The Music of What Happens(46)

“If you say so,” I say, and we open the doors. The streetlights shine above us. Despite the fact that it’s 12:27 a.m., heat radiates off the asphalt. It feels like we’ve just walked into a sauna.

I pull out my cell phone, turn on a flashlight app, and we walk up to the entrance. I hold the step stool and Jordan has the bag of small stuffed animals. I admit it’s kinda awesome to be the only people here.

“I guess you must be wondering what we’re doing here with stuffed animals?” he whispers, even though we are clearly alone.

I nod. He places the flashlight under his face so that he looks demonic. I laugh.

“Ancient tradition states —” he says, and then he breaks into laughter. “Sorry. Got nothing. We are here because while the zoo is an awesome place to look at monkeys while drinking an overpriced grape slush, it is also like a jail to those very same monkeys, and all the other animals. Our act of hooligan do-goodery is an artistic one.”

We stroll toward the entrance. It’s a large arch you walk through, and illuminated on top of it is a big globe. We walk in, keep walking, and finally we get to a shuttered main entrance with ticket booths.

“Shoot,” he says.

“What?”

He sighs. “I was hoping for a tall wall.”

“Okay.”

“Hmm,” he says. “Plan B. Stay here.”

He jogs off to the wooded area to the side of the zoo, and I hear him doing something with the bag. He comes back and shows me the contents of the bag with his flashlight. Gravel.

“We’ll use this to mark the pathway.”

I don’t even ask. He kneels down at the shuttered doors and starts to create a one-foot-wide mini-pathway through the asphalt with the gravel, and though I don’t really know what he’s doing, I sit down on the hot asphalt and join him. The parts he does are curvy, so I mimic them.

Once we have a path that’s about twenty feet long leading from the entrance toward the parking lot, Jordan empties the bag of stuffed animals, and he begins to place them, two by two, in a line as if they’re walking up the path.

I laugh. “Ah,” I say, and my worry about going to jail goes away.

“I saw this in my sleep,” he says. “They’ll get the message, don’t you think?”

“I think so, dude.” I grab a couple zebras and put them at the end of the path.

“And zebras shall lead them,” he says.

I say, “Where is not clear.”

“True.”

We step back and look at our project. A procession of stuffed animals appears to be taking flight from the zoo.

It looks — weird.

I start laughing. I glance over at Jordan and he looks similarly amused, and then he starts laughing and our laughter reverberates through the quiet night.

Then I see lights in the distance.

“Shit,” I whisper. “Mission aborted.”

I grab his arms and pull him toward the parking lot, but it’s too late. There’s a car pulling in next to ours. My heartbeat soars. I pull him back into the zoo area and scan for a good hiding spot. There are bushes right at the edge of the woods to our right, so I pull him in that direction and I feel him nearly fall. He rights himself and we sprint toward the woods, then I jump behind a shrub and Jordan carefully follows me, trying to avoid the branches that I didn’t worry too much about.

We watch, breathless, as the car stops, the guy gets out, looks at our car, looks around, and, possibly because he’s underpaid or perhaps because he doesn’t give a shit, drives off. We stay there for a few extra minutes, in silence, as he drives away.

I find myself feeling kind of incredible there, at almost one in the morning, behind a bush at the Phoenix Zoo with a beautiful guy who doesn’t know he’s beautiful. I feel invincible. Superhero-ish.

I turn toward Jordan. He turns toward me. Our eyes meet and in his I see so much all at once. Fear. Humor. A question. And hidden behind it, I see something I wasn’t sure was there. It’s in the arch of his eyebrow, and the unflinching way he holds my stare.

I curl my lips into a smile as a kind of question. His lips curl too. That’s all I need. I lean forward and jut my neck out at him. His face is frozen.

I put my lips on his. When they touch, my heart lurches, time stops, and he gasps.

His mouth tastes like light syrup, sweet and vaguely maple. I open my lips just a little and he does the same, mirroring mine. Our lips stay connected, and then I slightly breathe into his mouth, and his whole body shakes. Mine too.

His mouth is so tentative, and I wonder: Has he ever been kissed before? I want my lips to heal him, to protect him from everything. From his crazy mom. From the people who have hurt him, because no one is as tentative as Jordan without having gone through some shit.

I pull back slowly. I search his face. He averts his eyes for a moment and I give him some time to look back at me. Which he finally does. His light green eyes focus on mine again, and his face reddens just a bit, and he smiles.

“Well,” he says.

“Well.”

We exit the bushes, which is a good idea because no, I’m not gonna have our first time be in the bushes at the zoo. And I can’t help but think about kissing Kevin and how it was just — not this. I didn’t want to. Maybe that’s why the whole thing was so weird. I don’t know. Just thinking about it, and just thinking about seeing him earlier today — well, yesterday by now — makes my chest shiver.