Pardon Me, You're Stepping on My Eyeball!
by Paul Zindel

This has some surface similarities to Zindel's The Pigman. There's two teenage misfits, a houseparty that goes drastically wrong and some quirky kids and bullies. But this is a much darker tale. There's very real anger and even some ugly domestic abuse that came out of left field. If this book had been written today instead of the seventies that last would almost certainly be handled differently.

This book is about two high school weirdos and their encounters with each other, their dysfunctional families and their struggles to move forward in life. It's not quite a love story although there are some hints of that. Both the hero and heroine are in a special needs class.

Louis Mellow, or as he prefers to be called, Marsh, is an intelligent high school student who spends his days writing down lists of all the things he hates and why he hates them. He idealizes his absent father, whom he calls Paranoid Pete and hates his whiny mean drunk mother, whom he refers to as Schizoid Suzy. Marsh always carries a baby raccoon that he rescued in his jacket pocket. Marsh can be quite disruptive in class. He enjoys telling people outrageous stories about his adventures with his father and their supposed lecherous dalliances with women and girls in the continental United States and beyond. According to Marsh Paranoid Pete is locked in an insane asylum and about to be executed! Marsh can be cruelly dismissive or insulting to anyone who doesn't believe his stories.

Edna Shinglebox is a girl at Marsh's school that Marsh decides he likes, just because anyone who has the nerve to walk around with a name like Shinglebox must have some heart. Edna actually suffers from social anxiety and gawkiness. Her hair gets caught in escalators and she makes involuntary head jerks when she gets nervous, which is often. Her parents think she's going to die an old maid. Her mother is extremely sarcastic and cutting. Her mother is trying to fix Edna up with anything of the male persuasion, weird or not. Marsh wants Edna's help to rescue his father. Edna's not sure if she likes Marsh but after he insults her a few times she finds the backbone to stand up to him and change how she approaches life in general. She also rather quickly figures out the truth behind Marsh's stories and must decide if she wants to help. I can't say for sure of course but from the outside looking in I would think that Zindel wrote an extremely realistic young girl character.

Everyone has problems here, whether it's the overweight diabetic teacher who also knows why Marsh has issues and refuses to tell Edna or the rich girl who knows that the football player only likes her because she lives in a large house suitable for parties, or the malodorous psychic who wants to give Edna advice. The ending is at best bittersweet but also leaves room for growth, which is all you can ask for in life. Worthwhile reading. Edna's anger is awesome to see. This is also a very funny book. The title comes from the advice Marsh got from his father to not let anyone step on his eyeball.