“Sweet. Ethan will be stoked.”
Hopefully chicken strips will lull the kids into submission and we’ll have a peaceful, spill-free dinner.
Stranger things have happened.
Chapter 11
“Does your friend Charlotte have a thing with anyone?”
The question comes while I’m in the middle of explaining the Gudermannian function to Josh, so it catches me off guard.
“Have a thing? Like I have a thing with trig?”
He laughs a little self-consciously. “Yeah, I mean, does she have a boyfriend or … whatever?”
I put down my pencil. “No. She doesn’t. Not right now.” I add that last part, trying to make it seem like Charlotte is in a very rare and brief window of opportunity between love interests.
“Cool.” Josh leans back in his chair and taps his hands on the tabletop. “Cool.”
I look at him for a moment and before I think better of it, I reach over and pick up his cell phone.
“Is this that new one?” I ask vaguely. I don’t know much about phones. I’m sure his phone is the newest and greatest model — I couldn’t care less. I’m just making small talk while I peek into his life for a second. I want to see if I can sense his motivations because I’m not sure I trust him yet. Not with my best friend.
“Yeah,” he says. He starts to explain how awesome his phone is, but I don’t hear him because the fractal is already sweeping over me. It’s only slightly milder than the one from Zenn’s coat, which surprises me because I wouldn’t think a guy like Josh struggles with much. But this one makes my palms sweat, my ears ring, my throat tighten. I set the phone down quickly, before full-blown dizziness or nausea sets in. I steady myself, taking a deep breath to try to shake off the surprising weight of rejection and insecurity and loneliness.
“Are you okay?” Josh’s voice is concerned and I realize I’ve ignored him since I picked up the phone. I’m probably a little pale and sweaty, too.
“Sorry. Low blood sugar, I think.”
Josh digs in his pocket and pulls out a half-eaten bag of Skittles. For some reason the fact that he has a bag of opened Skittles in his pocket and is not too embarrassed to offer me some makes me instantly trust him more. That, and the fact that his fractal is nothing like what I expected.
Although my blood sugar has nothing to do with why I’m pale and sweaty, I take a few Skittles to play along. They are slightly soft.
“Thanks,” I say, and he smiles, happy to help.
He reaches for his phone and presses the button to check the time. I already regret touching it because now when I look at him all I can think of is that fractal. I get the feeling of watching someone kick an adorable puppy.
There is a tap at the door and Zenn peeks his head into the room. He lifts his hand in a small wave. Josh stands up and pronounces my name correctly as he says goodbye. I wonder if someone — maybe Charlotte? — tipped him off on that.
Josh leaves and Zenn takes his chair. I quietly inhale the fresh air he brings with him. In what I realize is becoming a habit, I study his hands. Today he has medical tape wrapped around two of his fingers and a bandage across one of his knuckles. I wonder, briefly, if he was in a fight. As if teenage boys are getting into fistfights every day. What is this, West Side Story?
“I stopped by the body shop yesterday with the van,” I tell him.
He looks up at me. Wow, his eyes are truly gray. Like … number 2 lead pencil gray. I’m probably the only girl in the world who would notice that, and also find it a little sexy. “Really?” he asks, his voice almost hopeful.
“Yeah. But I’m not sure the church can afford two or three grand.”
He waves his hand, dismissing my argument. “It won’t be that much.”
“It won’t?”
“I can get Dave to write some of it off as a charitable donation since it’s for a church. I’ll talk to him.”
“Really?”
Zenn nods. “Do you want me to meet with the priest or whoever to talk about some ideas?”
“Well … that would be my dad. The pastor.”
“Oh!” he says. “Your dad?”
Yeah. I suppose that’s pretty sexy — having your dad be a man of the cloth. “But he’s delegated this to me, since I’m the one who thinks we should paint it.”
“Oh,” he says again. “Great. So … what were you thinking?”
I shrug. I haven’t put a lot of thought into anything but getting rid of the sheep. “Just something … less.”
He nods and takes out his phone. He touches the screen and opens his camera roll. “Maybe something like this?” He finds what he is looking for and he holds the phone out to me. I hesitate. If touching his jacket was any indication, holding his phone could be a nightmare, just like Josh’s. To my relief, he sets it on the table and slides it toward me.
I look at the screen and there is a picture of a motorcycle fuel tank painted with a very busty woman in a tiny black bikini top. Her hair is made of snakes, like Medusa’s. Fire is shooting out of her eyes.
I grin and look at Zenn, who is deadpan.
“You know,” he says, shrugging. “Something classy.”
“Could you make her with, like, devil horns? And maybe paint the lyrics to ‘Stairway to Heaven’ along the running board?”
Zenn nods, smiling finally. He takes the phone and flips to another picture.
“You could just do the name of the church. Something basic. Or you could do something like this.” He shows me another picture, this one of a mural painted on a school wall, a simple silhouette of children backlit by sunshine.
“Oooh, that’s nice. I like that.” This time I cautiously take the phone from him to study the picture and I brace myself for a fractal. But … there’s nothing.
“You could put a cross in the background or something. To make it more … churchy.”
“Is this a new phone?” I ask, grasping it more firmly.
“Huh?” He looks up, confused. “Oh. No … not really.”
Maybe he’s not an Instagram-selfie-overtexting sort of guy, not attached to his phone at every waking moment.
Zenn takes out a pencil and opens his notebook and starts drawing. In just minutes he scribbles an amazing sketch, something I couldn’t have done if you gave me weeks and something to trace.
“Holy shit.” I watch his pencil fly across the page, like it’s magic.
Zenn looks down at his sketch and shades in a little more. “I could come up with a couple of options for you to run by your dad.” For the first time since I met him, he seems relaxed. His jaw is unclenched, his face calm and less weighed down with worry.
“Sure. That’d be great.” I pick up the scrap-of-paper masterpiece. “Or I could just show him this. This should be more than enough.”