She’s testing her reflexes. The snake rears up, ready to strike, and she flickers herself out of there before she gets hurt. She lands on the planet snow moon in the middle of a freshly plowed street.

  THE FREAK HATES HALF-WIT HIGH SCHOOL BITCHES!

  The Freak is angry. She knew better than to be set up by two half-wit high school bitches. Nearly two years have gone by, and she’s still angry about it.

  The snow calms her. It’s falling so fast she can’t see thirty feet in front of her. She doesn’t try to catch any snowflakes on her tongue. The Freak doesn’t catch snowflakes on her tongue. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a lighter and tries to light the snowflakes on fire before they hit the ground. Before they cover everything up. This is a pointless task.

  * * *

  Last Friday, The Freak’s father moved out of the house. Again. Good riddance. He was a series of dials and switches that controlled everything from when she took a bath to how she brushed her hair. He said bras were too expensive when her boobs came in so she wears layers to hide her nipples. He said tampons and pads were too expensive when she got her period, so she’s used everything from a menstrual cup to random washcloths since day one. This could be the reason people call her The Freak, but there are others.

  The Freak is angry at Kelly Pointer and her dumb friend, Mika. She’s angry at her mother already for the day she’ll let her father move back in. Happens every time, like a yo-yo. The longest they ever managed to stay separated was three months. That was two years ago, when her mom moved the two of them to Pennsylvania.

  * * *

  She tries to burn snow that’s sitting on top of a car. It melts and that’s satisfying. She doesn’t know where she is, but she never does when she flickers. Flickering can be dangerous. She could have landed anywhere. It’s nice to see snow again.

  “Hey! What’re you doing to my car?”

  The Freak forgets that people can see her.

  The guy yelling at her is standing in his doorway in a thick flannel shirt and a pair of unlaced snow boots. She moves along. Whispers, “Sorry.” It’s so quiet in the snow, she doubts the guy hears her but then he says, “Aren’t you cold? Want to come inside?”

  The Freak is sick of pervy older guys already. She’s been sick of them since she was twelve. She isn’t cold. She just spent eight hours in a desert. She keeps walking and waves him off. He closes the front door and she’s alone again. No traffic. No people. No noise. Snow makes everything that’s wrong with the world disappear.

  * * *

  The thing about flickering is she can’t stay in one place forever even if she wants to. The Freak is at the beach. The Freak is in the boardroom. The Freak is hiking in the Alps. The Freak is on a boat. The Freak is harvesting Russian wheat. The Freak is on the snow moon.

  When The Freak was sixteen, her boyfriend cut her arm with a steak knife. The Freak told him to fuck off. But the next day he said he was sorry. A week later, The Freak was douching with turpentine. It hurt a little, but not as much as other things.

  Flickering doesn’t hurt. Flickering is easy.

  Now The Freak will never have to douche with turpentine again.

  She can just go to the beach.

  The Freak’s feet are in sand.

  The Freak’s feet are in surf.

  The Freak’s feet are in woolly boots and she’s melting snow with her lighter.

  The Freak’s bumming a cigarette from a stranger in New York City.

  The Freak’s snowboarding in Tahoe.

  The Freak is sober. The Freak is drunk. The Freak is angry. Adults tell her to smile. Adults tell her not to be so angsty. She says, “You douche with turpentine and get back to me.”

  The Freak has emotions. She doesn’t plan on stopping those up with stupid wine conversations or political debates. Red, white, red, blue. The Freak’s mother is a fan of red. Big, round glasses—she’d swirl the wine around and sniff it. By the end of the night, who cares what it smelled like? By the end of the night, The Freak’s mother was stumbling around the house, talking to the cat like the cat could really understand her. The cat and The Freak would both recoil from the curse of red wine: black gums and teeth and the unmistakable sour of sulfur.

