“Cool.”

  “Yeah.”

  Misha flies Mario through the air, and I smile in the almost dark.

  LATELY I CAN’T SIT DOWN.

  If I’m in a chair more than two minutes I’m jumping up to look out the window or checking the thermostat because I feel too hot or too cold. I stare off into the kitchen and decide I want a snack but when I sit at the counter making a sandwich or whatever I leave it before I finish making it.

  My body is in one place while my mind is in another.

  I’ve been limping around the neighborhood and trying to ignore the old folks’ concerned looks when I tell them I’ll be back—whenever. That is what brought me to Rodney’s Comics.

  Whenever.

  Two blocks from my house and a place I never went into. Rodney’s. Home to comic-book and graphic-novel lovers who just happen to be, on a Saturday, every guy in my school who probably at some point wanted to date Misha but would have tripped over his tongue, feet, and a staircase while trying to ask her.

  And if only the poor fools would actually ask her out . . . They are Misha’s kind of guys. Geeky, probably smart, scared of girls, and have discretionary income they use to buy reading material instead of bomb-making implements. So when I walk in, all eyes are on me ’cause I’m probably not their usual kind of customer. I got a pastel hoodie on and smell like expensive perfume (which I put on in a moment of boredom while rifling through Laura’s toiletries in the bathroom). Actually, I’ve been sneezing from it since I left home.

  But now I’m just looking. And I know it’s going to be okay when the bearded man behind the counter drops his eyes and doesn’t ask me what I’m looking for. My kind of place.

  So I peruse the tables of plastic-covered issues of X-Men, The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Batman, Wolverine, and Superman, and it feels so good not to know anything about what I’m looking at. I can move along the tables and take in the huge posters on the walls of mutant superheroes and listen to the way the guys who lean against the far walls and squat along the shelves talk about the comic-book world.

  Here it’s okay for my body not to be with my mind.

  Until.

  “So, are you into old-school DC or more into graphics?”

  Again, my mind, of course, is not with my body. It’s halfway across the room staring at a poster of a warrior woman with a sword who in real-assed life wouldn’t be able to walk because her waist is about two inches in circumference and her chest is about a quadruple-D cup. You gotta love the artist’s imagination—and his probable sadness at never realizing his dream. I turn around to see smiling lips, laughing eyes, and hair all over the place. Nougat Boy. Comic book in place, but no candy bar ’cause there’s about ten signs saying no food in the store.

  One says, DON’T EAT FOOD IN THIS STORE SO I DON’T HAVE TO PROVE TO YOU THAT I’M THE ASSHOLE EVERYBODY SAYS I AM.

  Rodney’s is my new favorite place, featuring comic books I know nothing about, deformed superheroes, a reading public, rude signs, and a strange smiling boy who asks me questions—that again sound like an alien language.

  I smile back at Nougat Boy, who finishes asking me about comics in about ten seconds, then asks me how my knee is, then how life in general is treating me—and finally, “How’s your friend Misha?”

  I smile my you just won a shopping spree and can bring a friend smile at Nougat Boy. My mind and body become friends again and it comes to me while I’m telling him about how Misha is a saint and doesn’t date and saved a basket of puppies when we were eight—I can make something good happen and I won’t have to think about myself for a while.

  I’ll get Misha and Nougat Boy together ’cause if somebody doesn’t get all up in their business all they’re ever gonna do is flirt with each other.

  The universe is cruel, but it doesn’t mean you can’t bring about some happiness for some of the poor creatures who have to live in it.

  AWWWW, HELL.

  I forgot Misha is going to homecoming with Jason. How am I going to change her destiny if she keeps making plans that have nothing to do with mine?

  I say over the phone, “What about Nougat Boy?”

  Misha sighs and says, “He’s a musician, plays the piano and speaks Spanish fluently because he spent the first seven years of his life in Mexico City with his dad.”

  I guess they did flirt and talk.

