“Is anyone home at your house?” I ask.

  “Trivia night,” Ian says. “They won’t be home till the pub closes.”

  We walk.

  * * *

  Ian’s house is layered in books—all kinds of books from picture books for little kids to huge books about art that Ian and I used to press flowers in when we were young enough to care about pressing flowers.

  We sit in his living room and he puts on some music and it sounds like a painting in my head and my chest. It’s hard to explain. It’s as if I’ve lived my whole life underground and just found the hole to the surface.

  My parents don’t like me hanging out with Ian. He’s not allowed to hang out at my house. Not even when we were little. My mother rang her bell once, and she and Dad tried to talk to me about it. How maybe I shouldn’t get too close. How maybe it looks bad for our family for me to be friends with a boy like him. Now, Ian gets good grades and leads the debate team. I’m growing my client list to nearly sixty and will scrape through junior year with my worst grades yet. I’m pretty sure having Ian as my best friend is the only good thing I have going for my reputation.

  I check my phone. I look at the numbers on the clock but they still make no sense to me. Ian is lying on the couch with his eyes closed.

  I decide to lie next to him.

  We kiss and it’s a longer kiss than when we were on Elm Street. I can feel every nerve in my body. It’s like Ian’s kiss is a million times more powerful than my mother’s stupid bell. I’m breathless when we finish.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Ian says.

  I am out of my tunnel here, lying in the crook of his arm, curled in on his body. I can feel him breathing. I can hear his heartbeat. The grin on my face won’t calm down. It may be bigger than ever.

  I don’t know what I’m doing. He’s just lying here and I’m just lying here but something makes me reach down and touch his penis. I think of the word penis and start laughing slowly. The laugh builds and I don’t take my hand off, but I squeeze it with each giggle and Ian laughs, too, and we’re lying on his couch, me with my hand on his penis, laughing, when my phone rings again. My hand hesitates. In order to reach my phone I will have to take my hand off Ian’s penis and I really don’t want to because it’s growing in my hand and that’s far more interesting than anything anyone could tell me on my phone.

  “You getting that?”

  “No.”

  We fall into a hysterical fit and Ian nearly falls off the couch but I hold him steady by his penis. The phone rings again and it makes us laugh until I feel like I’m going to pee in my pants and I leave the ringing phone on the coffee table and make my way to Ian’s downstairs bathroom.

  “It won’t stop ringing!” he screams as I’m peeing. I try to block it out and stare at the two green hand towels on the rail in front of me. The towels breathe as I breathe. The floor is a sea of movement and I glance up at the towels and then back at the floor and I realize that I’m tripping my balls off—the way my clients have described it to me. And then I remember touching Ian’s penis and I laugh so hard I fart and that makes me laugh even harder, so I pee more.

  I finally finish and wash my hands for what feels like twenty minutes, and I come back to the living room and my phone is still ringing and Ian’s hard-on went away because he’s holding my phone, staring at it.

  “I think you should read your texts,” he says.

  “Your towels breathe,” I say.

  “No. Seriously,” he says, but he’s laughing while he says it so I don’t take him seriously.

  I can only read one text. The latest one. It’s from my mom. It says: When u get home we have to talk about spending time with that boy.

  I read the last part aloud in a white dickhead voice. “We have to talk about spending time with that boy.”

  Ian and I fall off the couch laughing even though nothing about this is funny.

  Loretta’s Ticket Is a Flea Circus

  In a dark corner of her bedroom in her family’s traveling wagon, which is parked in a back lot at the RV camp, Loretta Lynn, named after the famous Loretta Lynn of country and western music fame, talks to her fleas.

  “You have to sit still while Gerald does his train act,” she scolds. “And, Gerald, you need to go offstage the minute that set is over so you can get ready for the band act. I’ve told you all before. This isn’t just any act. It’s the act that will get me away from You-Know-Who.”

  Loretta listens as her flea troupe talks to her about the issues in the show. Dolly complains that Gerald hogs the spotlight. Cynthia cries when Gerald tells her she sucks at trapeze. Dolly comes to Cynthia’s rescue when she says that Gerald’s father, Holloway, was a better performer than he’d ever be.

  Holloway was the best train-pulling act anyone ever saw.

  “Stop picking on Gerald,” Loretta says. “And, Gerald, go practice the train act.”

  Loretta hoists herself up and walks to the bathroom and closes the door. Before she can get the door all the way closed, she puts her hand down her pants and touches the spot she’s been thinking about since she was last able to touch it. She’s silent so the fleas don’t hear her. When she’s done, she waits and catches her breath. And then she does it again. Because she can.

  CanIHelpYou?: Us & Them

  Ian and I are still on the floor next to his couch, but we’ve stopped laughing. I close the text app on my phone and stare at the clock. I see the glowing numbers but they don’t make sense. 1:32. It just seems like someone was counting and got 3 and 2 mixed up.

  “Are you okay?” Ian asks.

  “Doesn’t that bother you? That my mom is such a fucking idiot?” I say.

