Gray Days

Chapter 15: Things We Don't Know We Are

15

Rut.

She has not just build a snowman. She's made a snow man. He's a friend of hers and his name is Gary. I don't even know her anymore. Last night she was crying and now, like the day I went cycling with the Adams, she's smiling and laughing at no one in particular. Not that she can't smile and laugh all by herself but it's weird and it's strange. I like it though. I've never seen her so happy.

"He's a midget," I say of the snowman and she glares at me like I've said something wrong.

"He can't speak and he can't hear us, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have feelings." She defends him like a real person when he's only snow. But to hell with it, as long as it makes her crazily happy, I say sorry. I give him a smile. And I ask him how he's doing. It's Zoey that answers, of course. "He's doing fine. Cold but livable. Do you know that Gary's brother was killed by a redheaded madman days ago?"

We're playing pretend, I guess. And now I'm pretending that this snowman named Gary has a brother that was killed by a madman days ago. "I didn't, but I'm sorry." Zoey doesn't seem satisfied with my acting. She looks at me as if she knows something I don't and squints her eyes and stares at me until a piece of memory pops into my head. And I'm like, 'Oh, that brother.' In a more sympathetic tone, I say, "I'm really sorry."

I thought he was just a snowman when he was really a snow man.

"Gary forgives you, redheaded madman." She smiles at me in a smile I've never seen her with before and that makes her look like a cute little girl. I'm like seeing a side of her I never thought she has. And it's refreshing.

Zoey says yes when I invite her to have a late lunch at Cappy's. And so I get a cooler from Trip and we put Gary inside with a cooler-full of snow to keep him alive. Since Zoey doesn't want to leave him all alone with fleeting strangers and madmen, her words exactly. I deal with Jesse and Mayor Humphrey when I happen to come across them and all is well. Zoey and I are inside the car with the cooler on her lap because she doesn't want to put it anywhere else and we're now on the go to our local diner.

"What do you think of the race?" I try getting her in a conversation and this time, more than the other times before, she's more than glad to converse with me.

"It was nice. Floyd Flynn almost beat you though. You almost got second." She shifts her eyes to me and to the road and to the cooler and back to me, and she still has that smile on her lips. "In that other race, you could've made a back flip or something. It would've been so cool."

"I could have, but I would've either broken my back or killed myself. Now would you want that fate for me, honey?"

Zoey shrugs it off and laughs. "I'm just saying it would've been cool if you had."

"It would have, yeah."

When we arrive, Cappy's new and improved children's corner catches our eyes. It has this plastic fence around it and moms will distract their kids to play there while they talk with other moms and have a peaceful lunch. There's about five kids tops, mostly toddlers and young brats, and they don't even know that their moms deceived them with playtime. Kids, don't they just look cute and stupid. People love them though.

"If you have the chance to go back to being a kid with the knowledge you have now," Zoey says, fiddling with her fries, "Would you do it?"

I stare at her and she stares straight back. The cooler is beside her and we're finishing up. The fries are the only ones that's left, other than our drinks, but I think we might need another ten minutes because right now, all her attention has been directed to the kid's corner. Sometimes I think she's forgotten that I'm here with her until now.