The Great American Whatever by Tim Federle Page A

Amir is not, in fact, 100 percent ideal, this early on. Ha. How incredibly me. Too controlling. Too sensitive. Always just a little too .
    I go to the mirrors. “Stop,” I say at my reflection, which is tattooed and scratched with graffiti. “Stop,” I say again, and this time I listen to the talking face that used to look like Quinn Roberts—the guy voted “cutest weirdo” in an unofficial poll conducted by the girls in middle school—and I stop crying, for him. For the cutest weirdo, and maybe the least likely to succeed now, too.
    One little detour before rejoining my trio in the picnic area: “I really like your earrings,” I say to the lady at the table, because she’s got cool earrings on. I really do like them.
    She sneers at me the way you do when your whole life is about being noticed for the wrong thing, and she doesn’t say thank you, I think because she thinks I’m making fun of her, which I’m not.
    I stand here long enough that the lady’s husband, skinny just like my dad was, goes, “You have a problem ?” But the lady puts up her hand to him and goes, “It’s okay,” because she must realize it is . That teenage boys who make fun of big ladies never stand around afterward, like I’m doing right now. Believe me, they ring your doorbell and they call your mom terrible names and then they run and they run, and they never dare to look back. And I hate them, and I’ve memorized their faces.
    â€œThank you,” she says, touching one of the earrings. “My daughter made them for me.”
    When I get back to our table in the shade, which is somehow not in the shade anymore, Amir looks flat-out mortified, his brown face glowing pinker than a poker. I guess he didn’t really notice my mom standing on our front steps when he picked me up this morning. I guess some people don’t see everything. I guess Geoff and Carly told him about her, and me, while I was in the bathroom. And I wonder what else.
    â€œCome on,” I say. “Let’s hit some more rides.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    O ur clothes are still damp from the log flume as we pull onto my street just before midnight. My fake glasses are fogged up and kind of smudgy, too. How do people manage to keep glasses clean all day?
    â€œOkay, before you get out of my car,” Amir says, turning down NPR, “you have to pass one round of Trivia.” I like that he listens to NPR.
    â€œOh, boy,” Carly goes, “the rare Trivia counterattack.”
    All I want is to be dead asleep.
    â€œAll right,” I say, when it seems like Amir isn’t kidding. I’m on the side of the car that doesn’t open, anyway. So I’m kind of trapped, I mean.
    â€œName the horror franchise that was shot in Pittsburgh in the sixties,” Amir says, “and was originally titled Monster Movie .”
    He’s looking at me in the rearview mirror and I’m not looking away, which is something.
    â€œWhoa!” Geoff goes, thumping his hands against the dashboard. “This dude brought it , Quinn.”
    â€œNo,” I say. “It’s too easy, Amir. It’s literally insulting. Carly probably knows the answer.”
    â€œUh, I don’t,” she goes.
    â€œScoot,” I say to her, and she opens her door and I hop out to the curb, which is still radiating such warmth that I actually look up, to make sure I’m not standing beneath a heat lamp of some sort. I’m not. We don’t even have streetlights, ha.
    Amir gets out and walks me to my mailbox, two feet away, which is kind of sweet.
    â€œQuinn doesn’t know the an-swer,” he goes in this sing-song way.
    â€œQuinn does , actually,” I say, not in a sing-song way. “But that is some third-grade-level movie trivia you’re rocking, and it’s beneath me.” I am terrible at flirting. I open the mailbox and then I shut it. “So, I