The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl Read online

  The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy & Goth Girl

  Barry Lyga

  * * *

  Houghton Mifflin Company

  Boston 2006

  * * *

  Dedicated to Ally, of course.

  You were right.

  * * *

  Text copyright © 2006 by Barry Lyga

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this

  book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South,

  New York, New York 10003.

  www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

  The text of this book is set in Legacy Serif.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lyga, Barry.

  The astonishing adventures of Fanboy & Goth Girl / by Barry Lyga.

  p. cm.

  Summary: A fifteen-year-old "geek" who keeps a list of the high school jocks and

  others who torment him, and pours his energy into creating a great graphic novel,

  encounters Kyra, Goth Girl, who helps change his outlook on almost everything,

  including himself.

  ISBN 0-618-72392-7 (hardcover)

  [1. Self-perception—Fiction. 2. Cartoons and comics—Fiction. 3. Geeks (computer

  enthusiasts)—Fiction. 4. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 5. High schools—Fiction. 6.

  Schools—Fiction.] I. Title: Astonishing adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl. II. Title.

  PZ7.L97967Ast 2006

  [Fic]—dc22

  2005033259

  ISBN-13: 978-0-618-72392-8

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  QUM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  * * *

  There are three things in this world that I want more than anything.

  I'LL tell you the first two, but I'LL never tell you the third.

  Chapter One

  I WANT TO NOT RIDE THE BUS to school every day, but that would be a waste of a really big want—it'll take care of itself eventually. Until then, I put up with it, like today.

  So what do I want? I want a copy of Giant-Size X-Men #1 in Mint condition.

  I would settle for Near Mint, I guess, which would definitely be cheaper, but I'd really like to be able to say that my copy is pretty much perfect. on eBay, a Mint copy starts at at least eight hundred bucks, which is way more than I can afford, but maybe once I get my driver's license, I can get a job after school and put together the money. Sounds crazy, I know—some ancient comic book from the 1970s. But it's important.

  I also want a new computer. Multiprocessor, maxed-out memory slots, wireless everything ... when my parents got divorced, my mom got custody of me, and I got custody of the old Pentium clone that used to sit in the den at our old house. Thanks to the very best in Microsoft/Intel engineering, it crashes every time you exhale too hard in its general vicinity. It's tough to accomplish the kinds of things I want to accomplish with that going on. I want Flash animation! Video editing! Heck, I just want to be able to use Photoshop or Illustrator for ten minutes without rebooting.

  Thinking about a pristine Giant-Size X-Men #1 and a humming new computer usually gets me through the bus ride to school. Today's an exception. Today, I don't need to spin fantasies because a living, breathing fantasy has just gotten on board: Dina Jurgens, who manages to make climbing the steps to the bus look like something that crazy parents' groups boycott.

  It's a good day when a goddess gets on the school bus with you. In my two years suffering as this particular school bus stutters over potholes and gravel, winding its way through the back roads of Brookdale, Dina has only ridden a handful of times.

  She's a senior, two years older than I am, but she looks like she could have stepped off a runway somewhere: blond hair, bright green eyes, soft and puffy lips, and a body that's pure torture. There are plenty of hotties at South Brook High, but Dina's a cut above and beyond. of all the things I hate about South Brook, the fact that she's graduating in a few months is at the top of the list. How am I supposed to go through junior and senior years without catching glimpses of her in the hall?

  Dina checks out the seating situation, scanning the back seats, which are packed. The bus driver—a wheezing, leather-faced troll appropriately named Mr. Dull—closes the door and hits the gas, jerking Dina forward a little. She flips her hair out of her eyes, then rolls them at Mr. Dull's temerity. She heads for the first empty seat, which happens to be, well, next to me.

  I try to play it cool, but let's be honest—that's tough to do in the presence of a goddess. I go with my first instinct, which is to try to dip my hand into my pocket for the safety totem I keep there. I always feel calmer when I touch it.

  But it's awkward getting a hand into your pocket when you're sitting down, doubly so when there's someone right next to you. My elbow brushes her side, and she looks at me like I planned it. "Hey!"

  "Sorry," I mumble. I feel like I should explain that I wasn't trying to touch her, but she's already looking away.

  "What happened, Dina?" Sounds like Kayla Meyer. A junior, one who hasn't gotten a car yet. one who apparently ranks as worthy on the Dina Jurgens Scale because her older brother is Steve Meyer, who I think dated Dina's older sister or something like that. I don't know. I don't really pay attention to stuff like that.

  "My car wouldn't start this morning."

  "Bummer."

  "Yeah, I told my dad that it has to be ready by the weekend because..."

  I tune it out and keep my head down so that no one will bother me. But being so close to Dina rattles me. I keep wanting to turn and stare, but even I know that that's not cool. So I settle for cutting my eyes left as often as I can. I get flashes of skirt and leg and the shadow of what could be a breast, but I'm not sure and I don't want to risk looking for longer than, like, a tenth of a second. So it's sort of like dumping the pieces of a puzzle out on the floor, looking at them, and then trying to put it all together in your head. with your eyes closed. So close! So far!

