Free Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini Page B

pulling $600 out of my pocket, I select $500 with the sweaty tips of my fingers, pushing seven of the twenties
aside. Maybe that’ll be enough. I give it to him—so thick.
    “Wow, man, you don’t need to give me this much.” He smiles.
    “Really?”
    “No, actually, you do.” Rack clenches with laughter, pinches a squip from the box and holds it in one hand with my cash in the other.
    “Gimme!” I grab. Rack holds it above his head, grins—a return to grade school, a game of keep away.
    “Calm down, dude, calm down. What do you want to take your pill with? I’ve heard people say that if you drink Mountain Dew, it works best.”
    “Fine!” I hold my hand out. “Whatever.”
    The pill plops in my hand with a gorgeous little pat. “Here,” Rack says, “I just happen to keep some Dew behind the Tevas.” He reaches back and pulls out a bottle of
incredibly flat, green quasi-soda. I put it to my mouth and swig it—it coats my teeth in a thick sugar film. Ugh. Nasty. But…
dun da da dunh da dunn dunn
…
    The pill goes down.



“What now?” I lean against a Payless shelf. “What’s happening?”
    “I dunno.” Rack lounges on a step ladder and lights up a cigarette. “You hear anything yet?”
    I shake my head.
    “Well, it’s warming up. It’ll start soon.”
    I picture the pill in my stomach, opening like a cocoon, allowing the tiny (invisible?) computer inside to pass through the pinched gate of my duodenum into my intestines and mush its way
through my intestinal walls into my bloodstream and shoot its way up to my brain to my neurons (bio class) to start talking to me. What kind of computer is it? How does it work, exactly?
    “Do you have one?” I ask Rack.
    “Of course.” He drags his cigarette lazily.
    “Is it on right now?”
    “Sure is. It just said you were a chump, but I don’t think so.”
    “Wow. Did yours get you a girlfriend?”
    “Man, that’s the first thing it does, is get you a girlfriend. I bet yours is working on that right now.”
    “That’s what I want.”
    Rack nods, rolls his eyes.
    T ING .
    Whoa. Here we go.
    W ELCOME TO SQUIP 2.5.
    It’s a voice, in my head, but it isn’t all that strange. It’s like my own voice, but deeper, older, more authoritative. It sounds like—
    “Keanu Reeves?”
    “Yeah! You’re hearing it?” Rack stands up.
    “It’s
Keanu Reeves’s
voice?”
    “Sure, but that’s just the default.” Rack swishes his cigarette, explains. “You can set it for Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, Tyrese; you can even give it a sexy female
voice if you want, but I find that distracting.”
    SQUIP 2.5 CALIBRATION AND ACCESS PROCEDURE IN PROGRESS.
    “Aaaaaagh!”
Pain like a motorcycle races through my head. “Jesus!
Agh!
”
    “It’s okay!” Rack puts an arm around me. “It only happens once. It’s picking out information from your brain.”
    “Oh my God…” It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced, transcendent pain, from temple to temple, death, fear, agony, like a spike bent through my ear…and
then it’s over.
    H ELLO , J EREMY .
    “Hey. Ugh.”
    P LEASE . D O NOT TALK TO ME OUT LOUD .
    “It’s working!” I tell Rack.
    Y ES, IT IS WORKING . “I T ” HAS A LOT OF WORK TO DO, BY THE LOOK OF THINGS .
    “It’s
working
!” I grin.
    “Welcome to the world,” Rack says. I expect a hug from him or something, but all he does is get up, crush his cigarette underfoot and lead me back, past monoliths of shoes, to the
Payless retail area. A girl is waiting by the cash register.
    “Excuse me, is there a reason nobody’s attending to customers in here?” she asks, hair bouncing against her cheek, indignant.
    T ARGET FEMALE INACCESIBLE DUE TO INTEREST IN OTHER PARTY , the squip declares.
    “I’m really sorry, miss,” Rack says. He smiles like he can’t help it. “But I don’t know why you’re here. You have nicer shoes than we stock anywhere in
this place.”
    “Well,” the girl says. “I’m not looking for me; I’m