Breakfast Served Anytime (6 page)

“What about him?” Calvin asked. He gave a furtive little glance and shifted in the booth. You could tell he didn’t have it in him to go staring at other people, much less talking about them.

“He’s been over there with his face in his phone since we got here,” Chloe said. She was smoking her straw and waving it around. “That poor girl just keeps yammering on and on, and he’s not listening to a word she’s saying. He’s probably over there playing a video game or some shit.”

Mason craned around to look. “So? Can you hear that girl’s voice? Fingernails on a chalkboard, man. I’d rather text her than talk to her, too.”

Chloe elbowed Mason in the ribs. “
So
,
it just proves what I’m trying to say, which is that phones are this generation’s cigarettes. It’s an addiction, dude, but it’s not about communication, just like it’s not about nicotine. It’s about holding something in your hand that makes you feel important. It’s about props. Drama. I’m just saying.”

Calvin cleared his throat. “Actually, it’s about dopamine.”

“Dopamine,” Mason repeated. “Like the band?”

Dopamine:
The word drifted in my head and I tried to seize onto it, but I kept coming up with Dramamine, à la GoGo’s old motion sickness remedy.

“Not the band, the neurotransmitter,” Calvin went on. “Chloe, when you take that first drag on a cigarette, you get a little shot of happy, right?”

“
Oh,
yeah,” Chloe said. “But Calvin, sweetheart, don’t be all yanking my chain. I’m trying to quit, remember?”

Calvin nodded and blushed. “So that little shot of happy, that’s dopamine, telling your brain to be content. And every time you get a text message, or new Facebook updates, or an e-mail in your in-box, or whatever, that’s another little dopamine shot, bam, right to your brain. The more texts you get, the more your brain craves them. It’s what addiction’s all about.” Calvin paused to gulp from his milk. He glanced up at us and seemed surprised that we were listening, waiting for him to go on.

“So, Calvin,” I asked. “What are you addicted to?”

“I’m addicted to these fries,” Mason interrupted. “Pass the ketchup?”

I extracted the ketchup from its sticky chrome harness and banged it in front of the Mad Hatter. I shot him a midlevel death glare.

“I don’t know,” Calvin answered. “I mean, I don’t think I have any addictions. I don’t have a cell phone or a Facebook account, so it wasn’t hard for me to give those things up when X asked.”

Chloe gave Calvin a wide-eyed stare. “Calvin. Oh, my God. Are you a Bible-beater?”

Calvin laughed and picked at his fries. “Actually, I’m embarrassed to say I’ve only been to church like twice in my life. I’m just interested in what makes our minds want what they want, that’s all.”

My heart gave a sudden lurch of worry and affection for Calvin. “I’m addicted to Ale-8,” I blurted. To illustrate, I downed the rest of my bottle. “I also think I’m addicted to the night-before-the-museum feeling.”

Everyone stared and waited for me to go on, so I grabbed a fry from our shared pile and leaned back in the booth, all blithe nonchalance.

“Um, care to elaborate?” Chloe said.

“Yeah,” Mason chimed in. “Do tell.” His eyes locked with mine for a dizzying fraction of a second.

So I tried to explain to them the night-before-the-museum feeling, but of course that’s not the kind of thing you can really explain. God, there’s nothing worse than trying to stick words onto something really important and knowing that what’s coming out of your mouth sounds like total nonsense. The whole time I was talking, I was aware that the Mad Hatter had cast his eyes downward toward his plate, that he wasn’t really listening to me, that he was chewing his straw and getting bored. Then he surprised me. He was always doing that — surprising me.

“Well, Gloria,” Mason said (what is it with the sound of my name spoken aloud?), “It seems like maybe you’ve got a Grecian Urn complex.” He flicked his eyes back in my direction and parked them on my face.

“Excuse me?” I snapped. I stared back, daring him to look away first.

“Wait,” Calvin said, leaning forward in his brow-furrowed, get-to-the-bottom-of-this pose. “Is that like an Oedipus complex or something?”

I shot Calvin a look. “Wait a minute, dude — who says I want to bang my mom and kill my dad?”

