I opened my mouth to defend my parents because they really are good people, and I didn’t want him to believe that they whacked me, even metaphorically, but for some reason, no words came out of my mouth. The afternoon had gotten intense much too quickly.
“You seem like a weird, lonely girl, Nanette O’Hare. I’m a weird, lonely old man. Weird, lonely people need each other. So let’s just cut to the chase.” He smiled and took another sip of his coffee. Then he said the seven words that would change my life forever. “Would you like to be my friend?”
I nodded a bit too eagerly and was shocked to feel myself welling up.
“Well, I never under any set of circumstances whatsoever discuss The Bubblegum Reaper with my friends. So once we make it official, that’s it. We never talk about Wrigley or Unproductive Ted or the Thatch twins or any of it ever again. Understood?”
I had one more question prepared—and maybe to stop myself from crying, I asked, “Before I become your friend, then—on the Internet, I read that several publishing companies have offered to rerelease the book and you turned them all down. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I own the copyright and can do whatever the hell I want with it. I chose to quit publishing. I made that decision a long time ago. Publishing The Bubblegum Reaper was the biggest mistake of my life.”
“You want to quit—like Wrigley?”
“Yes! So can we end all this literary talk and simply be friends already? True friends are better than novels! Better than Shakespeare plays! Any hour of the day! Fake friends, on the other hand—well, I’d rather smash open my skull with a solid-gold Bible than endure the slow poison of a fake friend!” When a few other patrons looked over at us, Booker thumbed his nose at them and then smiled at me.
I laughed. “Is this just a way for you to get me to stop asking questions about your book?”
“No, it’s a way to move beyond the book. The book’s there—stagnant. It never changes. We evolve as people. I’m not the same man who wrote that book twenty-some years ago. And you won’t be the same girl in love with Wrigley forever.”
I blushed because he was right about one thing: I absolutely was in love with Wrigley. I’d even begun hanging around the pond in our town where turtles sun in the summer because I was secretly hoping that Wrigley would magically show up—like I could think him into existence, as we do when we read fiction. I felt my cheeks burn and changed the subject by saying, “So why did you agree to meet me today? If you hate talking about your book so much?”
“I love free coffee in real cups and saucers,” he said without missing a beat. “Buy me a cup of black and I will meet you every single week forever and ever.”
I smiled and pushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “What happens when we become friends?”
“No way to tell now. I think we just have to give it a try and find out. There are no guarantees when it comes to such treacherous things as friendship. It’s a tricky business.”
“You were Mr. Graves’s friend when he was my age, right?”
“We corresponded. Yes.”
Mr. Graves was one of the few adults I admired. I wanted to do whatever helped make him the person he turned out to be.
“Okay,” I said. “We’re friends now.”
“Good.”
And that was it.
Booker and I became friends.
We met regularly—sometimes for coffee at the House, sometimes in his garden, where he has a pet turtle named Don Quixote who sits eternally between two miniature windmills that have faces and arms holding swords, which makes Booker laugh and laugh every time he looks at his pet, which is daily. Initially, we didn’t talk about his book even once, although I continued to reread it dozens of times. I kept my word, even though I also kept accidentally calling Don Quixote “Unproductive Ted,” which made Booker angry. “That’s not his name!” he’d yell whenever I slipped up.
And if you are one of those pessimistic people who think that an old man can’t befriend a teenage girl without some sort of perverted, deviant ulterior motive, let me end the witch hunt right here and now. Booker was as grandfatherly as they come and never once did or said anything inappropriate or sleazy. No funny business at all ever went on between us. I loved him like I loved walking through summer grass barefoot, like I loved a warm mug in my palms, like I loved driving on a long road as the sun sets in the distance. It was a good, safe, simple sort of friendship—well, at first, anyway.
5
He Never Told Anyone Else What I Did
It was our usual lunch period, except it was Valentine’s Day. Mr. Graves and I were alone in his classroom, talking about Booker. We had turned two desks sideways and were watching a flock of birds perching on the wires just outside the windows. We were also laughing and smiling and trading info like old friends. He turned to say something at the same time I did. Our faces were so close—I could smell his aftershave and see where his razor had irritated his neck just below his jawbone—and when I looked up into his eyes, suddenly I was full of electricity.
I didn’t plan to do what I did next.
That was when whatever we had ended. And I’m pretty sure it was why he quit teaching at the end of the year, too.
It just sort of happened spontaneously, like when you see a spider crawling up your bedroom wall and you reflexively shiver. Or maybe like the first time you accidentally stumble upon Internet porn and your skin tingles and you want to stop looking, but you just can’t, and so you click on more and more links.