  Jake & Bill are shoveling

  Jake and his brother, Bill, are shoveling their driveway in the dark. They live in a nice place—part of a development. From the outside of the house, you’d never guess that minds like theirs could call it home. It’s so standardized—as if a house machine had just dropped two hundred houses perfectly aligned along the streets, only changing the color from light beige to dark beige to gray each time. Inside is just as normal. Kitschy decorations from their mother’s trips to Amish country. Framed childhood pictures. A wall-hanging-sized quilt that says FAMILY. Whole place smells of cinnamon and vanilla. The kitchen is clean, and the den next to it is filled with normal-looking furniture and lamps and a nice carpet with no stains.

  The only thing weird about the house is the heated tank in Bill’s room for his snake. But boys will be boys, and boys like weird things like snakes. From the outside, they’re as normal as anyone on the block.

  Jake shovels faster than Bill, like it’s a race. The blacktop of the driveway is the same blacktop as everyone else’s driveway. The minute Jake sees it under the snow, he wishes the whole driveway was exposed. Shovels faster. As deep as he can. Daydreams of moving south.

  “Fuck this,” Bill says, and goes inside, leaving Jake to do all the work.

  The Shoveler: Brain Man

  There’s a girl walking up the street, in the middle of the street. I don’t know where she came from and it doesn’t look like she knows where she’s going. She’s just meandering. She doesn’t see me and I stand here quietly because for some reason I don’t want her to see me.

  I can’t keep my eyes off her, though.

  For some reason I think: She is the answer.

  For some reason I think: She is the meaning of life.

  We look at each other for a second, and she walks toward me slowly. Still meandering. Stopping to light her lighter, but I’m not sure why. I think she’s trying to light the snow on fire.

  Eventually, “Hi.”

  I say, “Hi.”

  “Was that your dad asking me to come in?” she asks, pointing to Mike’s house.

  I shake my head. “That’s our neighbor. I don’t have a dad.”

  “Immaculate conception?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Cosmic.” She reaches down deep into her parka pocket and seems disappointed that nothing is in there. “Dads are overrated anyway.”

  “You probably only say that because you have one.”

  She says, “My mom told me that my dad was an ass man when I was five years old. I didn’t know what it meant. She told me later that some men are ass men, some are breast men, and some are leg men. I’m looking for a brain man. Haven’t found one yet.”

  I don’t know what to say to her. I never thought about it this way. Also: hell of a way to start a conversation.

  “It’s like they have us carved up before we’re even in middle school. Fuck men. No offense, but y’all are a bunch of assholes . . . fathers included.”

  I don’t know what to say to that, either. I want to tell her I’m a brain man, but I’m not one. I’ve looked at breasts. I’ve looked at legs. I’ve looked at asses. “Maybe it’s because no one can actually see the brain,” I say. “Like, you have to get to know someone before you know their brain.”

  “No shit.”

  I let too many seconds pass. “We’re all assholes,” I say. She looks at me and rolls her eyes. “Sorry. I’m trying to think of a guy I know who’s a brain man and I can’t think of one.”

  “Doesn’t make you all assholes. I mean, are you an asshole? Out here shoveling snow in the dark? Assholes are usually lazy.”

  I’ve never been lazy. This makes me feel good.

  “Anyway, it’s not like you’re an orphan,” she says.

  “True.” I think of Mom. Sometimes I feel like an orphan, but I’m not an orphan.

  “And you’ll get a good job soon. It’ll be in your mailbox tomorrow. Watch for it.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  “You got a smoke?” she asks.

  I hand her one and she lights it with her lighter. I don’t feel like smoking another one so I just watch her smoke. I notice her lips. Full and red. No lipstick. Just naturally perfect lips. I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone in my life. Never. But right now? Right now I want to feel her lips on my lips and taste what she tastes like.

  I watch her take another pull off the cigarette and I can’t stop thinking about my father. This is my main tunnel. It feeds the other tunnels. I can’t get away from him and I don’t even know who he is. I’m sixteen years old and I’ve never wanted to kiss a girl before. What the fuck is that about? Seriously. A man I never met—a man whose name I don’t even know—he’s crippled everything about me.

