I brushed past him and began spraying the counters with Formula 409. When I finally turned around, he was gone. I checked the back room, but there were only freezers and boxes of inventory. I heard a tap on the order window and found him staring in from the outside, lifting the ice cream cone in his hand like a torch. “Do I want to know what you’re doing?” I asked once I slid the glass back.
“That’s no way to greet a customer.” He reeled. “I’m offended.”
“Fine. Welcome to Oinky’s. Do I want to know what you’re doing?”
“I would like to return this vanilla cone.”
“We don’t have a return policy on ice cream.”
“Then I would like to make an exchange.”
“Okay?”
“I will exchange this vanilla cone for the pleasure of your company tomorrow night.”
I snatched the cone out of his hand and dumped it in the trash can under the cabinet. “I’m going to say yes so we can get out of here, but I think you’re immature and talk too much and are not nearly as cool as you think you are. Are we clear?”
“I heard nothing after yes.”
We left at nine. The minivan light stayed off when I opened the door, because it was a 1992 Town & Country and my dad insisted he would be able to fix it without having to take it to a repair shop. Snake had parked his car next to mine. He had a gold Prius with a license plate that said NAMASTE. I assumed it was his moms’.
“That’s a chick car,” I said as he reached for his keys.
“That’s a misogynistic assertion,” he returned quickly. Well played. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“Whatever.”
“I already put my number in your phone while you were washing the sink.”
“That’s thoroughly creepy.”
“Oh, by the way.” He leaned across the top of his car. Towered over it, actually. “My answer is smart.”
I had no idea what he was saying, but I figured that he just said a bunch of random stuff all the time to hear himself talk. “Answer for what?” I asked.
“Tuesday, when you asked me if I would rather be smart or happy. I would rather be smart.”
“Why?”
“Because intellect can be proven scientifically with machines and litmus tests and IQ evaluations, but happiness is only based on a loose pool of interpretive data drawn from perception and emotion. It’s a theory, see? And I’d rather put my faith in something real than something that’s inconclusive.”
“So, you don’t think happiness is real?” It was the first time I’d questioned him and been eager for his response.
“I think it’s tolerable pain. Happy people have a really high tolerance, that’s all.” He tapped the hood of his car. “See you tomorrow.”
He drove toward Sun Street with one of his taillights busted, flooring it through a yellow light that blinked red the moment he crossed the threshold. I read the word NAMASTE until the letters disappeared.
Chapter Four
SYMPTOMS OF A DEPRESSIVE EPISODE ALWAYS came in three major stages—?wait, scratch that. Symptoms of a Reggie depressive episode always came in three major stages. As I lay on my floor, my knees curled beneath my chin, the most exaggeratedly morbid song moaning into my headphones, I knew that I was in Stage 3: Disconnect.
Stages 1 and 2 were pretty brutal, sure. Lots of sobbing, shaking, sore body parts for no reason whatsoever, walls that did all but swallow me whole, a bunch of upbeat, cheery things like that. But they were nothing compared to Disconnect.
My mom had tried to help when it first started happening. She would suggest taking a walk together whenever the silence got loud. When I wouldn’t answer, she’d bake me chocolate chip cookies and leave a note under my door to let me know when they were ready. Eventually, though, she just sat downstairs and ignored me because she said the devil had to release his control before the Lord could do His work. Personally, I wondered if even the devil was Stage-3-caliber mean. Sometimes it felt like it was my mind that was the cruel one. Like it was true what people say about you being your own worst enemy. That, or I was just plain crazy.
Anyway, Disconnect was either the best or the worst stage, depending on how you looked at it. It was numbing. It was staring for half an hour at a spot on the ugly wall Karen insisted on painting yellow to make me stupid (see: happy) while the piano from my earbuds spilled into every bone and vein and fiber. Numb. That was what made it the best stage. It didn’t hurt. It was also the worst, because I could feel nothing for only so long.
That’s where I was that night. I was in frayed jeans with a coffee stain, a white T-shirt with a cross-patterned scarf, and my black combat boots laced halfway up my shins, lying in a heap of human on the bed. And Snake was supposed to pick me up in less than two minutes.
“A little gold car just pulled into the driveway!” my mother called from the living room. I had hoped he wouldn’t pick me up at the door, because one look at his tattoo, and he would be walking out of there with a Gideons Bible tucked into his pants.
It was hard to move during Disconnect, but I picked myself up by the bootstraps (almost literally). When I dragged my wobbly legs into the living room, I saw Snake standing on the welcome mat just inside the door with both hands in his ripped pockets, my dad studying him from his usual spot in the La-Z-Boy, and my mother’s wide-eyed, disapproving stare as she took her place on the love seat. He was wearing a T-shirt that said ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG with the word YOUNG marked out by a red X.
He wasn’t the least bit uneasy or ashamed or anything close to what I would have expected, given the pretty portrait I’d painted of my mom the night before.
I walked toward him and motioned to my parents. “Snake, this is my mom, Karen, and my dad, Dave. Mom and Dad, this is Snake.”
A customary awkward silence ensued, followed by my mother being unable to deny her nature. “Snake can’t possibly be your real name, sweetheart. Does your mother approve of that nickname?” she asked.
He grinned his Snake grin. “My mothers prefer it. Self-expression, and all that.”
She raised her brows at the mothers part. I nudged Snake so he would know to gear up for battle.
“Your mother and stepmother?” she asked, wringing her hands in her lap.
“No. My mothers. You know, like you and Dave, except neither has a mustache.”
“I’m working on a Fu Manchu,” my dad added.
“Dave.” My mother’s face turned redder than the sweater she was knitting. She turned back to Snake, unable to let it go. She never could. “So, two mothers. That’s . . . interesting. Is that difficult for you?”
“Really, Mom?”