Now Is Not the Time to Panic(5)

“Would you talk to him if he called?” I asked. I felt like his answer was important.

“Probably not. Not because I don’t want to talk to him, but I feel like it would hurt his feelings if I shut him out. Like, he should be punished, right?”

“He should be,” I told him. I wanted to grab his hand for emphasis, but I was weird around boys. I was weird around people in general. I didn’t like touching people or being touched. But Zeke needed to know. You had to choose sides. And you always chose the person who didn’t fuck everything up. You chose the person who was stuck with you.

“So,” he said, looking up at me. “We’re both kind of alone in the same way, right?”

“I guess so,” I said. He looked like he might kiss me. Or maybe not. I’d never been this close to a boy. I knew there had to be a moment, some signal, that regular people could sense in order to go from being people who didn’t kiss to being people who kissed. What the hell was it? How could I make sure not to do it until the exact right moment? His eyes were so dark, but they kind of twinkled. I felt light-headed.

“Are you hungry?” I asked him, jumping up from the sofa. “Do you want something to eat?”

“Um, sure,” he said. “I’m hungry.” And before he could even finish talking, I was running into the kitchen, opening the fridge, feeling the cool air on my face. Was this how love worked? You shared something personal, stood close to each other? I wasn’t attracted to him. I didn’t know him. All I knew was that we both had dads who sucked. All I knew was that we were both alone.

Zeke was standing at the kitchen counter. I turned to face him, shutting the door to the fridge. There wasn’t much in there. I didn’t know what to do. The house felt really empty. So I just said something to break up the silence.

“I’m a writer,” I told him.

“Really?” he replied. He seemed impressed.

“Well, I mean, I want to be. That’s what I want to do. I want to write books.”

“That’s cool,” he said. “I like books. Stephen King? You like him?”

“He’s okay,” I said, but I actually didn’t like him all that much. I liked southern writers, because that’s what my mom taught me to love. I liked badass women southern writers like Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers. I liked Dorothy Allison and Bobbie Ann Mason and Alice Walker.

Oh, but really, truly, I loved Carolyn Keene. I loved Nancy Drew books. I loved the Dana Girls. And maybe I was too old for those books now, but I still read them, over and over. I didn’t want to get into all of that with Zeke. If he had never read The Member of the Wedding, then I might cry. It would make me so sad.

“I like Philip K. Dick,” he said, and I had no idea who that was. We were getting nowhere.

“I’m writing a book,” I said. I’d never told anyone. Not even my mom, who would have been delighted to hear it. “It’s like Nancy Drew, you know? But, she’s bad. She’s the one doing the crimes. And her dad is the police chief, but she keeps outsmarting him. And her sister is the girl detective, but she’s not very good at it.”

“Is it for kids?” Zeke asked, confused.

“I honestly don’t know,” I admitted. “I haven’t figured it all out yet.”

“Well . . . cool,” Zeke said, and I believed him. “I want to be an artist,” he told me, like we were both admitting that we weren’t human. We didn’t understand how normal this was, to be young, to believe that you were destined to make beautiful things.

“What kind of artist?” I asked him.

“Comic books,” he told me. “Drawings? Weird stuff, really.” His eyes lit up. He looked so happy. “And real art, too. Like, big things, complicated things. I want to make something that everyone in the world will see. And they’ll remember it. And they won’t totally understand it.”

“I know what you mean,” and I did.

“That’s what we should do this summer,” he said, like a lightbulb appeared over his head. He, honest to god, snapped his fingers.

“What?” I asked him.

“We should make stuff,” he said.

“Well,” I said, nervous, “I’m still working on the novel. It’s not finished. It’s just a rough draft, really.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “We can figure it out. It would be fun to do something together, though.”

“Just spend all summer making art?” I asked, confused.

“All summer,” he said. “What else were you gonna do?”

“Okay,” I told him, nodding. “But what if your dad fixes himself and you go back in a few weeks?”

He thought about this. “I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” he told me, and we both laughed.

And that was it. That was going to be our summer. If something happened to me, it would happen to him. The next few months opened up, turned shimmery in the heat. We’d make something.

So, we were friends now. And maybe, by August, we’d be best friends. It had been a long time since I’d had a best friend. Zeke was still smiling, still staring at me, like I was supposed to say something, like I was supposed to do something important. I felt like if I did the wrong thing right now, if I messed up, it would all go wrong. But I was frozen, staring at him. Finally, he said, “So are we gonna eat lunch?”