The Haters

Read The Haters for Free Online Page A

Book: Read The Haters for Free Online
Authors: Jesse Andrews
hours, and between every song Corey and I were afraid to do any talking. The entire time it was incredible. Then we went out into the hall and tried not to freak out too much.
    At that point, I would say Ash felt like one of us.
    WES,
punching a wall
: yeah
    COREY,
punching himself
: yeah
    ASH: fuck yeah guys
    COREY: heeeeerrrrrrrRRRRNNNNNNNNNN
    WES: i know this is gross but it feels like we all just had sex with each other for three hours
    COREY: i can never play jazz again
    ASH: fuck jazz
    WES: to continue to play high school–type jazz would be a catastrophic mistake for us
    COREY: the very thought of having to play another two weeks of jazz with the many herbs of this camp is making my dick retreat into my body like the head of a turtle
    [
a hyped-up silence during which corey punches himself again
]
    ASH: so actually that was the first time i’ve ever gotten to play those songs like with a band and everything
    COREY: no
    WES: what?!
    ASH: i’ve just never had anyone to play with
    COREY: fuck you! that’s not even possible!!
    WES: you’re telling us Trees Are Eating My Dad Right Now, for example, you’ve never gotten to hear that song played by a band before
    ASH: no. i mean i tried to play it with one of my sisters on piano once, but that doesn’t count
    COREY: that probably sounded like ass
    ASH: it did sound like total ass
    WES: that song could work with guitar and piano if your sister had a certain kind of approach but it sounds like she did not
    ASH: she plays like you gave billy joel mittens and a concussion
    WES: daaaaaaaamn
    COREY: real talk
    [
a silence in which everyone is thinking something different
]
    [
the silence intensifies
]
    [
he has been suppressing them pretty hard but wes’s hyper-developed hater reflexes finally kick in
]
    WES: so just,
    COREY:
    ASH:
    WES: i mean, uh
    COREY,
with growing irritation
:
    ASH:
    WES: i mean that was as good as we thought it was, right?
    COREY: oh goddamn it wes
    WES: what
    COREY: wes. why would you
even say that
    WES,
babbling like a maniac
: it’s just that i just want to be prepared in case we listen back to it and it turns out we were being dumb or naive or whatever because i mean it was definitely good but what if it wasn’t
as good
    COREY: you have to stop talking immediately
    WES: okay
    COREY: if you keep talking i am going to commit an atrocity against you
    WES: okay but let’s just listen to it and make sure
    COREY: no
    WES: what
    COREY: no. we can’t listen to it in fear
    WES: oh
    COREY: we can only listen to it when you’re no longer at risk of hating on it
    This was a tough thing to hear. Because I was, deep down, preparing to hate on it. But I figured Corey was, too. He’s even more of a hater than me.
    We were at kind of an impasse, and fortunately Ash was there to break it.
    ASH: let’s listen to it after dinner
    WES: okay great
    COREY: what’s for dinner though

8.
COREY LITERALLY EATS HIS TONGUE AND ASH LEARNS THE TRUE MEANING OF GARFUNKEL
    Dinner at Bill Garabedian’s Jazz Giants of Tomorrow Intensive Summer Workshops was an array of steamed meats and vegetables that looked and tasted like we were getting them secondhand. There was also a pasta bar way off in an abandoned corner somewhere. Corey filled an entire bowl with sauce and drank it as if it were soup.
    At first we were mostly silent, ignoring our gross food and gazing around the room in secret triumph at these other jazz kids in their various jazz-camp-hierarchy postures: the alpha kids sitting in too wide of a stance; the beta kids hunched over, intensely making Important Points; the gamma kids slumping around all demoralized.
    We were feeling completely superior to these kids who were too chickenshit to throw a tantrum and walk out on jazz camp band practice for basically no reason.
    ASH: oh my god this food sucks dick
    WES: i feel like someone pre-licked all of these zucchinis
    [
ash chuckles again and wes feels a happiness so

Similar Books

Forever and Always

Beverley Hollowed

Murder at Union Station

Margaret Truman

The Burning Air

Erin Kelly

Surprise Dad

Daly Thompson

Dead Girl Walking

Ruth Silver

New Blood

Gail Dayton

The Bohemians

Sean Michael