better choice: a big box wholesale club, restock department.
“You don’t need a license to drive a forklift?”
“The dude who’s supposed to work the forks is always out sick. After a while I got tired of putting my life at risk to climb the racks to the fourth tier to pull down eight-packs of Similac for stroller mafia who don’t know the words
“Costco?” she said.
“BJ’s.”
“Cool.”
“Not really. How come you can’t drive?” I said.
“Car’s in the shop.”
“Gotcha.” I’d found myself hoping she had some kind of condition too. Not like she didn’t have enough going on with her face. I’m an idiot.
She checked her phone for the time. “Yeah, I think I’m going to have to hoof it.” She stepped out into the rain, east. “Good luck with the stroller mafia.”
“You too,” I said.
She turned back and looked at me like,
I wondered why, having been stranded by Dave, she didn’t just call somebody else to pick her up. That’s when it occurred to me that maybe she didn’t have anybody to call. That maybe everybody thinks the pretty girl with the big brain has the world by the tail, that she wouldn’t want to hang out with somebody average like you, so why bother trying to be friends with her. Or was it that she just didn’t want to be around the people from her old life, their pity?
She walked fast up the avenue. Her backpack straps were uneven. She didn’t have an umbrella. I pulled a busted one from the trash and splinted the broken spoke with a rolled magazine and a plastic bag ripped into strips. It held together perfectly for thirty seconds, the amount of time I needed to catch up to Nicole, and then it punked right in front of her. The one side of it was still okay. I handed her the umbrella. A truck flew through a pothole lake and threw a wave of muddy water onto us.
Nicole dropped to her knees in a silent scream. She covered her face as if to protect herself from a second splash. She was balled up on the side of the road. The gutter water tugged at the half umbrella. “It burns,” she said. “Oh god. Please. It burns.” I helped her up. She wouldn’t let go of my arm. “Walk me? Please?”
The bandage tape was peeling off her cheek. She tilted her head so I couldn’t see it. I’d always thought she was statuesque goddess height, at least five ten, but she was more like five five. In my mind she was all curves, but here, now, up close, my hands on her waist to hold her up, she was slight. She was just a girl, and she was shivering.
TWELVE
“As in rhymes with S
“Ex
I found it hard to believe she didn’t know my last name after I was the YouTube sensation of freshman year, spazzing out in the middle of the gym floor at the pep rally. Could she not have seen the video? Maybe she wasn’t at the pep rally altogether?
“Nazzaro,” she said. “I think I knew that. Wait, I’ve seen that name somewhere. Somewhere else, I mean.”
“My father, maybe. It’s a lame paper, but you ever read the
“Your father is Vincent Nazzaro?”
“Steven, but everybody always thinks his name is Vincent too. Not like I mean he has two names.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Thanks.”
“For what?”
I shrugged.
She stumbled. I grabbed her arm. She regained her balance but kept her arm hooked through mine as we walked. “Was it as lame for you as it is for me, home school?” she said.
“My father just let me read whatever I wanted, as long as I passed those tests the state makes you take.”
“I have to take them if I don’t head back next quarter. How were they?”
“I took them all in the beginning of the year to get them over with. I home schooled online. This pilot program thing.”
“And you passed everything, no tutors?” she said.
“Tests were designed to let a moron pull at least a B. You’ll kill them. If you don’t come back to the Hollows. Are you? Coming back, I mean?”
“I’m not sure. I’m being told I need to hunker down for a while, hang home with my mom. She’s been awesome, total rock.”
“Why didn’t you call her? You know, to pick you up?”
“I can’t have her dropping everything for me anymore. As it is, she’s pretty much stopped her life to help me get through this. She needs to take a break from me every once in a while. From it.”
I wondered how I’d react if I saw it. I’d read that burn wounds were the worst. Catastrophic disfigurement. Identities just erased.
We came to where the main road tied into a tunnel of very old, well-pruned elms, no cars at the curbs. A sign said: PRIVATE COMMUNITY, NO PARKING, VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED. “I’m just down the street,” she said.
I lived on a street. This was a drive with estates on either side. I had a cousin who lived in Englewood, plenty of money there but gaudy rich, lots of lawn statuary, half the saints in the Gregorian calendar sticking out of the
“Your clothes are soaked,” she said. “You can borrow some of my father’s. We’ll go visit my friend, and then I’ll drive you home.”
“Your car’s in the shop,” I said.
“Our housekeeper’s. We have this old Subaru wagon for when she runs errands.”
“Why didn’t you call her for a ride?”
“She’s in Florida for the week.”
“Your friend,” I said. “The one in the hospital?”
Nicole clicked her phone to play me a message.
Nicole laughed. “She’d so never wear Dolce, you know?”
I laughed and nodded, like of course I knew the wardrobe inclinations of this person I’d never met. We’d come to a guardhouse in the middle of the street. The attendant came out with an umbrella for us. “Nicole, let me call the car to take you to the house.” His eyes ticked toward the main road. An older model Civic was parked off the shoulder, somewhat camouflaged by the woods. Somebody was leaning through the driver’s-side window, aiming a telephoto lens at us. The guard frowned. He shined his flashlight toward the camera as he clicked his radio. “John, he’s back again.”
