Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You

by Todd Hasak-Lowy

  3. She has a good friend or close cousin she’s been meaning to visit who goes to Michigan.

  4. She is thinking about going to Michigan for school, but hasn’t yet had a chance to tour the campus.

  5. She does this kind of thing all the time.

  6. She likes, or even secretly loves, Darren, and this is her chance.

  7. She is insane, more or less.

  7 Brief Conversations Darren and Zoey Have While Zoey Plays This Game on Her Phone, Which Is Just Distorting the Faces of Random People by Using Your Finger to Pull Their Features Apart or Mush Them Together

  1. D: You like North High? Z: Nah, not really. D: Me neither.

  2. D: When did you get the one over your eye? Z: Last Thanksgiving. D: Cool.

  3. D: Mr. Pibb is pretty excellent. Z: And nasty. D: Well, yeah. Z: Good nasty. D: Yeah. D: Great nasty.

  4. D: Do you know Maggie Block? Z: Not really. Z: Why? D: No, nothing.

  5. D: What are your parents going to do? Z: Do? D: When they find out. Z: About? D: About, you know, this. Z: Who cares. D: Are you scared? D: Are you? Z: (shoulder shrug) D: You should call them. I did already. D: Mine, I mean. D: They were mad, but not that mad, actually. D: You should. Z: (shoulder shrug)

  6. D: Do you know where you’re going to stay? Z: (noise he’s pretty sure means no) D: You can probably stay at my brother’s place. D: But it might be on a couch or something. D: He’d be okay with it. Z: Okay. D: He’s cool.

  7. D: That one’s awesome. Z: Thanks. Z: Your turn. D: Sweet.

  5 New Thoughts Darren Has about Zoey, Now That He Can Just Stare Right at Her, Because While He Was Playing the Game on Her Phone, She Crossed Her Arms, Rested Her Head to the Side, and Fell Asleep, Which Is Maybe One of the Advantages of Being Small, Since There’s No Way Darren Could Ever Get Comfortable Enough in His Cramped Seat to Fall Asleep

  1. Her haircut (sort of shaved on one side but long and almost poufy on the other) is kind of stupid. Almost cool, but mostly stupid. He’d never in a million years have the guts to get his hair cut that way, or in some other kind of way that would be equivalent for boys.

  2. Her nose and mouth are pretty small, and the way her nose curves around or below her nostrils (right where the bottom of her nose meets the rest of her face), along with the plumpness of her top lip in the middle, where it juts up and out a bit, this being the one part of her face that isn’t little and thin, are probably the best parts of her face, which is maybe a little plain overall, but is definitely pretty in those places. Plus her skin looks super smooth, not to mention really pale.

  3. She smells like a cigarette, which is gross, but there’s another smell too, which is either a hair product or some perfume, or some combination of them, and the smell isn’t that strong, but it’s really distinct and steady, almost like it’s in her clothes, too. He has absolutely no idea what the name of the smell is or how even to describe it, except that it is a smell that makes you want to keep smelling it, which is probably the overall point of perfume, if you think about it. So it’s kind of interesting that Zoey puts something on that makes you want to keep smelling her, because if you asked her, “Do you want people to want to keep smelling you?” she’d almost certainly say no; in fact, she probably wouldn’t even answer the question.

  4. You can do all that stuff to your hair and face, but then when you’re asleep you still look just like pretty much anyone else when they’re sleeping, because there’s no sleeping expression that only sad or defiant or bitter or mysterious people (or whatever Zoey is) have, and so there’s something extra pathetic about looking at her like this, to the point that he’s almost embarrassed for her right now.

  5. If it were somehow the right or appropriate thing for him to do, he’d lean over and kiss her neck, maybe two inches below the place where her jaw curves up toward her ear. Just a little kiss, not even very long and definitely not juicy or anything. And it’s not like he’s thinking about some kind of frog/princess situation here, but he almost has the sense that the world would be a much better place if it were somehow the right or appropriate thing for him to kiss her on the neck, because, again, it’s not like she’d turn into a princess, but he does think it would make her life much better, change it somehow, assuming he could kiss her neck in just the right way, which he would definitely try to do and wishes he could.

