"Oh."

"Uh, in convenient gel-tab form."

"Oh."

"Yeahhhh."

"So I guess you heard that I'm sick."

"Yeahhhh."

"Did my mom tell you?"

"Uh, my mom told me."

"Oh."

"So, uh."

"What?"

"What?"

"What were you going to say?"

"Uhhh."

"Greg, what?"

"Well, I was calling . . . to see . . . if you wanted to hang out."

"Right now?"

"Uh, sure."

"No thanks."

"Uh . . . you don't want to hang out?"

"No, thanks anyway."

"Well, maybe later then."

"Maybe later."

"OK, uh . . . bye."

"Bye."

I hung up feeling like the biggest douchebag in the world. Somehow the conversation was 100 percent what I was expecting, yet I still managed to be blindsided by it. By the way, this kind of awkward fiasco was always what happened when Mom tried to get involved in my social life. Let me point out here that it's acceptable for moms to try to run their kids' social lives when the kids are in kindergarten or whatever. But I have a mom who didn't stop scheduling play dates for me until I reached the ninth grade. The worst part of that was that the only other twelve and thirteen-year-olds whose moms scheduled their play dates were kids with mild to serious developmental disorders. I'm not going to go into detail about that, but let's just say that it was emotionally scarring and is possibly a reason I spend so much time freaking out and pretending to be dead.

Anyway. What you're seeing here is just part of a larger pattern of Mom-Greg Life Interference. She was without a doubt the single biggest obstacle between me and the social life that I was trying to describe before: a social life without friends, enemies, or awkwardness.

I guess I should introduce my family. Please forgive me if this sucks.

Again, let's try and get this over with as quickly as possible.

Dr. Victor Gaines: That would be my dad, a professor of cla.s.sics at Carnegie Mellon University. No human being is weirder than Victor Quincy Gaines, PhD. My theory on Dad is that he was a party animal in the '80s, and drugs and alcohol have partially unraveled the wiring of his brain. One of his favorite things to do is sit in a rocking chair in the living room, rock back and forth, and stare at the wall. Around the house he usually wears a muumuu, which is essentially a blanket with holes cut in it, and he talks to the cat, Cat Stevens, as if he were a real human being.

It's hard not to be envious of Dad. He teaches at most two cla.s.ses per semester, usually one, and that seems to occupy a very small percentage of his week. Sometimes they give him the entire year off to write a book. Dad has very little patience for most of the other professors he works with. He thinks they whine too much. Dad spends a lot of his time at specialty food shops on the Strip, chatting with the owners and buying obscure animal products that no one else in the family will eat, like yak tripe and ostrich sausage and dried cuttlefish.

Every two years, Dad grows a beard, and it makes him look like a member of the Taliban.

Marla Gaines: And that's my mom, Marla, the ex-hippie. Mom led a very interesting life before she married Dad, but the details are carefully guarded. We know that she lived in Israel at some point, and we suspect that she may have had a boyfriend in the Saudi royal family, which would have been sort of a big deal, because she is Jewish. In fact, Marla Weissman Gaines is very Jewish. She is the executive director of Ahavat Ha'Emet, a nonprofit that sends Jewish teenagers to Israel to work on a kibbutz and lose their virginity. I should point out that the virginity-losing part is not technically in the mission statement of Ahavat Ha'Emet. I'm just saying, you do not leave Israel without getting laid. You could have an eight-inch-thick t.i.tanium diaper bolted to your pelvis, and you would still somehow get laid. It should be their official tourism slogan: Israel. Where Virginity Goes to Die.

Israelis get it on.

Anyway, my mom is a very loving woman, and she lets Dad do whatever the h.e.l.l he wants, but she is also very opinionated and strong-willed, especially when it comes to Matters of Right and Wrong, and when she decides that something is the Right Thing to Do, that thing gets done. No ifs, ands, or buts. For better or worse. Whether we like it or not. This characteristic, in moms, is a colossal pain in the a.s.s, and it basically ruined my life as I knew it, as well as Earl's. Thanks a lot, Mom.

Gretchen Gaines: Gretchen is my older younger sister. She's fourteen, which means that any kind of normal interaction with her is doomed to failure. We used to be pretty good friends, but fourteen-year-old girls are psychotic. Her main interests are yelling at Mom and not eating whatever is for dinner.

Grace Gaines: Grace is my younger younger sister. She's six. Gretchen and I are pretty sure Grace was an accident. Incidentally, you may have noticed that all of our names begin with GR and are not at all Jewish-sounding. One night Mom had a little too much wine at dinner and confided to us all that, before we were born, and after she realized her children would have Dad's also-not-Jewish last name, she decided she wanted all of us to be "surprise Jews." Meaning, Jews with sneaky Anglo-Saxon names. I know, it makes no sense. I guess it shows that a vulnerability to brain fungus runs in the family.

