Me Myself & Him Read online

  Books Coauthored by Chris Tebbetts

  M or F?

  Public School Superhero

  Middle School Series

  Stranded Trilogies

  The Viking Series

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Chris Tebbetts

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Woody Harrington

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! GetUnderlined.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9781524715229 (hardcover)

  ISBN 9781524715243 (glb.)

  Ebook ISBN 9781524715236

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Books Coauthored by Chris Tebbetts

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  12:30?

  1:15

  Chapter 1

  Chapter One

  Chapter 2

  Chapter Two

  Chapter 3

  Chapter Three

  Chapter 4

  Chapter Four

  Chapter 5

  Chapter Five

  Chapter 6

  Chapter Six

  Chapter 7

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 18

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter 9

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter 10

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter 11

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter 12

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter 13

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter 14

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Howard

  12:30?

  The last thing I remember is sucking down a lungful of gas and closing my eyes. My friend Wexler tells me that I set down the cartridge, stood up again, paused like I wasn’t going anywhere, and then fell over, almost slow motion, like a tree going down, until I landed face-first on the cement.

  All of that’s blank in my memory.

  When I woke up, if that’s what you can call it, the first thing I saw were these yellow and blue streaks, moving away from me like paint running down a windshield. On the other side of that, I saw one of Wexler’s black Keens, the ones he wore at the restaurant, but just one of them, right there in front of my face.

  “Hang on, man. You’re going to be okay. I called the ambulance. It’s okay.”

  It wasn’t, though. I could see the shoe, and I heard Wexler’s voice, but they weren’t, at that time, Wexler’s shoe and Wexler’s voice. They were just shoe and voice. I had no idea where I was, or how I’d gotten there, or why everything was sideways.

  The first thing that kind of made sense was the sound of the siren. I knew it was an ambulance. That was good. At least I knew something.

  And then there were all these people. EMTs and police. More shoes.

  A cop kneeled down next to me. It was starting to come together.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  I tried to answer, but everything came out g, l, a, and r. “Glaaarh…gharr…”

  “Your name?”

  The first words I actually managed were “I’m having…trouble…speaking.”

  He just shrugged and took his lack of grasp for the obvious somewhere else. I heard Wexler giving them my information. Then they put a big thick collar around my neck and lifted me onto a stretcher.

  The back of the ambulance was like this lit portal with night all around it, and I slid right in. My face didn’t hurt. I don’t know why, it just didn’t. I thought the collar was a bit much, but someone took my hand away when I tried to loosen it.

  And then we were moving.

  I’d always wanted to ride in an ambulance. It was on the list with helicopter, glider, and, yes, fire truck, so I couldn’t help at least noticing that it was happening. The whole thing was so much like a movie or TV show that reality kind of got drowned out. “Riding in an ambulance” was all front and center. “I am so screwed” wouldn’t show up for another forty-five minutes or so.

  At the emergency room, they wheeled me right in. A doctor came into the bay where they had stuck me and felt around on my face. When she got to my nose, she made this sympathetic kind of sucking sound.

  “What happened to you?” she said.

  “Well…” I didn’t know how to tell her anything but the truth. “I did a hit of nitrous oxide and passed out on the cement.” My voice was really small, like if I barely said it, it would barely be true. “Does my mom have to know about that?”

  “You’re eighteen,” she said, with the same kind of tone she might use to say You’re a dumbass kid in every respect but the law. “That part’s up to you.”

  I’m not sure how the standard exam is supposed to go in these situations, but I’m pretty sure I got the discount package after that. She gave me another quick once-over, said something about X-rays, and left.

  I lay there alone for a while, and the shame started to creep in, but also a dose of aggravation with myself. Why couldn’t I have just said I fell down on the cement?

  1:15

  Wexler came in a little later. He was still wearing his uniform, minus the bow tie.

  “How’s it going?” He cupped my hand, just for a second. “Does it hurt?” He was smiling, too, like he was in on the joke, which basically he was. He knew it wasn’t funny, and I knew it wasn’t funny; but still, it was kind of funny. Wexler was like my lifeline that night.

  “You scared the crap out of me, man,” he said.

  “Did anyone else see it?”

  “Nah,” he said. “Everyone else was gone. I called nine-one-one, waited with you, gave them your info—”

  “Thanks.”

