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But right now? It feels ridiculously silly to put so much into something that happened years ago.
Michael’s okay, I know he is. He’s grown now, came to camp for a few more summers after that one, but he always stayed far, far away from me. The Killer Kisser, my first nickname.
After a few more wheezing laughs, Blake manages to hiss out, “So, because Michael is allergic to peanut butter, we can’t go out? What if I promise to take you somewhere where there is no peanut butter and submit a medical report showing that I have no allergies?”
Is he serious? My laughter dries up, but the smile lifting my lips stays right where it is.
“I’m not done, barely getting started. After that, everything was fine . . . for a while. Then, we played dodgeball in PE. I threw the ball, like you’re supposed to.”
The scene replays in my mind like a movie I’ve called up more times than I can count. “Overhand, aim at the body, not the head. But I’ve got shitty aim. I hit Andy Mackowitz right in the nose. It broke both his glasses and his nose. He had to wear an eye patch for two weeks and a weird splint on his nose for even longer than that. And when the ball hit him, he stumbled backward, stepping right onto Toby Rodriguez’s ankle. Toby had to sit out the whole football season because of a ligament tear. But the worst part was that Toby’s friend, Drake, tried to catch him. Drake was a little guy, way smaller than Toby, and he went down like timber and his head hit the floor. Concussion. One ball plus me led to a broken nose, broken glasses, a pirate-looking eye patch, a nose splint, whistle-breathing for Andy, ankle surgery, a missed football season, and a concussion.”
“And a partridge in a pear tree,” Blake sings.
Does he not understand how dangerous I am?
I move onto the real scary shit. “Went on two dates with Jordan, a skydiver. His parachute didn’t open and he was in freefall, sure he was going to splat on the ground, for over two minutes. Luckily, one of the other jumpers saved him.”
“Was it you? Did you save him?”
“No! I . . . I couldn’t do it. I went up in the plane, played along like I was going to jump, and I wanted to, but when they opened the plane door and all that wind whipped in . . . no way was I jumping. But he did. And he almost didn’t make it.”
“I’m sensing a theme here,” Blake guesses finally.
“The first time I met you, I almost killed you with my car!” I remind him.
“Almost being the operative word. Odds of your killing me, intentionally or accidentally, are exceedingly low. A risk I’m willing to take to eat dinner with you. Go out with me, Zoey.”
Not a question but still a request. I don’t get it. How can a smart guy like him not see the cause and effect when I lay it out so plainly?
“I can’t. I killed my parents and my grandparents too.”
That has the mic drop effect I expected when he gasps in shock. “What?”
“Not by my hand. I’m not a serial killer. But my parents . . . they were in a car accident while driving to pick me up. It was late at night, and I got scared at a sleepover and called home, begged Mom to come get me. But Dad didn’t want her driving alone so late, so they came together. A drunk driver hit them.”
That’s all I can say about that without crying, so I move on to my next piece of evidence. “I moved in with my grandparents then. My grandma died of sepsis from a burn—”
Blake interrupts. “Was the burn your fault?”
He’s trying to make me feel better, but the truth is bitter. “Yes. We were baking together, and she let me hold the hot pads to take the cookies out of the oven. I lost my grip on the cookie sheet somehow, and it fell, badly burning her arm. She doctored it with cream for days, telling me it was fine and just an accident. Even when she got a fever, I didn’t realize it was related to the burn. Not then. But later, I figured it out.” One last piece of evidence, the hardest one to reveal. “My grandpa was killed by lightning.”
“Unless you’re Thor, wielder of thunder and lightning, you can’t blame yourself for that one, Zo.” Blake’s voice is quiet, hard.
“He was in a field with friends, hanging out to celebrate his birthday. There was rain in the forecast, but nothing major. Nothing that should’ve mattered, and it wasn’t raining anyway,” I recall. “Dry lightning, they called it. Just shoots down out of the sky to the ground, and it hit Grandpa on the way.”
