Free Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini Page A

good-byes, and make off with a backpack full of Beanie Babies. (I have to duck down and walk like an army commando when I
pass the kitchen window so she won’t see.) Once Mom picks me up, everything is secure, and I’ve even managed to take a digital photo of the Beanies sitting on a bush for my eBay sales
shot. Mom asks me how it went, and I tell her I’m always cool with doing family stuff.

Even without the squip, a week later I discover one way to be Cool—walking around with lots of money. Heading into the Menlo Park Mall with $640 in Beanie Baby-derived
cash (more than expected! I put them online Saturday, priced them to move by Tuesday, got payment Wednesday, got the eBay ATM card Friday, withdrew the money Saturday) I feel like Jake Dillinger
must feel when he strides across the lawn to Christine’s house, knowing he’s going to get some. I’m in control of everything. Even if I don’t find a squip at this Payless
Shoes, at least I’ll have wised up to the joys of sauntering around with lots of cash.
    Michael drove me here; he’s off in HMV listening to music in one of those kiosks where one of the buttons (or headphones) is always busted. I head to the first Payless Shoes I can find: no
customers, briskly over-air-conditioned, no attendants to help you try shoes on, and that familiar ’80s black-yellow-and-orange Payless color scheme. There’s one cashier, an Asian
teenager. This might be it!
    “Hi, I’m looking for Rack,” I approach.
    “Yeah.”
    “You’re him?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Hey.”
    “Hey.”
    Rack has the Asian Wolverine haircut with the two oversize bangs, bleached, hanging down across his eyes; his hair is short and buzzed in the back. He’s probably eighteen, although I tend
to think kids my age are eighteen because I have such a warped self-image; he could be fifteen. He’s not from Middle Borough, though; I’d have him cataloged.
    “Yeah, hi, um, I got sent here by, ah, the…” Jesus, I never got the guy’s name. “By the
guy
over at B. Bowl-Town lanes. You know who I mean?”
    “Oh yes.” Rack smiles, polishing a shoe. “My cousin. So you’re looking for a squip, right?”
    “Yeah.” I bite my lip, duck my head into my neck, wary.
    “Well, do you have the money?”
    “Sure.” I grip the wad tightly in my pocket.
    “What’s your name, then?”
    “Jeremy.”
    “Well, all right, Jeremy. I’m gonna be your guide today. C’mon.” Rack gives a well-toothed grin, shakes my hand, and opens a gate that I didn’t even know was a gate
in the Payless countertop. I step through into his world: exotic topless calendars on the inside of shelves that hold shoe polish and extra laces.
    “The squips got moved in back with the legit merchandise,” Rack explains. “We got a bunch of new ones in and we’ve had lots of people asking for them so we had to secure
them, y’know? Let’s walk.” We leave the counter unattended and venture back into the Payless inventory hangar, full of shoes in boxes that lack the insignias and celebrity faces
that get you to buy them in the first place.
    “Stop,” Rack says, removing a totally nondescript Reebok box off the particular nondescript shelf we’re at. The back of this Payless is really
big
; it stretches to an
indoor horizon like the hallway of my school.
    “Take a look.” Rack opens the box; inside, padded with tissue paper, are half a dozen gray pills.
    “Nice, aren’t they?” Rack shakes his head. Then he adopts a more serious pose. “Okay, just so you know: squip is untested technology and obviously it’s not exactly
legal, which is why you’re paying for it with cash in the back of a shoe store. I take no responsibility—neither does my cousin or Payless or anybody else—for what it will do to
you. Even if you
could
spit it out and get a refund, there wouldn’t be one.”
    “Understood.”
    “Let’s see the money.”
    I try my bargaining skills a little. Rack never mentioned a price, so instead of