  10 Questions Nate Texts to Darren during an Exchange That Starts with Darren Texting, Im Bringing Someone OK?

  1. Someone?

  2. ???

  3. Who dat?

  4. Toby Lovells sis?

  5. She hot?

  6. U bonking her?

  7. So wtf?

  8. She gonna stay here?

  9. U want to be bonking her?

  10. Whatevs. Was Dad cool?

  4 Possible Translations of the Startlingly New Expression That Briefly Passes over Zoey’s Face When She First Starts Waking Up but Before She Is Totally Awake, an Expression Darren Gets a Pretty Good Look at, Because He Was Still Staring Right at Her

  1. Oh, I forgot you were here. Glad you’re here.

  2. That was a strange but not entirely unpleasant dream I was just having.

  3. Good morning, sweetie.

  4. If this crappy world were exactly the same as it is right now, exactly the same in every last way, except I knew that you’d always be next to me and watching over me while I slept, then I’d be much happier about living in this crappy world.

  4 Mostly Trivial Events That Together Quickly Ruin the Moment

  1. Zoey presses the palm of her hand against her mouth while kind of squinting one eye and then looks at her palm, maybe because she was expecting to find some drool there, though Darren’s pretty sure there wasn’t any.

  2. A couple of college-age guys sitting a few rows back have a pretty loud and brief conversation about Superbus’s unreliable Wi-Fi service, a conversation that could pretty well be summed up in the phrase, “This is bullshit, man,” which is said more than once during this conversation.

  3. Zoey quickly stands up, grabs her worn-out canvas backpack, and starts walking toward the back of the bus before turning around and saying “Bathroom” to Darren.

  4. It starts raining lightly, the small drops stretching out into thin lines along the side windows but just sort of turning into deformed rings on the front window, which has no windshield wiper, which seems perfectly reasonable but still makes Darren a little nervous.

  6 Instances of Physical Contact Involving Darren and Zoey That Take Place between Battle Creek and Ann Arbor

  1. Zoey returns to her seat. Darren had raised the armrest to make a little more room for himself. When she sits down, her side, especially her shoulder and upper arm, momentarily push into his upper arm. And then sort of keep pushing. Not that hard, but still. So Darren softly leans back into her to see what will happen. The answer is nothing, meaning they sit there, pretty much leaning into each other and watching Michigan roll past.

  2. Darren looks down at the back of her right hand. The number 827 is written on her thumb. Small circles are drawn around each knuckle. “Hello,” “Bye,” and “Hello” are written below the place where her pinkie and ring finger come to an end. Her sleeve is pushed up just a bit and Darren can see that there’s more writing there. So he lets the index and middle fingers of his left hand reach down to this sleeve and push it up an inch or two more. She doesn’t stop him.

  The end of her forearm is covered by some sort of design. Curvy lines and straight lines and little colored-in rectangles. It looks a bit like fish scales, a bit like medieval chain mail, a bit like waves. The lines are incredibly intricate and have been drawn so steadily that Darren assumes it’s all a tattoo.

  “Is that . . . ,” he starts to ask.

  “I drew it,” she says.

  “Can I . . .” But she just pushes the sleeve up herself.

  “Holy crap,” Darren says. The pattern covers the entire top half of her forearm and reaches almost all the way to her elbow. It l
ooks weird, but it looks awesome, too. It’s almost scary at first, but then, somehow, it isn’t. “How did—”

  “Left-handed,” she says, like that explains anything.

  “No, but . . . ,” Darren says.

  He really can’t decide what he feels about it. When he thinks about what it looks like (fish scales and all that), he’s not so crazy about it. But then when he just looks at and kind of lets himself get lost in the pattern, he totally loves it. Maybe because the pattern is almost perfectly consistent. Like a machine did it. Or maybe because it’s just a killer design that kind of turns her arm into something other than an arm.

