But Zenn’s cell phone buzzes and before I can censor my big mouth I say, “Is that a cell phone in your pocket or are you happy to see me?” Oh God, what is wrong with me? Nervousness brings out the worst in me.
Zenn just laughs. He’s not easily embarrassed. “Um … both?”
He fishes the phone out of his pocket and looks at it for a moment. His face changes from happy and relaxed to tense and serious.
“Ev, I have to go. I’m sorry.”
But I still haven’t told him!
“It’s my mom.”
“Oh. Okay. Sure.”
“She gets weird sometimes. When she drinks … I just need to check on her.”
“Of course.” I walk with him back to the nursery to get his jacket, even though my legs still feel like jelly. We go through the narthex and I follow him out to his truck. He kisses me goodbye, distracted, and hops inside.
“I’ll talk to you later?”
I nod and watch him drive away.
Before I go to bed, I have to know if everything is okay.
Zenn: Yep. Fine. Sorry for running out. Gtg — see you tomorrow?
His lack of enthusiasm freaks me out. Could his mom have said something to him? Could she know what I know?
To make it worse, I don’t see him at school the next day, and my phone is dead silent. I text him again and he doesn’t respond. Maybe the Camelot period of our brief relationship is over. Maybe the whole relationship is over.
The next day I wonder if he really is dropping out. But then I go to the art room and he is there.
He smiles at me but there is tension in his mouth. He has faint circles under his eyes.
“You okay?” I ask.
He nods. He’s not mixing paints today, just sitting at a desk doodling on what appears to be his literature assignment.
“No painting today?”
He shrugs. I notice his hair is getting a little bit longer in the front and it sticks up when he runs his hand through it.
“Everything okay with your mom?”
“I don’t really want to talk about it here,” he says.
Even though I get it — school is not the place for deep conversations — my feelings are hurt a little. But then he says, “I have to work after school, but do you want to come over tonight?”
I wonder if he’s inviting me over just to break up with me, if he found out about my parents. I can’t even think about that. I can’t lose all this now that I’ve finally found it. I can’t go back to my isolation and self-imposed loneliness. He wants me to come over and I know I won’t say no.
I wonder if his mom will be there and I’ll have to figure out what to say. I wonder a million things in a second but my answer is a simple, “Yeah.”
Chapter 28
At eight I pull up in front of the Arts and Crafts house in my mom’s minivan. In exchange for using the car, I helped her get the kids to bed before I left. I can tell my mom is torn between being happy for me that I finally have some kind of social life, being resentful that I have other things to do now and being worried about me. She gave up what should have been her carefree twenties to be my mom and I wonder if she’s jealous of me sometimes, too. Not that there’s been much to be jealous of up to this point. She’s made it eighteen years without having to think about me having a boyfriend. Now some big fears — of me getting hurt or pregnant or damaged in some way — are probably hitting her like bricks.
Zenn lets me inside and gestures to the couch, asks me if I want something to drink. Things feel kind of stiff between us, especially considering the last time we were alone together I was basically a puddle of confessions and lust. I know I have to tell him the rest tonight, before things go any further.
I take him up on a glass of water for my dry throat. He hands it to me but I drop it almost immediately, startled by the fractal.
“Sorry!” I bend to pick up the glass, to stop the spill, but the fractal makes me drop it again. I leave it on the floor this time. Zenn grabs a towel from the kitchen and mops up the water. He raises his eyebrows in a what-was-that-about look.
I feel like I peed on the carpet instead of just spilling water on it. “The glass …” I say.
He picks it up and studies it a second. Based on the fractal, I suspect it’s a glass that his mom drinks from often.
“I didn’t even think,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
He goes to the kitchen and looks at the shelf, probably for the least offensive glass.
“I used the Pritzer Insurance mug that one time,” I remind him. “That was fine.”
He takes the mug, fills it with water and brings it to me.
“Are they painful?” he asks.
“No,” I reassure him. “Not physically. Sometimes they give me a headache, or make me a little queasy, but that’s all. They just … surprise me sometimes. Especially when I let my guard down.”
He sits next to me on the couch.
I make small talk to distract him from the fact that I’m kind of a major freak. “How was work?”
“Fine,” he says. He’s still studying the glass that I dropped. “My mom uses this one all the time.”
I nod.
“So what’s it like? Her … fractal?” he asks.
I silently debate about what to tell him. “Um ... Fuzzy. Swirly. Kind of sad. Lots of blues and purples, like a bruise.”
He nods. I don’t think I’m surprising him.
“What’s my dad’s like?”
He looks at me, his gray eyes searching, but hinting that they already know what his dad’s fractal might feel like. I look away.
“He was in jail,” Zenn tells me. He sets his mom’s glass on the battered coffee table. “For almost eighteen years. He just got out.”
Here it comes. I probably should act surprised but I realize that not being honest will only come back to bite me, so I just stay quiet instead. I nod nonjudgmentally.
“Vehicular manslaughter. Drunk driving. After the Packers-Patriots Super Bowl.”
I take a deep breath.
“The Packers won, so … you know. Reason to celebrate.”
His voice is ironic, not making a joke, exactly, but trying to lighten things up.
“My mom had me right after the accident.” He leans back against the couch and stares at the ceiling. I see his Adam’s apple rise and fall. “Messed her up pretty good.”
“We’re all messed up,” I say.
“True. But she’s at a whole different level.” He shakes his head and closes his eyes. He looks exhausted. “Last night she was wasted. She gets kind of manic and just … I worry about her. That’s why I had to leave.”
I reach for his hand, sliding my fingers between his. I realize for the first time that his family has been affected at least as much as mine has by that accident. Who knows where we all would be if things had been different that night. The difference of a few minutes, a drink or two, a missed light at an intersection … Even eighteen years later, that night is still threatening to take things from me.
“Your family is so normal.” He shakes his head. “You sure you want to get involved in all my shit? Jailbird dad. Slutty drunk mom. Me …”