Read Online Nothing Special by Geoff Herbach - Free Book Online

Aleah.
    After, while I was riding my bike toward home, up that huge freaking hill on Hickory Street and feeling the power coming back to my legs, a car pulled up behind me and drove slow, way too close.
    Sometimes people in small towns can act like this. I know you think Bluffton is all sweet views and nice people, but that’s not really the case. People just mess with you in Bluffton. We don’t have enough to do here, Aleah.
    Maybe you figured that out so you went to Germany?
    When this car started tailing me, I figured I’d just keep biking. I’d maintain my dignity. I wouldn’t do what I wanted to do, which was throw my bike down and freak out.
    Generally, if you don’t pay attention to them, the person who is messing with you will just get bored and leave.
    But it kept going and going, this car on my tail. My heart started pounding hard, not just from pedaling up the giant hill. The car followed me closer and closer all the way up. I was thinking, “What if this is a real psycho who really wants to kill me? Need to be ready…”
    When we got to the top, I had gorilla adrenaline pumping through every part of my body.
    I turned to shout, and who was it?
    Gus. He laughed.
    I did not find this funny. I hadn’t spoken a word to him since the Randy Stone call two months earlier. He wouldn’t acknowledge my existence at school.
    â€œ You ass ,” I shouted.
    He smiled like an evil monkey from under his hair wad. (It took a full ten months to grow back after his grandma made him cut it off last summer.) “Get off the road, you bike hippie,” he shouted out his window.
    I pulled over. He pulled alongside me and rolled down the passenger-side window.
    â€œWhy would you do that?” I asked.
    â€œI don’t know. I really hate bikers, I guess. Why didn’t you turn around earlier?”
    â€œBecause I wanted to get to flat ground so that I could more easily punch your face in.”
    â€œNice. Good thinking. You’re a jock strategerist, aren’t you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHow’ve you been?” he asked.
    â€œWhy would you care?”
    â€œGood point,” he said.
    â€œAre we done here?” I asked.
    â€œCould be. I have a question, though.”
    I got ready for something mean. “Okay…”
    â€œWhere’s your little brother?” Gus climbed out of his car and looked at me over the top.
    â€œOrchestra camp.”
    â€œNo, seriously. Put your bike in the trunk, Felton. I’ve been calling you for like three hours. Where’s your freaky little brother?”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” I hadn’t taken my phone with me to run routes.
    Gus popped the trunk. I climbed off my bike and watched him jam it into the small trunk of his tiny Celica, which I didn’t like because the front wheel dangled out and the trunk door was unsecured and was thus free to bounce up and down on the frame.
    â€œI don’t think that’s safe, man.”
    â€œWe have to talk to Bony Emily,” he said.
    â€œEmily Cook?”
    â€œYou know any other Bony Emilys?”
    Here’s where Bluffton becomes multigenerationally incestuous and gross, because it is so tiny. We climbed in the car.
    As we drove off, he said, “Get this. Emily told Maddie that Andrew ran away.”
    â€œYou’re talking about Andrew’s Bony Emily?”
    â€œYeah, man.”
    If you’ll recall, Aleah, Emily Cook, the very skinny and dorky girl I call Bony Emily, is Andrew’s best friend. Maddie, who likes to smoke cigarettes and wants a tattoo, is Gus’s girlfriend. Andrew and Emily seem like little kids. Maddie, even though she acts like a burned-out twenty-five-year-old, is only a year older. Maddie was in their orchestra last year. And Emily and Maddie share a love of some weird music, I guess, so even though Maddie is a townie and Emily’s parents are professors, they’re friends,