  “That’s sick,” he says. “But how—how can you do that?”

  Zoey shrugs her shoulders, but this time Darren’s pretty sure it doesn’t mean what it’s meant all the other times. Now it’s more like she’s a little embarrassed that he’s so impressed, even though she’s glad he is.

  “Totally sick,” he says.

  The next thing Darren knows, Zoey reaches into her bag and pulls out one of those fine-tip Sharpies. For a second Darren figures she’s just showing him what she drew it with. But then she takes off the cap.

  Her small, dark eyes grow a little wider. The white is really white next to the black, which is really black. Darren’s not exactly sure what his face does, but it must do something, because her eyes shrink and she asks, sounding ready to be disappointed, “You don’t want me to?”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s cool,” she mumbles, puts the cap back on, and leans down toward her bag.

  3. “No, wait,” Darren says, and grabs her shoulder, which is small and muscular.

  She freezes and looks at him quite seriously.

  “You can,” he says, but her expression doesn’t change. “I want you to. For real.”

  4. Zoey softens a bit, including in her shoulder.

  “Yeah?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  She looks at his hand, which is still on her shoulder. He decides it’s probably time to remove it. She sits up straighter.

  “Okay. First . . .” She reaches over and pretty much takes off his zip-up hoodie for him. Then she puts the armrest down and sets his arm on it. She turns her whole body to face him and tucks her right leg under her butt.

  Darren’s glad she’s not mad at him or anything, but otherwise he’s not so sure how he feels about all this. The more he looks at her arm, the more he thinks it looks like a tattoo. Maybe it actually is, and maybe she’s just screwing with him and will laugh once he’s done letting her draw all over his arm.

  5. But too late, because she takes hold of it with her right hand and starts drawing with her left. The ink flows out of the Sharpie and onto his skin. She begins with small waves, with these little bumpy lines running across the width of his forearm. When she finishes one line she goes back to where she started, but moves maybe a quarter-inch up his arm. Each line is identical.

  The tip of the marker on his skin, he can’t figure out what it feels like, but something between the feel of it and just watching her hand steadily hovering over his arm, it makes him close his eyes. Darren pictures the design slowly spreading over his arm. He wishes Zoey had three hands so he could hold one of them. The more he sits there, the more he has trouble figuring out where he ends and Zoey begins, which feels like the answer to a question he’s been trying to ask himself for a while.

  He opens his eyes about ten minutes later. Was he sleeping? At some point she finished the waves, and without him noticing, switched to longer lines running down the length of his arm. He can’t tell if they’re straight or not, because it’s like one of those optical illusions, or at least it could be. And it doesn’t make any sense, because he swears the bus ride is bumpy, but all the lines are straight. Like even the wavy lines are somehow straight, whatever that means.

  He really wants to say something, but it’s way better not to. Which is good, because he has no idea what he’d say. Part of him is ready for her to finish already, but part of him wishes he was lying on an operating table, wearing only his boxers and a T-shirt, so she could do his other arm and both legs.

  When she finishes the longer lines, she starts filling in some of the curvy rectangles created by all the intersecting lines. Darren tries to figure out the pattern she’s using, like how is she deciding which rectangles to color in? After a while he decides it’s random. But good random. The fingers of her right hand have been pressing hard into the area above his elbow this whole time. He might be able to feel a pulse in her fingertips. Though maybe it’s his own pulse she’s helping him feel.

  6. Zoey sits up but continues looking at his arm. The stretch of skin she drew on is now about three-fourths black. She turns her head this way and that, checking something. Then she pushes her right sleeve all the way up and presses her forearm firmly against his.

  Even though his arm is bigger, the patterns are identical. The waves in the shorter lines. The weird bends in the longer ones. Even the colored-in rectangles. All the same. They press their matching arms into each other. His skin is a little darker than hers.

  “Holy shit, that’s crazy!” he says.

  “Do you like it?” she asks with what sounds like absolute and unguarded sincerity.

  “I love it,” he says, “seriously,” at a volume the drone of the bus just about swallows up.

