Her fractal is lavender, like a faded bruise, and dense like fog. It feels like a muffled argument, like a battle between someone with a megaphone and someone whose mouth is covered with duct tape. There is a giddiness there, but it’s weighed down by something else … a helium balloon tied to an anvil.
I don’t know exactly what it means, yet, but I’m furious at myself for ever introducing Charlotte to Josh if this is what he’s done to her fractal. If his fucked-upness has somehow rubbed off on her.
She looks up from my hand.
“What’s it say?” she asks, though I’m sure she already knows.
“What’s he doing to you?” I ask.
“Who?”
Her lying is getting better, but I give her my impatient look anyway.
“Josh?” she asks incredulously. “You think it’s just Josh?” She shakes her head and pulls her arm away.
“What is it then?”
She looks out at the water again. We sit for a moment and eventually she offers her arm to me. Maybe it’s easier to let me read her fractal than it is to talk about it.
I focus on the shapes and the feelings and the pattern and slowly I get a sense of isolation, of a huge lake an inch deep.
“They never talk about anything. Ever.”
Ah. I get it. The new friends.
“I mean, they talk. They talk a lot. But it’s about clothes and parties and cute boys and how many calories they had for lunch. But they don’t know anything about me. I don’t think they even want to. I can’t stand it anymore.”
And I can’t help myself, but I smile before quickly covering my mouth.
She says, “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
“Then why haven’t you been calling me? Or texting me?”
“You seemed like you wanted to try out that group. Josh’s friends. I didn’t want to get in your way.”
She looks down at her lap. “It felt like you were disappointed in me. Like … like by dating Josh I was somehow one of them. It felt like you had written me off.”
“Me?”
She nods.
It’s probably true. That’s what it felt like. An either/or situation: me or them. “You’re sitting with them at lunch now,” I remind her.
“Only because you left me stranded at that table with Negative Nora and her whiny bunch. I’ll take the calorie counters over the complainers any day.”
Truth again. The girls we sit with can be truly miserable.
“Come back to lunch and we can sit together again,” Charlotte offers. “We can both get away from the Glumsters. We’ll sit somewhere else.”
I think about it for a minute, weighing my friendship with her and my growing whatever it is with Zenn.
“It’s that guy, isn’t it?”
I must blush or something because I don’t say a word and she still nods knowingly.
“Are you guys dating?”
“No. No. Nothing like that. Just … friends.”
“Right.”
“Come on, Char. You know I can’t touch anyone. And this guy … man. I’ve touched his jacket and nearly passed out. I can’t imagine what it would be like to touch him.” I don’t tell her that I have touched him, however briefly, once. I don’t tell her that it didn’t give me even a hint of a fractal.
“Well,” she says, decisively. “He can touch you, can’t he?” Her voice is suggestive and teasing. Man, I’ve missed hanging out with her.
“Well … yeah.”
She smiles. “So there you go.”
I don’t even know how to answer.
Chapter 22
Zenn has been out for three days in a row and I’m starting to worry. I decide that, as his friend, I should check up on him. That’s what friends do, right? If it were Charlotte, I’d make sure she was okay. And since I only have two good friends, I have to look out for their welfare. This is what I tell myself.
I swing by the cemetery on my way to his house, dawdling so I don’t seem so pitifully eager. It would be really sad for me to show up at his door only minutes after the final bell. So I stop by my parents’ grave and swap the small, white stone that is there for the gray yin-and-yang one I picked up yesterday with Charlotte.
When I get to the Arts and Crafts house, Zenn’s truck isn’t in the driveway but I decide to try anyway. If he’s home, I hope he’s home alone. And I hope he’s receptive to a surprise visit.
I take a deep breath and knock on the door and wait. And wait. When no one answers, I reluctantly turn back down the steps and am halfway to the bottom when Zenn’s truck pulls in the driveway.
He parks and climbs out before he sees me waiting on the stairs.
“Oh, hey!” He is clearly surprised, but not disappointed. He might even be happy. I’m new at this whole boy-girl thing, so it’s hard to tell.
“Hey.” I hold up a yellow folder with his trig homework. “I just … you weren’t at school again so I got your homework from Mr. Haase.” I hope my excuse doesn’t sound as transparent to him as it does to me. “Didn’t want you to get behind.”
He comes up the steps and I get a better look at him. He is filthy. Dirt coats his jeans and his sweatshirt. It covers his skin in a fine layer making him appear even darker than he normally is. And hotter, if that’s possible.
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.” He takes the folder from me and opens the door. “Come on in.”
Even though his voice is subdued, I hesitate only a second.
He drops the folder onto the tiny kitchen table. “I just … have to get cleaned up.”
“Oh, sure! Sorry! I’ll go …”
“No, you can hang out. I’ll be quick.”
“No, seriously. I just wanted to drop off your homework. See if you were okay.”
“Eva,” he says. “Stay.”
His voice is kind but firm. I can tell he wants me to stay. I want to stay. “Okay.”
He disappears into the bedroom, and then into the bathroom. After a moment I can hear music — something soulful with banjos and maybe harmonicas — and the shower running.
Holy God. He’s in the shower. Right behind that door.
I nearly get up and leave, but then I realize I’m being ridiculous. I’m eighteen years old, for Pete’s sake. The mere thought of a naked guy in close proximity should not send me running for cover.
The nosy part of me wants to slide my hands over everything in his apartment, learn as much as I can in these few minutes alone with his stuff. It’s so tempting to snoop sometimes, out of curiosity or boredom. But with Zenn I’m too afraid of what I might learn, so I sit primly on a kitchen chair with my hands on my lap.
The kitchen is so tiny that I can almost reach out and touch every cabinet and appliance from my chair. The only thing that looks properly used is the coffeemaker. There are no curtains on the window, but a small ceramic cartoony-looking turtle sits facing outward on the windowsill, as if watching for guests to arrive. Next to the turtle is a row of small, round stones, lined up by gradient: light gray to almost black. I stand up to look at them, and smile. They are all about the same size, each one slightly darker than the one next to it. Leave it to an artist to organize his stones by color. Or maybe they’re his mom’s stones. Either way, seeing them lined up like that makes me happy.