Zoe and her mother took turns patting Jonah’s hair. A clunky metal fan that their mom used to lull herself to sleep spun noisily in a corner, like the propeller of an old plane.
Jonah fell asleep within minutes, and Zoe’s mother drifted off soon after. Zoe lay on her side, her thoughts swirling. Was this what love was like—one part pleasure, two parts pain? Zoe thought of Val’s obsession with Gloria. She understood it now. She’d never felt anything like that with Dallas—it had never even occurred to her to make a Tumblr about his feet. For one thing, she was pretty sure he waxed them.
Zoe laughed softly, and her body relaxed, muscle by muscle. She could feel sleep coming for her at last.
But then Jonah, who’d apparently not been sleeping, announced into the darkness, “I’m not going to school tomorrow.”
Zoe clenched.
“Shhh,” said her mother, her voice soggy with sleep. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
“Okay, but I’m not going,” Jonah said, as defiantly as he could. “And you can’t make me.”
“We will talk about it in the morning.”
“I know you’ll try to make me. But I won’t. I hate it.”
Zoe knew she should keep her mouth shut. But the idea that Jonah hated school was ridiculous. His homeroom teacher, Miss Noelle—he worshipped her. Once, he’d drawn a picture of her on his arm, like a tattoo.
“You don’t hate it, bug,” she said. “Don’t say that.”
“I hate it if I say I hate it,” he said.
He sat bolt upright, and kicked the covers to the bottom of the bed.
Crap, thought Zoe. Here comes a meltdown.
“Jonah, control yourself,” her mother said. “Please.”
“Only I know if I hate school,” he said. “So Zoe shouldn’t say I don’t hate it. I hate it if I say I hate it.”
Zoe got out of bed, and stalked across the room, allowing herself a childish outburst of her own. She was carrying around enough pain already. She couldn’t add her brother’s misery to the pile. Not this time. It wasn’t fair. Didn’t Jonah know that she missed X, too? Didn’t he know that she was thinking about him with every breath?
On her way to the door, she kicked over the idiotic fan with her bare foot. Behind her, Jonah said, “See how she just left? Nobody says good-bye.”
The morning was a nightmare. Zoe avoided Jonah as she printed an essay for English, but she could hear his shouts of “I hate it if I say I hate it” ringing through the house. He wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t brush his teeth, wouldn’t get dressed. Zoe felt her mother’s impatience rise. As she passed Jonah’s bedroom, she saw her mom trying to dress him herself. Jonah refused to cooperate. He stiffened his body like a war protester.
Zoe motioned for her mother to come into the hall.
“I can’t believe he’s being so heinous,” she said.
“He’s in pain, Zo,” said her mom. “We all process pain differently.”
“Yeah—and he processes it heinously,” Zoe said.
“Anyway, look, there’s no way I can go to work today,” said her mom.
“Can you afford to take a day off?” said Zoe.
“No, but I can’t afford a sitter either,” said her mother. “And who could I call? All the sitters are going to be in school, which is where children are supposed to be.”
Jonah must have overheard them because he called out from his room.
“Could Rufus be my babysitter, maybe?” he said. “I would never be heinous at Rufus.”
Zoe’s mom didn’t like the idea. She didn’t want to take advantage of Rufus’s crush on her, probably. But Zoe thought it was genius, and she wanted this morning, this crisis, this escalating Jonah nonsense over with.
She called Rufus herself. He sounded surprised by the request—chain-saw artists are rarely asked to babysit—but before she could say never mind he had declared the idea to be rad.
“Thank god,” said Zoe. “I was afraid you’d think it was gnarly.”
“You’re making fun of me, I know,” said Rufus, laughing, “but tell my man Jonah to prepare himself for an epic hang.”
Twenty minutes later, Rufus’s van could be heard negotiating the mountainside. Zoe saw the wooden bear affixed to the roof as it rose above the treetops, waving like the queen.
At last she was free. She drove the decrepit Struggle Buggy to school as if it were a race car. Every nerve in her body seemed to be humming. Every song on the radio seemed to be about X.