Peeps Read Online Free PDF Page B

but it’s hard to wipe it out completely. Like a tapeworm, it starts off microscopic but grows much bigger, flooding your body with different parts of itself. It wraps around your spine, creates cysts in your brain, changes your whole being to suit its purposes. Even if you could remove it surgically, the eggs can hide in your bone marrow or your brain. The symptoms can be controlled, but skip one pill, miss one shot, or just have a really upsetting bad-hair day, and you go feral all over again. Sarah could never be let loose in a normal human community.
    Worse, the mental changes the parasite makes are permanent. Once those anathema switches get thrown in a peep’s brain, it’s pretty hard to convince a peep that they really, really used to love chocolate. Or, say, this guy from Texas called Cal.
    “But don’t some peeps come back more than others?” I asked.
    “The sad truth is, for most of those like Sarah, the struggle never ends. She may well stay this way for the rest of her life, on the edge between anathema and obsession. An uncomfortable fate.”
    “Is there any way I can help?” My own words surprised me. I’d never been to the recovery hospital. All I knew about it was that it was way out in the Montana wilds, a safe distance from any cities. Recovering peeps usually don’t want their old boyfriends showing up, but maybe Sarah would be different.
    “A familiar face may help her treatment, in time. But not until you deal with your own disquiet, Cal.”
    I slumped in my chair. “I don’t even know what my disquiet is. Sarah freaked me out is all. I think I’m still . . .” I waved a hand in the air. “I just don’t feel . . . done yet.”
    The Shrink nodded sagely. “Perhaps that’s because you aren’t done, Cal. There is, after all, one more matter to be settled. Your progenitor.”
    I sighed. I’d been over all this before, with Dr. Prolix and the older hunters, and in my own head about a hundred thousand times. It never did any good.
    You may have been wondering: If Sarah was my first girlfriend, where did I catch the disease?
    I wish I knew.
     
    Okay, I obviously knew how it happened, and the exact date and pretty close to the exact time. You don’t forget losing your virginity, after all.
    But I didn’t actually know who it was. I mean, I got her name and everything—Morgan. Well, her first name anyway.
    The big problem was, I didn’t remember where . Not a clue.
    Well, one clue: “Bahamalama-Dingdong.”
    It was only two days after I first got to New York, fresh off the plane from Texas, ready to start my first year at college. I already wanted to study biology, even though I’d heard that was a tough major.
    Little did I know.
    At that point, I could hardly find my way around the city. I got the general concept of uptown and downtown, although they didn’t really match north and south, I knew from my compass. (Don’t laugh, they’re useful.) I’m pretty sure that this all happened somewhere downtown, because the buildings weren’t quite so tall and the streets were pretty busy that night. I remember lights rippling on water at some point, so I might have been close to the Hudson. Or maybe the East River.
    And I remember the Bahamalama-Dingdong. Several, in fact. They’re some kind of drink. My sense of smell wasn’t superhuman back then, but I’m pretty sure they had rum in them. Whatever they had, there was a lot of it. And something sweet too. Maybe pineapple juice, which would make the Bahamalama-Dingdong a close cousin of the Bahama Mama.
    Now, the Bahama Mama can be found on Google or in cocktail books. It’s rum, pineapple juice, and a liqueur called Nassau Royale, and it is from the Bahamas. But the Bahamalama-Dingdong has much more shadowy origins. After I found out what I’d been infected with and realized who must have done it, I searched every bar I could find in the Village. But I never met a single bartender who knew how to make one. Or who’d even heard of