“How about we not get pizza at all?”
“I thought you might say that too, since you had such a hearty, well-balanced lunch.” He pauses. Clears his throat. Stares at the single car making its way down Main Street. “That’s going to be one of those things I said out loud and then will regret later, isn’t it?”
I laugh and it feels good. He looks sweet when he realizes he’s said the wrong thing. His eyes go big and wide. To rescue him, I link my arm with his and start us walking down the street.
“Just so you know, if asked, I would have no idea how to describe your frequency,” I say.
“Honestly, sometimes I think only dogs can hear me,” he says.
“For what it’s worth, I can hear you just fine.”
“It’s worth a lot,” David says, and I blush, and I’m pretty sure he does too.
—
We end up at the counter at Straw and we order double cones of vanilla and chocolate brownie ice cream, despite the fact that it’s cold out. It’s easier this way, sitting at the counter facing forward, so we don’t have to look at each other while we talk. It’s crazy but I don’t feel self-conscious around David like I do with pretty much everyone else, but still, staring at the old-fashioned mini jukebox instead of his face helps me to forget myself.
“Do you believe in the butterfly effect?” David asks out of nowhere.
“English, please.”
“In chaos theory there’s this concept that one small change can have increasingly bigger effects. So, like, a butterfly flaps its wings here in New Jersey and it disturbs the atmosphere, and somehow that eventually leads to, like, a hurricane in the Galápagos Islands.” I nod and think about how exactly thirty-four days ago, a man called George Wilson, a name for a portly next-door neighbor in a sitcom, not a real person, decided to meet a friend for a drink. I think about how exactly thirty-five days ago, a work order to fix a traffic light was sent up the chain for approval, and how it got stuck in bureaucratic traffic along the way. I think about a foot not fast enough on the brake.
Seemingly small, inconsequential things.
I think about a butterfly flapping its wings and now my father is dead.
“I do. But I wish I didn’t, because it makes me realize just how much of our lives are out of our control,” I say.
“Like your dad dying.” He says it like the words have no power at all. I feel winded, like David punched me right in the gut. And also a little high because he read my mind and said it out loud. Straight out. With the exception of last night, my mom barely even says my father’s name, not to mention the whole him-being-dead part.
So many available words: Expired. Killed. Departed. Liquidated. Gone.
All have been banned from my house.
“Sort of,” I say. “That was a car accident, though. A bunch of things added up, but there were two drivers. Human mistakes were made. That’s different from an atmospheric disturbance, right?”
“Maybe. But take each one of those human mistakes in isolation and you’d have a totally different outcome. Your dad could have walked away without a scratch.”
I lick my ice cream, which is suddenly sickly sweet. I should have gotten it like David did: asked for the chocolate brownie on the bottom. Worked down to the decadence.
“I was thinking about the butterfly effect and about how a series of events brought you to sit at my lunch table, and you sitting there has led us to sit here. A week ago we wouldn’t have had ice cream together.”
“Probably not.”
“And then I may say the wrong thing, and that will lead us to never eating ice cream together again.” I look at the side of David’s face. He’s not as impervious to the world around him as he seems.
“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” I say. “I’m like a rash.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I say, embarrassed. Did I just compare myself to a skin condition? Yes, yes I did. “Nothing at all.”
—
A little while later, we’re still sitting here in the empty ice cream store, legs dangling from stools. David has a bit of chocolate on his chin, but I don’t tell him. It’s kind of adorable.
“If you could be anyone else, who would you want to be?” I ask, because I’ve decided that I admire how David doesn’t self-censor. I should try it too.
I think about this all the time. Waking up in the morning, looking in the mirror, and seeing someone wholly different staring back. These days I’d give anything to be the old me, the pre-accident me, who could sit at my old lunch table and chat about nothing. The pre-accident me who aspired to be more like Lauren Drucker, former benevolent ruler and social chair of Mapleview. I really wouldn’t mind being entirely full of shit, so long as I didn’t notice.
“There’s this guy Trey who teaches me guitar,” David says. “He kind of pisses me off, actually, but he’s just the type of guy everyone likes. He always knows exactly what to say. Like has annoyingly pitch-perfect radio waves. So I guess him?”
“I used to want my metaphorical radio waves to play music that was, like, quirky but also perfectly curated, you know? Something cool. But now I feel like I’ve become traffic on the hour.”
“You are so not traffic on the hour,” he says, and to my dismay dabs at his chin with a napkin. “Though I wouldn’t mind even being that. Reliable, informative, albeit repetitive. At least people actually listen to it.”
“I think your signal is in Morse code,” I say with a smile.
“When I was eight, I taught myself Morse code. The clicks are highly irritating.”
I lean over and for no reason I can think of—maybe because I have nothing smart to say, maybe because with David I feel like someone else entirely, I want to be someone else entirely—I take a lick of his ice cream. The vanilla part. He stares at my lips, as shocked as I am.
“Sorry,” I say. “I liked your order better.”
“The cold medicine is not for me. Just to be clear,” he says.
“Wasn’t worried.”
I wonder what would happen if I looked into a mirror right now. Who would be staring back at me? Did time just leap forward with that single lick?
—
Later, when I’m home in my room working on a problem set, though it’s long past time to go to sleep, I receive my very first text from David.
David: I am usually anti-text, but I thought I’d make an exception.
Me: I’m honored. Why the staunch anti-text stance?
David: I have trouble conceptualizing the idea of words traveling like this. And I worry that how they sound to me might sound different to you. I’m not good with tone.
Me: I should know to expect a real answer from you. But still. It’s surprising.
David: When you ask a question, you get an answer.
I take my phone and snap a quick selfie. Me in my pajamas, hair in a bun on top of my head, giving him a thumbs-up. Far from a pretty picture, but I think it would offend David if I put a filter on it. I press send.