Stoner & Spaz Read Online Free PDF Page B

Tomorrow night at Caltech my teacher is showing his new class three or four of the films from last semester.”
    “And one of them is yours?”
    “Uh-huh. I don’t know if mine’s an example of what to do or what not to do, but you could come if you wanted to. The class is just Basic Film Techniques, Ben. Don’t expect too much.”
    “Let’s go, Grandma, okay?”
    She presses her thin lips with a napkin. “I’m afraid I have AIDS tomorrow night. But you may go, Benjamin.”
    I’m supposed to be getting Marcie’s coffee, but I dart (well, you know what I mean) into my room and call Colleen instead. “My neighbor made a movie, and I want to see it. Go with me, okay?”
    “If Ed finds out, he’ll kick your ass.”
    “You know, I think we’re more liable to see somebody walking a Chia Pet than we are to see Ed at Caltech.”
    I hear her cross the kitchen linoleum, hear the refrigerator door open, then the hiss of a soda can. “What’s the movie about?”
    “It’s a documentary. That’s pretty much all I know. And it’s tomorrow night.”
    “I thought nice boys like you were supposed to call at least a week in advance.”
    “If you go, I’ll bring you a single rose, okay, but half-dead so it’ll go with your tattoo that says Born to Lose.”
    “Very funny.”
    “Go with me and I’ll say more funny stuff. Your sides will ache from laughter.”
    I hear her inhale before she says, “This is not a date.”
    “I know that.”
    “This is a good deed, okay? I’m helping the handicapped.”
    “Whatever you say.”
    “I’ll pick you up. Where do you live?”
    IN THE MOVIES, usually bad ones, when somebody goes on a date, there’s almost always a Changing Scene. Somebody in front of a mirror, clothes everywhere. Or popping out of a closet, each time in a different outfit.
    I don’t do that. For one thing, all my clothes are pretty much the same: preppy. For another, I’m ready for something a little more radical.
    I’m on my way out the door for my nondate, when Grandma stops me.
    “What happened to your hair?”
    I take off my cap. “I stopped by Supercuts. They bleached it. And cut it a little.”
    “But why?”
    “I just wanted to look different.”
    “There’s different and then there’s peculiar. A cat and a dog are different; a cat is not a peculiar dog.”
    “If you’re saying I was a dog before and now I’m a cat, that’s fine by me.”
    “It was an analogy, Ben.”
    “I know what an analogy is, Grandma, and it wasn’t a very good one.”
    “There’s no reason to be rude.”
    I let my backpack drop to the floor. “Oh, Grandma, all I did was make my hair different.”
    “Don’t you have enough to contend with without making yourself more conspicuous?”
    “It’s my hair.”
    “But it’s in my house.”
    “Fine, I’ll leave my hair outside. Or at least put it out at night like a cat. If we had a cat. Which we don’t since Mom left, because of your precious furniture. Man, I can’t believe you gave away Mittens.”
    “The cat was unhappy without your mother.”
    “I was unhappy without my mother. Did you think about giving me away, too, or did I just not shed as much?”
    Grandma settles onto a Stickley chair and looks down at her folded hands. I look up at the light fixture.
    Then I turn to my grandmother. “Let’s not fight, okay? You don’t like my hair. Fine. I know that; I even understand it. But I’m not going to change it back.”
    “This is very upsetting. It’s that Colleen person, isn’t it?”
    “What does that mean?”
    “Remember that absurd video you made me buy for your ninth birthday, that
Devil Girl from Mars
?”
    “Is that what you think Colleen is?”
    “It’s not that far-fetched. That character, that . . .”
    “Nyah.”
    “. . . came down to Earth to get men for her planet. And that awful girl is after you.”
    “I wish.”
    By the time I get out to the car, Colleen is standing on the passenger’s side of her beat-up