6 Things They Do
1. KISS
But not much on the lips. Zoey is all about Darren’s ear. She seems to be inflating him through this orifice, even though she’s not actually blowing into it. It’s just that his left ear hears and feels everything her mouth and throat are doing, and they’re doing so much. For instance:
2. BREATHE
Very loudly. Zoey must be struggling to breathe. She keeps holding her breath for long stretches, and when she finally exhales, right into his ear, the air is so warm and moist that Darren can feel not just his ear, but most of his head, neck, and left shoulder turn that shade of white-orange-red your mouth turns when you put a flashlight inside it in the dark.
3. HUG
But it’s different than regular hugging. Because a regular hug begins and then ends. And even if both people are agreeing to have a very tight hug, like when his parents dropped him off at the bus for that camp back when he was twelve, even then it’s just a three-part thing. You start hugging, you keep hugging, you stop hugging. But now they’re hugging and re-hugging and trying to out-hug each other. They’re not stopping. At first Darren holds back a little, because he’s so much bigger than Zoey that even with her on top of him he wonders if he won’t hurt her if he hugs her as much as he can (and wants to). But then he notices how the harder he hugs her, the softer and deeper her breathing gets inside his ear. It’s like the canal running between his ear and his brain is an extension of her throat, like he isn’t just hearing her breath or feeling her breath, he can feel the tissue down in her throat making the breath, like Zoey’s throat and Darren’s ear are now the same thing. And the harder he hugs her, the more this is true, and he wants it to be more true than anything has ever been true, so he squeezes her with all his strength and she squeezes him back and breathes some more.
4. PUSH
Select a thigh and push. They are each wearing just T-shirts (actually, hers is a tank top) and underwear, so Darren notices how she’s both soft and hard down there. And the hardness isn’t only bone, though he feels some of that, too. Actually it’s soft and hard and warm and damp down there, because of the sweat and whatever else is happening. His boner would normally have exploded right away, but this is so not normal, or maybe he’s still high or maybe he was asleep and dreaming when it all started or maybe he’s listening to her breath climbing up the mountain of his thigh or maybe her throat is ordering him to wait and he has no choice but to obey.
5. FINISH
But not just stop. When it happens, it’s like his body is telling hers everything that his mouth has wanted to tell Nate for the past two years, like he’s getting rid of all this stuff he’s wanted to get rid of for so long. He finishes in his neck and shoulders and the place where his ribs meet right above his stomach and not just in the one obvious place. Plus her breath, right at the end, it reaches up and finds this impossible spot between yes and ouch. Like she’s not exhaling or not only exhaling, but finding a way, for the first time since he saw her again at North High last year, to speak to him without trying really, really hard not to speak to him at the same time.
There’s no way in a million years he’d be able to put into words what she’s telling him (in part because he’s busy telling her a million things himself), but when she says it (and when she pushes the hardest, despite all their slipperiness, she’s pushed so far) it’s like meeting all the Zoey Lovells who Zoey has been between the pigtails-bowling-party Zoey and the extra-holes-in-her-face Zoey. It’s like hugging all the Zoey Lovells there ever were and ever will be, and this is why she can finally just tell him something without not telling him it at the same time, which must mean that this is what she’s telling him: I’m Zoey, I’m Zoey, yes, I’m Zoey Lovell, yes. So he tells her the same thing, and for the first time in a long, long while he’s grateful to be Darren Jacobs.
6. PASS OUT
3. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26
5 Months That Have Passed
1. May
2. June
3. July
4. August
5. September, at least most of it
7 Reasons Darren Suspects Today Is Going to Be Great, Assuming Today Is Opposite Day
1. His nose, sinuses, throat, and maybe lungs seem to be filled with about four pounds of phlegm for the second day in a row.
