This week was probably the most fun I have ever had at school, being with Cole every day and working on astronomical maps together in Ms. Spencer’s class. He can draw really well, and he knows his stuff when it comes to dark matter. At lunch he and I and Lisette sat together instead of just me and Lisette slinking away to the art room like we usually do.
I’ve gotten over being angry at him for selling drugs to that crowd. Apparently his mom is sick and can’t work. It’s true that those kids are losers, but I’ve been paying attention to how Cole acts with them—he really isn’t their friend, he really is different. I just hope he doesn’t get caught and get into some real-world trouble.
Oh my God. But more important: Lisette is making this insane shirt out of fake fingernails! It sounds gross and weird but actually it looks so, so, so cool. She said it’s the perfect thing to wear with her fur boots and wolf hat. She said she’s going to wear that outfit to the Electric Daisy Carnival, if we ever figure out a way to convince our parents to let us go. Or figure out a way to get in.
“It’s good to have goals,” I said.
“It’s better to have conspiracies!” Lisette said.
After school on Monday, the three of us were walking around and going a little bit out of our minds, when Lisette said, “Let’s go to the Mall of America!” Cole rolled his eyes.
“You want to go shopping?” I asked her.
“No. But Amazing Mirror Maze? C’mon.”
“What will we do there?” Cole asked.
“Haven’t you been to the mall?” Lisette asked.
“Uh, no,” he said.
“Won’t your mom say no?”
“No to shopping?” Lisette asked. “Atty, c’mon.”
We hopped on the Blue Line and crammed into a corner. Usually this time of day I am alone in my room studying with my headphones on. Sitting with Cole and Lisette—my two favorite people—leaned up against me on the train ride made me kind of giddy, and everything Lisette said was, as always, funny. Me and Cole are so dark and heavy, but that girl is probably the funniest person in the universe.
Taking Cole into the mall was like leading an alien around. Lisette kept asking him if he was high.
“Uh, I don’t think I have to be high to be weirded out by a place called Alpaca Connection, especially when I’m breathing recirculated air from millions of suburban Midwesterners on antidepressants. I mean, the mall has its own gift shop with things that just say Mall of America on it! Seriously? I can’t . . . How is this a thing?”
We walked past a place called Hat World.
Cole had a look of such horror on his face it made me laugh.
“Is this place a big social science experiment or something?” he asked. “We’re supposed to see how fast capitalism can erode our reasoning?”
A tour group—led by a tall man wearing a headset and holding up a little Swedish flag—walked by us. Cole looked incredulous, started to say something but stuttered and eventually gave up, and Lisette pointed at him, burst out laughing.
Then: Amazing Mirror Maze. Cole did not bump into one thing! He did not get lost! He walked straight through! He must be the only person on Earth who has achieved this. We could hear Lisette calling out to us from somewhere in the middle, then various “ows” and “sorrys” then “oh shit” and “where the hell are you guys?”
It took me almost as long as Lisette to get out. When I did, Cole was leaning on the rail in front of the exit, his backpack at his feet, reading God Created the Integers by Stephen Hawking.
Finally Lisette emerged, grinning.
“There’s a little pit of narcissists in the center of that thing combing their hair and checking out their biceps,” she said.
I looked behind her and recognized the kids she was talking about coming out of the maze. Cole used to hang out with some of them all the time: Jason Sanchez, Steve O’Connor, John Newman, and a couple of other kids whose names I couldn’t remember. Steve came over and looked at the three of us.
“Hey, Cole. Honor Society meeting at the mall today?” Up close I could see that his pupils were huge and his arm was bouncing absently at his side.
“Yeah, y’know, sometimes the conference room at the American Association for the Advancement of Science is closed, so we have to slum it out here.” Cole was smiling, but I could tell that he was hoping this would end quickly.
“Ri-i-ight . . .” Steve ran his hand through his dark wavy hair and looked from me to Lisette and back to Cole. “I didn’t know that it was costume day at the mirror maze, or I would have dressed up too.”
“Fuck off, O’Connor. You dumb-ass speed freak.” Lisette has hated him ever since he put gum on the seat of her chair in Mr. Dotz’s ninth-grade algebra class. And it’s true that he really is a shithead. It’s beyond me why Cole would even give that kid the time of day.
“Ooh, you sure are touchy there, Wolfy.”
Lisette is about three inches taller than Steve O’Connor and played field hockey every weekend for years until this fall. I’ve seen her take down girls twice her weight, and when she took a step forward I thought for sure she was going to haul off and crack him in the nose. But Cole slipped in between them, ignoring the exchange.
“Funny running into you here, bro. But we’re gonna be late for the six o’clock meeting of the Twin Cities Unicycle Club if we don’t head out right now. See you tomorrow in homeroom.” He linked one arm in mine and one in Lisette’s and walked toward the escalator.
“I could murder that clown!” Lisette said under her breath as she pulled her arm away from Cole. “How do you even talk to that guy?”
“Yeah, he can be an ass. But . . .”
“But nothing, dude. I heard that you’re the one who sells him his pills—true or false?”
Cole paused for a second and looked at me from the corner of his eye.
“True,” he said. We walked toward the exit, and he went on. “I don’t like them and I don’t like doing it, but, Lisette, you could never understand how it is.”
“That’s for sure.”