Free The Museum of Intangible Things by Wendy Wunder Page B

slips into the passenger seat and slams the door.
    “You already have,” I say. His knees fold up almost into his armpits, so I show him how to pull up the lever and send the seat back.
    “You’ve been avoiding me. Want to go for a ride?”
    “Now?”
    “Yeah. No one cares if I miss school as long as I’m back for practice.”
    My palms are freezing and sweaty at the same time, and my stomach twists and cramps. These are not cute physical manifestations of first love but, sadly, my anxiety about missing a day of school. I never have missed a day of school. Even when people seemed to stop keeping track of attendance, I continued to show up every day. “I can’t miss school,” I tell him.
    “Why?” he asks.
    “I just can’t. It’s a thing with me.”
    “Can I talk you down?”
    “You can try.”
    “Okay, so relax your grip on the steering wheel and take a deep breath in through your nose. Good. Now, slowly release the breath as if you’re blowing through a straw . . . We are going to miss school today, Hannah.” The timbre of his voice vibrates at my center, and I relax for a second, but when I hear “miss school,” I tighten my grip again, and my shoulders hunch up toward my ears.
    “Boy, this is harder than I thought,” he says.
    “It’s a personal goal of mine,” I say. “Perfect attendance.”
    “Perfect should never be a goal. Perfect just happens if you let it.”
    “Whoa.”
    “You learn that from sports. Perfect happens only if you get out of its way. So what time do you need to be there for it to count as a full day?”
    “Ten,” I say.
    “That gives us plenty of time.”
    “For what?”
    “Turn left. Take 206,” he says.
    On the drive through other country parts of New Jersey, horse farms and rolling hills and woodsy big estates, I wonder what the hell happened to make him suddenly so interested in me. There must be a rumor circulating that I gave someone a blow job. That’s the only way I can possibly explain it. It’s a perfect linear equation. FALSE BLOWJOB RUMOR = SUDDEN UNEXPLAINED ATTENTION FROM BOYS.
    “So is there a rumor circulating about me?”
    “What do you mean?” he asks.
    “Well, you and I don’t usually hang out,” I answer.
    “Yeah. I’m trying to change that.”
    “Why? What about Rebecca?”
    “I’m tired of them.”
    “Who?”
    “
Everyone
. You know, that’s the word they use to describe themselves. They consider themselves
everyone.
‘Everyone’s meeting at the beach.’ ‘Meet us at the mall. Everyone is going to be there.’ Everyone who matters in their universe.”
    “I’m not part of everyone?”
    “Not usually, no. That’s what I like about you.”
    “That’s what you like about me now. Until you start to miss ‘everyone.’” I don’t even ask if he’s broken up with her. Somehow I don’t feel like I have the right. Like it’s none of my business. Because I could never understand what they have together.
    “Don’t do that.”
    “What?”
    “Try to discredit what I’m saying to you. You have to know that I’ve always liked you. Since second grade when we sat across from each other and you taught me that trick about the nine times table and you let me copy your answers.”
    “I just wanted to help.”
    “And that’s what I like about you.”
    “That’s not very romantic. Those are the same feelings you have for a preschool teacher.”
    “Stop. Pull over. We can be real with each other. You and I are, as they say, cut from the same cloth.”
    “Aren’t you and Rebecca ‘cut from the same cloth’?”
    “I think what we had has run its course. We’re bored with each other.”
    “And so you’ve set your sights on me? I’m not the most exciting person in the universe. I sell hot dogs.”
    “You’re going to make me prove this to you, aren’t you? Look at me. You are one of the hottest girls in school. And you’re smart and ambitious and kind. Which none of those others are. You are the only girl worth