  He looks at their arms, pushed together firmly, until they stop looking like arms to him. Zoey and he are members of some gang. Or superheroes. Or cyborgs. Or aliens. There’s something weird and important and awesome about the whole thing.

  “Zoey,” Darren finally says about two minutes later.

  “Huh?” Zoey asks.

  “Aren’t Sharpies permanent?”

  “Yeah,” she says.

  “Oh,” he says.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Cool.” He flexes his forearm. “Cool.”

  6 Manifestations of Darren’s Sudden Nervous Excitement to See Nate, All of Which Intensify as the Bus Turns Left into a Parking Lot in Ann Arbor

  1. Right leg bouncing up and down

  2. Nodding his head over and over

  3. Needing to pee like crazy

  4. Wanting some gum to chew

  5. Wishing Zoey would either disappear or finally hold his hand

  6. Which is sweating

  5 Components of Nate’s Outfit

  1. Black suede Puma sneakers

  2. Jeans, torn slightly above left knee

  3. Mickey Mouse T-shirt

  4. Plaid flannel (mostly blue, green, and red), unbuttoned

  5. Red winter hat

  3 Words Nate Greets Darren with, Warmly

  1. Yo

  2. Yo

  3. Bitch

  4 Suppositions of Varying Certainty Darren Reaches While Hugging Nate for Five/Six Seconds

  1. I am taller than Nate.

  2. I am much heavier than Nate.

  3. Hugging Nate is good for me.

  4. Nate smells like an Italian spice.

  2 Follow-up Questions Darren Doesn’t Even Have to Ask, Because Nate Sort of Points to His Own Face/Head and Says/Asks, “Kind of Sick, Right?” as Soon as They Stop Hugging and Each Take a Step Back to Look at Each Other

  1. When was the last time you had it cut?

  2. Is that a beard?

  4 Times in Jacobs Brothers History That the Two of Them Considered Someone Else from a Possibly Safe Distance with a Combination of Awkward Confusion (Darren) and Baffled Amusement (Nate)

  1. The weekend of their mom’s very first business trip to California, their dad said, “Hey, how about us men head downtown? Lunch at Eleven City Diner and then we can hit the Shedd Aquarium. What do you say?”

  Darren looked at Nate. “Yeah, sure,” Nate said.

  Only finding a place to park before lunch was a pain, so their dad just dropped the two of them off in front of the restaurant, where they waited for him outside. Nate and Darren, then ages sixteen and eleven, were just standing
there, pretty much doing nothing, when some older guy appeared out of nowhere.

  “Young men,” he said to them, like being young men was really crucial to something. Nate and Darren said nothing. The man was not particularly clean.

  “God. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Who’s it gonna be?”

  “Okay,” Nate said with slight sarcasm, while Darren took a half step closer to his brother.

  “Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Evil magic.” Without moving, Darren tried to look at Nate. The man stuffed his hands into his pockets. Darren could tell they were fists. “Evil. Magic.”

  “Okay,” Nate said again, this time more sarcastically.

  The man closed his eyes tightly for a moment, like he was trying to remember something. Or was in pain. Then he turned and started walking off. Not only were his pants ripped down the back, but a small slice of what appeared to be his right butt cheek was plainly visible as well.

  Darren didn’t think it was funny; in fact, the sight of the man’s discolored flesh made him feel kind of what he’d felt when he’d seen a bloody, car-flattened squirrel a week earlier. But the next thing he knew, he had joined his brother in a very brief and very audible burst of laughter, which, not surprisingly, caused the homeless and/or crazy man to turn around.

  For a moment, Darren feared a showdown, but just then their dad showed up and, without even noticing the other man and the slice of his exposed ass, patted both his sons on the back and said jovially, “Gentlemen, let’s do lunch!”

  2. Their cousin Eli, who’s exactly between Nate and Darren in age, clearly has some sort of something. He’s probably not autistic, but Asperger’s, to the extent that Darren even knows what that is, seems like a very distinct possibility.