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Authors: Janet Tashjian

Larry and the Meaning of Life (17 page)

BOOK: Larry and the Meaning of Life
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72
I'm not going to tell you what it was, so don't ask.
73
Ouch.
74
P.S.—What about kissing
me
?
75
We won't even talk about Beth.
76
Sound familiar?
77
She thought the typical red wagon was too boring and had painted mine lime green. I remember feeling like I was riding a glowworm all the way to the playground.
78
A very bad habit of mine.
79
Okay, maybe a few times.
80
I wondered if it would be weird for her to run into Beth, but they chatted together like old friends.
81
Have you ever seen a real cat stuck in a tree? I never have. Gotta be a myth.
82
Contrary to what my feisty Haitian nurse may say, I was
not
trying to set up a slalom IV race.
83
Perfect title for my autobiography.
84
Even with a screen resolution of 640 × 480, the thing looked
great.
85
I'm not sure that's a good thing.
86
Ditto the last footnote.
87
Maybe it was because betagold had three kidneys now; in most transplant cases, they attach the healthy, new kidney without bothering to remove the old one unless it's decayed. Ah, the wonders of technology.
88
Between missing my mother and not eating meat, it's always hard for me to get up the requisite appetite and cheer.
89
I had to prop up an atlas between us to spare myself the sight of the carved bird.
90
My memory from art class is spotty, but I don't believe it was a turducken.
91
I hate to use the word
giddy
but can't think of a better way to express my excitement at such rigorous mathematics.
92
Maybe some Concord teacher had tips for getting an ex-writer like me from note-taking to final draft stage again.
93
It was hard to be there without thinking of Brady.
94
For the first time in my life.
95
Over four hundred million land mines have been buried in eighty different countries; even with peace treaties, more than a hundred million unexploded mines remain in the ground today. Some devices—designed only to maim—injure more than seventy people a day, most of them children.
96
It killed me to resurrect the whole story in front of Janine.
97
Where does she shop? Grandmas “R” Fanatics?
98
If you've never seen one in real life, you should do a Google image search. They're pretty amazing.
99
A bald-faced lie. I'd tried to obtain other samples from Gus—used tissues, bloody Band-Aids—but every time I came close to grabbing one, another student mysteriously appeared. It was only a matter of time before I'd succeed in acquiring a good sample.
100
Don't ask me how because I don't know.
101
A far cry from the enlightened girl I found here weeks ago. It's amazing what killing a girl's dog will do.
102
He uses it to locate things people lost on the beach at Castle Hill. Once he found a diamond ring from the '40s that he gave his wife for their anniversary. I'm not sure how Mrs. Cullen felt, but I love that kind of recycling.
103
Or was she just
pretending
to?
104
A flaw in my logic, unfortunately.
105
Yes, betagold, that would be me.
106
A cult leader in Guyana who led his followers in a mass suicide by spiking their drinks with cyanide—913 people died.
107
The onomatopoeic words reminded me of the old
Batman
show I'd been addicted to on TV Land. That was only a few months ago, yet seemed like years.
108
No Brady references, please.
109
Finally!
110
The usual reaction girls have.
111
I've been using that joke since I was five.
112
Again.
113
I don't know about the fun in fundamentalism, but Gus certainly had the mental down.
114
Both Thoreau and Gandhi were huge fans of the text.
115
WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MY WORLD?
116
Gus was right about one thing, though—the power of the mind. I could've sworn I'd felt pain after the surgery.
117
What was with all the wacky headgear? I was beginning to feel left out.
118
How evolved is he?
119
Here we go again.
120
I looked up the quote later; it comes from Carlos Castaneda.
121
I told you she'd never let me hear the end of it, didn't I?
122
An interesting story, actually. George de Mestral, a Swiss inventor and outdoor enthusiast, was fascinated by the burrs that stuck to his pants and dog during a hike. He examined the burr under a microscope and discovered how the hooks of the burr connected to the loops of his fabric. He played around until he came up with his own hook-and-loop system that he called Velcro—an acronym for velour crochet (French for velvet hook). But I digress. As usual.
123
Too much information, thanks.
124
Even for betagold.
125
Don't bother with your e-mails; I had to defend myself.
126
So I could plan on doing something else.
127
Of all the things you can call me, I'm happy to say dog-killer is no longer on the list.
128
Don't hate me for hitting on Beth and Janine within five minutes of each other. I have feelings for both of them, okay? Besides, what good is altering your view of reality if you still can't get a girlfriend?
129
Here comes the worst word in the dictionary:
but.
130
Given the number of things I own, it took me about three minutes.
Copyright © 2008 by Janet Tashjian
All rights reserved.
Art credits: p. 46, Thoreau's survey courtesy of Concord Free Public Library; p. 63, photograph of Gandhi © Getty Images; p. 114, illustration of kidney transplant by Birgitta Sif Jonsdottir; p. 134, photograph of land mine © Wendell Phillips/Adopt-A-Minefield; all other photographs and illustrations by Janet Tashjian.
 
 
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
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Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
 
 
eISBN 9781466822887
First eBook Edition : May 2012
 
 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tashjian, Janet.
Larry and the meaning of life / Janet Tashjian.—1st ed. p. cm.
Summary: Larry (otherwise known as Josh) is in the doldrums, but after meeting a spiritual guru at Walden Pond who convinces him to join his study group, he starts to question his grasp of reality.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-7735-3 / ISBN-10: 0-8050-7735-9
[1. Identity—Fiction. 2. Political activists—Fiction. 3. Walden Woods (Mass.)—Fiction.
4. Thoreau, Henry David, 1817–1862—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.T211135Lar 2008 [Fic]—dc22 2007046936
First edition—2008
BOOK: Larry and the Meaning of Life
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