Free The Museum of Intangible Things by Wendy Wunder Page A

seventh day, I go to Zoe’s house. It’s Friday morning.
    I go into her room, and she’s still in bed. The dreadful black poppies of the mock-Marimekko comforter, which she made herself, wrap around her body, as if strangling her. Her feet, still bare, stick out from the bottom.
    I walk to her side and lift her limp arm off the bed. Gravity pulls it back to the mattress.
    “Zoe. Get up,” I say, but she won’t budge.
    “Draw me a picture,” she mutters into her pillow.
    “Of what?” I ask.
    “Of why I should get out of bed.”
    She’s made bedroom furniture out of found objects like milk crates and button boxes. Underneath a table made out of a stop sign, I find some printer paper and a Sharpie. I begin to draw.
    “Don’t do flowers and rainbows.”
    I crumple up the paper and get another one. This time I draw a huge rippling staff of music filled with notes and an electric guitar.
    “What’s that?”
    “Music.”
    “That’s enough.”
    “That’s enough drawing?”
    “No, that’s enough to live for. Music.”
    “See? Then get up.”
    “I just need five more minutes,” she says, and she rolls back over.
    “Zoe . . . Zo,” I say, but she’s already fallen back to sleep.
    • • •
    I go back to the front door. Noah’s on the stoop reading when I ask him how he is.
    Without looking up from his book, he says, “You know I can’t answer that question, so why do you ask it, Hannah? I can answer where I am, and who I am, and what I am doing, but I cannot answer the question how I am.”
    “I want you to know that Zoe’ll get up soon, okay?” I say, as I hug him close and muss his straight hair a little. “Because whether you know it or not, you are probably feeling frightened by the party, and lonely without Zoe to take you to school. You probably miss your routine, and I want you to know it will all fall back into place. Okay?”
    “What I feel without Zoe is lonely?”
    “Yes.”
    “What is it that I feel for you right now because you told me that?”
    “Gratitude, perhaps. Or friendship.”
    “Is friendship a feeling?”
    “Not necessarily. I guess what you feel for friends is a special love.”
    “Does not compute,” Noah says in his robot voice, and he lets out a rare Noah giggle and smile.
    I start to get up to go, and he holds out his hand to stop me. “Will you bring me to school, Hannah?”
    “Where is your mom, buddy?”
    “She’s crying a lot because of Zoe. Sadness-slash-despair again,” he sighs.
    “I’ll take you,” I say. I yell into the screen door that I have Noah. I hear Susan blow her nose, and then she yells, “Thank you, Hannah.”
    “And don’t do anything rash,” I yell. “Zoe will be fine.” I’m not sure about this, but I don’t want her sticking Zoe in the hospital again.
    “I’m giving it one more day,” she says.
    • • •
    Taking Noah to school is not part of my routine, and I begin to feel the agitation, a tingling in my hands and feet and my chest closing up like a vault, that happens when I veer from my habitual schedule. I don’t have time to stop at the corner store for my corn muffin. I don’t have time to take the long way past Danny Spinelli’s house. I won’t have time to give my first-period homework a once-over. I won’t have time to park in my regular parking spot.
    This makes me a little testy with Noah. But he can’t pick up on it anyway and continues to speak at me about the different categories of star.
    “Okay, I’m going to quiz you now. What color star is the hottest?”
    I haven’t been listening, but I try, “Blue.”
    “Good job,” he says, and luckily we pull up to his school before he can ask me another question.
    He opens the door and flutters out of it before I can say, “Have a nice day,” and before he can close the door, Danny Spinelli grabs the top corner of it and holds it open. He has a little sister Noah’s age, and he must have been dropping her off.
    “May I?” Danny asks as he