  Ian nods and says, “I’m going for a cigarette before my parents get home.”

  “I can’t see your parents like this.”

  “I can’t see them either,” he says.

  We stare at each other and then crack up laughing again.

  “Let’s go back to the park,” I say. Ian looks like he doesn’t want to go to the park, but he walks with me anyway. We take the back alleys behind garages littered with basketball hoops and wood piles. We’re quiet and we hold hands again.

  I think about how I had my hand on Ian’s penis. How he kissed me the way I’ve always wanted to be kissed. How he laughed at my mom’s text. How he looked like he didn’t want to come with me on this walk.

  I think about how my grandmother once told me that black people have different blood than ours. How it’s got disease in it. I was nine years old. “They’re not like us,” she said.

  It was my birthday party. I’d invited eight friends from school to the local roller rink and two of them were black—it was the year I met Ian, and I’d already known Talia since first grade. I watched them skate in circles, and I looked over at my grandmother and my parents, who were eating half-burned pizza and french fries. I skated toward the opening into the rink and then stepped out to join my friends going in circles. When I looked at Talia and Ian, I saw them differently. I didn’t think what my grandmother said was true.

  They weren’t like us, no. They were better/stronger/smarter because they had to live in the same world with people like my grandmother.

  They didn’t know anything had changed that day, but I did. And as I skated around in circles and played an endless game of roller-skating limbo, I felt the tunnel building itself around me, the way a shell grows. Layer by layer, I was part of them and the shell would protect me from us.

  Except the older I get, I realize it’s not that simple.

  THE FREAK HATES YOUR IDEA OF A PARTY!

  The Freak has landed.

  There’s is a haze over the room. It’s pot haze. She’s at a party, except people at this party think having a party means smoking pot and playing Call of Duty—or watching people play Call of Duty. This is not The Freak’s idea of a party, but she could sure use a joint right about now.

  No one’s even noticed she’s here, standing in the kitchen. She sneaks over to the living room and slowly coaxes a boy’s stash bag off an end table and sticks it in her pocket.

  “Don’t you guys have anything better to do?” she asks.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “What the fuck do you care?”

  “Where the fuck did you come from?”

  None of them actually take their eyes off the screen to look at her. She walks to the window and looks into the night. It’s cold out there. Some snow on the ground, but not nearly as much as when she met the boy with the shovel last month.

  There’s mail on the kitchen counter, and she looks at the address.

  The Freak is in Wisconsin. She closes her eyes. Flickers.

  * * *

  The Freak is in another lecture hall at Potato University. Go Spuds!

  The professor is a tall African American woman. Every student is white.

  “Solanum tuberosum, our modest friend from the Andes, saved you from certain mediocrity. Grew your population while others withered—doubled it in some places. Rose you up. Rose up your children, your servants. Starched you rigid into your beliefs. The key to the kingdom was yours for the taking. Who wouldn’t take that key?” The professor adjusts her glasses with the back of her index finger.

  “Your ancestors arrived in the New World, strong and ready,” she says, “to wipe out whatever and whomever stood in their way.”

  The Freak raises her hand.

  “We didn’t do it on purpose, though, right?”

  The professor smiles. “All depends on your definition of purpose.” The Freak waits for an easier answer. “I mean, accidents are usually fast, right? Can’t say the last four hundred years counts as fast. Can you?”

  The Freak closes her eyes. Flickers. Underground.

  * * *

  The Freak is in a tunnel. It’s like a submarine. There are people here. She feels a lot of them, but can only see one at a time. She sits on the floor and pulls out her stash from Wisconsin. Rolls it into a joint. Lights it with her lighter.

  The Freak looks up and the ceiling is made of glass. Everything on the other side is roots. White filaments searching for water and nutrition. The longer she looks, the more roots she sees.

  The Freak is sad. She feels the roots working their way toward her—as if she is water and nutrition. As if she is dinner.

  The Shoveler: Existence

  Mom got a job at a used-car lot two weeks ago. She gets off at four on weekdays and she has weekends off. We’ve been able to share the car so I can go to Marla and Gottfried’s house to work, but she’s getting fed up with it, even though I’m the only one who puts gas in the tank. All I want is a shower after a long day. She seems to want to complain about how we need to figure out what to do about the car.

  “Maybe one of the guys at your work can find me something cheap,” I say.

  “You’d need insurance.”

  “I can pay for insurance,” I say.

  She doesn’t like that I make enough money to afford insurance. I’m not even sure if I can. I’m not even sure if she can. I’m just trying to find a solution to her being pissed off that I take the car the minute she gets home. It’s not like she goes anywhere at night or on weekends. Mostly, she texts Mike next door even though he’s right there, in his house, watching baseball and controlling his mind.

  I decide to take a walk.

  * * *

  I’ve been painting Marla and Gottfried’s house for three weeks now. My arms hurt, but I can feel them getting stronger. I like the relaxing art of house painting. I like to think it’s helping me somehow. I don’t realize how fast I’m walking until I get ten blocks away inside of what feels like five minutes. So much for being relaxed.

