Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You (23 page)

9.
 Concluding, through the process of elimination, that no more than four people in this room (excluding Mr. Cowens) will ever have any use for the material covered in this exam

10.
 Envisioning possible scenarios involving Rachel later today

10
Albums Mr. Keyes Has Played during Lunch That Darren Hopes to Hear Again

1.
 Duke Ellington,
Money Jungle

2.
 Bill Evans,
Waltz for Debby

3.
 Joe Henderson,
Page One

4.
 Wayne Shorter,
Adam's Apple

5.
 Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers,
Moanin'

6.
 Horace Silver,
Song for My Father

7.
 Herbie Hancock,
Maiden Voyage

8.
 John Coltrane,
My Favorite Things

9.
 Charles Mingus,
Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus

10.
 Miles Davis,
Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet

1
Place, 1 Person, and 1 Idea, All Directly Tied to Zoey

1.
 THE PATIO

After math Darren goes down to the Patio. It's not his first visit to the place since he asked Zoey to drive him to the El way back in April. Closer to the tenth time at least, if Darren had to guess.

Because once a whole week had passed without Zoey showing up after the Ann Arbor thing, Darren thought he was going to die. But he figured if anyone knew what had happened with Zoey, it would be the citizens of Patiostan. He wasn't too eager to go down there, but he was even less eager to keep googling her name every day, just to see if she was dead or something. So he went down to the Patio in early May sometime to look for Derek Schramm. This was even before he found Zoey's note.

Derek was playing with a silver metal lighter, flicking it open and closed. Flicking it open somehow caused it to light. Derek flicked it open again, showed Darren the flame, and said, “No idea, dude. You should ask

1.
 GRACE PEARSON—

they were pretty tight.”

But the next period was about to start, so Darren had to wait until after lunch, when he went back down there and found Grace, who had long silky hair but was kind of gross-looking in general. She offered him a cigarette, even though he hadn't asked for one.

“Do you know what happened to Zoey?” Darren asked.

Grace turned her head away from him quickly, looked around, and lit her cigarette. Then she exhaled her smoke really hard. “Her parents sent her somewhere.”

“Where?” Darren asked.

“I don't know”—Grace turned back to him—“some kind of hard-core boarding school probably.” Then she squinted her eyes, which seemed to Darren like a twitch maybe.

“How do you know?” Darren asked.

“She texted me, but just one time, real early in the morning before I was up, but then that was it.”

“What did she write, exactly?”

Grace reached into her enormous bag, which hung open and seemed to contain about three hundred objects no bigger than a pack of cigarettes. She dug around in there for a while and eventually pulled out her phone. After pressing a bunch of buttons, she passed it to Darren.

Parents are shipping me to New Mexico crazy farm fuck me.
That was all it said. The text had been sent at 6:32 a.m. on Wednesday, April 30. Just seeing her name on Grace's phone made his hands shake a little.

“Can I take her number?” he asked Grace.

“Go ahead,” she said, “but don't bother calling. Wherever they put her, she probably can't have a phone there.” Grace looked over his shoulder and maybe mumbled, “Oh shit.” Then she took a drag and said, “That's how it was with Miles Fagen, anyway.”

So at least he finally had Zoey's number. He texted her, pretty much right away,
Hey its Darren this is my number call if u can hope ur okay.
And every once in a while he would just look at her name and number in his phone. Her number has four sevens in it, which Darren likes.

He even went back down to the Patio a few more times the next week and the week after that, in part because he sort of convinced himself that a good detective keeps snooping around until he finds more information. And also because Grace would always give him a cigarette, and so sometimes he would smoke one by himself on the way home from the bus. But other than the second time he talked to Grace, when she sort of clarified a few things for him, all he found out was that she definitely has a twitch and that most of the people on the Patio are actually kind of nice. Meaning it was probably a good thing that the school year ended not much later, because otherwise he'd be an actual smoker by now.

Still, every once in a while, like today, he goes down to the Patio. Partly to check in with Grace and partly because even though he doesn't exactly feel like he belongs with the Patio crew, it's easier not to belong there than it is not to belong in all the other places at school he doesn't belong. Plus today is a good day to go down there, since his cold will keep him from wanting to smoke, which otherwise he'd really like to do. Plus Grace is always nice to him.

“What's up, Grace?” he asks, sitting down next to her on a cement bench.

“Chilling,” she says.

Darren nods. He still hasn't told Grace about the note, he's not sure why. Even though he plans to. “Any word from Zoey?”

Grace smiles, looking almost a little disgusted. “Jeez, you're mental over her, aren't you?” He shrugs his shoulders and sniffles. “You totally are.”

Apparently, today's the day. “She left me a note.”

“What are you talking about?” Grace appears deeply skeptical.

“In Ann Arbor. Before she took off or whatever. She wrote it in this book that was in my backpack.”

“A book,” Grace says. “What kind of book?” He hesitates before answering, not ready to reveal that particular detail. “Never mind, what'd the note say?”

Darren wipes his nose on a part of his left sleeve just below the shoulder. “It was mostly personal stuff.”

“Duh,” Grace says. “But, like, what kind of personal stuff?”

“Just that she, I don't know,” he tries inhaling through his left nostril, “likes me. Pretty much.”

“Pretty much?”

“I don't remember.”

“Liar. You've probably memorized the thing.”

“Maybe.” He smiles.

“You are a freak,” Grace says, with approval and emphasis on the verb of being. “No wonder she likes you.”

“But so you still haven't heard anything?”

“You know”—Grace takes out a pack of cigarettes and starts banging them against the palm of her hand—“you should

1.
 WRITE HER A LETTER,

like an old-fashioned letter. You totally should.”

“And send it where?”

“Give it to her parents, they'll know how to get it to her.”

