Free Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes Page B

ate, like, a few bites, man.”
    I shrugged. “If there’s not enough of my germs, I could sneeze on it for you.”
    He laughed. “Good one, Karl. I wish I’d thought of it.”
    “You will if you’re ever not hungry.” I passed him my tray. “I have to grab something from the library.”
    “First Paul, then you. Is it my breath?”
    I got up. “No, that’s what keeps girls away.” He snarfed, so I said, “Hey, I offered to sneeze on it for you, you don’t have to do it yourself.”
    Like Paul always said, you don’t waste a curtain line, so I went.
     
     
    After not being hungry at lunch, I was starving all afternoon and couldn’t concentrate in chem, or in Agreeing with Harry, or even in French.
    Walking home—I usually did if the weather was good and I didn’t have to get over to Browning’s to deliver a couch—I mostly watched my shoes and didn’t go very fast. I was going to buy dinner at Philbin’s Drug Store rather than try and find anything clean and not-cat-chewed at home. The one problem I didn’t have was poverty, and at Philbin’s I could get a science fiction novel or a mystery or even just a comic book to enjoy with dinner.
    “Hi,” a girl said behind me. “I’m going to introduce myself to you because—”
    I turned. “Your name is Marti,” I said. “Coach Gratz made sure everybody would remember.”
    I could tell from how she flushed that that was a real stupid thing to say. For just a sec I felt like shit.
    Then she made herself smile, revealing her braces. “This is the part where you tell me your name. That way you can say ‘Hi, Marti’ and I don’t have to say ‘Hello, geek.’ ”
    I laughed. “My name is Karl Shoemaker. I’m sorry.”
    “Oh, that’s all right, I was hoping for you to have a good name, but don’t apologize, I’m sure your parents liked it.”
    I was so out of it I almost went on to explain that no, I meant I was sorry about having brought up the thing with Gratz, then finally got my head together enough, and realized what she’d said was funny. So after an interval just long enough for her to decide I was retarded, I said, “Uh, yeah. Um, I’m kinda thinking too much and I’m a little slow about everything. Uh.” I was sounding fucking brilliant, I can tell you that. “So you’re new this year. Where’d you come from?”
    “Prison,” she said. “Are you going this way for a while? I’d like to try to make friends.”
    “I’m going downtown,” I said. “Walk along if you like.”
    She was bony, with about as womanly a figure as I had. Her belted-in jeans bunched and sagged around her ass. She was wearing grody old loafers without socks. Her frizzy blonde hair bunched around her head so that she looked like a tree drawn by Dr. Seuss.
    “Most people, when I say I came from prison,” Marti said, “either laugh like they’re afraid I will think that they didn’t get the joke, or they’re so literal-minded that they ask ‘really?’ Most people don’t stay dead silent, when I say that.”
    I wasn’t going to tell her that I’d been trying to figure out exactly how small her boobs were. “I figured if I waited a little, you’d tell me.”
    “Karl, you’re a great person,” she said. “A really great person.”
    I had no idea what she was talking about. “So what prison were you in?”
    “Prison with style. My dad kept putting me into genius schools to teach me discipline so I could live up to my potential. It didn’t really work out.”
    “You didn’t learn discipline?” I asked, feeling stupid.
    “No, that’s all I learned, was discipline. I had to—there was so much homework and it was so hard. After a few months, I’d start to cry all the time, and then he’d move me to another genius school.” She sighed. “I didn’t actually have any potential. Well, not, didn’t have ‘any,’ any, but not like the kids that go to those schools do. The trouble is that Dad is a genius, a real one I mean, and he thinks