Project X Read Online Free PDF

up,” Flake says when I ask him. “You’re fucked in the head. You’re never gonna be normal.”
    â€œI’d settle for
para
normal,” I go.
    He laughs a little. “You think it’s a joking matter,” he goes.
    We’re in his room, the next day after school. His room’s a box on the second floor. His dad let him paint one wall black, but only one. He’s got a sticker on the window of a cartoon duck with no head and Magic Marker blood gushing out of the neck.
    He’s got something from his
Great Speeches of the Twentieth Century
boxed set going. It’s the only thing we play.
    â€œPut on the one with the guy who’s always talking about the Reds,” I tell him.
    â€œI will if you tell me the guy’s
name,
” he says.
    I throw his dresser knob at him. His furniture’s always falling apart. There’s a bottom desk drawer he hasn’t opened in a year and a half. I didn’t really wing the knob. “Ask Bethany,” I go.
    â€œYou’re not interested in anything constructive,” he tells me. “You just sit around and piss your time away.”
    â€œYou don’t give a shit about anything,” I tell him back. “You don’t have the slightest regard for private property.”
    We’re doing our parents.
    â€œYou shit in your nest,” he goes. “And then the mess is supposed to be our problem.”
    We laugh. Sometimes he makes us both laugh.
    â€œThey’re so worried about us but they do whatever they want,” I go.
    â€œI’m tired of talking about them,” he goes.
    â€œSo let’s talk about Bethany,” I go.
    â€œYou are such a dildo,” he goes. He says it like it surprises him every time.
    â€œLet’s talk about extracurriculars,” I go. “So: you running for Student Government?” I go.
    He laughs a little. He lies back and looks at the ceiling. There are marks up there from his throwing something. He bends his fingers until there are cracking noises and I can’t look anymore. “So I had this idea,” he goes.
    Outside there’s a banging noise. His dad’s beating on something. He’s a mediator for married couples who want to split up and a part-time hockey coach at the high school. He’s always building something in his garage workshop and then getting pissed off when it comes out wrong.
    Flake’s pinching his eyelid like he found something strange there. He’s still lying on his back but seems like he lost interest in what he was going to say. “Know how in cartoons,” he finally says, “the coyote or whoever can run out over a cliff and hang there a second and realize what’s going on before he falls?”
    â€œYeah?” I go when he doesn’t say anything else.
    â€œThat’s not that funny,” he goes. “That can really happen.”
    We both think about that while his dad bangs away outside. There’s the noise of tools being thrown onto the driveway outside the garage.
    â€œSo what’s Grant up to?” I ask him. I call his dad by his first name, and for some reason this always pisses him off. This time it doesn’t work.
    â€œI feel like jerking off,” he says, like it’s like going away to a beautiful island.
    â€œI’m not stopping you,” I tell him. He makes a face.
    â€œGod
damn
it,” his dad says outside. There’s one more bang and a ringing sound.
    â€œWhoops,” Flake goes. “My hands smell like something,” he goes. “Do your hands smell like anything?”
    â€œSo what was your idea?” I finally ask.
    â€œI lifted some shit from Pengway’s garage when I took that dump on his picnic table,” he goes.
    â€œNice move, by the way, with the table,” I complain.
    â€œWhy? You get in trouble?” He sounds interested.
    â€œCourse I got in trouble,” I tell him. “What’d you