Chloe snorted. “Oh, my God, yall. Don’t make me laugh when I’m drinking. That totally went up my nose.”

I folded my arms across my chest and waited for the Mad Hatter to go on. After a prolonged performance of polishing off the rest of the fries and wiping his hands on the remains of a shredded napkin, he lifted a finger and started nodding at us, like,
Oh, hold on a second, I will enthrall you with my infinite wisdom as soon as I’m done masticating.
Seriously: My hatred of him was starting to become epic.

“Grecian Urn, as in John Keats,” Mason finally declared. “X’s clue. Didn’t you guys look at it?”

After Mason had collected it from the to-go counter, X’s latest clue had gotten lost in our hurry to fuel ourselves. It lay there in the middle of the table, getting soggy around the edges.

“Wait a minute, did you read it without us?” Calvin wanted to know. “Okay, new rule: Nobody opens the letters until we’re all together.”

“We
were
all together, bro,” Mason said. “You all just weren’t paying attention. This one’s not exactly mind-blowing, anyway. Like I said: John Keats. ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn.’ I had to read it for AP English last year.”

Chloe picked up the letter and started reading out loud. When she got to the part about
heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter,
Mason interrupted her.

“See, Gloria? Right there. There’s your museum feeling. It’s like, for you, anticipating the museum is better than actually going to the museum.” He stared at me, waiting. “Am I right?”

“No, you’re not right,” I said. But of course he was right. I was seized by the irrational worry that he could see straight into my brain, could maybe even steal a glimpse there of Alex, my own secret personal private Alex, turning to face me in the car. “You’re wrong. I loved that museum.”

“Oh-
kay,
” Chloe broke in. “How about you two discuss that amongst yourselves later. Right now I’m going to finish reading this hideous poem, and then maybe Calvin can tell us where to go from here. Sound like a plan?”

“Keep reading,” Calvin said. “I’m listening.”

Chloe read the rest of the poem, which even Calvin couldn’t wrap his brain around, and then our server showed up with a bill and a plate of fortune cookies.

“Who’s got money?” Mason said. “Chloe?”

“Shit, I forgot my wallet,” Chloe replied, rummaging in her bag.

“Dude. You’ve got a whole arsenal of crap in there, but you don’t have any money?”

“Shut up, Mason. Gloria, what about you?”

I shook my head and looked at Calvin, who was already quietly plucking bills from his wallet. “Bank of Calvin, open for business,” he muttered. “Since when does it cost fifteen dollars for four people to share some french fries?”

I reached across Calvin to grab a fortune cookie. Fortune cookies are possibly the grossest things on earth, but I love them.

Never miss a chance to keep your mouth shut.

“Hey Mason,” I said. “I think I got yours.” I handed over the message and beamed. Mason flashed me a smirk, cracked open his own cookie, and read aloud, “Too many people volunteer to carry the stool when it’s time to move the piano.”

“Okay, that one’s obviously mine,” Calvin said. “Chloe, what’d you get?”

Chloe bit into her cookie and frowned. “Are these things ever not stale?” She chewed as she regarded her fortune. “Suck! I got the piano one, too.”

Mason reached for the last cookie. “This one must be yours, then, Gloria. Why don’t I read it for you?” He made a great show of breaking the cookie and extracting the message within. A slow smile spread across his face.

“What’s it say?” I asked. “Give it here.”

“This one is definitely yours,” Mason answered. He passed it across the table and, like your average seven-year-old, yanked it away when I made a move to grab it. When he finally relinquished it, here’s what I read:

Those grapes you cannot taste are always sour.

Before I could give him a proper glare, the kind of glare that would say,
I am not at all interested in your grapes, jackass,
Mason rose from the booth, stretching luxuriously.

“Shall we?” He yawned.

“Yes,” I said, “We shall.”

We trudged back to campus in silence. The Grecian Urn had landed us at a dead end, so we decided to stop on a stretch of velvety green lawn in front of the administration building and think things over. In the middle of the lawn stood this huge sycamore tree, the biggest I’ve ever seen, and from an impossibly high branch hung a rope swing, anchored at the bottom by a single slab of wood. The Mad Hatter broke into a sprint and did a flying leap onto the swing. His top hat sailed from his head as the swing swept him in a wide, graceful curve across the lawn. Soon he was spinning himself dizzy and barking the kind of genuine laughter I hadn’t heard or experienced myself in way too long. You couldn’t
not
smile at that kind of unadulterated joy.