The bell for the next period sounds. He's already late. “Have you done that?”

“Nah.” Grace stands up, while her right eye slams shut. “Her parents seriously hate my ass.”

2
Text Messages from Nate

1.
 
Come back here after yur weakass half day. We can jam rocknroll style.

2.
 
Swing by super burrito. Just called in our order. Under the name Sergeant Jose Morales III.

5
Claims Grace Made about Zoey and Her Parents the Second Time Darren Went down to the Patio, Some of Which Seemed More Credible Than Others, but All of Which Together Clarified Something Important for Him, Even If He's Still Not Sure Exactly What the Name of That Clarified Thing Might Be

The second time Darren went down to the Patio, he had a pretty clear goal in mind: find out what exactly was wrong with Zoey. Because people don't just take off to Ann Arbor, run away to who knows where from there, and then wind up in a hard-core boarding school, all for no reason.

Of course, asking someone that kind of question, especially if you barely know that someone, isn't the easiest thing in the world, so at first he just smoked his cigarette. Until he decided it was time to be bold.

“Grace,” he said.

“Huh?”

“What,” Darren said, and took a long inhalation, either because he was trying to stall or because he sort of sensed that this is something cool and courageous people do in movies when they're smoking and about to say something important. Only he didn't feel very courageous, and not all that cool, either. “Why,” he started asking instead, “do you think they sent her away? I mean, I guess she took off and everything. But still.”

1.
 “Yeah,” Grace said, “her parents, they're pretty hard ass, you know?”

“Yeah,” Darren said, even though he didn't.

2.
 “They told her, I don't remember when exactly, like a few weeks ago,” Grace said, and kicked at something nonexistent with the tip of these ankle-high suede boots she was wearing. “It was after she burned a little hole into some fancy leather couch they have. Not even on purpose. They told her something like”—Grace put up the index and middle finger on each hand and said in some kind of weird voice that must have been her imitation of Zoey's two parents together, an imitation that was kind of hard to make out, because she was still holding a cigarette in her lips—“
one more thing, Zoey, and that's it
.”

“One more thing?”

“Or something like that. You know, like she was out of warnings.”

“But what'd she do before then?”

“I don't know, not that much,” Grace said. Darren was pretty sure this couldn't possibly be true and sort of wanted to say as much, but he didn't want to sound like he was siding with Zoey's parents, so he kept quiet, half trying to figure out how to express his skepticism and half trying to figure out what else Zoey might have done to make her parents so mad.

No one said anything for a little while, so Darren just sat there, scratching at his elbow, which had started to itch like crazy for no reason.

3.
 “Look.” Grace started speaking again. “Her parents, they just decided, like a long time ago, that she's this problem.”

“What kind of problem?” Darren asked quickly and quietly. Grace didn't answer. “I mean”—Darren felt the words coming out, wondering if he might want to stop them—“what's wrong with her, anyway?”

“What?” Grace said, making a face like he said something so stupid that it actually smelled bad.

“Nothing, nothing,” Darren said, wishing he had a time machine that operated in ten-second intervals.

“Did you just ask what's
wrong
with her?”

“No, forget it.”

“I mean, are you serious?” Grace said, her voice super pissed. With no time machine nearby, Darren resorted to shoulder shrugging as some kind of hopeless backup strategy. “What, like do you want to know if she has ADHD or is on meds or cuts herself or has to go to therapy nine times a week?”

“No,” Darren said defensively, even though he wouldn't have minded knowing those things.

“Because that sure made everything better,” Grace said super sarcastically.

“What did?” Darren asked, relieved that Grace was still talking to him.

“Oh, you know, every time they switched her to a new therapist so they could diagnose her with something else.” Grace kicked at that spot again.

4.
 “Last year it was Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Yeah, right. Whatever.”

“Oppositional Defiance Disorder.” Darren had to say the words himself, though he made sure to sound like he was saying them with disapproval.

“How about,” Grace said, her face freezing up for a moment, “how about My Parents Suck Disorder? Or no, how about All This Stuff Is Actually Making Things Worse Disorder? How about Why Can't Anyone Just Leave Me Alone Disorder? You know?”

“I Was Born into the Wrong Family Disorder,” Darren mumbled, feeling some kind of new smile cut across his face.

“I mean, who doesn't have that?” Grace asked, and actually smiled.

Darren nodded.

5.
 “She's just Zoey,” Grace said, sounding almost relaxed all of a sudden. “She's complicated, okay? That's it. Everyone's always telling her what she is. Especially her parents. Like that's going to help anything. You're this, you're that.” Grace exhaled loudly through her nose. “She's Zoey, that's all. You know?”

He didn't know, but he sure as hell wanted to. Darren felt like he was done smoking and for some reason elected to separate his fingers until gravity could finally have its way with his cigarette. Though it wasn't surprising in general, there was something unlikely about the way the thing fell straight to the ground, where it continued smoldering even after he went off to continue his high school education.

6
Possible Scenarios Involving Rachel Today

1.
 Darren pretends or actually gets too sick to see her at all.

2.
 Darren gets dropped off at Krista's. They hang out there. A couple of other kids show up. Darren and Rachel sneak up to Krista's room. He gets an HJ.

3.
 Darren gets dropped off at Krista's. Rachel is so happy to see him, she almost starts crying. Darren feels kind of good to see her for some reason. She whispers in his ear that she missed him so much and really just wants to see him (and not Krista) this weekend. So he invites her over for Shabbat dinner. She accepts. It's nice. Her and his mom totally hit it off, even if Rachel isn't Jewish. After dinner his mom goes to synagogue. Nate disappears somewhere. They listen to music (he lets her choose) and talk about all sorts of stuff. By 10:24 p.m. Darren is no longer a virgin, and Zoey is in his life's rearview mirror.