  Jason asked her weeks ago to go to homecoming with him as friends. But she says she just invited Nougat Boy over to her house and I have to come with Falcone later for dessert. I start to tell her I saw him at Rodney’s and gave him her phone number, but she says,

  “He just called me. What were you doing in Rodney’s?”

  “Trying to mess with the universe,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. I’m just glad you two are hookin’ up.”

  “It’s not a hookup. He’s just strange and I like him.”

  That’s good enough for me.

  Later I tell Falcone we have to go to Misha’s. He says, “What the fu . . . ,” just as his dad walks into the room.

  “Watch your mouth,” Mr. Alguero says, and heads out the front door with a bird feeder.

  “Sorry, Papi,” Falcone says to his papi’s back, then to me, “Why I gotta come to dessert? And how the hell did she hook up with somebody called Nougat Boy?”

  “His name is Thelonious.”

  Falcone drops to the couch and kicks a soccer ball across the room that almost takes out a picture of him when he was a baby and a vase sitting underneath it.

  “What the hell kind of name is Thelonious?”

  “Monk.”

  “Huh?” Falcone says looking confused.

  “He was a jazz musician.”

  “Okay,” Falcone says, still looking confused.

  “He played piano,” I say. I looked it up—and since Falcone is getting on my last nerve I decide to give him the full bio.

  “He died in 1982 and . . .”

  Falcone smirks. “Stay off Wikipedia—girl.”

  “Shut up—boy.”

  “Nawww, you first.”

  I grab a pillow and think about clocking him with it but Mr. Alguero walks back through the door, smiles at me, and asks if I’m staying for dinner.

  Yes—I will.

  “So you two can set the table, then.”

  I like Falcone’s house. It’s tumbled but put together. And you’d never know a woman doesn’t live here. It isn’t what you might expect—a gym (’cause Falcone and Mr. Alguero are jocks). There are always cut flowers in the house and it is seriously clean, but comfortable.

  “So you’re going, right?”

  Falcone puts the forks beside the plates, then remembers the napkins. He goes over to the sideboard and gets three cloth napkins. We always use paper napkins at our house ’cause Keone goes through them like everything . . .

  I sit at the table and start to cry. I do it a lot now. All of a sudden and real hard I’ll just start crying like a baby.

  Falcone moves over to my side of the table, puts the last napkin down, then wraps his arms around me. I cry so much I get a real snotty nose—he hands me one of the napkins. I start laughing, but don’t use it.

  I know Falcone wants to run or get on his iPhone or pretend he’s somewhere else. It’s the crying and sadness that freaks him out. I think it’s a boy thing—but that would be sexist, although it’s probably true. So he stands there and holds me while I drain almost every drop of liquid out of my body. In the end Falcone leaves me for a second and comes back with a gigantic piece of paper towel.

  “Better?” he asks.

  “Yep. Thanks for the paper towel.”

  “No prob.”

  I start to think how sweet Falcone can be. He’ll even give you the last bite of his ice cream cone if you look sad enough, and I get sad a lot when there’s ice cream. Falcone deserves to share ice cream with someone he loves and can share clothes with. What to do, what to do?

  I blow my nose for what I hope is the last time and still keep thinking of Kris and Keone and the new girl who had just been here two days and knew no one at school before she died. By the time Mr. Alguero has come into the dining room carrying what smells like empanadas, I’m ready to be normal again—whatever that is these days.

  We sit down to eat and Mr. Alguero starts talking about the boat he’s fixing up so he and Falcone can go fishing together.

  “She’s a beauty—heh, son?”

  Falcone nods with his mouth full of empanadas and smiles between bites at his Papi. The only thing Falcone loves more than his father and soccer (and once upon a time, Nick) is fishing.

  He told me once he didn’t know if it was because you had to be quiet, or if it was that everything smelled and felt better in the early morning, or if it was the company of his dad as they sat in the boat unwrapping egg, pork, and onion sandwiches from wax paper and eating them, while birds flew overhead and the water rippled away from their boat.

  Who’da thunk it?

  Cool Falcone, all dressed in black, street and with an ex-boyfriend who would get hives when he had to leave the city.

