Paper Towns pdfdrive com

pillowy.”
“Personally,” Ben said, “I think at least one of the words should be
buhbuhbuhbuh.”
“I don’t think I’m familiar with that word,” I said.
“It’s the sound my mouth makes when I’m giving a honeybunny the patented
Ben Starling Speedboat.” At which point Ben mimicked what he would do in the
unlikely event that his face ever encountered cleavage.
“Right now,” I said, “although they have no idea why, thousands of girls all
across America are feeling a chill of fear and disgust run down their spines.
Anyway, I didn’t hook up with her, perv.”
“Typical,” Ben said. “I’m the only guy I know with the balls to give a
honeybunny what she wants, and the only one with no opportunities.”
“What an amazing coincidence,” I said. It was life as it had always been—
only more fatigued. I had hoped that last night would change my life, but it
hadn’t—at least not yet.

---

The second bell rang. We hustled off to class.
I became extremely tired during calc first period. I mean, I had been tired since
waking, but combining fatigue with calculus seemed unfair. To stay awake, I was
scribbling a note to Margo— nothing I’d ever send to her, just a summary of my
favorite moments from the night before—but even that could not keep me
awake. At some point, my pen just stopped moving, and I found my field of
vision shrinking and shrinking, and then I was trying to remember if tunnel
vision was a symptom of fatigue. I decided it must be, because there was only
one thing in front of me, and it was Mr. Jiminez at the blackboard, and this was
the only thing that my brain could process, and so when Mr. Jiminez said,
“Quentin?” I was extraordinarily confused, because the one thing happening in
my universe was Mr. Jiminez writing on the blackboard, and I couldn’t fathom
how he could be both an auditory and a visual presence in my life.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Did you hear the question?”
“Yes?” I asked again.
“And you raised your hand to answer it?” I looked up, and sure enough my
hand was raised, but I did not know how it had come to be raised, and I only sort
of knew how to go about de-raising it. But then after considerable struggle, my
brain was able to tell my arm to lower itself, and my arm was able to do so, and
then finally I said, “I just needed to ask to go to the bathroom?”
And he said, “Go ahead,” and then someone else raised a hand and answered
some question about some kind of differential equation.
I walked to the bathroom, splashed water on my face, and then leaned over
the sink, close to the mirror, and appraised myself. I tried to rub the
bloodshotedness out of my eyes, but I couldn’t. And then I had a brilliant idea. I
went into a stall, put the seat down, sat down, leaned against the side, and fell
asleep. The sleep lasted for about sixteen milliseconds before the second period
bell rang. I got up and walked to Latin, and then to physics, and then finally it
was fourth period, and I found Ben in the cafeteria and said, “I really need a nap
or something.”
“Let’s have lunch with RHAPAW,” he answered.

---

RHAPAW was a fifteen-year-old Buick that had been driven with impunity by
all three of Ben’s older siblings and was, by the time it reached Ben, composed
primarily out of duct tape and spackle. Her full name was Rode Hard And Put
Away Wet, but we called her RHAPAW for short. RHAPAW ran not on gasoline,
but on the inexhaustible fuel of human hope. You would sit on the blisteringly
hot vinyl seat and hope she would start, and then Ben would turn the key and the
engine would turn over a couple times, like a fish on land making its last,
meager, dying flops. And then you would hope harder, and the engine would
turn over a couple more times. You hoped some more, and it would finally catch.
Ben started RHAPAW and turned the AC on high. Three of the four windows
didn’t even open, but the air conditioner worked magnificently, though for the
first few minutes it was just hot air blasting out of the vents and mixing with the
hot stale air in the car. I reclined the passenger seat all the way back, so that I
was almost lying down, and I told him everything: Margo at my window, the
Wal-Mart, the revenge, the SunTrust Building, entering the wrong house,
SeaWorld, the I-will-miss-hanging-out-with-you.
He didn’t interrupt me once—Ben was a good friend in the not-interrupting
way—but when I finished, he immediately asked me the most pressing question
in his mind.
“Wait, so about Jase Worthington, how small are we talking?”
“Shrinkage may have played a role, since he was under significant anxiety,
but have you ever seen a pencil?” I asked him, and Ben nodded. “Well, have you
ever seen a pencil eraser?” He nodded again. “Well, have you ever seen the little
shavings of rubber left on the paper after you erase something?” More nodding.
“I’d say three shavings long and one shaving wide,” I said. Ben had taken a lot
of crap from guys like Jason Worthington and Chuck Parson, so I figured he was
entitled to enjoy it a little. But he didn’t even laugh. He was just shaking his
head slowly, awestruck.
“God, she is such a badass.”
“I know.”
“She’s the kind of person who either dies tragically at twenty-seven, like Jimi
Hendrix and Janis Joplin, or else grows up to win, like, the first-ever Nobel Prize
for Awesome.”
“Yeah,” I said. I rarely tired of talking about Margo Roth Spiegelman, but I
was rarely this tired. I leaned back against the cracked vinyl headrest and fell
immediately asleep. When I woke up, a Wendy’s hamburger was sitting in my
lap with a note. Had to go to class, bro. See you after band.

---

Later, after my last class, I translated Ovid while sitting up against the cinder-
block wall outside the band room, trying to ignore the groaning cacophony
coming from inside. I always hung around school for the extra hour during band
practice, because to leave before Ben and Radar meant enduring the unbearable
humiliation of being the lone senior on the bus.
After they got out, Ben dropped Radar off at his house right by the Jefferson
Park “village center,” near where Lacey lived. Then he took me home. I noticed
Margo’s car was not parked in her driveway, either. So she hadn’t skipped school
to sleep. She’d skipped school for another adventure—a me-less adventure.
She’d probably spent her day spreading hair-removal cream on the pillows of
other enemies or something. I felt a little left out as I walked into the house, but
of course she knew I would never have joined her anyway—I cared too much
about a day of school. And who even knew if it would be just a day for Margo.
Maybe she was off on another three-day jaunt to Mississippi, or temporarily
joining the circus. But it wasn’t either of those, of course. It was something I
couldn’t imagine, that I would never imagine, because I couldn’t be Margo.
I wondered what stories she would come home with this time. And I
wondered if she would tell them to me, sitting across from me at lunch. Maybe, I
thought, this is what she meant by I will miss hanging out with you. She knew
she was heading somewhere for another of her brief respites from Orlando’s
paperness. But when she came back, who knew? She couldn’t spend the last
weeks of school with the friends she’d always had, so maybe she would spend
them with me after all.
She didn’t have to be gone long for the rumors to start. Ben called me that night
after dinner. “I hear she’s not answering her phone. Someone on Facebook said
she’d told them she might move into a secret storage room in Tomorrowland at
Disney.”
“That’s idiotic,” I said.
“I know. I mean, Tomorrowland is by far the crappiest of the Lands.
Someone else said she met a guy online.”

---

“Ridiculous,” I said.
“Okay, fine, but what?”
“She’s somewhere by herself having the kind of fun we can only imagine,” I
said.
Ben giggled. “Are you saying that she’s playing with herself?”
I groaned. “Come on, Ben. I mean she’s just doing Margo stuff. Making
stories. Rocking worlds.”
That night, I lay on my side, staring out the window into the invisible world
outside. I kept trying to fall asleep, but then my eyes would dart open, just to
check. I couldn’t help but hope that Margo Roth Spiegelman would return to my
window and drag my tired ass through one more night I’d never forget.

---