Now Is Not the Time to Panic(15)

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said, kind of whispering but also kind of shouting. It was a strange effect. I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming. “I know it’s late, but I really want to talk to you.”

“Right now?” I asked.

“Yes, right now,” she said. “Here, move over, jeez, just let me . . . Frankie? Wake up, okay? Just scoot over so I can sit down.”

I sighed as deeply as possible, long enough that I was starting to fall back asleep, and then I slumped over a few inches so she could sit on the bed.

“Now, I know I was acting all cool and hip this afternoon, you remember? When I found you two . . . kissing, I guess you’d call it? And Zeke seems like a sweet kid. And I don’t want to mess you up any more than . . . well, I just don’t want to put a lot of unnecessary pressure on you, but I’ve been up all night. I can’t sleep.”

“What is it, Mom?” I asked, so grumpy, but also kind of terrified that she’d somehow found out about the art, the Xerox machine, the posters hanging up in town.

“I just . . . I know we talked about all of this a few years ago, but it didn’t really feel real to me then. Now I feel like I just need to reiterate some of those talking points, okay?”

“What is it, Mom?” I said.

“You’re a young woman, and your body is your body, and that’s fine, I respect that. And it’s natural, like we talked about before, to have desires.”

“Gross,” I said. “Desires.”

“Frankie, just shut up for a second,” she continued. “If you’re going to be physical . . . you know, have sex—there, I said it. If you have sex with Zeke, I want you to use protection. You have to use protection. That’s nonnegotiable.”

“Mom, this is embarrassing. I’m not going to have sex with Zeke. It’s fine.”

“Look,” my mom now said, reaching into the pocket of her bathrobe, “just take these condoms, okay. Frankie? Just take them.”

“I don’t want these condoms,” I told her.

“You have to take them. That’s nonnegotiable. And that’s what you tell Zeke, too, okay? Say, it’s nonnegotiable. Let me hear you say it.”

“Where did you get them?” I asked her.

“That’s not the point, sweetie,” she replied.

“The box is already opened,” I said, inspecting it in the dark. “Some of them are missing, I think.”

“Frankie! Focus, please. Just keep them in case. I can tell you this with one hundred percent certainty. You do not want a baby at your age. Or . . . or three babies. Can you even imagine, Frankie? Three babies, all at once? You’re still just a kid. You don’t want that.”

“Okay, okay,” I finally said. I put the box under my pillow. “Thank you, Mom. Thank you for caring about me.”

“I do care about you, sweetie,” she said. “So much.”

“I know,” I said.

“I’m going to be in the kitchen, okay? I’m not going to sleep tonight, I don’t think. I think I might make a cake or something for you to give to Zeke’s mom? How does that sound?”

“Mom,” I said. “I’m so tired.”

“Good night, sweetie,” she finally said. “Go back to bed.”

After she left, I closed my eyes and whispered to myself, The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us. I still wasn’t asleep. So I said it again, and again, until the world turned fuzzy, nothing mattered, and I was gone.





Six


NO ONE CARED ABOUT THE POSTERS. NOT RIGHT AWAY. BUT WE cared. And that’s why, the next morning, as soon as we were alone, we made three hundred more copies. The machine whirred and, with agonizing slowness, spit out copy after copy, the thing we had made together. The entire time, we touched the copier like we were laying hands on it, like it needed us for the miracle to happen.

As we drove around town, we tried to remember every single place we’d put up one of our posters. Had we put one on that particular telephone pole? Each time we saw one still up, we gasped, like they should have vaporized in direct sunlight. At the Creekside Market, while I posted one surreptitiously on the community bulletin board above the nightcrawlers and crickets, Zeke bought a detailed map of Coalfield, so we could mark every spot, to have an official record, to see how long some of them stayed up. It was the kind of obsession where, once we fell into it, we tried to be scientific, precise, but it was so warped by our desires that it wouldn’t mean anything to anyone but us.

We drove over to the movie theater and an employee was taking down the wall of posters, his hands full of our art. I recognized the boy, one of my brothers’ friends. So I rolled down the window and called out for him.

“Jake!” I said, and Zeke got very nervous.

“No,” he said. “Don’t draw attention to it. We have to be, like—”

“Jake!” I said again, and Jake, who was squinting at me, trying to place me within his world, finally nodded.

“Hey,” he replied.

“What’s all this?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. A wadded-up poster fell out of his hand and got caught in the wind. “My boss just told me to take ’em down. He’s such a bitch. He called the cops to come look at it, but they said they didn’t care.”