  THE FREAK IS PART OF A TEAM NOW!

  The Freak loves how the exhale is a mix of smoke and steam. It’s proof that she’s there, on the snow moon. She’s talking to a boy. It’s not something she likes doing, but this boy is different. He’s shoveling snow while she smokes. He doesn’t seem interested in her at all, outside of random conversation. No flirting, no innuendo, no tips on how to be prettier or more fashionable, no telling her how to talk because swear words put boys off. Mostly he moves snow and breathes heavily. There’s something about him. She likes him too much. Not even halfway to the filter. That’s not good. So she places her cigarette on the edge of the curb, as if the street were a giant ashtray, and flickers to her bedroom.

  In it, she finds the note from her mother.

  You can’t just disappear without telling me where you went. I know your dad leaving has been hard on you, but we have to be a team now. I want your car keys on the kitchen table before dinner.

  The Freak was fond of disappearing from the minute she could drive. At first, she was staying out all night with the turpentine boyfriend. After that, she swore off boys and drove around by herself so she didn’t have to hear the arguments. It’s funny, this note. Still here in her old bedroom in California. As if Pennsylvania never happened. As if car keys mean anything now.

  The Shoveler: Transparent Backpack

  She just vanished. Bummed a cigarette, smoked half of it, then I looked up and she was gone. Her cigarette is still burning on the curb where she left it, but it’s wet from the snowfall, which seems impossible—a burning, wet cigarette. She isn’t walking up or down the street. She isn’t sitting on the front porch. She isn’t sneaking through side alleys. Her footprints stop where she stopped. It makes no sense. The variables try to take over. I look at the church across the street. It has one of those tiny old graveyards next to it. Maybe there are ghosts here. I’m not scared of ghosts, but she didn’t seem like one.

  By the time I stop clearing off the top of the cars—ours and Penny’s—the snow has slowed. Maybe five more inches to come, tops. I bring the shovel and the broom to the porch, knock off as much snow as I can from my boots and coat, and take them off inside the foyer.

  When I get upstairs and inside the apartment, I see it’s 1:30 a.m. Mom is asleep on the couch, curled up facing the wall. I’m wide-awake and I put the teakettle on and make hot chocolate.

  I change out of my damp clothes and put on a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a long-sleeved T-shirt. My room is small and empty, aside from my bed, the school handbook, two trash bags of clothing, and a new backpack Mom got me when she went on her first-day-in-a-new-town shopping spree. The backpack is made of transparent plastic. This is never a good sign.

  I open the handbook and close it again. What could it say that isn’t obvious—other than all backpacks must be transparent? Don’t be late; don’t leave early. Don’t skip school. Don’t hit anyone. Don’t stab anyone. Don’t wear clothes that show your private parts. Don’t fail your classes. Don’t be a dick in the cafeteria. Don’t be a dick on the bus. Don’t be a dick in the library. Don’t be a dick during class changes. Don’t be a dick on school property after school ends.

  First day in a new school. Never goes well. Always too nervous. Always sweat through all my layers. Always hiding from the kids who want to beat me up. There are always kids who want to beat up the new kid. It makes no sense. Texas, it was a kid name Kyle. Arizona, it was a kid named Paco Taco, which was a racist nickname, but he was known for his love of tacos, and he called himself that, so I guess it was okay? Nebraska, it was a girl. Her name was Julie. She beat everyone up at any chance she could. One time in Kentucky, in the fourth grade, it was the principal of the school. Wanted to beat me up on day one. Said free-lunch kids should at least wash their hair.

  I washed my hair every day in fourth grade but the principal always told me it was too greasy. Said free-lunch kids shouldn’t have dirt on the knees of their jeans, and he was sick and tired of kids like me bringing his test scores down.

  One day he produced the cheese paddle. Holes in wood. Made a whooshing noise. I puked my free lunch onto his carpet.

  Got expelled. Moved. Tunnel closes.

