Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You (19 page)

“Over there,” Darren answers, pointing some more.

Zoey finally sees it and exclaims, “Puppy!”

4.
 An orange camping tent has been erected in the middle of Kyle and Nate's apartment. Kyle is sitting cross-legged on their couch next to a sleeping bag, eating a bowl of cereal and watching one of the
Lord of the Rings
movies. Darren and Kyle make eye contact. “It was with the sleeping bags,” Kyle says, and shrugs his shoulders. “You're supposed to air it out every once in a while, so, I don't know, guess you're camping out tonight.”

3
Fictional Creatures Nate Sounds like While Puking

1.
 Chewbacca

2.
 Frankenstein

3.
 The Hulk

15
Confessions Nate Makes to Darren While Trying to Get Comfortable on the Dirty, Cold, and Arguably White Tiling of the Bathroom Floor

1.
 I don't study enough.

2.
 I don't even know what my major is right now.

3.
 I didn't fuck that girl Brittany. Just fingered her.

4.
 I puked on Tuesday, too. No, it was Monday. Or Tuesday.

5.
 Fuck, I don't remember.

6.
 Mom is always mad at me.

7.
 Shit, maybe it was both.

8.
 They think my major's Psych, but what am I going to do with that?

9.
 I don't know what Dad is. Other than gay.

10.
 I don't know what I want to be.

11.
 Psych just teaches you how fucked-up everyone is. What's the point of that?

12.
 You're way smarter than me.

13.
 I was going to try to hook up with Zoey, but I won't now. Promise.

14.
 I'm a bad brother.

15.
 I hate my beard with puke in it.

5
Messages Darren Quietly Calls Out to Zoey from inside the Tent to Check If She Is Still Awake on the Couch, Though It Looked Like She Was Out Cold by the Time He Left the Bathroom and Helped Nate—Who Darren Sure as Hell Hopes Is Done Puking—Get into Bed

1.
 Zoey?

2.
 Hey.

3.
 Zoey.

4.
 Good night.

5.
 Zoey?

1
Visitor to Darren's Tent during the Middle of the Night, Who Announces Her Arrival by Softly Pushing Her Head into His Side like a Kitten

1.
 Zoey Eve Lovell

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

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.