LIZZIE AND ZACH SAT AT the kitchen table. Other than adding a little pepper, the eggs were perfect and the bacon was that barely crispy, firm texture.
For a while they didn't talk. Food shoveled in. Lizzie watched Zach. From time to time he glanced at her again with that serious ‘being-an-adult’ expression.
“You can smile, you know,” Lizzie suggested. Zach did. It was a nice smile; but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He was still worried.
“That was amazing.” Lizzie set down her fork. “Thanks, Zach. For the food. For coming up here. Is your family...?” She wanted to ask what had happened to his dad and grandpa, but she couldn’t find the right words.
“Hey, we go back a long way, Lizzie. Remember that time you, Nevaeh and I played strip poker, but you guys got towels.” He laughed, but it sounded forced.
Lizzie could take a hint. She laughed. “Yeah. I was a pretty bad influence on you two, wasn’t I?”
“Yeah, you were.” Zach scraping the last few bits from his plate was the only sound in the room for a long time. Then he used his fork and knife to perform a mock drum solo on the table and plates.
Lizzie watched him skeptically. He could still be as annoying as a middle-schooler.
He finished with a crash. “You want me to do the dishes?”
“Hell, no. We'll throw 'em out back. Lots of clean dishes in the neighbor’s houses.” Lizzie laughed. “Besides, you cooked; I’ll clean.” She walked out the back door with the dishes and dumped them in the garbage.
Zach stared at her. “You’re—”
“Crazy,” Lizzie finished for him. “Yeah. Watch this.” Lizzie snagged a plate from the sink and hurled it out the back door. “Frisbee!”
After she ‘did the dishes’ Lizzie headed to her mom’s bedroom. “I gotta run a load of laundry.”
Zach followed her. “Really? You throw out the dishes, but you’re going to wash the sheets?”
The bed was gross. The remains of the pills she had taken were all over—a few untouched and still recognizable. She recognized them in shock. Multivitamins her mom had gotten prescribed so she could get them for free. Shit. She really did suck at suicide.
She wadded up the sheets and the mattress pad; the comforter had escaped the deluge. There was only a little that had soaked through to the mattress. She grabbed a sock off the floor and scrubbed at the mattress then tossed the sock in with the rest of the bedding.
Lizzie sighed. Over the last year she had finally gotten to the point where she could recognize the ebb and flow of her mood. The meds her doctor prescribed had been mostly useless, but pouring her energy into something always helped.
Zach watched her from the door as she marched the pile of bedding to the washing machine. She grabbed him around the waist once the wash was going and hugged him. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He smiled down at her.
Lizzie felt self-conscious. It must seem like she was getting the bed ready—because of him. Her cheeks got hot. She slapped him on the back hard and said, “Man hug!”
“Thanks.” He winced. “Let’s watch a movie.”
“You want to watch a movie?” Lizzie grabbed the John Deere cap off his head and stuck it on hers.
“A chick flick? Something light.”
“Really? You’re not too big of a man for that?”
“Nope. Thinking one of those feel-good movies you and Nev used to make me watch. I always hoped one of you would get all mushy and I would end up getting a kiss out of it.”
“Poor Zach,” Lizzie teased. “Never going to happen.”
“No?”
“How about one of the Brat pack films? Something John Hughes? I tried to watch a marathon the other night, but fell asleep during Some Kind of Wonderful.”
“Is that the one with the tomboy who plays drums?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, how am I supposed to get a kiss at the end if you’re gonna fall asleep?”
She punched him in the gut. “No funny business. We’re friends. Even if it is the end of the world, and everybody else on the planet is dead.” That hit a little close to home. She saw tears in his eyes, but carefully didn’t notice.
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