Free The MaddAddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood Page A

to asking him about it, which had taken a while. “He named me after a dead pianist, some boy genius with two n’s.”
    “So did he make you take music lessons?”
    “No,” said Crake. “He never made me do much of anything.”
    “Then what was the point?
    “Of what?”
    “Of your name. The two n’s.”
    “Jimmy, Jimmy,” said Crake. “Not everything has a point.”
    Snowman has trouble thinking of Crake as Glenn, so thoroughly has Crake’s later persona blotted out his earlier one. TheCrake side of him must have been there from the beginning, thinks Snowman: there was never any real Glenn,
Glenn
was only a disguise. So in Snowman’s reruns of the story, Crake is never Glenn, and never
Glenn-alias-Crake
or
Crake/Glenn
, or
Glenn, later Crake
. He is always just Crake, pure and simple.
    Anyway
Crake
saves time, thinks Snowman. Why hyphenate, why parenthesize, unless absolutely necessary?
    Crake turned up at HelthWyzer High in September or October, one of those months that used to be called
autumn
. It was a bright warm sunny day, otherwise undistinguished. He was a transfer, the result of some headhunt involving a parental unit: these were frequent among the Compounds. Kids came and went, desks filled and emptied, friendship was always contingent.
    Jimmy wasn’t paying much attention when Crake was introduced to the class by Melons Riley, their Hoodroom and Ultratexts teacher. Her name wasn’t Melons – that was a nickname used among the boys in the class – but Snowman can’t remember her real name. She shouldn’t have bent down so closely over his Read-A-Screen, her large round breasts almost touching his shoulder. She shouldn’t have worn her NooSkins T-shirt tucked so tightly into her zipleg shorts: it was too distracting. So that when Melons announced that Jimmy would be showing their new classmate Glenn around the school, there was a pause while Jimmy scrambled to decipher what it was she’d just said.
    “Jimmy, I made a request,” said Melons.
    “Sure, anything,” said Jimmy, rolling his eyes and leering, but not taking it too far. There was some class laughter; even Ms. Riley gave him a remote, unwilling smile. He could usually get round her with his boyish-charm act. He liked to imagine that if he hadn’t been a minor, and she his teacher and subject to abuse charges, she’d have been gnawing her way through his bedroom walls to sink her avid fingers into his youthful flesh.
    Jimmy had been full of himself back then, thinks Snowman with indulgence and a little envy. He’d been unhappy too, ofcourse. It went without saying, his unhappiness. He’d put a lot of energy into it.
    When Jimmy got around to focusing on Crake, he wasn’t too cheered. Crake was taller than Jimmy, about two inches; thinner too. Straight brown-black hair, tanned skin, green eyes, a half-smile, a cool gaze. His clothes were dark in tone, devoid of logos and visuals and written commentary – a no-name look. He was possibly older than the rest of them, or trying to act it. Jimmy wondered what kinds of sports he played. Not football, nothing too brawny. Not tall enough for basketball. He didn’t strike Jimmy as a team player, or one who would stupidly court injury. Tennis, maybe. (Jimmy himself played tennis.)
    At lunch hour Jimmy collected Crake and the two of them grabbed some food – Crake put down two giant soy-sausage dogs and a big slab of coconut-style layer cake, so maybe he was trying to bulk up – and then they trudged up and down the halls and in and out of the classrooms and labs, with Jimmy giving the running commentary.
Here’s the gym, here’s the library, those are the readers, you have to sign up for them before noon, in there’s the girls’ shower room, there’s supposed to be a hole drilled through the wall but I’ve never found it. If you want to smoke dope don’t use the can, they’ve got it bugged; there’s a microlens for Security in that air vent, don’t stare at it or they’ll