Excerpt from 100 Sideways Miles by Andrew A. Smith, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Cade Hernandez used the money he earned to buy cans of chewing tobacco, and we joked that Monica Fassbinder's obses¬sion with giving Cade hand jobs was a win-win proposition as long as they never got caught.

They never did get caught, and that was where the nickname came from.

Cade was always in a good mood.

Cade Hernandez always had plenty of tobacco, too. Win-Win Hernandez earned a steady income of about thirty dollars a week from Monica's hand jobs.

Monica Fassbinder caused Cade Hernandez to free a lot of his atoms in the night-custodian's shed.

My father bristles around Cade, avoids him as much as possible. But I think Cade has magical spell-casting beams or something that he can fire from his eyes, because I'd never seen a girl—my stepmother and sister included—who didn't think Cade Hernandez was endlessly adorable, even if he did things such as openly announce the frequency and stubbornness of his erections.

Some guys have all the luck.

Win. Win.


When we finished our pizza, Cade asked me, "How much is five euros in dollars?"

"Um."

I tried to ignore his question. I sucked Coke through a barber-striped plastic straw and stared out the windshield of Cade's truck.

"I'm serious," he continued. "Monica gave me five euros today. We did it right before lunch. I just want to make sure she's not taking advantage of me."

I nearly choked on my soda.

Nobody would want a girl like Monica Fassbinder to take advantage of poor Cade Hernandez. "You can't spend euros at a 7-Eleven," I countered.

Every day, we'd stop at 7-Eleven before heading back to school for seventh-period baseball. Even though the season was over for us, we still had to show up to practice.

Also, nobody wants a truancy ticket for skipping a class that you don't have to go to.

"Well duh, Finn. I know that," Cade said.

"Um. Five euros is a pay raise for you, Cade."

Cade Hernandez nodded and grinned. "Oh yeah, baby."

I was simultaneously embarrassed and deeply envious of my friend. I had never even held a girl's hand before, and suddenly I was a twenty-miles-per-second angry hornet's nest of hormones, unable to think of anything else except how I might be able to finally orchestrate an opportunity to at least talk to a girl before the earth moved another foot, another inch, through space.

Like that was ever going to happen.

Excerpted from 100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith. Copyright © 2014 by Andrew Smith. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.