  “—and, um…”

  “What?”

  “I called your mom, too.”

  I closed my eyes. Of course he called my mom. I’d do the same thing. Not if it was just some basic accident, but with police and an ambulance and all? Yeah.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “No,” I told him. “It’s not like I’m going hide this from her.”

  “Have you seen your face?” He was smiling again, and I could tell he hoped the answer was no, so he could be the first one to show me.

  “Not yet.”

  “Here.” He found a pink plastic mirror, the little-girl kind. I had no idea where it came from, and I wondered for one weird little moment, Did some girl die in here?

  And then I saw myself. My hair in front was standing s
traight up, and there were stripes of dried blood from my upper lip to my forehead. My nose had a little quarter-inch gash on the side that didn’t look like much, and didn’t feel like anything. Of course, my nostrils were now completely different sizes.

  Wexler knocked my hand away. “Don’t mess with it.”

  “Or what? It’s going to stay that way?”

  We both laughed—but only until that little blue curtain opened and I saw my mom standing there.

  “Oh, Jesus.” She looked pretty much like someone who had gotten a call in the middle of the night to come get their kid at the hospital. It was maybe two in the morning by now. “What happened to you?”

  She came over and put a hand on my cheek. Wexler looked around like he didn’t know where to be anymore.

  And I looked up into her eyes, and I said, “I fell down on the cement.”

  Chapter 1

  11:11

  When I woke up the next morning, my clock said 11:11. That meant Mom was long gone to work, and I had the house to myself.

  I lay there for a while, piecing it all together.

  The strange part was how nothing hurt. I kept touching my nose and honking it back and forth, trying to get some kind of pain out of it, but nothing came. It seemed wrong, somehow—not just physically, but theoretically. I mean, when you fall down on your face huffing whippets in back of the restaurant where you work, it’s supposed to hurt. You’d think.

  More than anything, I felt relieved. It seemed like the worst of this could be behind me, as long as Mom never found out what happened. I didn’t like lying to her, but it was done now. I wasn’t about to start undoing it.

  In fact, I wouldn’t have to. Someone else was about to do it for me.

  In two hours, Rita Neemeyer was going to come over to Mom’s desk at their real estate agency and say she wasn’t sure she should be butting in like this but thought maybe it was better to say something than not say something, just in case. And Mom would ask Rita what she was talking about, and Rita would ask Mom if she’d seen the paper that day. Then she’d put it down in front of her, opened to a small story on page 3, circled in blue pen.

  WHIPPED CREAM NOT UP TO SNUFF

  Green River—June 24—A young Green River man found there’s more than just whipped cream in those cans when he sustained a broken nose

  Technically, that’s a lie. I didn’t actually break my nose, and the hospital said so.

  after inhaling too much of the gas inside. Chris Schweitzer, 18, was treated and released at Richmond County hospital after he fell in the parking lot of Smiley’s Restaurant, where he is employed. Smiley’s management was not immediately available for comment.

  I have no idea how that story made its way into the paper, or which reporter was just enough of an insomniac to have somehow picked up on it in the middle of the night. All I know for sure is that it happened.

  I imagine Mom sitting at her desk and reading it, all calm on the outside while someone holds an X-ray up to her head, where you can see the little mushroom cloud going off inside. She wouldn’t say anything, though. She’d wait until she was alone again and then hunt me down on the phone, so she could be exactly as pissed off as she didn’t want Rita to see her being.

  That would come around one-fifteen, but right now it was just after eleven, and I was feeling like I’d dodged a major bullet.

  I took my time getting up, and called Wexler. He was in his car and said I should meet him and Anna at the platform. I told him Mom had gone out and gotten cinnamon rolls that morning, and they should get the coffee. They knew how I liked mine.

  12:00

  I don’t know what the platform used to be. Now it’s just four wooden legs and a bunch of boards about three feet off the ground, in the middle of the golf course. And we call it the golf course, but it isn’t one, and never was. It’s just this wide-open space in the middle of our town that they keep mowed, like it’s the place you’d go if you wanted to drive some balls (which I’ve never seen anyone do).

  Anna got up on her knees when she saw me coming. She made the same sucking sound the doctor had made, and her hands floated up at her sides like little wings.

  “Does it hurt?”

