Read Extreme Elvin for Free Online

I did the Dracula, I vant to suck your blood, penetrating stare. “Or like this one?” I turned a little sideways and fluttered my eyelids coyly like there was a fan blowing hard into my face.
    Not that it mattered. The point was that that phrase had never ever wafted my way before, “... really pretty one... staring at you.”
    “See for yourself,” he said, grabbing the back of my neck—which was fine by me now—and pointing me right at her.
    And you know what? He was right.
    There was a whole gaggle of chubby ones.
    “Look closer, man,” he said, shoving me two inches farther in the right direction.
    And he was right again. Her perfectly, impossibly round woman-in-the-moon face was ringed with black curly shiny hair that twisted and snuggled along her jawline, under her chin, along her shoulders, only then to turn back up and reach for her face. It fell over her forehead with the same curlicue determination, like a million tiny silky fingers on a million tiny black hands that wanted nothing more out of life than to just touch the soft pretty surface of her skin.
    And I wanted exactly the same thing. Nothing but to lay the tips of my fingers on that soft pretty skin.
    And true enough, the startled wide pale eyes were staring right at me. Her eyelashes were long and spiky, top and bottom, like a Venus’s-flytrap.
    I smiled. I didn’t want to, because that was not part of my cool plan.
    She smiled back, the rise of her cheek nearly obscuring the lower half of those eyes.
    I knew her. Never met her. But I knew her. She knew me. Do you know how that is? How it can be?
    What’s-his-name didn’t have to pull me or push me or talk me into it. Mikie didn’t have to convince me, and Frankie didn’t have to teach me. I started walking right over to her, even though I couldn’t feel my legs and even though this girl in the gaggle was not the plan. I felt my face pulling me across the room, to her face, which was hanging there in my sky. I was the tide to the moon of her face.
    And my heart felt something. Really, right there in the place where the heart is in cartoons, where Pepe LePew would have this valentine-shaped protrusion punching its way out of his chest. I couldn’t believe this stuff actually happened to people in real—
    “Not,” Frankie barked in my ear as he hit me from the side and moved me like a tackling sled off my route.
    “What, what?” I asked, still looking at her.
    “No way, Elvin. We didn’t come here for that. What has all our work been for? New clothes, new attitude, new Elvin, remember? You”—he poked me in the chest with his finger—“don’t belong there”—he pointed at the gaggle, where I could see her peeking out from the black ringlets. She looked confused.
    “Why? What? Maybe I... maybe. Where would I belong, Frank?”
    He spun himself around like a human spin-the-bottle, took in all the action everywhere, then zeroed in on another group.
    And a mighty fine group they appeared to be. Not all fashion models and cheerleaders, exactly, but not a bare-knuckle boxing team either.
    Now I’m good at being scared. Been scared by pretty much everything that most people would consider scary and plenty of things most people wouldn’t. But this was new. These ladies—pretty and fun-looking and all—scared me cold. That shouldn’t have been. Should that have been? Was I doing this wrong?
    “They’re out of my league, Frank,” I said, and nobody would have disagreed.
    “Hey listen to me. You make your own league in this game. Boy this is your first dance of your first year of high school. You go over there and start grazing with that herd, you might as well just chew your cud for the next four years. For the rest of your life, even, is probably what’ll happen ’cause this stuff starts right now and goes on forever.” By now Frank had me by the shoulders and was trying to shake wisdom into me.
    I was paralyzed. This was a lot. On top of a lot. I didn’t want to be doomed.