  I’m still sniffing a little so Mr. Alguero starts telling funny stories about fixing up his boat. I figure he probably heard me crying while we were in the kitchen.

  I laugh harder than I have in a long time at Mr. Alguero’s boat stories. And by the end of dinner I almost forget that I had a mini meltdown. Me and Falcone start clearing the table. His papi gets on the phone and leaves the room.

  “So are you going to Misha’s or not with me?”

  “I’ll go, Scotts,” he says.

  “Good, ’cause I didn’t think you were gonna answer me.”

  “Yeah, well I would have if you hadn’t started crying.”

  “Whatever, Halloween’s coming—I wanted to scare you,” I say.

  “I gotta say that I feel like I’m going behind my boy Jason’s back. I mean—I know they’re only going together because Misha needs a date. And let’s face it, Jason is probably the only dude who won’t rip her dress, get drunk, and start a fight or make a move on some other girl in front of her.”

  “Okay—yeah, that’s probably true.”

  “She should still talk to Jason. I don’t know, I mean he might feel like he’s being dissed if he found out about Nougat Boy—”

  “Thelonious.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Thelonious.”

  “True. I’ll say something to her about it.”

  We go into the kitchen and pile the dishes up on the counter.

  “I’ll wash,” I say.

  Falcone starts running the hot water in the sink and puts in too much dish soap.

  “I wish Papi would get a dishwasher.”

  “He has one,” I say.

  “Yeah—that would be me.”

  I pass the dishes to Falcone to dry and we don’t talk for the next twenty minutes. And that’s how I know who I’m close to. If I can be in a room with somebody and be comfortable enough not to say anything for that long . . . we’re tight.

  I pass the rest of the dishes to Falcone.

  “Thelonious, huh?”

  “Yeah Falcone, Thelonious.”

  “Okay, I just have to get used to it.”

  “We got used to your name.”

  “What does that mean, girl?”

  I stick my hand in the last of the soapy water as it goes down the drain, then turn and look at Falcone.

  “You’re named after a predator bird, Falcone.”

  “. . . and your ass is named after the engineer on the Star Trek Enterprise.”

  I laugh until I cry a whole different kind of tears.

  I’VE BEEN THINKING A LOT lately about baked goods, boys, Cupid—and how if he lived now he’d be on antidepressants. Sometimes you just have to move things along. Love is hard to get back sometimes, but I’m motivated. I find myself looking through old photographs of summers gone by but stop when I see an amazing picture I’ve never seen before. Laura or my dad must have taken it.

  My heart skips a beat.

  TEJANO MUSIC IS BLARING OUT OF THE SPEAKERS in Juerez’s Bodega a few blocks from my house. I search the store for chocolate sauce and the potato chips that Laura loves. Little kids run up and down the aisles and are being yelled at in Spanish by the man at the counter.

  I find Laura’s chips and turn the corner to get the chocolate sauce and run smack into Jason. Three little kids squeeze past us with juice boxes in their hands and run to the back of the store.

  Jason watches them go—smiling.

  “They got some serious sugar on.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I say.

  The bodega’s aisle isn’t that wide, and Jason takes up a lot of it.

  We stand looking at the floor for a few seconds.

  Jason says, “How you been? I don’t think I’ve talked to you since the accident.” He looks at the brace on my knee. Most times I try to pretend like I’m just sporting a knee pad. Misha talks to me about being in denial.

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  “Good,” he says. Then I notice he’s got a couple of six packs under his arm.

  “Party?”

  “Yeah—small party,” he says.

  All I can think about and not say is Jason’s having a bad year. One of his friends is dead and the girl he’s really starting to like (I think) is hooking up with a security guard/musician with a bad comic-book habit. And worse—he’s trying to be nice to the person responsible for killing his friend.

  Okay—I don’t say that to anybody. I don’t ever want to say it out loud. But I know. I really know. Kris would have been home safe if I hadn’t been on the train. He would still be on the school paper. He’d still be kickin’ it with his boys. He’d still . . . be, if not for me.

