Read Online Antsy Does Time by Neal Shusterman - Free Book Online Page B

months—maybe more, because my symptoms haven’t been getting worse.” Then he patted his Binder of Life. “But maybe the real reason’s right here.”
    I let out a nervous chuckle. “Whatever it takes, right?”
    I still didn’t know if he was serious, or just playing along. The kids who donated their months were, for the most part, treating it like a game. I mean, sure, they were hung up on the rules, but it was more like how you argue over a Monopoly board, and whether or not you’re supposed to get five hundred bucks if you land on “Free Parking.” The rules say no, but people still insist it’s the cash-bonus space. In fact, my cousin Al once busted a guy’s nose over it—which sent him directly to jail, do not pass “Go.”
    The point is, even when a game gets serious, there’s still a line between game-serious and serious -serious. If I was sure which side of that line Gunnar was on, I’d have felt a whole lot better. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who felt a little unsettled around Gunnar. Sure, girls flocked to him, but when it came to our literature circles, they divided right along gender lines, with all the girls going for things that sounded romantic, like East of Eden . We had four guys in our group to start with, but they had all migrated to other novels. I suspected their migration was, much like the farmworkers in our book, driven by empty plains of death. In other words, they couldn’t handle Gunnar’s constant coming attractions about the end of his life.
    â€œI’ll never forget,” he said to Devin Gilooly, “that you were my first friend when I moved here. Would you like to be a pall-bearer?”
    Devin went bug-eyed and vampire-pale. “Yeah, sure,” he said. The next day, he not only switched to a different novel, he switched to a different English class. If it were possible, I think he would have switched to another school altogether.
    â€œDoesn’t your culture ululate for the dead?” Gunnar asked Hakeem Habibi-Jones.
    â€œWhat’s ‘ululate’ ?” Hakeem asked, making it clear that any cultural traditions had been lost in hyphenation. Gunnar demonstrated ululation, which was apparently a high-pitched warbling wail that was maybe meant to wake the dead person in question. All it succeeded in doing was chasing Hakeem away.
    After that, it was just Gunnar and me. Even now, as we started pumping out poison in his yard, I was afraid Gunnar would talk about the death of weeds and find a way to relate it to himself, like maybe he was some unwanted plant targeted by the Weedwhacker in the sky.
    He didn’t talk about himself, though. Instead he talked about me. And his sister.
    I was all set to put a painfully ugly shrub out of its misery when Gunnar said, “You know, Kjersten really likes you.”
    I turned to him, and ended up spraying herbicide on his shoes. “Sorry.”
    He took it in stride, just wiping the stuff off with a rag. “You shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “Not with that kiss all over the school paper.”
    I shrugged uncomfortably. “It wasn’t all over the paper. It was on page four. And anyway, it wasn’t really a kiss—it was just a peck. Or at least I think it was supposed to be.” But I couldn’t help but think about what Lexie had said. “Has Kjersten . . . said anything about it to you?”
    â€œShe doesn’t have to say anything—I know my sister. She doesn’t kiss just anybody.”
    There it was—confirmation from a sibling! “So, are you saying she Likes me, as in ‘Like’ with a capital L ?”
    Gunnar considered this. “More like italics,” he said. Which was fine, because the capital L was more than I could handle.
    â€œSo . . . are you okay with her liking me?”
    Gunnar continued to kill the plants. “Why shouldn’t I be?