2. Rachel Madsen likely sent him between one and forty-three messages on Facebook while he was asleep.
3. A certain math test for which he is not particularly well-prepared awaits.
4. Therapy with his dad and Dr. Schrier at three p.m., oh joy.
5. Shabbat dinner with his mom and (probably/maybe/who knows) Nate.
6. Rachel Madsen is coming to visit today.
7. Still no Zoey.
7 Days Since Saturday, April 26, That Darren Hasn’t Thought about Zoey within the First Four Minutes of Waking Up, Not That He Understands What Was So Special about Those Days, When He Was Definitely Thinking about Her Before Breakfast Was Over Anyway
1. Thursday, May 22
2. Tuesday, June 17
3. Thursday, July 3
4. Monday, July 21
5. Sunday, July 27
6. Friday, August 8
7. Monday, August 25
4 Objects the Crumpled Kleenex Overflowing the Small Wastepaper Basket Sitting Next to His Bed Could Be Said to Resemble
1. A cloud, of the cumulus variety
2. A snowy mountain range
3. A human brain, if something was really wrong with it
4. Cauliflower, maybe
7 Cons That Ultimately Outweigh the One Rather Obvious Pro in Darren’s Deliberations over Whether He Should Stay Home from School Today, Which Is Only a Half Day Anyway
1. He’ll have to deal with his mom more if he stays home, since she’ll be working here most of the day, which maybe wouldn’t be so bad, except she’ll come check on him a bunch, and then he might have to lie to her if he’s actually not feeling that bad.
2. Staying home might preclude the possibility of doing something fun later today, and even though he’s not really sure how fun it’s going to be, there’s probably going to be something with Rachel happening.
3. He’d probably wind up feeling worse, physically, than he would if he went to school, since he is definitely at least a tiny bit sick, meaning if he stays home he’ll just act like a genuinely sick person and then feel like one too.
4. His dad might somehow find out (it’s not really clear how that might happen, and it’s probably not likely, but if Darren has learned one thing since his parents stopped being together, it’s that you’re a moron to think you can predict what’s going to happen with them). But he (his dad) would want to somehow do something about Darren’s health, which would probably involve offering to bring soup by, which in general Darren wouldn’t mind at all. In fact, it wouldn’t be the craziest thing for him to offer, since back when they were just a regular family, it was kind of official that his dad would make soup for anyone who was sick (this somehow being the one thing his dad was way better at cooking than his mom). And maybe his mom would be fine with that, but maybe she wouldn’t, and so then he’d get to listen to half of yet another disagreement and/or argument between them, one that (like a bunch of others) he’d be kind of indirectly responsible for them having.
5. He’d be around whenever Nate finally woke up, which would be so late it would bum Darren out a little bit by adding more evidence to the “I think my brother is a genuine slacker” argument. Plus Nate would maybe do something to piss their mom off for whatever reason, like play really loud music or make a mess in the kitchen and not clean it up.
6. He’s got his first test in Algebra II/ Trig today, and Mr. Cowens made it pretty clear in his nearly amusing, definitely intimidating way that it will be a very bad idea to miss this test. (His exact words were: “You may miss this test, conditional on a death. Your own.”)
7. Staying home from school would be almost like a trap in terms of obsessing
about Zoey, which for a few weeks there he thought he was done doing, but somehow things changed. On Yom Kippur of all days.
2 Decisive Acts Darren Performs That Make It Official He Will Attend School Today
1. Showers
2. Gets dressed, and not in sweats
1 Fairly Prestigious Center of Higher Learning Nate Jacobs No Longer Attends
1. The University of Michigan
3 Items His Mom (Sitting at the Kitchen Counter and Listening to Some Dude Rocking Some Serious Classical Cello) Is Touching or That Are Touching Her
1. HER MACBOOK AIR
Darren’s mom is pretty much sponsored by Apple at this point. She’s got two huge Mac monitors in her office downstairs, plus within like a day of whenever it comes out she’s always got the latest iPhone. She’s on to her third iPad (two regular and one mini—the company she’s consulting with apparently gives them to her), but she claims not to like them except for when she’s traveling (which is a lot).
