Free Antsy Does Time by Neal Shusterman

Better you than some other creep, right?”
    I wasn’t sure whether he was REALLY okay with it, or just pretending to be okay with it. The only similar situation in recent memory had to do with Ira’s ten-year-old sister, who was kissed in the playground by some twelve-year-old last Valentine’s Day. The second Ira heard about it, he assembled a posse to terrorize the kid, and now she might never be kissed again.
    This situation was different, though. First of all, she kissed me, not the other way around. Secondly, she’s Gunnar’s older sister, so it’s not like he’s got to be protective, right?
    â€œShe likes you because you’re genuine,” Gunnar said. “You’re the real thing.”
    This was news to me. I don’t even know what “thing” he meant, so how could I be the real one? But if it’s a thing Kjersten liked, that was fine with me. And as for being “genuine,” the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a big deal that was. See, there’s basically three types of guys at our school: poseurs, droolers, and losers. The poseurs are always pretending to be somebody they’re not, until they forget who they actually are and end up being nobody. The droolers have brains that have shriveled to the size of a walnut, which could either be genetic or media-induced. And the losers, well, they eventually find one another in all that muck at the bottom of the gene pool, but trust me, it’s not pretty.
    Those of us who don’t fit into those three categories have a harder time in life, because we gotta figure things out for ourselves—which leaves more opportunity for personal advancement, and mental illness—but hey, no pain, no gain.
    So Kjersten liked “genuine” guys. The problem with genuine is that it’s not something you can try to be, because the second you try, you’re not genuine anymore. Mostly it’s about being clueless, I think. Being decent, but clueless about your own decency.
    I don’t know if I’m genuine, but since I’m fairly clueless most of the time, I figured I was halfway there.
    â€œSo . . . what do you think I should do?” I asked, parading my cluelessness like suddenly it’s a virtue.
    â€œYou should ask her for a date,” Gunnar said.
    This time I sprayed the herbicide in my eyes.
    My advice to you: avoid spraying herbicide in your eyes if at all you can help it. Use a face mask, like the bottle says in bright red, but did I listen? No. The pain temporarily knocked Gunnar’s suggestion to the back of my brain, and the world became a faraway place for a while.
    I spent half an hour in the bathroom washing out my eyes while Gunnar threw me a few famous quotes about the therapeutic nature of pain. By the time my optical agony faded to a dull throbbing behind my eyelids, I felt like I had just woken up from surgery. Then I step out of the bathroom, and who’s coming in the front door? Kjersten.
    â€œAntsy! Hi!” She sounded maybe a little more enthusiastic than she had intended to. I think that was a good thing. Then she looked at me funny. “Have you been crying?”
    â€œWhat? Oh! No, it’s just the herbicide.”
    She looked at me even more funny, so I told her, “Gunnar and I were killing plants.”
    Kjersten apparently had a whole range of looking-at-you-funny expressions. “Is this . . . a hobby of yours?”
    I took a deep breath, slowed my brain down—if that’s even possible—and tried to explain our whole dust-bowl project in such a way that I didn’t sound either moronic or certifiably insane. It must have worked, because the funny expressions stopped.
    Then Mrs. Ümlaut called from the kitchen. “Are you staying for dinner, Antsy?”
    â€œSure he is,” Kjersten said with a grin. “He can’t drive home with his eyes like that.”
    â€œI . . . uh . . . don’t