Read Online Eeeee Eee Eeee by Tao Lin - Free Book Online Page B

empty and melodramatic—at the other side of her room, where the bookcase, the computer, the desk, and the stereo were.
    That was in the wintertime, and then it was Spring, and some nights, now, in bed, feeling very bored and a little lonely, Ellen would let herself worry that she had hit a person—that the person had looked like a No U-Turn sign; was wearing a cowboy hat, or something—and then have imaginary conversations with kids at school she wished she were friends with, the ones who listened to punk music like she did and who always dressed prettily and had very beautiful and vividly dyed hair.
    “I think I hit a person.”
    “No you didn’t.”
    “I knocked down a No U-Turn sign. That’s illegal.”
    “You’re being honest right now. You can use that to cancel out the sign.”
    “I’ll tell the judge, ‘We’re even now.’ ”
    “The judge will be like, ‘Fine then. Uh, I mean case dismissed.’ ”
    Alert and awake, under her blanket, having these conversations, she would sometimes feel so yearning and friendless and unhelpable—eachmoment of being herself, she knew, was a strengthening, an adapting, of who she was; and she didn’t want to be who she was—that she would squeak a little.

 
    In Ellen’s English class someone said, “I hope those motherfuckers die.” The substitute teacher seemed a little confused then grinned. Someone had overheard her in the parking lot calling her boyfriend a motherfucker. There were eight weeks of 10th grade left.
    Ellen raised her hand. Usually she never spoke in class but no one was paying attention today. A group of kids were playing a boardgame on four desks pushed together. “We should use nonviolence,” she said.
    “I hope those motherfuckers get really fair trials so they get what they deserve and die.”
    “I guess,” Ellen said. She wasn’t sure. Didn’t the terrorists just want to be happy like everyone else? When people ate at McDonald’s weren’t they killing people—by supporting McDonald’s and enabling it to open more restaurants in places like Japan, where the kids would then grow up fat and diseased and get heart attacks or cancer and die—just like terrorists? Weren’t the terrorists at least less circuitous, a little more honest? Why didn’t the news care that much when all those Africans killed each other in Rwanda? Why didn’t McDonald’s open free restaurants in Africa and save people? Why was the teacher letting everyone say ‘motherfucker’?
    “What is the theme of
1984?”
said the teacher. They were discussing
1984
.
    Ellen raised her hand. “I think it talks about how the government can trick us and control us. Like they’re doing right now.Because they’re making us think that American lives are worth more than British lives and that British lives are worth more than African lives.” She blushed.
    The teacher nodded a little. She picked up the yardstick and pointed it at someone, who looked blankly at her.
    “In the end they play chess,” someone else said. “After they use the rat on him they play chess.”
    “Chess is boring,” said the teacher. “Does anyone else think chess is boring?” She was just out of graduate school, and she didn’t care. In the parking lot she had called her boyfriend a ‘motherfucker.’
    “People who play chess could be spending their time growing tomatoes in their backyard,” Ellen said. “Remember the news this morning when they said that two people in London died? If I did the news, I’d say that people who play chess killed five hundred people in Africa because of being apathetic and not helping with their own gardens. That’s true. That’s a fact.” She did not want to arguewith anyone. She was just saying things that were true.
    “I think if they make the movie—
1984
, the movie—I think everyone should have long hair and listen to heavy metal,” said the substitute teacher. “And wear those dyed shirts and have holes in their jeans and sit around