I think that YA boy books are changing. They seem to be going more the way of Then Again, Maybe I Won't than the way of Gary Paulsen. (Christopher Paul Curtis's new book even falls into this category). In Be More Chill, Jeremy Heere masturbates so much that you wonder how he has time to get his homework done.
He's a pretty classic geek--actually, he's a little over-the-top in his geekdom. He even carries a Humiliation Sheet around with him at school, "to keep track of [his] social status in a concrete, quantitative way":
I don't really know what a fudge-packer is, but when I think about it, it's pretty clear. Meanwhile, Rich laughs and calls me a bitch again. He leaves without washing his hands. I pull out my Humiliation Sheet and press it against the mirror with my wet wrist, scraping tally marks next to Laugh and Snotty Comment. It never ends with this school, and with Rich; for every one of him there are mini-hims like George or Ryu, and sometimes I think about renaming all of them, about standing inside the front door or Middle Borough on a stepladder and stamping their foreheads as they come in in the morning: Mouth Breather, Waste of Sperm, Ingrate, Troll, Skank, Retard, Pus Head, Junkie, Fetal Alcohol Casualty, Yellow Teeth, Stinky, Preggers, Soon to Be Featured on World's Scariest Police Chases, whack, whack, whack. I know them all so well.
Everything changes, of course, when he learns about the squip. A squip is a supercomputer that you swallow--it fuses to your brain, and tells you (in a Keanu Reeves voice--they couldn't get the rights to use Brad Pitt's) how to BE COOL. Of course, learning about the squip and actually getting a squip are two totally different things--Jeremy's get rich quick scheme involves pilfered Beanie Babies.
Okay. I loved this book so much that my boss just walked by, and I took time out from writing this to tell her all about the book and how great it was. So read it.
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