee! Bring me a Dr Pepper, why don’t you?”
It’s Randy. He woke up and now he wants room service. Aimee’s shoulders slump. “I’ll be right back.”
After a couple of minutes, Randy’s voice booms out again. “What’s this supposed to be? You know I like my tall blue glass. This is like a thimble or something.”
If Aimee says anything back, I can’t hear her, but Randy’s loud and clear. “Well, go down and get some more. What have you been doing all afternoon?”
So Aimee slinks back and tells me she’s sorry but she has to go to the 7-Eleven. It doesn’t seem to have crossed her mind that I might drive her. When I volunteer, she’s like, “You don’t have to do that. It’s my fault. I should have gone right after school.”
And I’m, “What are you talking about? It’ll take like a minute and a half. Of course I’m going to drive you.”
That perks her up a little, but any trace of the confidence she showed earlier has shriveled up about to the size of plankton. It’s even worse after we pick up the Dr Pepper. Looking through the windshield at her front porch, she has this expression on her face like her spaceship just crashed and she’s found herself back on Gracknack.
So the next thing I know my mouth’s open and these words are spilling out: “You know what? There’s a party this Saturday. I think you should go with me.”
It was like a reflex action. I had to do it. What else was I going to do, let her traipse back into that house with nothing?
True to form, her response is a surprised “Me?”
And I’m, “Yeah. You and me.”
And she’s, “A party?” Like I’ve been speaking Mongolian or Gracknackian maybe.
“Yeah, a party. Saturday night. You and me. I’ll come by and get you around 8:30. What do you say?”
“Um, okay?”
“Is that an answer or a question?”
“No,” she says. “I mean, yes, I’ll go.” And this time it’s a one syllable yes.
“All right, then. Fabulous. We’ll have fun.”
And as she walks back to her house with her head held high and the liter of Dr Pepper dangling casually from one hand, I feel pretty damn good about myself. It was a drastic measure, but it needed to be done. And it’s not like I asked her out for a date or anything. I just figured a party would be good for her. I know it’ll be good for me.
Chapter 27
Friday night and I’m grounded. Of course, I could easily sneak out. The climb down from my second-story window is much easier than the climb up to Cassidy’s window, and I can’t remember the last time either Mom or Geech paid a visit to my room in the evening. They’re probably afraid they’ll catch me spankificating the mighty Cyclops to online p**n . Which I’m sure Geech got caught at many a time during his stupendously boring teen years when p**n was something you could hide under your mattress.
But the thing is I’ll have to sneak out tomorrow night for the party, so I decide a Friday night in the privacy of my room won’t be a bad change of pace. After all, I have my TV, my computer, my phone, and my tunes, not to mention my little blue ice chest for my 7UP and whiskies. Basically, I’m all set.