Paper Towns — Chapter no 49

“I hope you and me stay friends this summer,” she says. And that helps,

for some reason. You can never tell what is going to help.

Radar is now saying that the car should be called the Gray Goose. I lean

forward a little so everyone can hear me and say, “The Dreidel. The harder

you spin it, the better it performs.”

Ben nods. Radar turns around. “I think you should be the official stuff-

namer.”

Hour Twenty

I’m sitting in the first bedroom with Lacey. Ben drives. Radar’s

navigating. I was asleep when they last stopped, but they picked up a map

of New York. Agloe isn’t marked, but there are only five or six intersections

north of Roscoe. I always thought of New York as being a sprawling and

endless metropolis, but here it is just lush rolling hills that the minivan

heroically strains its way up. When there’s a lull in the conversation and

Ben reaches for the radio knob, I say, “Metaphysical I Spy!”

Ben starts. “I Spy with my little eye something I really like.”

“Oh, I know,” Radar says. “It’s the taste of balls.”

“No.”

“Is it the taste of penises?” I guess.

“No, dumbass,” Ben says.

“Hmm,” says Radar. “Is it the smell of balls?”

“The texture of balls?” I guess.

“Come on, asshats, it has nothing to do with genitalia. Lace?”

“Um, is it the feeling of knowing you just saved three lives?”

“No. And I think you guys are out of guesses.”

“Okay, what is it?”

“Lacey,” he says, and I can see him looking at her through the rearview.

“Dumbass,” I say, “it’s supposed to be metaphysical I Spy. It has to be

things that can’t be seen.”

“And it is,” he says. “That’s what I really like—Lacey but not the visible

Lacey.”

“Oh, hurl,” Radar says, but Lacey unbuckles her seat belt and leans

forward over the kitchen to whisper something in his ear. Ben blushes in

response.

“Okay, I promise not to be a cheese ball,” Radar says. “I Spy with my

little eye something we’re all feeling.”

I guess, “Extraordinary fatigue?”

“No, although excellent guess.”

Lacey says, “Is it that weird feeling you get from so much caffeine that,

like, your heart isn’t beating so much as your whole body is beating?”

“No. Ben?”

“Um, are we feeling the need to pee, or is that just me?”

“That is, as usual, just you. More guesses?” We are silent. “The correct

answer is that we are all feeling like we will be happier after an a cappella

rendition of ‘Blister in the Sun.’”

And so it is. Tone deaf as I may be, I sing as loud as anybody. And when

we finish, I say, “I Spy with my little eye a great story.”

No one says anything for a while. There’s just the sound of the Dreidel

devouring the blacktop as she speeds downhill. And then after a while Ben