Free The Museum of Intangible Things by Wendy Wunder

the lake.
    “They mate for life, you know,” Danny says.
    “Because their lives are short,” I quip.
    “You’re a glass-is-half-empty kind of girl, aren’t you?”
    “No, not really. I just like surprises, so I keep my expectations low.”
    He seems to think for a moment and then says, “The difference is subtle.”

LUST
    Zoeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
, I text.
    But she doesn’t respond.
    She won’t pick up her phone. It’s killing me.
    There is such a thing as a shy extrovert. People think extroverts are all loud and mouthy, like Rebecca Forman, but that’s not true. The definitions of
extrovert
and
introvert
have to do with how you process the world and from where you draw your energy. I’m shy, but I process my world by talking about it. Which makes me an extrovert. But I don’t talk about it with just anyone. I have to talk about it with Zoe.
    Zoeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
, I text again.
    My retelling of events to Zoe is what grounds them, shapes them, makes them real. If I can’t tell Zoe about kissing Danny Spinelli, it didn’t happen.
    I call her mom to find out what’s going on.
    “Susan,” I say.
    “Hannah.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “Well.”
    “Well, what?”
    “Well. She promised to let me watch her for a week. If she doesn’t get better, we’re going to the hospital.”
    “So it’s like an S-word watch?” We never say the word
suicide
out loud.
    “No. We’re not there yet.”
    “So it’s like a what?”
    “Just a watch. I’m watching her.” Susan had quit smoking years ago, but I hear her exhale what can only be cigarette smoke from the side of her mouth, then I hear some
tamp-tamp
ing into what must be an ashtray. I trust Zoe’s mom because she’s a nurse and she sees so much
humanity
on a daily basis. She usually understands people, especially people in crisis, and knows what to do about it.
    “Should I come over?”
    “Why don’t we let her rest?”
    “Okay . . .”
    “Don’t think I forgot about the fact that you two took Noah to a party. I’m going to visit that at a more appropriate time.”
    “Okay,” I say, and I hang up.
    For that entire week Zoe is on lockdown and doesn’t even go to school. I text her, but she doesn’t answer.
    So for an entire week, I worry about her. And without her counsel, I have to pretend I didn’t kiss Danny Spinelli. I avoid him, sneaking through the halls and eating my lunch in the library, because I don’t know what to say to him.
    For an entire week, I sneak alone to the attic at Sussex Country Day. (The secretary notices me, but she turns a blind eye.) She and my mom used to play bridge. I learn the conditional past tense in Spanish and how to find the volume of a curve when you rotate it around its axis. Two things I will never use. I watch Ethan Drysdale stare catatonically at the whiteboard. He doesn’t remove his sunglasses. Which would never fly in public school. And he doodles in his notebook, what seem to be large storm clouds and crooked flashes of lightning.
    I go alone to sell the hot dogs, reading in my chaise lounge as the
whoosh
of the highway relaxes me and covers me in gray dust.
    I go alone to my father-who-is-back-on-the-wagon’s AA meetings, and I whisper the Serenity Prayer along with the drunks.
    God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
    The courage to change the things I can
    And the wisdom to know the difference.
    I try to be supportive, wearing my EASY DOES IT, ONE DAY AT A TIME T-shirts and making random Crown Royal sweeps through his cupboards and filling his refrigerator with fresh vegetables and grapefruit juice (a natural detoxifier).
    I learn to accept my fate. Accept the things I cannot change. For a whole week, my life is pretty calm, the way I like it. Huddled among the soft weeping of old men in the dark basements of churches.
    And then on the