Read Make Something Up for Free Online

Newspapers flatter themselves. Anymore, Tricia Gedding’s Facebook page has a larger readership than our daily paper. Mass media, my foot. They cover the front page with unemployment and war, and they don’t think
that
has a negative effect? My uncle Henry reads me an article about a proposed change in state law. Officials want a ten-day waiting period on the sale of all heart defibrillators. They’re talking about mandatory background checks and mental health screenings, but it’s not the law, not yet.
    My uncle Henry looks up from the newspaper article and eyes me across breakfast. He levels me this stern look and asks, “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?”
    My uncle’s what I have instead of a mom and dad. He won’t acknowledge it, but there’s a good life over the edge of that cliff. There’s a lifetime supply of handicapped-parking permits. Uncle Henry doesn’t understand that all my friends have already jumped.
    They may be “differently abled” but my friends are still hooking up. More than ever, these days. They have smoking-hot bodies and the brains of infants. They have the best of both worlds. LeQuisha Jefferson stuck her tongue inside Hannah Finerman during Beginning Carpentry Arts, made her squeal and squirm right there, leaned up against the drill press. And Laura Lynn Marshall? She sucked off Frank Randall in the back of International Cuisine Lab with everybody watching. All their falafels got scorched, and nobody made a federal case out of it.
    After pushing the red defibrillator button, yeah, a person suffers some consequences, but he doesn’t know he’s suffering. Once he undergoes a Push-Button Lobotomy a kid can get away with murder.
    During Study Hall, I asked Boris Declan if it hurt. He was sitting there in the lunchroom with the red burn marks still fresh on either side of his forehead. He had his pants down around his knees. I asked if the shock was painful, and he didn’t answer, not right away. He just took his fingers out of his ass and sniffed them, thoughtfully. He was last year’s Junior Prom King.
    In a lot of ways he’s more chill now than he ever was. With his ass hanging out in the middle of the cafeteria, he offers me a finger to sniff and I tell him, “No, thank you.”
    He says he doesn’t remember anything. Boris Declan grins this sloppy, dopey smile. He taps a dirty fingertip to the burn mark on one side of his face. He points this same butt-stained finger to make me look across the way. On the wall where he’s pointing is this guidance counselor poster that shows white birds flapping their wings against a blue sky. Under that are the words “Actual Happiness Only Happens by Accident” printed in dreamy writing. The school hung that poster to hide the shadow of where another defibrillator used to hang.
    It’s clear that wherever Boris Declan ends up in life it’s going to be the right place. He’s already living in Brain Trauma Nirvana. The school district was right about copycats.
    No offense to Jesus, but the meek won’t inherit the earth. To judge from reality TV the loudmouths will get their hands on everything. And I say, Let Them. The Kardashians and the Baldwins are like some invasive species. Like kudzu or zebra mussels. Let them battle over the control of the crappy real world.
    For a long time I listened to my uncle and didn’t jump. Anymore, I don’t know. The newspaper warns us about terrorist anthrax bombs and virulent new strains of meningitis, and the only comfort newspapers can offer is a coupon for twenty cents off on underarm deodorant.
    To have no worries, no regrets, it’s pretty appealing. So many of the cool kids at my school have elected to self-fry that, anymore, only the losers are left. The losers and the naturally occurring pinheads. The situation is so dire that I’m a shoo-in to be valedictorian. That’s how come my uncle Henry is shipping me off. He thinks that by relocating me to Twin Falls he can postpone the