The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp

along with her. Surely my car is somewhere close by. In the condition I was in, I probably didn’t walk too far before sitting down for a rest.
    This sounds el fabuloso to her. After all, usually her mother drives the truck and she heaves the papers out the window. If I can get the right throwing motion down, she figures I’ll be a real ace paperboy.
    The back of the junky white pickup contains three bundles of unfolded newspapers and the cab is piled high with folded ones, crisp as new ears of corn. “How big is this paper route of yours?” I ask as we pull away from the curb.
    “Practically this whole side of town,” she says, and I’m like, “Jesus Christ, I didn’t know newspaper throwing was such big business. You must reel in a lot of cash.”
    “My mom does. She gives me an allowance out of it.”
    “That doesn’t sound fair.”
    “It doesn’t?”
    “Of course not. If you do half the work, you ought to be fifty-fifty partners. Maybe more, since you have to do all the work when she goes out blowing her money at the Indian casino.”
    “That’s all right,” she says. “She pays most of the bills.”
    “Most of them?”
    “Sometimes I have to chip in.”
    “She sure saw you coming.”
    Down the street we drive, moving at senior-citizen speed since she has to tell me which houses to deliver to. I take to the throwing part right away, though—it’s a sideways motion from the chest out, kind of like throwing a Frisbee. Before we make a whole block, I’m already pitching way into the yards, almost to the porches. I’m a natural.
    My head’s still a little woozy, but gradually, it’s clearing up, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Thoughts of what Mom and Geech will have to say about me staying out all night start to trickle in. It’s not hard to predict—Geech is bound to come with the good old military school threat. He must have that recorded on a chip and installed in his robot head.
    Mom, she’ll go into her routine about what the neighbors would think if they saw me traipsing in at such-and-such time in the morning. What I want to know is why should she care? She doesn’t even like the neighbors. But that doesn’t matter. She worries more about what people think than anyone else in the universe. I’m always embarrassing her somehow. I guess I must have inherited that trait from Dad.
    But I don’t know why I should have to explain anything to anybody. Why shouldn’t I be doing exactly what I’m doing? It’s superb to be out in the early, early morning before the sun comes up. There’s this sense of being super-alive. You’re in on a secret that all the dull, sleeping people don’t know about. Unlike them, you’re alert and aware of existing right here in this precise moment between what happened and what’s going to happen. I’m sure my dad’s been here. Mom might have been once. But Geech? Robots don’t have any idea of what it’s like to be really alive, and they never will.

Chapter 17
    After finishing up three streets, we’re out of rolled newspapers and still haven’t run across my car. Aimee pulls over and brings a bundle from the back around to the cab so we can get some more ready to throw. She shows me her method of folding, then rolling, then slapping on the rubber band, but there’s no way I can keep up with her once we get started. Her hands are magic. I swear the girl gets three done for every one I finish.
    “How many of these things have you folded in your life?” I ask as she pitches another finished product onto the floorboard by my feet.
    “I don’t know.” Her hands keep working. “It feels like about a hundred million.”
    I ask if her mom has a day job too, but she says no, the paper route is her only job. Her mom’s boyfriend is on disability with a bad back. He collects his disability check and buys and sells things on eBay. That’s when he’s not sitting around watching TV in his sweatpants. A lot of kids might have sounded bitter about