Free The Astonishing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga

longer, then set her jaw as if making a decision. Soon we were on the outskirts of Brookdale, where Route 54 stretches for miles and miles, south to Finn's Crossing and north to Canterstown. There's nothing but empty farmland on Route 54, except for a housing development that went in a couple of years ago, a lonely cluster of cloned houses squatting on the side of the road.
    Kyra pulled into the development and guided the car past quiet houses that may as well have been from a ghost town. At the end of the development the road terminated in a circle of five houses, beyond which loomed trees and tall grass.
    "C'mon," she said, finally lighting the cigarette after she killed the engine.
    Technically, it was trespassing. We walked right through someone's yard, sneaked behind their house, then headed into the woods. Just when I was starting to worry about getting lost, the woods opened up into a broad clearing. I could see fallow farmland in the distance. The ground sloped down to a chain-link fence, which ran in a rough oblong around a weedy, muddy flat, then sloped back up on all sides of the oblong. It was like the ground made a bowl here.
    Kyra sat down on the slope, then lay flat on her back, a black line on the green grass. I sat down next to her and listened to the wind in the leaves, the rustle of grass, a croaking that could have been a frog or just wind in a hollow log. Kyra blew plumes of smoke into the sky.
    We said nothing for the longest time.
    I guess that part of me that wants to know is persistent. I know how I got here. But sitting here now, in the quiet, needing to say nothing, feeling no need to speak, just watching her black lips surrender white-gray clouds, it really doesn't matter.

Chapter Seventeen
     
    "Y OU LIKE THIS PLACE ?" she asks after a while.
    She's been lying there with her eyes closed, so I've been watching her fearlessly. At the sound of her voice, I avert my eyes as if caught doing something, even though she's still not looking.
    "It's nice."
    "Nice?" She opens one eye and blows smoke through her nostrils, snorting aurally
and
visually. "Nice? That's it?"
    "I'm not big on nature stuff. It's pretty."
    She laughs. "It's a testament to stupidity is what it is." She flicks the cigarette butt down the slope in the general direction of the fenced-in swamp. "It used to be beautiful here. There was a pond down there." She points to the fence. "Then they built the houses back there, and the idiots who bought the houses decided that they didn't want the pond because they were all afraid of mosquitoes breeding in it. So they drained it and figured they'd build a playground instead."
    "And?"
    "And look." With a hand, she sweeps the entire vista. "No one could be bothered. They drained it, the imaginary mosquito problem went away, and they couldn't be bothered to do anything else. So what could have been a little bit of unspoiled nature in the middle of more stupid cookie-cutter houses, they made a dumb-ass swamp and fenced it in so the dumb-ass kids they all bred won't accidentally fall in." She looks at me seriously. "people are stupid. people suck. period."
    "Yeah. I know."
    "That's what I like about you."
    I shiver even though it's warm. What's going on here?
That's what I like about you.
What am I supposed to do? Does she want to be my girlfriend? That's impossible. The silence hangs in the air, heavy and impossible to ignore, so I say the first thing that comes to my mind:
    "There's a comic book convention next weekend. You want to go?"
    "Are you asking me on a
date,
fanboy?"
    Back to fanboy, then. In which case, no, I'm
not
asking her on a date.
    "Just wondering if you wanted to go, that's all."
    "Anyone there I care about?"
    I should have checked that. I
will
check that. I tell her so, then add, "Bendis will be there. I know
you
don't care, but that's a pretty big deal, whether you like his stuff or not."
    "Whatever." Dismissive hand wave.
    "Oh, come on! Come on! You have to admit it—it's a big