“Maybe I should just bring him here after all,” Zoe sighed with deep resignation. This mental resignation soon turned to a full-bodied psycho-physical resignation and Zoe gently drifted off to sleep.

  It was not long into this quietitude that Zoe had recedded to when she was woken up with an abrupt knock on the door.

  “Zoe,” her father spoke through the door. “There’s some boy here to see you,” uncertainity and indifference battling it out in the inflections of the man’s voice.

  “What?” Zoe said half alarm half confused as she was regaining footing in the material world, beginning to remember where she was and why. “Is it possible to channel the oblivion of sleep consciously?” She wordlessly wondered in the depths of her being. Grogginess still upon her.

  “He said his name is Zack and that he brought you homework from school.” Then her father added, “He’s not your boyfriend is he?”

  An inextinguishable silent rage began boiling in the pits of Zoe’s abdomen.

  “You don’t get to ask me that!!” It raged. As if years of neglectful fatherhood and absentee-parentism had earned the right to ask such questions.

  Zoe got off the bed frantic, as if the next thing she needed to worry about was boys and homework. Her unprocessed rage now turning to Zack for bringing such a trivial thing – she did not see herself returning to school because she did not see herself returning to the life she had experienced annihilated into smitherians; and, yet, she somehow sensed her grandma’s presence too. As if her actual parental guardian Mrs. Riverbocker – “gram” – never left.

  Zoe sped past the door half-dressed. Not engaging Father-Irrelevant at all. In her mind, ready to hiss at him like a feline in unfamiliar territory.

  She walked to the doorway where she greeted Zack with an abrupt swing of the door that generated light g-force winds that dissipated just as quickly as they had been born. He looked understandably startled. Zoe in a tank top and shorts also challenged the 14-year-old boy’s bravado.

  “What?” She rudely exclaimed to her only friend.

  Zachary was momentarily silent. “Nothing … Hey to you too,” he added on half-heartedly.

  “So what’s going on?” Zack said at the door.

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  “Just follow me,” Zoe said with uncharacteristic determination – usually she was the frightened dreamy-eyed lamb, not the hungry conquering lion.

  They walked to Zoe’s Dad’s garage.

  Zack felt even weirder now.

  Finally Zoe commented, “I’m sorry if I’m being short with you. I just have a lot on my plate right. Actually, I don’t really have a plate right now – if that makes sense?” A question that was not a question. A statement that did not want to be stated.

  “It’s okay. I get it. Life is tough…”

  Zoe jumped up to hug Zack, “Than you so much for taking care of Mister Scuttlebutt!”

  It was the first time they had really hugged.

  “Yeah about that…” Zack muttered.

  Zoe oblivious, “I just can’t stay with my dad right now. He’s so immature. I can’t stand him.”

  Zoe eyeing Zack’s weird, “what?” She said with fright.

  “It’s nothing. I just had to break into your house.”

  Zoe let out a sigh of relief.

  “That’s not –” Zack began before Zoe talked over him. “I thought something happened to Mister Scuttlebutt. Please don’t scare me like that again.” She ended her sentence in a very flat and very dead tone.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Zack getting frustrated, “Look you’re in shorts, you’re swinging doors and talking over me! This isn’t like you!”

  Zoe was still trying to piece together what her in shorts had to do anything, clueless.

  Zack was in a light bout of inner turmoil or dysregulated nervous energy, all the new stimuli was a lot to bear for a boy – that like Zoe – never learned to bear anything at all.

  Zoe’s dad finally popped his head into the garage – “so what’s going on here?”

  Zoe almost shouted irate, “Not him!”

  “Not in my house!!” Benny, Zoe’s dad, snapped back.

  “Ughh, nothing. Mister Zoe’s Dad, sir.” Zack replied.

  “Ughh, yes, of course. Mister Zoe’s Dad, sir.”

  “You don’t have to reply to everything he says”

  Zoe’s dad now walked in full-bodied into the garage from his preceding floating-head status.

  “You can call me Benjamin.”

  “Yes, Mister Zoe’s – Benjamin sir,” Zack fumbled together.

  “So who’s this?” Benny said to Zoe.

  Zoe’s lungs began to constrict with rage.

  “If you don’t leave I will start calling you Benjamin too!”

  “Well, that’s more than you say to me already!”

  “And whose fault is that!?”

  The argument began. Zack looked at himself like he was invisible. He wanted to help and be the hero and peacemaker but he did not know how, instead he felt a deep sensed of paralysis and learned helplessness.

  “Why is everyone shouting at me!?” Zoe began to cry in hysterics. “I just want to be left alone! I just want my grandma back!”

  Zoe’s dad with his arms half up ready to hug his hurting child. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “Just go! It’s what you’re good at!”

  A look of an adult’s anger flashed through his face.

  “Okay, if thats what you want I will give you some privacy,” and then added in very dominant tone to his daughter “but you and I are going to have a little talk later. You’re the child and I’m the adult. I will help you with this no matter what you may think of me or not.”

  Benny put two fingers to his eyes and then pointed the same hand in one-finger fashion at Zack. “And leave the door open.” He said as he left the two kids alone.