  * * *

  I don’t have any curtains in my bedroom so I wake up early on Monday with blinding snow sun in my eyes. The storm is over. I go out to survey the job ahead. I’m glad I did what I did last night because there’s only about six inches on our walkway and the sidewalk. Our cars are visible while the rest of the cars on the block still look like curvy icebergs in an ocean of snow.

  I turn to go back inside and I see there’s a small newspaper in our mailbox, the Merchandiser. No footprints. Penny’s mailbox doesn’t have one. Just ours.

  There’s a job in this paper for me. That’s what the girl told me. I still can’t tell if she was real. She looked real. When she breathed, steam came out of her mouth and nose. She lit snow on fire. She cursed at the snowplow. She talked about asses. If she was a ghost, she was a beautiful and very strange one.

  I turn to the help-wanted section and there’s an ad that’s outlined in purple highlighter.

  Worker Needed. Am I a worker?

  Interior house painting. I’ve painted a few of our apartments. Usually I have to paint them back to neutral, too, because Mom decides she wants a purple bedroom or a lime-green kitchen and landlords like white.

  Ten minutes from city. Perfect job for student. Nights and weekend hours only.

  Mom shows up in the kitchen. “You’re up early,” she says.

  “Got this in the mailbox last night.” I hold up the Merchandiser.

  She grunts and makes coffee, then plops down on the couch next to me.

  “Did you shovel all night?”

  “Just until I was done.”

  “I saw you talking to that girl.”

  “Yeah,” I say, and I smile because that means she was real.

  “Mike said she was melting snow with fire or something. Weird girl. Maybe you want to stay away from her.”

  When Mom goes for a shower, I decide this is a good time to call the painting-job people. They don’t answer so I leave a message on what sounds like the oldest answering machine in the world—a message recorded underwater and the beep that takes me by surprise. I can’t remember what I said, but my last sentence echoes. I look forward to hearing from you!

  I’m annoyed at how perky I sound. But it seems like a cash job, so perky is probably good. Cash job means Mom can’t take my check, deposit into her account, and give me forty bucks for a week’s work like the last two jobs.

  NAKED FREAK CAN’T CRY!

  The Freak wants to go back to the shoveling boy. She needs to tell him about what to expect at school. She needs to tell him not to talk to anyone who carries a snake. She needs to tell him you can’t always see right away who’s carrying a snake.

  But she’s stuck where she is. In her dusty old bedroom, listening to her parents argue downstairs.

  She can’t believe her mom let him back in the house again. She can’t believe it, but she understands it. Times are rough. Shit like this breaks people into pieces and somehow her parents’ pieces fit together even though it was never good for any of them.

  The Freak isn’t afraid of a little fighting, though. She sits on her bed and listens to them.

  “I should have never let you move out there,” he says.

  “I wanted to go,” she says. “And we needed the money.”

  “I should have just gotten another job. Or begged my dad. Or . . .”

  Her father is crying. This is new. Her mother starts, then. The two of them fill the whole house up with sobs. The Freak tries to cry but she can’t work up one single tear—not even an angry one. She looks at herself in the mirror. Strips naked. This usually works, but still, no tears. This makes The Freak angrier. She kicks her trash can over. She punches the mirror and it cracks.

  “Did you hear that?” her father says.

  “I hear things all the time,” her mother answers. “All the time.”

  The Freak tries to open her bedroom door but it’s locked from the outside.

  Sits on her bed. Still can’t cry even though she’s sadder than she’s ever been.

  Flickers.

  The Freak is still naked when she appears in a university lecture hall where a professor is talking about Solanum tuberosum—the potato plant.

  “Who would have thought Northern Europeans would rely so much on a plant so poisonous? Everything about it is toxic except for the tubers themselves. Leaves, stems, roots, seeds, all poison. The secret,” he says, slapping his hand on a stack of books, “is keeping the spuds beneath the soil. Because any part of the plant that sees light can hurt you if you eat it. Even kill you—but only after making you puke your guts out and go crazy.”