  It goes like that for a little while, the bus jerking and bouncing along, making Dina's anatomy do very interesting things that she's apparently unaware of (and of which I'm woefully underaware, given those quick glances). Dina talks with Kayla, the Usual Idiots yell and chatter, and Mr. Dull's beloved country station blares out of the radio.

  At some point, I realize that I probably look like an idiot, my head bent down, doing nothing (apparently), staring down at my feet. I pretend to look for something in my backpack, but there's just school stuff and comic books in there. And God knows I don't want to pull out a comic book while Dina's sitting next to me! I wish I had something—anything—else to read, something that didn't scream "Geek!" at the top of its lungs and jump around in nerdly war paint. Like ... I don't know...Hot Rod?

  When we screech to a tooth-grinding halt at the school, a sudden brilliant stroke hits me. Dina is sitting next to me. on the aisle. She'll get up to leave and I'll get up behind her. Behind her. From here to the exit, I'll be right behind her, with an unobstructed view of The Back of Dina Jurgens. Not as splendid a sight as The Front, but not bad in its own right. Sweet.

  So Dina gets up and I grab my backpack (watching her legs as I do so—wow), then get up and move to get behind her—

  And Mark Broderick pushes me back. "Move it."

  He doesn't even look at me as he does it. He's a big senior with short bleached hair and a face like old hamburger. He dresses like Eminem, if Eminem weighed twenty pounds too much and couldn't keep the sweat stains from spreading out under his armpits. This is the weirdest part—he smells like boiling leather. I've never
been able to figure that part out.

  Up until now, the only contact I've ever had with him was smelling that unique aroma as he walked past me on the bus. But right now I watch him as he struts up to the door behind Dina. A flood of bigger, meaner, and/or tougher kids fills the aisle, and I'm not about to step into that flood, so I just stand here and wait and watch Mark's back and the buzzcut that clutches his scalp.

  Now that I'm standing, it's easy to slip my hand into my pocket. As usual, I feel immediate calm when I touch the bullet that I keep there. I started carrying it about a year ago.

  Everything's OK; I've added Mark to The List.

  The List

  The List is getting pretty long these days. It's a compilation of everyone who's ever pissed me off for no reason whatsoever. All of those Jock Jerks and Clique-its who treat me like dirt just because they can. Someday, when I've left this stupid little hick town with its stupid little hick people, the ones on The List are the ones I'll be sure to remember more than anyone else. I'm not sure how, but I'll remember them. Sometimes I can almost sympathize with those guys who go nuts and shoot up their schools, but no one on The List is worth dying or going to jail for. The best revenge is living well, my dad told me once. So I'd be happy to show up at my tenth reunion in a stretch limo, or with a supermodel on my arm, or with a TV crew filming one of many documentaries about me or something. Just waltz in and make a show of ignoring them all, unless I get the chance to nail someone with just the right comment at just the right time. The difference between them and me being that I would have a reason for doing it. A stupid fantasy? Maybe. But reliable.

  The List started in sixth grade. I was in the school spelling bee. I was the first one to go and I stepped up to the microphone. I had no idea how high it had been turned up or how loud it would be, so I spoke in a loud, clear voice. when I said, "Massachusetts," it came out "MASS" and filled the entire auditorium, like some huge, heavy thundercloud of sound as I realized what was happening, and I managed to quiet down for the rest, but the enormity of my own massive, booming voice and the look of shock on the faces in front of me freaked me out—my voice cracked and shot up like a girl's for "achusetts," and I was so rattled that I didn't even spell it right and I washed out in the first round.

  That day I got in the lunch line and Pete Vesentine and Ronnie Warshaw started pushing me and imitating the crack in my voice: "Get out of line! Get out of line! "

  "No, no, like this," Ronnie said, and then said, "MASSachu setts," managing to break on every syllable and throwing in a limp wrist for added comedy.

  I was smaller than them and there were two of them and no one was going to help me, but I didn't want to get out of line and go to the back. My mother always told me to ignore bullies, so that's what I tried to do: I just sort of squared my shoulders and got back in line.

  "Hey!" Pete this time. "Hey, no butting! You can't butt in line."

  "I didn't butt," I said (probably too earnestly). "I was here already."

  "You can't butt," Pete said again, and Ronnie backed him up and they pushed me out again, only this time I lost my grip on my lunch money and a quarter fell onto the floor.

  I was just about to pick it up when Ronnie stepped on it.

  I looked up at him. "Come on, Ronnie," I said, trying to sound calm and reasonable. "Let me have my quarter."

  "Let me have my quarter. Let me have my quar ter." More falsettos and limp wrists from Pete and Ronnie.

  "Come on."

  Ronnie shoved with his foot and lifted it off the floor at the last minute. My quarter went skimming down the hall. I chased after it, followed by their laughter. When I reclaimed it and turned around, the line had moved. Ronnie and Pete were giggling to each other, almost at the door that led into the cafeteria. No way they'd let me back in line.

  As I took up my new position at the end of the line, I decided to start The List.

