You Don't Know About Me

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2011 by Brian Meehl

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meehl, Brian.
You don't know about me / Brian Meehl.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Billy has spent his almost-sixteen years with four cardinal points—Mother, Christ, Bible, and home-school—but when he sets off on a wild road trip to find the father he thought was dead, he learns much about himself and life.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89715-3

[1. Christian life—Fiction.
2. Self-actualization (Psychology)—Fiction. 3. Mothers and sons—Fiction.
4. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 5. Automobile travel—Fiction. 6. Gays—Fiction.]
I. Title. II. Title: You do not know about me.
PZ7.M512817You 2011

[Fic]—dc22
2010017101

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v3.1

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

To the Reader

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Note to the Lord

T.L.
,

You're totally-knowing; got it. You know what I'm going to write before my pen hits paper. You know what rattles in my head and stirs in my heart before I have a clue. No surprise there, I'm the last to know what I think or feel. So why send You a note when it's a copy of a t-mail (thought-mail) You already got? Because, on the wonky chance You've gone
less
knowing these days—and who could blame You?—or that You now use angels to screen Your t-mail, I wanted to be sure You got this.

Here's the must-know. I'm not writing my sketchy, blasphemous story to piss You off so You can tap the smite stick and slap me with boils, leprosy, head-to-toe pimples, or whatever You're smiting people with these days. I'm telling the story of what happened last summer for two reasons:

1. I promised someone I would (You know who).
   
2. And I want to see if I can write (You know why).
   

Wow, soon as I wrote that
—bam!—
whacked with brain lock. Maybe it was You crashing my cranium for having vainglorious thoughts like I can write. Whatever, while I was staring at the cement birdbath in the backyard, hearing nada because it's so hot the birds are in the trees taking shade baths, the silence of Your creation made me remember the other thing I wanted You to know.

As this pen lays down the trail of my adventure, I don't expect Your help or blessing. I mean, it's not Your kind of story. There's no prophets or heroes in it like in the Bible. There's no one You can be proud of. Actually, there's people in it that make me think Your smite stick has been jammed lately. It's about regular people. Your people. And me. Whether I'm “regular” I don't have a clue. Still sorting that one out.

I want to finish with a prayer.

• T.L., any time you want to God-up and hit me with some of Your zigzag loving-kindness, feel free. I always appreciate it.
  
• And please let Your only begotten Son help me Son-up and walk in His Way.
  
• Amen.
  

Your big fan, then-now-forevermore,
Billy