This is what Ma would look like dead, Rosemary thought gloomily. She plucked the cordless out of its cradle and took it back to her room.

“Hello?” Arik picked up, sounding groggy.

“Hi. It’s me, Rosemary Park. If this is a bad time, I’ll hang up.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I was just . . . I must have fallen asleep without realizing it, on the couch.”

“That’s crazy! My mother’s asleep at the dining table.”

“No way. My mother’s sleeping, too, in her chair! And so’s my little brother. They’re both asleep in the middle of the freakin’ afternoon. And the whole place smells like kerosene from her dry-cleaning shit.”

“Oh, wow!” Rosemary laughed. “It’s like a sleeping virus! Wouldn’t it be funny if, like, we walked outside and found that every single person was asleep except for us?”

They both laughed quietly.

“I’m so glad you called,” Arik finally said. “You wanna hang out?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Totally.”

“Like, now?”

“Sure.”

Rosemary walked into the Rite Aid after locking her bike and checking her underarms for BO. She was instantly greeted by Arik, who was standing by the tower of blue shopping baskets and holding two ice cream cones—Rocky Road and strawberry cheesecake—already melting despite the profuse AC.

“Hey!” He handed her the strawberry cheesecake. He just knew. “There was a clerk at the ice-cream counter. It almost never happens, so I went for it.”

“Thanks,” Rosemary blushed, in spite of herself, and reached for her wallet.

“No, no. It’s on me,” Arik grinned. She noticed that he’d shaved off his Fu Manchu patches.

They walked through the store, licking their cones. Arik gave her a smile as they passed the eye-level display of Preparation H suppositories. “My mom uses that stuff.”

He looked irresistible in his Green Day T-shirt and the cargo shorts that ended high enough to showcase his down-covered calves. She’d touched those legs doing various exercises in Workshop but never socially. The back of his T-shirt was sweat-dappled and stuck to him.

At the freezers in the back of the store, they pressed their backs against the cold glass doors and sighed in unison.

“Aisle seven, by the lozenges,” Arik muttered, talking through one side of his mouth. “Toupee alert!”

Rosemary spotted the old guy in a cheap golf shirt wearing a lopsided hairpiece. She giggled.

“World’s fattest Ethiopian,” Rosemary said, tipping her chin at an anorectic lady squinting at vitamins through bifocals.

“World’s skinniest Iowan.” Arik arched an eyebrow toward an obese woman, who was panting as she struggled to take two steps in her walking frame.

“Planet of the Apes.” Rosemary directed her elbow at the bearded Armenian gent circling the painkillers aisle, graying chest hair popping out of his singlet.