Now Is Not the Time to Panic(36)

“We both did,” I offered. “I wrote it,” and he said, “Excuse me, miss, I am talking to my son right now.”

“Well, okay, but—”

“Son, this is very bad. This is . . . this is really bad. You are going to ruin your life.”

“Who is that lady?” Zeke suddenly asked. “’Cause that’s not either one of the ladies that Mom told me about. Is she living here?”

“The fact that you are trying to turn this around on me,” his father said, “to deflect blame for . . . this thing. Jesus Christ. Your mother has made you crazy.”

“I hate you so much,” Zeke said.

“Get in this house right now,” his father said, almost yelling. “You want to go to jail for . . . this poster? I cannot believe—”

“I hate you,” Zeke said again, rubbing his face with his hands, like he was trying to scrub dirt off, like there were bugs on him, like he was starting a fire inside of his brain.

“Get in the house,” his father said, teeth gritted. “We need to figure out what we’re going—” and Zeke suddenly leaped toward him and started scratching his father’s face, digging his nails into the skin, and Zeke’s father began to howl.

“Reuben!” the lady shouted.

“Shit!” his dad said, trying to tear his son’s hands from his face, but Zeke was like a rabid squirrel. I ran forward and kicked his father as hard as I could, and his knee buckled and he was on the floor. It had nothing to do with my own dad. I just so badly wanted to hurt the person who had hurt Zeke. “Shit!” he shouted again.

“I’m calling the cops!” the lady yelled, but Zeke’s dad shouted, “Sheila, are you crazy? Don’t do that!”

“Come on,” I said to Zeke, who finally pulled his hands from his father’s face. There were these jagged little cuts all over his face, and I could see this flap of skin stuck on Zeke’s fingernail.

We ran back to the car, and I burned rubber pulling away. We were both nearly hyperventilating, and I was going fifty-five miles per hour in a residential area, but I just kept going. I blew right through a stop sign and there was an old lady walking her dog who shouted at me, but I screamed, “Fuck off!” and kept going. Finally, after a few miles, I pulled into the empty parking lot of some auto parts store that had gone out of business.

“Oh, fuck,” Zeke said, his whole body tensed like he was waiting for something to hit him. “We are so fucked.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “You did the right thing.”

“I just . . . Frankie, I’m so sad,” he said, and he started sobbing.

“It’s okay,” I told him. He was shuddering, making these little screechy sounds as he tried to breathe. It scared me. “It’ll be okay.”

“My whole life,” he said, but there was nothing else for a few seconds, just more sobs. “I wish I was dead.”

“No,” I said. “No, if you died, Zeke. If you died, I’d kill myself. Don’t die. Okay? Don’t die. You can keep living, okay? I’m alive, right? You think your life is worse than mine?”

“What do I do?” he asked, like I knew. Like he truly believed in me.

“Here, just . . . just come here,” I said. I pulled him across the seat, and we awkwardly held on to each other. His face was so wet with tears and snot and drool and sweat. But he’d said he wished he was dead, so I held on to him. And then he kissed me, his mouth so salty. There was a little blood inside his mouth, maybe from biting his tongue while trying to murder his father, and I could taste that, too. I wanted to stop, to just listen to him breathe normally. If he could just regulate his breathing, I thought it would be okay, but he kept kissing me, rougher. He was pushing his tongue into my mouth, and I hated this instantly. I just kept thinking, Don’t die don’t die don’t die don’t die don’t die. But was I talking to myself now? Or Zeke? Both of us? It was hard to do anything else but let him kiss me and not die.

And then he started crawling onto my side of the car, pushing me against the door. And his hands started touching my body, and no one had ever touched my body. And I had wanted to keep it that way for as long as I could. I liked Zeke so much. But I didn’t want him to put his hands in my pants in an empty parking lot in Memphis right after he’d yelled at his father because he’d been having sex with some lady in the afternoon. There is maybe no right time for someone to put their hands under your shirt, or there wasn’t for me, but this was a really bad time.

“Zeke, please,” I said, but he kept kissing me so hard, trying to take off my pants, and it was difficult for me to breathe, and he said, “I like you so much, Frankie. I like you so much.” And I started to go deep inside of myself for a second, to make it quiet, and he said, “Do you want to do this? Could we do this?” and it was like I was sinking beneath the surface of a lake, not leaving my body but going deeper into it, and then I just . . . I don’t know what I did. But I filled up my body again, my skin tightening around whatever it was that made me a human being, and I pushed Zeke away.

“Zeke,” I said, “please don’t. Okay? Please don’t do that.” And he seemed to kind of snap back to being that weird little boy I’d first met at the pool.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He started crying again, which I could not handle. He could cry about the other thing, but not this.