  I shook my head. “You should feel inside.” I put down the cinnamon rolls and stuck my two pointers in my nostrils to show her. One went straight up, the other went in at a forty-five-degree angle.

  “No. Way.” She already had her two fingers pointed up and ready.

  “Hold.” Wexler leaned in and took the food out of range. “Okay, go ahead.” He’s funny about stuff like that.

  So is Anna, but in the opposite way. She went right for it and put both pointers inside my nostrils, felt around for a second, and then wiped her fingers off on my shorts. “And it doesn’t hurt? How is that possible?”

  “Physically? Or theoretically?”

  I think she thought I was joking, and turned away from me toward the food. I always hated that—losing her attention. Wexler held on to the bag and handed her a roll to keep her nose-fresh fingers out, and I took one, too.

  After that, Wexler and I spent a little time getting our stories straight and making sure Anna knew what we were going to tell anyone who asked—that I tripped over a milk crate, passed out, and didn’t wake up until the ambulance got there. End of story. It didn’t seem that complicated actually, and pretty soon we were back to hanging out in the sun, doing nothing, and having exactly the kind of day I was hoping we could have all summer long.

  So when my phone rang, I didn’t even bother to pull it out of my pocket. There was nobody I felt like talking to anyway. But then, about thirty seconds later, Wex’s phone rang, too, and everything changed again.

  He took it out, looked at it, and looked right back up at me.

  “Schweitz,” he said. “It’s your mom.”

  5:30

  Mom’s phone call was bad, but the scene at home later was much worse. She used the word disappointed at least three times, and asked a lot—a lot—of questions, especially about “what else I’d tried” and how I’d “gotten started.” It only got more complicated from there.

  The truth

  What I told her

  What I’d tried

  Pot and beer, a few times. Vodka twice (liked it). Tequila once (hated it).

  “I tried beer at a party once, and I didn’t like it. Last night was just a stupid, one-time thing.”

  How I got started

  My brother and sister made a little project out of me when they were home two Christmases ago.

  “You know, just the usual, friends and stuff. But not Wexler or Anna. They’ve never tried anything.”

  That last part about Wexler shows you exactly the kind of liar I am, given that (duh) he’d been with me when this happened.

  Mom just looked sad. “I don’t know, Chris,” she said. “I’m not sure what to believe anymore.” Then she turned and walked away from me, which was the worst part.

  The thing with my mom is, she’s been with a lot of liars, including my father, and the one thing I’d always felt like I could do for her was to not be one, too. Now I’d blown even that ( = guilt). (And for the record, it’s not like Mom has had so many boyfriends; it’s just that the liar to non-liar ratio has been, basically, something to zero.)

  A second later, she came back in with the phone, hit the redial button, and handed it to me. That could only mean one thing.

  “You already talked to him?” I asked, incredulous. “How did you get him to answer at work?”

  And then he was there.

  “Chris?”

  As soon as I heard his voice, I tried to put the phone back in Mom’s hand, because I ha
d nothing to say.

  “Chris?”

  She took the phone then. “Mark, it’s me. He’s just standing here. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.” She put the handset on speaker and set it down on the table. “Go ahead.”

  “Chris, it’s Dad.”

  No kidding.

  “Listen, I’m really glad you’re okay. I’ve already talked to Mom about all this, and I don’t think you’re going to like what I have to say. I’m just going to lay it out for you. Are you listening?”

  My stomach felt like a fist.

  “He’s here,” Mom said.

  “You’re either going to come here and live with us for the summer, successfully, by my rules, or you’re going to pay your own way in the fall.”

  Giant bomb, hitting the town. Buildings, falling over. Lives, ruined.

  “That’s it?” All of a sudden I was talking to him. “Just like that?”

  “College is a privilege, Chris. It shouldn’t be, but it is. So yes, just like that. I’m more than happy to pay for your education, you know that, but after last night, I’m going to need some assurance that this is a good investment.”

  That statement says a lot about my father. I know that he knows I’m a human being, but I think I’m also like a point on a graph to him, where graph = life. One axis is Time, the other is The Realization of My Potential, as defined by him, and I rise and fall with every accomplishment and every screwup.

  “I’ve got you on a flight Sunday morning. Nothing direct. You’ll have to change in Chicago,” he said. Like that was the part that mattered.