  Chapter Two

  RONNIE AND PETE ARE STILL AROUND. Along with their Cro-Magnon buddies (read: the JJ, the Jock Jerks, the population of the football, soccer, lacrosse, and basketball teams), they dogged me through the rest of middle school. But fortunately high school deposited them in the sort of idiot classes they belong in—basic math, lots of "Tech Ed.," and, my favorite, "Reading" (can you believe they have to have a class called that?)—while I was placed in the "Fast-Track" for gifted and talented students. I almost never see them, except for gym class, where they're pretty easy to avoid.

  But they're still on The List. No one gets removed from The List. That's sort of the point.

  I give myself a moment to let the sensation of touching the bullet calm me. I found it one night, left neglected and lonely on the workshop bench in the basement at home. The step-fascist must have dropped it behind something and forgot about it. It just sat there on the bare workbench, glinting in a shadowy pocket near a box of screws. I stood there for a long time, having trouble catching my breath. I waited for some-one—Mom, the step-fascist—to show up and say something.

  Nothing.

  So I grabbed the bullet in a fist closed so tight it went white, and I've had it ever since. My lucky totem; my safety blanket.

  Relaxed now, I head into school, where Mark Broderick is swallowed up by the throngs of students (but his name is now indelibly imprinted on The List) and Dina Jurgens goes off into whatever world is inhabited by Senior Goddesses, and I go off to homeroom.

  But before I get there, I see Cal by the lockers. He's my only real friend at school, the only one I bother to hang out with outside of school. (or, the only one who bothers to hang out with me might be more accurate.) He's also one of ten black kids at South Brook, and the fact that I know there are exactly ten black kids at my school should tell you something right there.

  He's taller than I am and bigger and just generally cooler. Plays football and lacrosse. Wrestles. unlike the rest of the JJ, though, he's smart and he doesn't treat me like dirt. He loves comic books, too. That's actually how we met—back in eighth grade, he saw me reading League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and stopped at my desk. "When did that one come out? I've been waiting for it."

  I couldn't believe it—here was a guy who had girls swooning over him, more friends than I could count, and the weird sort of cachet you get by being a fun, friendly black kid in a white school ... and he was into comic books?

  At first I thought it was yet another ruse by some ill-intentioned idiot designed to lead me into a trap for the amusement of others. Like the time a few years ago when I gave a passionate report on collectible card games as a metaphor for cultural change in a social studies class. Todd Bellanger told me afterward that he had some rare Magic: The Gathering cards in his locker. I couldn't believe it. Well, actually, I couldn't believe he had them and I also couldn't believe that Todd was even bothering to talk to me, since he usually was one of my tormentors. But maybe we'd found a common ground.

  So I went to his locker, and instead of Magic cards he shoved a bunch of pictures of naked men into my hands, then shouted, "No, I don't want your gay porn!" really loud, so that everyone in the hallway turned and saw me with the pictures and laughed and laughed...

  So I was suspicious of Cal immediately, especially since I knew little about him—recent transfer, played football, hung out with a lot of jocks. I'd been burned before.

  "Yeah, well, this is the issue after the one with the Wright Brothers," I said.

  Cal blinked, obviously confused. "What? I must have missed more than one. When did the Wright Brothers show up? I didn't know they were in the story."

  They weren't. He had passed my test, and so I cautiously entered into a conversation with him, which eventually evolved into the only friendship I have at South Brook.

  "Hey, Cal!" I close in. "I found this website last night that lays out the whole Xorn-is-Magneto thing from Morrison's run on New X-Men. This guy, it's unreal. He's got scanned-in panels and pages and he annotated them all and there's a timeline and—"

  "Yeah, that's cool
," Cal says, but it doesn't sound like he thinks it's cool. He looks around quickly. I've seen this behavior before.

  "But I didn't tell you all of it." I'm rushing, trying to get it in. "There's also links to a whole site that shows all the other times Magneto disguised himself, and a thing about House of M— "

  "Uh-huh." Cal gives me a quick grin, then walks away. Down the hall, I see Mike Lorenz and Jason Benatovech waving at him. Football players.

  Well, that's life being Cal's friend. When the jocks call, he goes. on the mean streets of hick rural high schools, you have to keep up your popularity and your cool factor if you want to survive as a black kid. And being seen with me—especially talking comic books—is the best way to see your cool stock plummet.

  Cal doesn't even really know he's doing it. I can tell because he never refers to it, never acts as if he's done anything wrong. It's just survival. Just high school crap. It doesn't bother me. Not anymore. Not really.

  Chapter Three

  FOR SOME REASON (IT'S NOT IMPORTANT), South Brook High School has been taken hostage. Mike Lorenz, Jason Benatovech, Pete Vesentine, and Ronnie Warshaw are all dead with bullets in their heads. Todd Bellanger has been shot, too, but he's not dead, just writhing in pain and crying. I note with some satisfaction that Mark Broderick is also among the deceased.

  I'm hiding in the computer lab, and that's when I realize that everyone is being herded toward the gym. Cal is with them, and he looks angry and scared all at once. I realize that with a single distraction Cal would be able to disarm one of the bad guys and probably rescue everybody (even the ones who don't deserve it).

  From the computer lab, I'm able to hack into the bell system, which is all automated. I can kick off the distraction and save everyone.

  And that's when my arm explodes.