And then, one time, while we were sitting on the couch in the living room, making out, my mom unlocked the front door and walked into the house. “Whoa,” she said when she saw us, an actual sucking sound made when we pulled apart, scrambling to opposite sides of the couch. She smiled, trying not to laugh. Zeke had taken out his Velcro wallet and was inspecting his library card, like it was very important to make sure that he still had it. I just sat there, looking down at my feet, my lips tingling.
“Well . . . hello,” my mom said. “Who is this young man?”
“This is Zeke,” I finally said, my face burning red with embarrassment. “He’s new in town.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” my mom said, nodding. “Hey, Zeke.”
“Hello, Mrs. . . . um . . . Hey there,” he said. “I don’t know Frankie’s last name.”
“Well, her last name is different from mine anyways,” she said. “You can call me Carrie, though.”
“Hello, Carrie,” he said. He was still holding that library card, like maybe my mom was going to ask for it.
“We’ve been hanging out,” I said. “Zeke is an artist.”
“Okay, cool,” my mom said, still nodding, trying to figure out what in the world I was doing with a boy in the house, because I had never even been on a date, had not, to her knowledge, spoken to a boy in years.
“I draw,” Zeke said.
“So you guys have just made this little artist colony here in the house while everybody else is away?” she asked.
“Kind of?” I said.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Zeke. Frankie has not told me a thing about you, but you are welcome to come over anytime. In fact, would you like to have dinner with us tonight? I’d love to hear your story.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Zeke replied, looking over at me. “I mean, I guess I could ask my mom if it’s okay.”
“Sure thing,” my mom said. “If she wants to talk to me, I’m happy to vouch for Frankie. I mean, I’m sure you told your mom about this cool new friend that you’ve met. I’m sure you’d tell your mom something important like that.”
“Mom, it’s just—” I started, but just gave up. I knew she wasn’t really upset. She wasn’t that kind of mom.
“My mom is . . . she’s kind of preoccupied right now,” Zeke said. “I don’t think she’ll mind.”
“Then it’s settled,” my mom said. “I just came home to pick up something, and then I have to get back to work. I guess . . . I guess I’ll see you when I come back.”
“Nice to meet you,” Zeke said. He finally put the library card back in his wallet and Velcroed it shut.
And then she was gone. And it was just me and Zeke.
“Maybe we should make art,” he said, just like that, like art was cookies or microwave popcorn. Like if anything was going to keep us from having sex, from doing something we’d regret, it would be art.
“Okay,” I said, still flushed, still tasting celery, “let’s make art.”
We knelt on the floor in my musty garage, baking, making copies of anything that seemed interesting. I’d found a photo of my mom and dad and I used scissors to make a jagged separation between them, cutting the photo in half. I pasted them to the edges of a piece of copy paper, and then Zeke drew all these little designs in the gap between them, snakes wrapped around knives, lightning bolts, a fist punching out of a grave. Then we put it on the copy machine and looked at the black-and-white image it spat out. It made me sad. I wondered if that was kind of the purpose of art, maybe, to make you see things that you knew but couldn’t say out loud.
“This isn’t bad,” Zeke said. “This is pretty cool.”
“I kind of want to throw it away,” I said. “I think I’d feel awful if my mom ever saw this.”
“I think maybe art is supposed to make your family uncomfortable,” he offered.
“Well, I guess I’m not quite an artist yet,” I said, “because I don’t want her to see it.” I crumpled up the original and the copy and tossed them into the garbage can.
We sat on the cement floor, not sure what to do. I wanted to make out again, but I felt weird asking. Zeke was thinking about something, and so I waited to hear what he’d figured out.
“The problem,” he said, “is that this is all so private. We’re just making this stuff and because we’re sitting in your garage, it doesn’t feel like art. It’s like something you’d put in your journal and no one would ever see it except you.”