Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (28 page)

But I thought about it and it did seem like I should try to explain myself in some way. And I haven’t had anything to do this summer besides take these stupid makeup classes to get my degree. And I figured, anyone can write a book. So I wrote this book for you, Pitt admissions people. If nothing else, it should prove that actually
not
anyone can write a book, unless we’re talking about a record-settingly inane book, so at least it’s useful for that.

But now that I’ve written it, it’s pretty obvious that this book is not going to change your mind. I mean, if it
does
change your mind and you decide to readmit me, then you guys should all be fired, because all I’ve really demonstrated to you is that I’m a jackass who doesn’t feel appropriate emotions and can’t really live a normal human life.

Also I think at some point I insulted your school by calling it the bigger, dumber sibling of Carnegie Mellon.

But writing this page right now, I just realized that I should un-retire as a filmmaker. So if you still want to take me, that’s great. But just know that I’ll probably be leaving in a year to apply for film school. So I’m gonna go start making films now. Maybe I’ll even try to get some actors to be in them.

I’ve also had kind of a realization about myself and I might
as well share it because no one is reading this. This book probably makes it seem like I hate myself and everything I do. But that’s not totally true. I mostly just hate every person I’ve ever
been.
I’m actually fine with myself right now. I feel like there’s a good chance I might make a really good film. One day. Probably in six months I will have changed my mind about that, but whatever. That is just part of the action-packed roller-coaster ride that is the life of Greg S. Gaines.

(Although let me also say this: Just because I’m un-retired doesn’t mean I’ll be making a film out of this book. There is no way in hell that is going to happen. When you convert a
good
book to a film, stupid things happen. God only knows what would happen if you tried to convert
this
unstoppable barf-fest into a film. The FBI would probably have to get involved. There’s a chance you could consider it an act of terrorism.)

I’m briefly going to freak out here about Madison Hartner. It turns out she doesn’t date any of the Pittsburgh Steelers, or even a college student. Two weeks before school ended, she started dating
Allan McCormick.
He’s this gaunt little gothy dork with worse skin than mine and eerily short arms and legs and a big haggard face that doesn’t match the rest of his body. Actually, I guess he’s not a gothy dork anymore. In February, he stopped playing Magic cards in the morning with Scott Mayhew and transitioned into a straight-up smart kid. But still. It turns out Madison Hartner has no dating standards
at all.

So I guess there’s a chance I could have gotten with her that whole time, if I had spent more time working it in the cafeteria and less time in Mr. McCarthy’s office.

Although on second thought there’s no way that’s true.

Speaking of Mr. McCarthy, it turns out he’s not a stoner, and he doesn’t put marijuana in his own soup. When we got high, it was actually from the cookies that Earl brought to school for lunch that day. Maxwell’s then-girlfriend made them for him, and they contained an inordinate amount of pot. Earl found out about this months after the fact, when he and Maxwell were randomly beating the shit out of each other.

This was reassuring. Also, it fit what I know about the world of drugs. Because the truth is, a teacher who is high literally all the time would not be interesting and unpredictable and fact-oriented like Mr. McCarthy. Instead, that teacher would be eating things constantly and then failing to make intelligible sentences.

As for Earl, we’ve hung out a few times since Thuyen’s Saigon Flavor. Now he works at a Wendy’s. He’s too short to work the register, so that fills him with rage. He’s still living at home but he’s saving up to get his own apartment.

It’s weird, hanging out and not doing films. We sit around and talk about our lives instead. I’ve sort of gotten to know him better during the past few months than I did during the years
that we were making Gaines/Jackson films, and let me tell you this: Earl is fucking insane.

Secretly I have this hope, which I know is stupid, that I’ll get out of film school and make some big successful film right away and be able to start a production company and hire Earl as the co-president. But that’s definitely not going to happen. In fact, if we ever work together again, it’s more likely to be at a Wendy’s. I can’t believe I just typed that. That is the most depressing thing I have ever typed in my life. It’s probably true, though.

I guess I want to write one more thing about Rachel. Rachel died about ten hours after Mom and I left the hospital. She had a weird Jewish funeral service at our synagogue and no one, thank God, asked me to say anything, and they didn’t show the film that we made. Rachel was cremated, and her ashes were sprinkled in Frick Park, where apparently she loved to go as a kid. She ran away there once when she was seven—not because she was trying to get away from home, but apparently just because she wanted to live in the woods and be a squirrel.

It was weird to be learning something new about her even after she had died. Somehow it was also reassuring, though. I don’t know why.

Maybe I should try to put her in my next film. I don’t know. Honestly? I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

FIN

This weird little book had many midwives, too many to be acknowledged here. But I will give explicit and impossible-to-overstate thanks to Maggie Lehrman, my editor and friend, who gave me superb and superbly modulated guidance from conception to completion, and without whom this book quite literally would not exist. I thank Matt Hudson, my erstwhile agent and also friend, who was somehow able to interest numerous important people in a very profane manuscript about boys who make homages to Werner Herzog and a girl who has cancer. I want to thank my parents, sisters, and grandma in advance for the times they will have to answer the question, “So, is that your family?” (No, it is not.) Finally, I am thankful for Tamara, who loves this book, and whom I love.

is a novelist and musician. He has worked previously as a travel writer, tour guide, and receptionist at a German youth hostel. Jesse was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is a graduate of Schenley High School and Harvard University. He has also lived in San Sebastián, Spain; Berlin, Germany; Boston, Massachusetts; and Brooklyn, New York, where he currently makes his home. It was not until college that he even made out with a girl for more than five minutes.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
is his first novel. You can visit him online at
www.jesseandrews.com
.

This book was art directed by Chad W. Beckerman. The chapter openers were designed by Meagan Bennett, and the character illustrations were illustrated by Brian Levy. The text is set in 10.75-point Adobe Garamond, a typeface based on those created in the sixteenth century by Claude Garamond. Garamond modeled his typefaces on ones created by Venetian printers at the end of the fifteenth century. The modern version used in this book was designed by Robert Slimbach, who studied Garamond’s historic typefaces at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Belgium.