Anyway, Grace aspires to be a writer and a princess, and like Dad, she treats Cat Stevens as though he is a human being.

Cat Stevens Gaines: Cat Stevens was awesome, once-he used to do things like stand up on his back paws and hiss whenever you entered the room, or run up to you in the hallway and wrap his arms around your shin and start biting you-but now he's old and slow. You can still get him to bite you, but you have to grab his tummy and jiggle it. Technically, he's my cat; I was the one who named him. I came up with the name when I was seven, having recently learned about Cat Stevens's existence from National Public Radio, which of course is the only radio station that gets any burn in the Gaines house. It seemed like an obvious name for a cat at the time.

Only years later did I realize that Cat Stevens, the musician, is totally beat.

I cannot emphasize this enough: Dad has a strong affinity for Cat Stevens (the cat). In addition to sharing long-winded philosophical meditations with him, sometimes Dad plays Cat Stevens like a drum, which is a thing that Cat Stevens loves. Cat Stevens is also the only other member of the family who enjoys eating the meats that Dad brings home from the Strip, although sometimes he expresses his enjoyment by barfing.

Gamma-Gamma Gaines: Dad's mom lives in Boston and comes to visit occasionally. As with Cat Stevens, I named her when I was a toddler, and now I don't get a do-over, and me and my sisters all have to call her Gamma-Gamma. It's embarra.s.sing. I guess we all make mistakes when we're young.

I found out about Rachel's leukemia on a Tuesday. Wednesday, I tried calling her again after more nagging from Mom, and again she didn't want to hang out. Thursday, she hung up as soon as I said my name.

So on Friday, I had no intention of calling whatsoever. When I got home from school, I went straight to the TV room to watch a movie. Specifically, Alphaville (G.o.dard, 1965), which I was then going to re-watch later with Earl for research purposes. I realize you have no idea who Earl is still, even though we're deep into this unbearably stupid book. Earl will be introduced soon, probably after I attempt to slam a door on my own head.

Anyway, I was barely into the credits when Mom walked in and pulled one of her trademark moves. She shut off the TV, opened her mouth, and emitted a nonstop stream of words. Nothing I did could make her stop talking. This is an unstoppable move.

MOM.

You do not have a choice about this, Gregory, because you have been presented with the opportunity to make a very real difference in som GREG.

Mom what the h.e.l.l MOM.

s rare and above all meaningful thing that you could be doing and let me tell you that it is not GREG.

Is this about Rachel? Because MOM.

nd I've seen you day after day just lying around like a dead slug and meanwhile a friend of yours GREG.

Can I just say something?

MOM.

completely unacceptable, completely, you've got all the time in the world, and Rachel frankly doe GREG.

Mom stop talking can I just say something MOM.

f you think any of your excuses are more important than the happiness of a girl with GREG.

Holy s.h.i.t. Please stop talking.

MOM.

ou are going to pick up your phone, you are going to call Rachel, you are going to arrange to spend GREG.

Rachel won't even let me say anything! She just hangs up! Mom! SHE JUST HANGS UP.

MOM.

n this world, bottom line, you're gonna have to learn to give, because you've been given everythi GREG.

UUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRGGGG.

MOM.

think you can "urrrg" your way out of this one, buster, you can think again, nuh-uh, no way, you There was nothing to be done. I had to call Rachel. You can't fight Mom's unstoppable move. It's probably how Mom got to be boss of a nonprofit: Nonprofits are all about persuading people to do stuff by talking at them. It's like Will Carruthers talking you into giving him your Doritos "one time," except that the nonprofit doesn't have the additional persuasive advantage of you worrying that later the nonprofit is going to jump you in the locker room and whip your naked b.u.t.tocks with a towel.

So yeah, I had to call Rachel again.

"What do you want."

"Hi please don't hang up."

"I said, what do you want."

"I want to hang out with you. Come on."

"Rachel?"

"So you ignore me in school, and then you want to hang out after school."

Well, this was true. Rachel and I had a few cla.s.ses together, including calculus, where we sat right next to each other, and yeah, I made no effort to talk to her during any of that time. But I mean, that's just what I did in school. I didn't make an effort to talk to anyone. No friends, no enemies. That was the whole point.

If you think I had any idea of how to say this on the phone, though, you have not really been paying attention. I am about as good of a communicator as Cat Stevens, and only a little less likely to bite you.

"No, I wasn't ignoring you."

"Yeah, you were."

"I thought you were ignoring me."

"So, yeah."

"You always used to ignore me, though."

"Uh."

"I always figured you just didn't want to be friends with me."

"Uhhh."

"Greg?"

"The thing is, you broke my heart."

I'm smart in some ways-pretty good vocabulary, solid at math-but I am definitely the stupidest smart person there is.

"I broke your heart."

"Well, sort of."

"How did I 'sort of' break your heart."