At the heart of it, I’d been normal, I think, with sleepovers and friends, and then slowly they’d drifted away. I’d talk to them sometimes in class, or I’d sit with people at lunch, but would realize they were talking about things they’d done over the weekend that I had no idea about. And I’d pretend that it didn’t matter, because, honestly, I didn’t want to go to the mall and look at clothes. I didn’t want to watch the boys play basketball and cheer them on. I wanted other things, but I didn’t know how to ask for them. By the time I realized I was kind of alone, that I didn’t have any real friends, my dad ended up leaving us, and I was so angry and sad and there was no one to tell. And, you know, when your dad marries his secretary and leaves your mom all alone with four kids and not much money, people get a little weird around you. So I kept it inside of me, and that weirdness and sadness vibrated all the time, and maybe I’d just been waiting for someone who wanted me.

Zeke was staring at me, smiling, no pressure, just trying to find ways to pass the time, and I finally got inspiration. I finally had something decent for him. And I laughed, this barking sound, and said, “Well, I have an idea. I don’t know if it’ll work, though. I don’t know if you’d even like it.”

“Is it drugs?” Zeke asked, wary. “I don’t want to do that.” Goddamn, we were both so twitchy, so afraid.

“What? No,” I said, happy that I wasn’t the only one who was a square. “Just come on.”

I led him to our huge garage, which had become kind of scary in its disarray, boxes of junk stacked to the ceiling, stuff my dad hadn’t bothered to take with him and my mom hadn’t thrown out. After he left us, she refused to even come out here. I showed Zeke how to navigate around the junk to a corner of the room. “This is kind of cool,” I said, having forgotten about its existence until this very afternoon. Hidden under a tarp and obscured by water skis and a ladder, there was an old Xerox copier.

“It’s broken right now,” I said, “but I thought you might want to look at it.”

“You have a photocopy machine?” he asked, confused.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

“My brothers stole it last year,” I told him.