But she’s most into her MacBook Air. Some of her relationship with the thing is obvious: e-mail, music (classical or super lame pop music), Huffington Post, and even Facebook (Darren quickly averts his eyes and scrolls down frantically whenever one of her updates appears on his page). But some of it’s not: these crazy work-related applications and software packages, a bunch of which are just black screens with small, colored fonts that kind of scare the crap out of him.
Every once in a while Darren will get on her computer to do something fast (very fast, because she gets visibly nervous whenever there’s another human being between her and the thing, and because she also made it kind of clear—nicely, but still—that if he accidentally did anything to any of those weird, scary programs running, let alone the computer itself, her maternal instincts might be seriously compromised). Anyway, when he gets on he’ll do that thing where you press Command and Tab at the same time to switch applications, and he’ll see she’s got about fourteen of them running at once, including five or six with icons he doesn’t recognize at all.
2. HER COFFEE MUG
Filled with about two-fifths of today’s first cappuccino. His mom has been a coffee drinker since, like, forever, and she would always order fancy coffee drinks whenever they went into a Starbucks. But at home, back when his dad was still in the picture, it had always been just regular coffee (with milk). But then, right after his dad moved out and she rearranged the kitchen, she went and got an espresso machine from Bed Bath & Beyond.
She used it for a while, though she complained (mostly just aloud to herself) pretty much every time that she wasn’t crazy about the thing. Until one day she brought home a much nicer machine that she got at one of those kind of fancy and super boring stores that sell kitchen stuff (Williams-Sonoma maybe). She read the directions like she was about to deliver a baby. But ultimately she wasn’t crazy about this one either. She even invited some seriously hipster girl (Jess, who was kind of pretty but had an extremely deep voice) from the local non-Starbucks café to their house so she could show his mom how to make a real cappuccino.
Apparently what Jess taught his mom was that it might not be a bad idea to get another machine, because about three weeks later a UPS guy knocked on their front door with a box from Amazon that weighed a ton. She and Darren took the shiny, silver thing (made by some company called Pasquini) out of the box very, very, very carefully. Jess showed up about thirty minutes later and then the two of them (Jess and his mom; Darren went upstairs but left his door opened, who knows why) set up the machine and talked about it like there was a Rolls-Royce in the kitchen.
Twenty minutes later Darren heard Jess say, “What do you say we fire this baby up, Brenda?” Three minutes later his mom said, “Oh my God!” and laughed. She then said “Oh my God” three more times, emphasizing a different word in the short phrase each time. Jess, meanwhile, said “I told you” after each “Oh my God.” Darren subtly rushed downstairs, where, thankfully perhaps, he found his mother sitting across the room from Jess and licking some foamed milk off her index finger.
Not to mention, his mom can make some pretty insane hot chocolate with the thing.
3. HER LULULEMON OUTFIT OF THE DAY
Which is these black tights that end around her calves and a green pullover. Actually the tights have a green line running down the sides, and the pullover has a black stripe or two. Meaning it’s an ensemble of some sort. She’s got three or four outfits like this, all from Lululemon (the one time Darren actually said the name of the store out loud, he felt so stupid he promised himself he would never do that again).
She’s wearing it because after she drops him off at school, she’ll go to the local athletic club to do Pilates or yoga or something. She works out in the morning, because California is still pretty much asleep then. It’s a different class every day, and it’s definitely every day. Darren guesses she looks pretty good, but he sort of tries not to think about this too much, since it’s kind of obvious why she must be working out so religiously. Even though, thankfully, she still hasn’t mentioned going out on a date with anyone or anything like that.
But the other reason she works out so religiously is that she does a lot of things religiously now. Like keep the house insanely clean (with a huge amount of help from Dita, who comes three days a week) and put together a menu for the whole week on Sunday (and then do a huge shopping trip Sunday afternoon). She’s even got this crazy, elaborate, color-coded, magnetic dry-erase calendar on the wall by the fridge that she’s constantly updating (and yes, there’s a matching one on her computer). And yes, she expects Darren and Nate to take a look at it each morning.