  Slow down.

  Take a deep breath.

  I pretend like Mom being mad at me doesn’t affect me, but it does. Not just her, either. If a stranger was mad at me, I’d feel something deeper than I should. Like shame or something. I can’t explain it. I’m guessing it’s my father again, like a part of me is always going to be nervous and ashamed of him and me and Mom. But mostly me.

  I turn around before I get to the center of town and I start walking back toward our apartment. There’s a sound I can’t figure out, but I’m walking toward it. It’s too late for anyone to make this much noise. Sounds like someone digging.

  “Can you help me out of here?”

  This question comes at me from the rain drain at the bottom of our block. I’m hearing things. Clearly. I keep walking.

  “Come back! It’s me!”

  I look around. The people who live on the corner have a big hedge. I look behind it. No one.

  “In the drain!”

  I look into the drain grate and she’s there. The girl who tried to light snowflakes on fire. She says, “Can you lift this?”

  I lift it and she climbs out.

  “Thank you so much,” she says. “That place is fucked up.”

  “The sewer?”

  “It was like a submarine,” she says. “Lots of people down there.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m stoned. Sorry,” she says. “It’s been a while and what do I have to lose, right?”

  “If I was trapped in the sewer, I’d probably get stoned, too,” I say. “How’d you get down there?”

  “How do I get anywhere?” she asks.

  She grabs my hand and it instantly starts sweating. I try to make it stop, but it just gets worse. We walk toward my house.

  “Can’t go to my house. My mom’s in a mood,” I say.

  She keeps walking.

  “It’s nice to see you,” I say.

  “Stop being so nervous,” she answers. “It’ll all work out fine.”

  I want to ask her what “it” is, but I just follow her up the road. She still doesn’t use sidewalks, it seems.

  Mike’s house glows with TV light—probably more baseball.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Don’t have a name.”

  “Everyone has a name,” I say.

  “The Freak,” she says.

  I don’t know what this means. She notices.

  “My name is The Freak. Or just freak. Or The Freakish one. Lady freak. Whatever twist you want to put on it. Freak. That’s me.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m The Freak and you’re the shoveler.”

  I’m embarrassed now. Carrying a shovel around with me like some crazy person. She obviously heard.

  “You’ll find a lot underground if you keep digging,” she says.

  I’m puzzled. “I’m not digging. It’s a snow shovel.”

  “Shovel’s a shovel.”

  I never really liked stoners. This is why. “Okay.”

  “You can do whatever you want. You’ve got arms. You’ve got legs. You’ve got existence. Don’t waste it. Trust me.”

  I have existence? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I’m suddenly sweating all over my body.

  “Got a smoke?”

  I smile. I nod. I grab her hand this time and we walk to the bench in front of the church—the one on the opposite side from my house.

  She sits with her legs out and leans back so relaxed and I envy her. She truly doesn’t give a shit about impressing anyone. Her feet are splayed out. She doesn’t push her chest out like most girls do; she lets it sink into the gap between the sky and the bench.

  I’m surprisingly relaxed by this, but my brain won’t stop the variables. Why did she wait three weeks to show up again? Where did she come from? Where does she live? Why is her name The Freak? How do I show her that I’m a brain man? The movies I make run one after the other. All the variables. “What did you mean when you said I had existence?” I ask. Sounds smart. Brain-man kind of thing to say.

  She inhales from the cigarette and holds it in and then exhales while answering so the smoke escapes her mouth as she forms out the syllables. “Existence is wasted on the living.”

  “You’re stoned.”

  She takes another pull off the cigarette. “What do you think happens when we die?” she asks. “You believe in Heaven and Hell and all that shit?”

  We’re outside a Catholic church, sitting on a bench next to a statue of Mary. “This is the closest I ever got to a church. Wasn’t even baptized,” I say.

  “So?”

  “So, I don’t really believe in Heaven and Hell, no.”

  “So, you’re an atheist.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I believe in something but I don’t quite know how to explain it.”

  I try to ignore the feeling inside me. I can’t breathe. My chest is tight and there’s sweat running down my back. I try to take a deep breath.

  “You ever know anyone who died?” she asks.

  “Yeah.” I think of my dad. I don’t know if he’s dead or not, but he may as well be. Dead. Never existed. Existence is wasted on the living, I guess. At least for my dad.

  “Wanna know what I think?” she asks. “I think when we die we all become part of a larger thing—a place where everyone who ever died lives. Not like Heaven. Not like Hell. Nothing really exists there. There’s no beer or anything. Or swing sets or shovels. It’s just thoughts. Ideas. Like a big bubble of ideas.”

  “I like it,” I say.

  “You’d better,” she answers and flicks her cigarette into the bush next to the statue of Mary.

  “I really like you,” I say. My eyes are closed and my sweat is soaking now, through my sweatshirt. I flick my cigarette toward the same bush she flicked hers into. I wait for her to say what she said in my movie. Same movie’s been running through my head for three weeks. I say I really like you and she’s supposed to say I really like you, too. But she isn’t saying anything at all.