I was trying to figure out what to eat first when Earl suddenly said, "It's a good thing, man, because I can't be making films no more. I gotta get a job or something. I gotta make some money and get outta my mom's G.o.dd.a.m.n house."

"Oh yeah?" I said.

"Yeah," said Earl. "It's time to move on, man. I can't be doing this no more."

"What kind of job are you thinking about getting?"

"Man, I don't know. Manage a Wendy's or some s.h.i.t."

We tried to eat. The broth was OK. The various animal parts were a little too weird for me. They had little k.n.o.bbly b.u.mps and huge chunks of fat and stuff. There were also "beef b.a.l.l.s." There was no way I was going to eat those.

I don't know why I brought it up, but I said, "I'm probably failing some cla.s.ses."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, I stopped going to school basically."

"Yup, McCarthy was p.i.s.sed."

"Well, he can suck it," I said, and then was immediately filled with regret.

"Don't talk s.h.i.t," said Earl.

I didn't say anything to that.

"You're stupid if you fail," continued Earl. He didn't sound p.i.s.sed. He was being very matter-of-fact. "You're smarter than that, man. You got college and s.h.i.t to look forward to. Get a good job and s.h.i.t."

"I was thinking," I said, "maybe I don't want to go to college. Maybe I want to go to film school."

"What, cuz of Rachel."

"No. Did she say anything to you about film school?"

"She axed me to apply to film school. I figured she probly axed you, too. I was like, Girl, are you outta your mind. I ain't got no money for no film school."

"You could get a scholarship, though."

"Ain't n.o.body giving my a.s.s no scholarship," said Earl, and finally he ate some noodles.

"Why not?" I asked.

Sort of menacingly, with his mouth full, Earl said, "It's just not gonna happen."

We ate some more. The R&B guy was singing happily about how a girl kept him "sprung." Thuyen was kind of singing along to it, from behind a sketchy-looking gla.s.s counter.

For some reason, I couldn't drop the film school thing.

"I'm probably gonna apply to film school anyway," I said. "So I guess I'll need to make some new films for that."

Earl was munching something.

"I don't know if you wanna help out with it," I said.

Earl didn't look at me. After a while he said, kind of sadly, "I can't be doing this anymore."

Then some kind of very evil and/or stupid s.p.a.ce alien took control of my brain and made me say something unbelievably s.h.i.tty.

"Rachel would probably like that, though," I heard myself say. "If we were working together."

Earl stared at me for a while.

"You don't know s.h.i.t, man," he said finally. He was brisk and sad at the same time. "I hate to get on you for this. I'm not getting on you for this, but I'm just telling you. This is the first . . . negative thing that happened to you in your life. And you can't be overreacting to it and making big-a.s.s expensive decisions based on it. I'm just saying. People die. Other people do stupid s.h.i.t. I'm surrounded by family members doing stupid s.h.i.t. I used a think I had to do s.h.i.t for them. I still wanna do s.h.i.t for them. But you gotta live your own life. You gotta take care a your own s.h.i.t before you get started doing things for errybody else."

I was quiet because this was a completely unprecedented outburst for him. I mean, it was unprecedented because it was so personal. Or maybe that's not it. I don't know. Anyway, I was silenced by this and eventually that made him keep talking.

"I don't wanna leave my mama behind," he said, in the same tone of voice as before. "In that house. Drinking morning till night and always being online and s.h.i.t. I don't wanna leave Derrick and Devin. They a couple of jacka.s.ses. They all dumb as h.e.l.l, man. I look around and ain't n.o.body got a family as bad as mine. Ain't n.o.body live in a d.a.m.n s.h.i.thole of a house like mine.

"But I gotta take care of my own s.h.i.t," he said. I think he was talking more to himself than to me at that point. He was sort of explaining, sort of pleading. "They got s.h.i.t to figure out before I can help em. I love my mama, but she has problems that I can't help her with. I love my brothers, but they need to figure they s.h.i.t out before I can help em. Otherwise they just gonna drag me down."

It was possible for me to go for months without remembering that Earl had a mom. It was really jarring for me to hear about her, for some reason. I didn't even have a picture of her in my head. She was this kind of small faded-looking woman with big eyes and a sort of dreamy smile all the time.

Anyway, Earl seemed happier that he had said all of this. Then he noticed me like he had forgotten that I was there.

"Same thing with you and Rachel, except she dead, so it don't even matter what you do for her. You gotta do what's good for you. You gotta graduate, son. Graduate, go to college, get some job. We can't be doin this no more."

This was simultaneously awesome and depressing. At any rate, Earl had actually gotten himself in a good mood.

"The h.e.l.l Vietnamese people even think to put some of this s.h.i.t in soup," he said. "Look at this d.a.m.n thing. Look like somebody's n.u.t.s.a.c.k up in here."

Without warning, it was time for Gross-Out Mode. I didn't feel up to it, but I did my best.

"That's n.u.t.s.a.c.k? That's not a b.u.t.thole?"

"This wrinkly bulls.h.i.t? n.u.t.s.a.c.k. I think. Check the menu."

"What about this thing with the fringe on it?"

"That might be a b.u.t.thole. Did you order the large? The large got b.u.t.thole, n.u.t.s.a.c.k, uh, sauteed donkey d.i.c.k, and uh, you probably got some hairy-a.s.s goat t.i.tties floating around in there."

"Yeah, this is the large."

"Goat t.i.tties are rich in antioxidants."

"I'm looking for the donkey d.i.c.k. I'm not seeing any donkey d.i.c.k."

"Looks like you didn't get none."

"This is an outrage. There's no donkey d.i.c.k in my soup. I'm so p.i.s.sed about this."

"I most definitely had a couple generous chunks of finely sauteed donkey d.i.c.k up in mine."

I sort of got burned out and couldn't add anything after a while.

"Don't be p.i.s.sed, son," said Earl rea.s.suringly. "I've had better."

EPILOGUE.

So it's June and I just finished writing about all this. First of all: Thank Christ that this book is over. Also, I can probably just write whatever on this page, because there's no way you made it all the way to the end, because this book is a disgrace to the English language. To all language. They should take away my language privileges. But meanwhile, I can write anything I want. For example: Will Carruthers's p.e.n.i.s is basically an innie. Suck it, Will Carruthers. I no longer care about being your friend.

So as you probably know, I got into Pitt, but then my admission was suspended when I failed the first semesters of English 12, Calculus I, Biology II, and gym. And Dad thought maybe it would make a difference if I explained to the admissions people at Pitt why I failed those cla.s.ses. Dad kept throwing around the word "bereavement," which sounds like the word for being attacked by beavers. Mom thought I should show you Rachel the Film, and it is perhaps a sign of maturity that this suggestion didn't make me pretend to be dead even for like five seconds. Then Mom and Dad suggested I make some kind of film for your special consideration, but after Rachel the Film, and after I found Earl was done with filmmaking, I retired from filmmaking forever.

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 cla.s.ses 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 jacka.s.s 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 h.e.l.l that is going to happen. When you convert a good book to a film, stupid things happen. G.o.d 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 s.h.i.t out of each other.

This was rea.s.suring. 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 f.u.c.king 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 G.o.d, 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 rea.s.suring, 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 h.e.l.l I'm talking about.

FIN.

Acknowledgments.

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 ma.n.u.script 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 Sebastian, Spain; Berlin, Germany; Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts; 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 ill.u.s.trations were ill.u.s.trated 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.

end.