“Nothing happened to me,” I say. “Sorry to be anticlimactic. Does some catastrophic event need to happen in our lives in order for us to appreciate anything?”
“Usually,” he nods.
“Well, I want to be optimistic, because I can be. Complaining is such a waste of time. Instead of focusing on what goes wrong, focus on what’s going right. It’s that simple.”
He shrugs. “Good point,” he says.
“My mom used to host a women’s support club at our house every week.”
“That sounds awful,” he says.
I smile. “It was,” I admit. “But it didn’t have to be. It was supposed to an uplifting support group. But it was a two hour window of whining and complaining. They called themselves the Good News Club and it was all bad news. My sister and I would sit in the stairwell and listen and I always thought, that’s what I don’t want. That is the way I never want to live. We voluntarily make choices every day. We choose what we do. We choose who we’re with. But people act like it’s some kind of a trap. It never made sense to me.”
“Then how do you block out all the negative thoughts?” Gray asks me.
“I guess I’ve mastered the art of daydreaming,” I say.
He takes a bite of the cinnamon roll and he licks sugar off his fingers.
“How do you escape?” I ask him.
“I can’t,” he says. “I don’t have your amazing talent for lack of attention,” he says and follows up with one of his slow smiles.
“You can do better than that,” I tell him.
“When I’m bored, I think of conspiracy theories,” he says.
I take a long sip of lemonade. “What is it with you and aliens all of a sudden?”
“It’s not just aliens,” he says. “It’s government conspiracies. It’s unexplained phenomenons. A kid on my baseball team in high school was obsessed with conspiracies. It’s all he talked about. You have a lot of time to kill in the dugout, especially when you only pitch every third game,” he points out.
“For example?” I ask.
He points out the window. “For example did you know the government can control the weather?”
I look out at the blue sky. “What? Is that true?”
“It’s a theory. That’s one thing that explains climate change. The government can make clouds.”
He points out white, narrow streaks of clouds stretched behind jets.
“What do you think those streaks are?”
“They’re called contrails,” I say. “It’s short for condensation trails.”
“Wow,” Gray says, impressed. “It’s incredibly hot that you know that.”
I shrug. “My dad told me. I was always convinced they were ice highways in the sky, perfect for sledding. He had to ruin my fantasy.”
“What if they’re not contrails? What if that’s just what the government wants you to think? Maybe it’s soap,” he says.
“Soap?” I look up at the white clouds impossibly high and try to imagine flecks of soap inside of them.
“Supposedly, jets fly around spraying soap all over the sky,” he says.
“Why? To wash the sky? What, does it clean up the acid rain?”
He smiles. “That’s a good theory,” he says. “The soap helps absorb some of the sun’s rays and it keeps the earth cooler.”
I look back at him, fascinated.
Gray laughs. “I’m not saying I believe any of it,” he says. “It’s just my distraction.”
“Wow. You’ve opened me up to a whole new world of thought.”
Gray rolls his eyes. “Great.”
Dylan
Gray hands me his car keys after I take a solemn oath that I will never again offer someone a ride without his authorized and signed approval. I unlock the front door and he walks around to the passenger side.
“What if it’s a woman in labor?” I ask across the car from him.
“Definitely no,” he says. “I don’t want afterbirth all over my backseat.”
“What if someone’s been shot and they’re rapidly losing blood and need to get to a hospital?”
“Same rule applies,” he says. I frown at him for his lack of sympathy. “That’s what an ambulance is for,” he argues.
We both slide into the front seat and shut the doors. I turn on the engine.
“What if it’s an abandoned child under the age of five?” I ask.
He shakes his head and I only have one more question.
“Do animals count?” I ask.
Instead of answering me, he shuts me up by leaning over and kissing me. All my thoughts evaporate at the touch of his lips. It starts off slow and soft, but then his lips press harder against mine and his mouth opens up and our breaths combine. His hand squeezes my thigh, and I wrap my hand around the back of his neck because I need him to come closer, but the console divides us. I murmur the words “hotel room” against his mouth because I’m not thinking anymore, just feeling, and Gray leans away. I lean after him, my lips craving more.