Read Online The Other Normals by Ned Vizzini - Free Book Online

the way it works with women is that one minute you have two and the next you have none (and this always frustrated me because I thought, How do I get to two? ), but apparently it works the other way: zero women can become two without warning.
    “What happened to my clothes?” I ask Mortin, looking at my legs in the loincloth. They’re too skinny.
    “You can ask me,” the girl says. “You don’t have to pretend I’m not here, and you don’t have to be scared.”
    “Trust me, he’s scared.”
    “No I’m not!”
    “Your clothes have been eaten by the multiverse,” the girl explains. “Everybody comes through naked. You’re wearing a getma now, don’t worry.”
    “What about my keys and wallet and cell phone? They were in my pockets.”
    “Your getma fits you. Consider yourself lucky.”
    “I’ve gotta report my phone missing? Jeez.”
    “I told you to get naked,” Mortin says, affixing a different lighter to his tail. “We’re born naked and, if we’re lucky, we die naked.”
    I wiggle my toes. I’m on springy, forgiving dirt. I didn’t notice before: although a wooden floor runs around the circumference of this room, the center is a bare dirt pit. I look into the dirt and see a web of tiny white threads that spread and pirouette as they dive into the ground. The threads form a close-knit honeycomb; they remind me of pictures I’ve seen of neurons in the human brain, drooping in empty space and connected in the most complicated way imaginable.
    “What am I standing on?” I ask the girl, to show I’m not scared. Her ears are high and light, with pointed tips. She has deep eyes and full lips. She wears a getma, too, with a belt and what I can only describe as a stylish animal-hide fanny pack. Her top, which hangs from her shoulders on two wide straps, drapes over her body so that I think I might be able to see her belly button, but it could just be a shadow—or maybe shedoesn’t have a belly button. Why do I find this attractive? I picture running my hand over her stomach....
    “Why do you look at me that way?” she asks.
    I stumble. I’m not sure how to play this, but then I make a decision: she’s too beautiful ever to be interested in me. It’ll be counterproductive to think of her that way. Plus, she’s seen me naked, so she knows my deep and hairless secrets.
    “No reason. We should do this properly. I’m Perry. Pleased to meet you.” I stick out my hand. Businesslike.
    “I’m Ada Ember,” she says. “Mortin’s intern.”
    We shake: strict, cordial, nothing romantic about it. I like Ada’s handshake. It’s better than Anna’s, where I just shook a mitten.
    “You know what my mother would ask if I told her you had an internship? She’d ask if it was paid.” I chuckle.
    “It’s not,” Mortin says.
    “Your parents are fascinating specimens,” Ada says. “We’ve been studying them. Did your mother give you the pewter—”
    “Ah! Ada!” Mortin interrupts. “Let’s keep some things under wraps! We need to prepare Perry for analysis and orbitoclasty—”
    “He’s not going to remember this, so why can’t we talk about what we want?”
    “What am I not going to remember? I’m going to remember this for sure.”
    “ You maintain the correspondents’ sense of free will ,” Mortin hisses, ignoring me. “If they realize what’s happening to them, their heads explode.”
    “Hello? If my head were going to explode, it would’ve happened already. Guys? What’s this thing I’m standing on that looks like white plant roots?”
    “A thakerak ,” Ada says, before Mortin can stop her. “It’s biologically analogous to a fungus’s hyphae, which are the parts of a mushroom that you don’t see, that perform all the functions besides sex.”
    “It’s alive?” I smack the ground.
    “Stop!” Ada grabs me. The threads under the dirt pop and rustle. “Don’t hit it!” She pulls me aside. “Is that the first thing you do when you see something new—hit