A 52-Hertz Whale Read Online Free PDF

since I got out of school. Anyway, we went out to this dance club. Not my choice—I like to actually be able to hold a conversation at a reasonable volume when I’m socializing, call me crazy.
    We arrive. Luke’s buddies are a little odd, but they’re nice guys. We order drinks. The place is deafeningly loud, but I’m feeling good. And life is good, as long as I ignore the bass that’s thumping so hard my ears are about to bleed like poor Salt’s. We’re talking—yelling, rather—shooting the proverbial breeze. I’m looking around at all these pretty girls walking past, and at the packed dance floor, lights strobing over bodies, people’s hands in the a- yer like they just don’t ca- yer , and for the first time since Corinne and I broke up, I feel . . . shit, I’ll just say it: I feel whole again. I feel like a regular person who has struggles like anyone else but is in general just going about his business, paying dues at his job, complaining about his boss. Normal, adult stuff. And as a functioning adult, albeit one with a few Jack ’n’ Cokes in him, I decide what the hey, I’ll hit the dance floor for a while and shake what my momma bequeathed to me. I don’t know how to dance, but after seeing the bizarre convulsions of Luke’s insurance company clan, I figured I’d probably look pretty decent in comparison.
    So I head out there, start sidling by people to get toward the middle, and once I get there, I go all out for probably ten minutes. Just feeling it. In the zone. No room in my head for thoughts because all I can hear in there is the electronic bass drum and hi-hat going Boom-tiss, boom-tiss, boom-tiss, boom-tiss . All around me, there’s people and their sweat and their smell. And I’m flailing to that beat: Boom-tiss, boom-tiss, boom-tiss, boom-tiss .
    Then I open my eyes to see Corinne and her new boyfriend, right next to me on the dance floor. Corinne who supposedly hates techno. Corinne whom I would never expect to see—ever—at a dance club. She is totally oblivious, no idea that I’m there, because they’re intertwined. Making out hard. So hard. Like they were both bulldogs and thought the other was a brand new bone.
    Seeing her kiss someone besides me would have been heart-stompingly traumatic on its own, but the thing that’s freaking me out even more, the most—what’s the word?—terrifying thing about it is how little it resembled our kissing. It’s like she was a different person. I know you probably have no interest in hearing this (not that that ever stops me from talking), but we almost always kissed softly. Gently. Even at our most passionate, whatever rough-and-tumble might have been happening with the rest of our bodies, we weren’t lip-slammers or tongue-wrestlers. We talked about how awesome our kissing was. It was special. Sacred, I even thought. Seeing her so roughly and enthusiastically making out with this dude in a way so different from how we would have makes me feel like it wasn’t that special. That the whole time, whether she knew it or not, she wanted to be kissing someone else and in some other way. So when I said and did a couple things that, no doubt, weren’t the best things, rather than try to work through it she just kicked me to the curb.
    At this point, watching the girl I love engage in public heavy petting, I’m out of the zone. Way out. Light-years away from the zone. The zone and I have suspended all diplomatic relations. I push a bunch of people out of the way, and the music is loud and frantic now instead of fun and exciting. The strobe light’s flashing in my eyes. I fumble my way through the dance floor and head for the exit. Couldn’t even hold my tears back until I got past the bouncer.
    I’ve been lying real low ever since, Netflixin’ and eating. Since you got through F in the Urban Dictionary, you’ll know