Chloe hooted a congratulatory whistle and clapped her hands as we made our way toward the tree. “Very nice,” she laughed.

Mason took a bow and collapsed on his back in the grass. Without the hat, he looked almost normal: sweaty strands of unruly dark hair stuck to his temples, cheeks flushed with laughter and punctuated by dimples I hadn’t noticed before. His eyes, those alert blue accusers, seemed . . . I don’t know. Kinder somehow.

“Who’s next?” Mason asked, breathless.

Chloe settled herself down with an unlit cigarette and X’s Grecian Urn clue. I joined her on the grass and started to paste our cookie fortunes into the GBBoE, and Calvin dove for the swing, where he stayed, swaying in great arcs with his eyes closed, for an impressively long time.

“Calvin’s in thinking mode,” Chloe said, smiling. “Let’s leave him alone.” She glanced over at my work. “Do you seriously carry a glue stick around with you everywhere you go?” she asked.

“Yep,” I nodded. “What about you? I’m guessing there’s something in that bag besides your placebo-smokes.”

“Everything and nothing,” Chloe answered. “Do you need any Pez?” She dug into her bag and came up with a Hello Kitty Pez dispenser. “Three-D movie glasses? Dr Pepper Lip Smacker?”

I smiled at her. Definitely a kindred spirit. “No, thanks. I’m good.”

“I like those shades,” Chloe said. “Are they vintage?”

And so I sat there on that lawn and told Chloe about GoGo. I was surprised at how easily the words tumbled out, like I had been waiting forever for someone to ask me about my grandmother. And Chloe, she listened. She didn’t interrupt me or break in to tell me about
her
grandmother or try to lay claim to my sadness by co-opting it with some sad story of her own.

“Your GoGo sounds awesome,” Chloe said. “I was totally born into the wrong generation.”

Chloe went on to tell me about her obsession with France, her adoration of Louise Brooks and Charlie Chaplin, her love of silent movies, her collection of vintage flapper dresses and costume jewelry. “If I could time-travel, I totally would,” she sighed.

How long had it been since I’d talked with someone this way? Not just say words out loud to enjoy the sound of my own voice, not just pick the most convenient witty thing to say, but really talk, and listen back? It seemed like such a small thing, but I seriously couldn’t remember the last time it had happened. The stretch of time we found ourselves in, the swath of sunshine warming our hair and the backs of our necks, seemed almost criminal. It was hard to shake the itchy feeling that we were supposed to be somewhere, that we were under the watchful eye of some in-charge person who could admonish us or give us a test or arrest us or send us packing back to our parents at any moment. Our freedom felt foreign and exhilarating. There was Mason, dozing as the grass breezed against his face. There was Calvin, leaping off the swing and crouching to examine something on the ground. I glanced around at other Geek Campers crisscrossing the lawn: laughing, hurrying, phones pressed to their ears. They seemed remote from the four of us. Part of me envied them — they looked full of purpose, engaged in something we were missing, something I didn’t want to miss — but a greater part of me felt glad to be apart from them, and protective of this mission I found myself on with Chloe and Calvin and Mason. It was ours now, and it felt somehow too secret or sacred a thing to share.

Calvin approached us so gently that I didn’t hear him. He knelt next to Chloe and me and opened his cupped hands. There, on his palm, was a blue butterfly. It seemed completely at home in his hands, in no hurry to fly away.

“Look at that,” Chloe breathed. “Beautiful.”

I asked Calvin what kind he thought it was, and he shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, “but it’s pretty incredible.”

Yes, we agreed. It was.

“HE DIDN’T
give
a reason, Mom,” Jessica gasped into the phone. She was pacing the floor of room 317 and her face was bloated with tears. When she picked up the TRUE LOVE picture frame and hurled it against the wall, I took my cue to leave and started backing out the door I’d just opened.