CHAPTER 4: ALL RIGHT

6 Days Until Naomi is Back

     *Steering wheel smooth and firm under my fingers. Sunrise, empty streets. My pickup truck, my garbage on the floor. Someone's bobblehead on the dash. Coffee store just opening. Better get a bagel too. Houses blurring past, stores, large buildings. My parking space. My university.*

     I wake from a fitful sleep, and hear the first movements of life outside. I feel that I  dreamt last night, but when I try to recall them, they elude me. Anyway, my mind soon becomes preoccupied with another matter.

      I wander from my room. Then I quickly return, sheepishly slip some clothes on, and leave again.

     The sun creeps up slowly over the windowsill of Miranda's room as if also feeling sheepish for glimpsing my earlier nudity. It's rays filter through Miranda's window, light up dust motes like lazy fireflies against a burning background, and then re-filter through the glass case into our little diorama dream house of plastic and dwarfed flora. The early light makes the green leaves appear too green, the white plastic and gravel too yellow. I let it all sink through me with my hands in my pockets, wondering what I ever did without pockets.

     Zero makes his way around the perimeter, jogging barefoot, hopping obstacles in his path with practiced grace. I bite my lip, stare at my shoes, and eventually jog towards an interception. "Morning," we say at the same time, and before I can believe it things have already become more awkward than I had feared. We jog in silence for some time, and I wrack my brain trying to force my mouth open to breach the subject.

     As per usual though, Zero is much sharper than he lets on, a fact I had somehow forgotten. He says "I love her man," his head held rigidly upright and resolutely forward. "Sorry."

     That's when  I trip over a root and crash face first into the dirt. When Zero finally notices and comes back for me, I've managed to roll myself over and stare upwards through the leaves of a bonsai, my hands resting limply on my chest like a long dead king unearthed from his tomb.

       Upside down, Zero lowers into a crouch and stares at me. "All right there, bud?"

      "Yes," I say, staring past him. The leaves don't ripple here; there's no wind, they don't break up the sunlight like water. The sky that's revealed in the spaces between them is a constant white stucco. "Everything is fine," I say, in complete honestly.

      A smirk on Zero's upside down lips. He hears the truth in my words, through the thin layer of melancholic self pity tugging sarcastically at me like needy children. "Get up, loser," he says warmly and I'm jerked to my feet.

       I start to wander off in a daze, when he grabs my arm again and spins me around. "Hey, " he says. He furrows his brow and looks around him, searching for the words. "Thanks for saving our lives. You know, if you hadn't done what you did back there, I'd probably be dead and Beta would be..."

     I nod solemnly. "I'd do it again in a second. It's good to have you guys back."

     He nods too, and after a moment tilts his head and wraps me up in his arms. Then he laughs, that familiar cackle of his, and says "Gay!" and bounds off.