  My knee starts to hurt and I must look like I’m in real pain ’cause Jason says, “Can I give you a ride home? You aren’t making me go out of my way, remember. I live real close to you.”

  At first I think no, just because. Then I change my mind ’cause those blocks are looking longer as my knee is starting to howl. So I nod, find my chocolate sauce, and head up to the counter behind Jason.

  Jason flashes an ID and the man puts each six in a plastic bag after Jason hands over the cash. I go to pay for the chips and sauce but Jason puts the money down. When I slide the bills back over to him he moves out the door without taking it. The man at the counter shrugs and takes the money. I head out the door behind Jason. Now even on the busy street everything seems quieter. I didn’t get just how loud the music was in the store.

  “Where’d you get the fake ID?”

  Jason points across the street to where his car is. It’s way busy now. Jason takes me by the arm he’s holding the beer under, then puts the other arm out to signal for the oncoming, crazy-assed, after-work traffic to stop. And it’s wild when it does. We get across the street in one piece. I look at Jason like he’s some kind of magician.

  When he clicks the remote I open the passenger-side door and raise myself up into the SUV. He puts the beer in the back, then climbs in.

  He turns and smiles at me. “It’s my brother’s ID. He thinks he lost it so he had to get another one. I only use this sometimes.”

  “Ummmmmm?”

  “No, really.” Then he starts to laugh as he pulls out into traffic.

  Jason puts in a CD and says, “You want to go to Metroparks or do you need to get back right now?”

  “Naw, I don’t have to get back right away. I’ll call home.” But first I put the money for the chips and chocolate in his jacket pocket. He smiles.

  I get my cell out of my pocket and call Laura to tell her I’ll be home before dinner and that I got her chips. She’s okay with it. At least she’s trying to be okay with letting me out of the house at all. I can tell by the way she watches me anytime I leave that she wants to lock me in my room. It’s worse when she’s been at the hospital visiting Keone all day.

  We drive through the traffic on Euclid Ave.—which is like a zoo—for about ten minutes talking about nothing. Then we’re in the ’burbs. In two turns we’re getting out of the car and heading into the park. We walk—Jason keeps supporting me with his arm—and even though we’re walking real slow I stumble over branches, leaves, and assorted holes. Funny, until today I was more sure-footed even with the knee brace on. What the hell is wrong with me?

  Jason smells so good. No, wait. What? I’m just finding this out? Where the hell have I been? Who the hell is he anyway? Ummmm, he still smells so good . . .

  We walk for a couple of minutes in the cool breeze, inhaling wood smoke. Up ahead we find a picnic table sitting right beside the creek. Jason pulls a bottle of beer out of his jacket pocket, twists off the top, throws it in the garbage can by the table, and drinks half the bottle in one swallow.

  Impressive.

  He offers me the rest, but I shake my head. I’m not really into beer drinking. It’s too bitter. But I do jack drinks when Laura’s sisters come over for Midnight Margaritas once a month and they aren’t looking.

  Jason says, “Good for you,” and drinks the rest while he looks off into the trees.

  I watch the creek as it flows by us, carrying leaves and the occasional branch. A few minutes later two little boys and a dog go running by, screaming and laughing. The dog sees us, stops, and flops on her back. We get off the table and scratch her stomach. She lies there in dog heaven for a couple of minutes until the little boys call her. Then she’s gone and I’m sitting on the ground next to Jason.

  . . . and he still smells so good.

  . . . and it doesn’t matter that much that his mouth tastes a little like beer as we start to kiss. Jason stands and steers me towards a mammoth oak tree and soon we’re against it and he’s pulling my T-shirt up and I’ve pulled his jacket off and have slipped my hands underneath his shirt. His chest is smooth and warm. And he probably thinks the same thing about mine, ’cause there’s not much there, sadly.

  And this must be what it’s like when something feels so good you don’t want to stop. I don’t want to, ever, so I start to unzip his jeans and he lets me. But just as he starts to unzip mine and has gotten halfway—he stops.

 

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