Free How to Be a Normal Person by TJ Klune Page B

“Robert Redford is like cheese: he ages well and I want to put him in my mouth.”
    “No, but seriously,” Casey said. “ What .”
    “Oh,” Lottie said. “Gus can list off every Academy Award nomination and winner in every category of every year of the Oscars.”
    “Dude,” Casey said.
    “It’s just a thing,” Gus grumbled.
    “Dude,” Casey demanded.
    “Stop calling me dude!”
    “Pastor Tommy could do it too,” Lottie said. “Taught Gus everything he knows.”
    “Best Documentary,” Casey said. “1967.”
    “ The Anderson Platoon .”
    “Best Musical Score 1952.”
    “Alfred Newman for With a Song in My Heart .”
    “Best Film Editing 1986!”
    “Thom Noble for Witness .”
    “Cinematography 1937!”
    “Tony Gaudio for Anthony Adverse .”
    “ Dude ,” Casey breathed. “You… you just…. Who are you?”
    Gus frowned. “I’m Gus,” he said, though he didn’t know how well that explained it.
    “No,” Casey said. “You’re—like, okay, stay with me here, okay? So, if Jesus was still alive and he was totally into movies and could memorize shit because of the way his brain works, that’s who you’d be. Don’t you get it? You’re a cinematic Jesus .”
    Well. Gus didn’t know quite how to take that. “Are you… complimenting me?”
    “Yeah. Yes. Holy shit, yes.”
    “By calling me a cinematic Jesus.”
    “Praise be!” Casey said, throwing his hands in the air.
    “Contact high,” Gus said. “This has to be a contact high.”
    And how Casey smiled .
     
     
    WHEN THERE was a knock at his door that night, Gus was slightly confused. He understood the concept of knocking on a door (and had, in fact, done it a few times himself in his life). What was confusing to him, though, was the fact that someone was knocking on his door.
    He set down the encyclopedia (halfway through the entry on Greece) and stared at the door from his spot in Pastor Tommy’s recliner.
    The knock came again.
    “Huh,” Gus said. “So that’s what that sounds like.”
    Gus didn’t know if it were odd or not to hear for what was probably the first time someone knocking on the front door. Pastor Tommy always had an open-door policy for anyone who ever wanted to stop by. And people did because people loved Pastor Tommy, who would sit in his chair with a bong in one hand, his other flailing wildly as he told stories about the time he went scuba diving and was accosted by an amorous squid or when he outdrank an Irishman in an Irish Pub in Ireland (though, that last was really drinking with a guy named O’Malley in a pub in Portland). If Gus’s bedroom door was ever shut, it meant he needed privacy and Pastor Tommy respected that. (“You don’t need to be ashamed about masturbating, Gus, everyone does it, your teachers do it, police officers, the mailman, politicians, I do it, everyone seriously does it so stop being all weird about it and just shut your door and turn on music and go to town, oh my god.”)
    After Pastor Tommy died, Gus never left the front door open and people didn’t come over anymore. It was easier that way.
    Until now.
    “Huh,” Gus said again as the knock came a third time. Then he remembered that when one has a door knocked upon, it is customary to find out who is on the other side.
    Sometimes when he got home, Gus did not wear pants. He was thankful today was not one of those days. He didn’t think it would have been appropriate to answer the front door in nothing but his tighty-whities.
    He reached the door and heard someone shuffling outside on the porch. The door didn’t have a peephole and Gus was not a stupid man, so he said loudly, “If you’re here to rob me, you should know that I have a basic understanding of martial arts and will not hesitate to unleash my fury upon your thieving ways.”
    “Whoa,” a voice said on the other side of the door. “Are you serious? Dude. Please don’t karate chop my face.”
    Gus sighed heavily and opened the door, flipping on the