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ONE

MY NAME IS ODD THOMAS, THOUGH IN THIS AGE when fame is the altar at which most people worship, I am not sure why you should care who I am or that I exist

I am not a celebrity I am not the child of a celebrity I have never been married to, never been abused by, and never provided a kidney for transplantation into any celebrity Furthermore, I have no desire to be a celebrity

In fact I am such a nonentity by the standards of our culture that People ht also reject rounds that the black-hole gravity of h to suck their entire enterprise into oblivion

I am twenty years old To a world-wise adult, I am little h to be distrusted, to be excluded forever froical community of the short and beardless

Consequently, a deht conclude thatmen and women currently adrift between their twentieth and twenty-first birthdays

In truth, I have nothing to say to that narrow audience In s that other twenty-year-old Americans care about Except survival, of course

I lead an unusual life

By this I do not mean that my life is better than yours I’m sure that your life is filled with asfear as anyone could wish Like me, you are human, after all, and we knohat a joy and terror that is

I s happen to ularity, if ever

For example, I would never have written this memoir if I had not been coers on his left hand

His name is P Oswald Boone Everyone calls hi Ozzie, is still alive

Little Ozzie has a cat named Terrible Chester He loves that cat In fact, if Terrible Chester were to use up his ninth life under the wheels of a Peterbilt, I a heart would not survive the loss

Personally, I do not have great affection for Terrible Chester because, for one thing, he has on several occasions peed on my shoes

His reason for doing so, as explained by Ozzie, seems credible, but I am not convinced of his truthfulness I mean to say that I am suspicious of Terrible Chester’s veracity, not Ozzie’s

Besides, I siht years old Although photographic evidence exists to support this claius

For reasons that will beco my lifetime, and my effort will not be repaid with royalties while I’ests that I should leaveto him, will outlive all of us

I will choose another charity One that has not peed on me

Anyway, I’ it to save my sanity and to discover if I can convince h to justify continued existence

Don’t worry: These raloomy P Oswald Boone has sternly instructed ht

“If you don’t keep it light,” Ozzie said, “I’ll sit my four-hundred-pound ass on you, and that’s not the way you want to die”

Ozzie is bragging His ass, while grand enough, probably weighs no more than a hundred and fifty pounds The other two hundred fifty are distributed across the rest of his suffering skeleton

When at first I proved unable to keep the tone light, Ozzie suggested that I be an unreliable narrator “It worked for Agatha Christie in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” he said

In that first-person uy narrator turns out to be the er Ackroyd, a fact he conceals from the reader until the end

Understand, I a evil that I a froely with the tense of certain verbs

Don’t worry about it You’ll know the truth soon enough

Anyway, I’ ahead of my story Little Ozzie and Terrible Chester do not enter the picture until after the cow explodes

This story began on a Tuesday

For you, that is the day after Monday For me, it is a day that, like the other six, brims with the potential for mystery, adventure, and terror

You should not take this to ical Too much mystery isAnd a little terror goes a long way

Without the help of an alar at five, fro-alley employees

I never set the alarm because my internal clock is so reliable

If I wish to wake pro to bed I tell myself three times that I must be awake sharply at 4:45

While reliable, my internal alarm clock for soo and have adjusted to the problem

The drea-alley employees has troubled my sleep once or twice a h to act upon I will have to wait and hope that clarification doesn’t come to me too late

So I woke at five, sat up in bed, and said, “Spareprayer that ht me to say when I was little

Pearl Sugars was my mother’s mother If she had been ars, further co my life

Granny Sugars believed in bargaining with God She called Hi merchant”

Before every poker gaood fortune with orphans in return for a few unbeatable hands Throughout her life, winnings fronificant source of income

Being a hard-drinking woars didn’t always spend asGod’s word as she promised Him that she would She believed that God expected to be conned ood sport about it

You can con God and get aith it, Granny said, if you do so with charination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you’ll do next

He’ll also cut you so fashion Granny claimed that this explains why uncountablejust fine in life

Of course, in the process, you must never do harm to others in any serious way, or you’ll cease to amuse Him Then payment comes due for the promises you didn’t keep

In spite of drinking lu at poker with stone-hearted psychopaths who didn’t like to lose, driving fast cars with utter contempt for the laws of physics (but never while intoxicated), and eating a diet rich in pork fat, Granny Sugars died peacefully in her sleep at the age of seventy-two They found her with a nearly ehtstand, a book by her favorite novelist turned to the last page, and a smile on her face

Judging by all available evidence, Granny and God understood each other pretty well

Pleased to be alive that Tuesday htstand la rooet out of bed until I knoho, if anyone, is waiting for me

If visitors either benign orered for a breakfast chat So from bed to bathroom can take the charm out of a new day

Only Elvis was there, wearing the lei of orchids, sun