Now Is Not the Time to Panic(19)

He looked at the poster, and I watched as his lips formed the words that I had written. He smiled. And then he nodded and looked up at me.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know what you mean. Okay. Just this. Only this.”

“Only this,” I said, and we walked into the garage, over to the copier, to make more.





Seven


OVER THE NEXT FOUR DAYS, HERE ARE A FEW OF THE PLACES IN Coalfield where we put the posters: on the bulletin board of the public library; folded up in forty-six random books in the stacks of the library; on the inside door of the stalls in the men’s and women’s bathrooms of the Golden Gallon gas station; on the back of every box of Cookie Crisp cereal in the Kroger; all over the gazebo in Marcia Crooks Park; the back wall of the movie theater (again); in the mailboxes of 270 residences in town; on the dumpster behind the Hardee’s; in the pocket of someone’s jeans in an unlocked locker at the public pool; across the entire front window of the hair salon that had gone out of business a few months earlier; in the comment box of the Wendy’s; in a shoebox for a pair of size 6 sneakers at Payless; taped to the flagpole in front of Coalfield High School; in an envelope without a return address, mailed to the Coalfield Ledger; on the car windshield of a pastor who tried to get sex ed abolished from the high school curriculum; on the bulletin board of Spinners Tapes and CDs, which sold glass pipes and incense and was glowing inside from black lights; under a bunch of Dilly Bars in the freezer of the Dairy Queen; on the gravestone of the last Confederate soldier in Coalfield.

On the map, there were so many stars, it made me dizzy to look at it.

There were so many stars that, now, other people couldn’t help but notice. They couldn’t help but see the image, the words, and wonder, “What is this?”

I was upstairs in my room, writing my novel. It was weird, but having made the poster, having put it up everywhere, I felt like something had been unlocked in my brain. I couldn’t stop writing the novel about the evil Nancy Drew. I was now at the point where her sister, Tess, the dumb girl detective, stumbles onto a piece of evidence that their father, the police chief, had previously ignored, a piece of evidence that Evie had accidentally left behind and that could incriminate her. And now Evie was trying to convince her sister that the evidence didn’t mean anything, was worthless, that it would waste everyone’s time. Evie was reaching out for the evidence, waiting for Tess to give it up, Evie’s hand just hovering there, inches from Tess’s own hand, so close that they could shock each other with just the slightest charge. And what was weird, as I wrote, trying to get it all down, was that I really didn’t know if Tess would give it to her.

And then my brothers clomped into the house, and it broke my concentration. I realized how hungry I was, and sometimes the triplets brought home leftover burgers, cold fries, so I went downstairs to see if they had anything, even though I knew it would make me sick. Zeke was out grocery shopping with his grandmother, and he had promised to see if the posters were still stuck to the boxes of Cookie Crisp.

When I stepped into the living room, my brothers were sitting on the sofa, leaning over the coffee table, staring at a copy of the poster. My poster.

“What’s . . . what’s that?” I asked, my voice sticking in my throat, like it hurt to ask.

“What does it look like, dum-dum?” Andrew said.

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“Well, neither do we,” Andrew said.

“They’re all over town,” Charlie said. “I found a bunch of them taped up to the dumpster.”

“And Jenna said her parents got one in their mailbox,” Brian said.

“It’s kind of fucked up,” Andrew said.

“It seems like something you guys would do,” I finally said.

“Yeah, I know,” Charlie replied. “But we didn’t.”

“What. Is. IT?” Brian said, clearly frustrated, like the poster was infecting his brain.

“Like, is it a band?” Charlie said. “Fugitives? That’s a stupid fucking name for a band.”

“Look at those goddamn hands!” Brian shouted.

Just then my mom came home from work. She was holding one of the posters. “Boys,” she said, the poster flapping around in her hand like an unruly bird, “did you do this?”

“NO!” all three of my brothers shouted in unison.

“Oh, thank god,” my mom replied, sagging against the door for a second. “Hobart is writing an article about it.”

Hobart was a guy who worked at the local newspaper. My mom pretended that he was only a friend, but we all knew that they’d been dating in secret, off and on for the last four months. My mom would feel overwhelmed or worry they were getting too close, say they couldn’t see each other, and then they’d end up at Gilly’s Bar and Grill, dancing to the J. Geils Band on the jukebox. They had known each other in high school, though they hadn’t been romantic, but I think my mom needed someone who wasn’t my dad, like maybe the complete opposite. Hobart had this scruffy, unkempt beard and wore Hawaiian shirts and talked about the movie Billy Jack all the time. He was like if Lester Bangs wrote about Fourth of July cake contests instead of the Stooges. And I was happy that there was a guy, even if he was a little embarrassing to me, that my mom could look at and think, Maybe you’ll be better than the last guy. Hobart seemed like a good dude to start with. And now he was going to write about our poster.