It's Kind of a Funny Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

the chronology.
    Two years ago I got into one of the best high schools in Manhattan: Executive Pre-Professional High School. It’s a new school set up to create the leaders of tomorrow; corporate internships are mandatory; the higher-ups of Merrill Lynch come and speak to classes and distribute travel mugs and stuff. This billionaire philanthropist named Bernard Lutz set it up in conjunction with the public school system, like a school within a school—all you have to do to get in is pass a test. Then your whole high school is paid for and you have access to 800 of the smartest, most interesting students in the world— not to mention the teachers and visiting dignitaries. You can come out of Executive Pre-Professional High School and go right to Wall Street, although that’s not what you should do; what you should do is come out and go to Harvard and then law school. That’s how you end up being, like, President.
    I’ll admit it: I kind of want to be President.
    So this test—they named it the Bernard Lutz Philanthropic Exam, in honor of his philanthrop-icness—became fairly important in my life. It became more important than, uh, food, for instance. I bought the book for it—Bernard Lutz puts out his own line of test-prep books for his own test—and started studying three hours a day.
    I was in seventh grade, and I got comfortable with my room for the first time—I’d come home with my heavy backpack and toss it on the bed and watch it bounce toward the pillows as I sat down in my chair and pulled out my test-prep book. On my cell phone, I would go to TOOLS: ALARM and set myself up for a two-hour practice exam. There were five practice exams in the book, and after I did them all, I was thrilled to discover an ad at the back for twelve more Bernard Lutz test-prep books. I went to Barnes & Noble; they didn’t have all of them in stock—they’d never had anyone ask for all of them—so they had to put in an order for me. But then it was game on. I started taking a practice exam every day. The questions covered the standard junk that they test you on to determine if you’re not an idiot:
    Reading comprehension. Ooh. Can you read this selection and tell what kind of tree they’re trying to save?
    Vocabulary. Did you buy a book full of weird words and learn them?
    Math. Are you able to turn off your mind to the world and fill it with symbols that follow rules?
    I made that test my bitch. I mauled the practice exams and slept with the books under my pillow and turned my brain into a fierce machine, a buzz saw that could handle anything. I could feel myself getting smarter, under the light at my desk. I could feel me filling myself.
    Now, I stopped hanging out with a lot of friends when I got into Executive Pre-Professional mode. I didn’t have many friends to begin with—I had the kids who I sat with during lunch, the bare minimum—but once I started carrying flash cards around they sort of avoided me. I don’t know what their problem was; I just wanted to maximize my time. When all of my test-prep books were done, I got a personal tutor to shore me up for the exam. She told me halfway through the sessions that I didn’t need her, but kept my mom’s $700.
    I got an 800 on the test, out of 800.
    The day I got those test results, a cold, plaintive, late-fall New York day, was my last good day. I’ve had good moments scattered since then, times when I thought I was better, but that was the last day I felt triumphant . The letter from Executive Pre-Professional High School came in the mail, and Mom had saved it on the kitchen table for me when I got home from Tae Bo class after school, which was something I intended to keep doing in high school, to have on my extracurricular activity sheet when I applied for college, which would be the next hurdle, the next step.
    “Craig, guess what’s here?”
    I threw down my backpack and ran past the Vampire Mirror to the kitchen. There it was: a manila envelope. The good