“Clark,” he’d say. “Feeling loopy.”
It was the best way to describe it. Loopy. Anxiety works a little differently for everyone, but it certainly always comes with cycling thoughts. Looping images that you can’t control or stop, not easily anyway. Sometimes Solomon would start thinking about one of his parents dying. And then it would turn into both of them dying. And before he knew it, thoughts of something tragic happening to them—a car wreck, a random shooting, an earthquake—would swirl around in his mind so fast and so heavy that the only thing he could do was clench his fists and try to breathe as slowly as possible to not let it get to him, to not lose control the way he had so many times before.
Clark’s way of dealing with it was to become a master at distraction therapy, which didn’t work every time, but was always appreciated. When Solomon seemed particularly anxious, he’d try his best to keep his friend busy and over time, it seemed to be working.
“We need a project,” Clark suggested the day Lisa left for camp.
“You’re right. I can’t play one more card game or I’ll freak out.”
“You know anything about cars?”
“What do you think?”
“I think that was a dumb question,” he said. “Does your dad?”
“I don’t know. Probably. Yours doesn’t?”
“I’ve been asking him to help me fix up that van for six months and he still hasn’t done it. So, I give up.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Well, it’s a total piece of shit. I paid three hundred bucks for it last November and, honestly, I can’t believe it hasn’t blown up yet. I’m too scared to take it on the freeway because sometimes when I go over fifty, it starts smoking.”
“That can’t be good.”
“I need to clean it out, too. It smells like wet socks and I think there’s something dead in the back, but I’m too afraid to look. Lisa won’t even ride in it anymore.”
Solomon walked over to the kitchen window to look at Clark’s van in the driveway. It was painted dark green, not professionally, and just on the side facing him, it had two hubcaps that didn’t match and what looked like a mostly flat tire.
“Can you back it into the garage?”
“You mean the holodeck?” Clark asked, sounding offended.
“It won’t hurt anything,” Solomon said. “I can’t help you fix it, but I can help you clean it out. And then maybe my dad can have a look at the engine when he gets home.”
A few minutes later, with just the one single, dingy lightbulb casting its faint glow all over the garage, Clark climbed into the back of the van. It was disgusting, to say the least, so Solomon stood just outside of it, holding open a large black garbage bag with his face turned away.
“You okay?” Clark asked, amused.
“Just make it quick and don’t throw any dead body parts at me.”
“What about live body parts?”
Half an hour in, Solomon was tying up the first trash bag and walking into the house to get a second. He ran into his dad in the kitchen and nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Holy shit!” he yelled.
“Watch your mouth,” his dad said. “Who are you, your mother? What’re you up to anyway?”
“We’re cleaning out Clark’s van.”
“Clark’s here?”
“He’s in the garage.”
His dad followed him back and helped hold the trash bag while Clark tossed in soda cans, crumpled fast-food bags, and weird random things like a ripped pair of blue jean shorts and a deflated basketball.
“Are you teen wolf, Clark?” Solomon’s dad asked.
“Only on the weekends.”
They eventually took a break to have dinner, something Clark stayed for most nights of the week now. Valerie loved it, feeling like she had two fully functioning sons instead of one that just got by. Of course she didn’t say it aloud like that, but Solomon was smart enough to see it on her face. And he saw it on his dad’s, too. They hadn’t made it to dessert before Clark had convinced him to take a look at the van. By midnight, Jason was covered in oil and grease from his elbows to his fingertips. He’d been picking around the motor and listing things they needed to get it running right. Solomon jotted down everything his dad said, contributing the only way he knew how. But, mostly, he watched Clark as he nodded his head to these very technical things Jason was describing and pretended not to be clueless.
“You may need a new carburetor,” his dad said.