In fact, what’s weirdest is that she’s practicing religion a little religiously too, these days. Nothing too crazy. She’s not like any of those Jewish women with the wigs and stiff black skirts he sees over at the CVS on Howard. But she finds a reason to go to their synagogue a couple times a month, stopped eating pork and shellfish (Darren could give a shit about pork, but no shrimp at home was a major bummer), and on Fridays when he’s with her, they “do” Shabbat.
And yes, today is Friday and today he’s with her.
4 Ways in Which His Mom Acknowledges (or Has Recently Anticipated) Darren’s Presence This Morning
1. There’s a bag lunch, apparently already packed, sitting by the toaster.
2. She looks up from her computer and (somehow without stopping to type) gives him a very warm smile.
3. She says (after stopping to type), “Good morning, sweetheart.”
4. There’s a bowl, a spoon, a folded napkin, a box of rice milk, and a box of Peanut Butter Bumpers set up on the counter next to her.
2 Words Darren Needs to Say for His Mom to Realize That He’s Super Stuffed Up, Which Causes Her to Detach Herself from the Laptop and Go Upstairs to Her Bathroom to Get Him Some Medication
1. Good
2. Morning
4 Things Zoey Didn’t Do on Saturday, April 26, All of Which Darren Laments, Yet Again, as He Shovels Cereal into His Mouth
1. WAIT IN THE TENT, OR AT LEAST THE APARTMENT, UNTIL HE GOT UP
When Darren woke up late that morning, aside from being really confused about what he was doing in a tent and trying to figure out whether he should continue wearing his only pair of underwear (part of which was stuck to a spot right below his waist), he pretty quickly noticed that Zoey wasn’t in the tent or even anywhere in the apartment. Including, thank God, his brother’s bed. He was so confused, he checked his arm about three times to make sure the mark was still there and that he hadn’t just dreamed the past twenty-four hours. But he hadn’t, so he went out into Ann Arbor to look for her, wishing he had thought to get her cell number at some point. Not that there had ever been a particularly natural opportunity to do that.
He walked around campus and down all the major streets he could find, even though he couldn’t come up with a single good reason for her to be hanging out in any of the many places he looked. But around the time he was about to give up, he
saw her sitting in a café with Nate’s laptop. Darren felt a number of very different things when he finally found her, because he just really wanted to see her and had slowly been realizing while looking for her that he was pretty crazy about her, but what was she doing in a café and why did she have his brother’s computer and how stupid was Darren to let himself get crazy about someone like her?
2. BE AFFECTIONATE OR EVEN JUST NICE WHEN HE FINALLY FOUND HER
Still, he went inside and walked up to her table and just looked at her until she noticed him, which took about four seconds. This seemed about three and three-quarters seconds too long. When Zoey finally looked up, she just said, “Hey.” Not nice or mean or welcoming or dismissive. She just said, “Hey.” She didn’t say, “Oh, hi, I’m glad you found me,” or, “I was about to come back to the apartment; I only left because I figured I’d make a lot of noise and wanted to let you sleep,” or, “I was just thinking about you,” or, “I know I shouldn’t have taken Nate’s laptop, but I’m writing my parents a long e-mail explaining everything to them, and I couldn’t really wait any longer to do that.” And she definitely didn’t stand up to kiss or hug him or reach out her hand with that awesome ring on it and squeeze the mark on his arm, which Darren suddenly realized he wanted so badly for her to do that he thought he might start crying right there in the middle of the café.
So Darren asked (because it was one way to not mention any of the stuff that really mattered right then), “Why do you have my brother’s computer?”
Zoey just looked at the computer, shrugged her shoulders, and mumbled, “I don’t know.” If she had said it like she actually felt bad, that would have been one thing. But she said it pretty much the way she might have said, “Whatever.”
Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You Page 14
