Paper Towns — Chapter no 3

3.

The thing about Margo Roth Spiegelman is that really all I could ever do

was let her talk, and then when she stopped talking encourage her to go on,

due to the facts that 1. I was incontestably in love with her, and 2. She was

absolutely unprecedented in every way, and 3. She never really asked me

any questions, so the only way to avoid silence was to keep her talking.

And so in the parking lot of Publix she said, “So, right. I made you a

list. If you have any questions, just call my cell. Listen, that reminds me, I

took the liberty of putting some supplies in the back of the van earlier.”

“What, like, before I agreed to all this?”

“Well, yes. Technically yes. Anyway, just call me if you have any

questions, but with the Vaseline, you want the one that’s bigger than your

fist. There’s like a Baby Vaseline, and then there’s a Mommy Vaseline, and

then there’s a big fat Daddy of a Vaseline, and that’s the one you want. If

they don’t have that, then get, like, three of the Mommies.” She handed me

the list and a hundred-dollar bill and said, “That should cover it.”

Margo’s list:

3 whole Catfish, Wrapped separately

Veet (It’s for Shaving your legs Only you don’t Need A razor

It’s with all the Girly cosmetic stuff )

Vaseline

six-pack, Mountain Dew

One dozen Tulips

one Bottle Of water

Tissues

one Can of blue Spray paint

“Interesting capitalization,” I said.

“Yeah. I’m a big believer in random capitalization. The rules of

capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle.”

Now, I’m not sure what you’re supposed to say to the checkout woman at

twelve-thirty in the morning when you put thirteen pounds of catfish, Veet,

the fat-daddy-size tub of Vaseline, a six-pack of Mountain Dew, a can of

blue spray paint, and a dozen tulips on the conveyor belt. But here’s what I

said: “This isn’t as weird as it looks.”

The woman cleared her throat but didn’t look up. “Still weird,” she

muttered.

“I really don’t want to get in any trouble,” I told Margo back in the minivan

as she used the bottled water to wipe the black paint off her face with the

tissues. She’d only needed the makeup, apparently, to get out of the house.

“In my admission letter from Duke it actually explicitly says that they won’t

take me if I get arrested.”

“You’re a very anxious person, Q.”

“Let’s just please not get in trouble,” I said. “I mean, I want to have fun

and everything, but not at the expense of, like, my future.”

She looked up at me, her face mostly revealed now, and she smiled just

the littlest bit. “It amazes me that you can find all that shit even remotely

interesting.”

“Huh?”

“College: getting in or not getting in. Trouble: getting in or not getting

in. School: getting A’s or getting D’s. Career: having or not having. House:

big or small, owning or renting. Money: having or not having. It’s all so

boring.”

I started to say something, to say that she obviously cared a little,

because she had good grades and was going to the University of Florida’s

honors program next year, but she just said, “Wal-Mart.”

We entered Wal-Mart together and picked up that thing from infomercials

called The Club, which locks a car’s steering wheel into place. As we

walked through the Juniors department, I asked Margo, “Why do we need

The Club?”

Margo managed to speak in her usual manic soliloquy without

answering my question. “Did you know that for pretty much the entire

history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty

years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There

was no planning for retirement. There was no planning for a career. There

was no planning. No time for planning. No time for a future. But then the

life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more

future, and so they spent more time thinking about it. About the future. And

now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the

future—you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a

good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to

college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can

afford to send their kids to college.”

It felt like Margo was just rambling to avoid the question at hand. So I

repeated it. “Why do we need The Club?”

Margo patted me in the middle of the back softly. “I mean, obviously

this is all going to be revealed to you before the night is over.” And then, in

boating supplies, Margo located an air horn. She took it out of the box and

held it up in the air, and I said, “No,” and she said, “No what?” And I said,

“No, don’t blow the air horn,” except when I got to about the b in blow, she

squeezed on it and it let out an excruciatingly loud honk that felt in my head

like the auditory equivalent of an aneurysm, and then she said, “I’m sorry, I

couldn’t hear you. What was that?” And I said, “Stop b—” and then she did

it again.

A Wal-Mart employee just a little older than us walked up to us then and

said, “Hey, you can’t use that in here,” and Margo said, with seeming

sincerity, “Sorry, I didn’t know that,” and the guy said, “Oh, it’s cool. I

don’t mind, actually.” And then the conversation seemed over, except the

guy could not stop looking at Margo, and honestly I don’t blame him,

because she is hard to stop looking at, and then finally he said, “What are

you guys up to tonight?”

And Margo said, “Not much. You?”

And he said, “I get off at one and then I’m going out to this bar down on

Orange, if you want to come. But you’d have to drop off your brother;

they’re really strict about ID’s.”

Her what?! “I’m not her brother,” I said, looking at the guy’s sneakers.

And then Margo proceeded to lie. “He’s actually my cousin,” she said.

Then she sidled up to me, put her hand around my waist so that I could feel

each of her fingers taut against my hip bone, and she added, “And my

lover.”

The guy just rolled his eyes and walked away, and Margo’s hand

lingered for a minute and I took the opportunity to put my arm around her.

“You really are my favorite cousin,” I told her. She smiled and bumped me

softly with her hip, spinning out of my embrace.

“Don’t I know it,” she said.