Free Everyone We've Been by Sarah Everett Page B

a hundred percent accuracy when it comes to informing me of when it’s humid outside. In the end, I toss half of it into a ponytail and let the rest fall around my shoulders. I’m running down the stairs to wait by the front door when my mother comes in from the kitchen. It’s Thursday, but I forgot she has this morning off.
    The whole downstairs smells like baked fish, which we usually eat with roasted breadfruit—my dad’s favorite. Breadfruit is green and about as big as my hand, and it tastes like a cousin to potatoes. Mom has to special-order it at the farmers’ market, but I guess she figures she learned how to bake, sauté, fry, and do a million other things with it in the fifteen years she was married to Dad, so she might as well use it. Cooking is, apparently, Mom’s choice of distraction from our familial brand of SAD today. I immediately feel a niggling, familiar guilt for not spending more time with her this summer or looking for ways to cheer her up—Caleb certainly isn’t going to—or being as sad as I should about the anniversary of their divorce.
    “Where are you going in such a hurry?” she asks.
    “My friend is picking me up.”
    Her eyebrows rise up. “I thought Katy was out of town.”
    “Another friend,” I say.
    She folds her arms across her chest. “Someone I don’t know?”
    The guilt for not spending more time with her starts to dissipate. Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I say, “They wouldn’t let you hold my hand and go to school with me every day, remember? So
yes,
someone you don’t know.”
    “Don’t be cheeky, Addison,” Mom says. “This is a friend from school, then?”
    If she knew I just met this boy in the video store less than two weeks ago, she’d definitely want to meet him. And I can’t think of anything more embarrassing than Zach getting interrogated by my mother on our first maybe-date.
    Because one or two things in the universe are working in my favor, the phone rings right then and Mom goes to get it. She’s been waiting for a phone call from Bruce, this guy she started dating a few months ago. I know she expects me to wait there for her to finish speaking, but when she turns her back to me to write something down, I take that chance to make a run for the front door. It’s humid outside, but not quite as hot as it’s been the past few days. I’m just stepping onto the driveway when an aqua-blue car rattles up in front of the house. Zach waves as I get closer, then leans over to open the door for me.
    “Hey!” he says.
    “Hi!” I know lots of upbeat people—Katy, hypochondria aside, included—but what’s different about Zach is that I seem to match him exclamation mark for exclamation mark. Usually without thinking about it.
    The inside of his car smells a bit smoky. The leather seats are warm, as if the car’s been in the sun for hours, and it’s littered with paper bags, bottles, and empty cigarette packs. There’s a pile of DVDs on the floor of the passenger’s side.
    “Shit, I was going to move that. Sorry,” Zach says as the pile collapses around my feet when I get in.
    I laugh, picking up the DVDs and moving them to the backseat, which is full of film magazines. A stuffed koala dangles from his rearview mirror. “Is this what it looks like inside your brain?”
    “Unfortunately, yes,” Zach says, smiling. He’s wearing a T-shirt and jeans, same as every time I’ve ever seen him in his dad’s store. His hair is especially remarkable today, the front part of it curling up a little bit, like the tails of little
j
’s. He turns to me, hands on the steering wheel, but doesn’t start the car. I have horrifying visions of my mom running out here, furious that I left while she was distracted, and dragging me back in. “So where should we go? What’s the most mundane thing you can think of?”
    “Hmmm. Laundry. Chores. Post office.”
    Zach makes a face. “Post office? I thought we were going for mundane, not painful.”
    I