Page 63 of Wayfarers

“Put it this way: it was long enough to forget what normal life is like. And so the thing I really wonder about is, what does it feel like to be normal? I have a sense of the visual, I think, from movies I saw when I was a kid. Books I read. Normal life has school desks with chairs attached to them and a literal bell that rings at two forty-five and prom and a job at Wendy’s on the weekends and you stay up late texting your friends. Or maybe you’re more idiosyncratic, maybe your parents won’t let you have Instagram or you don’t make the football team and you feel like a loser or you wear a lot of black because the goth thing is appealing and so you’re different that way . . . but those are all still stories I’ve seen versions of, you know? That’s a weird I can visualize, even though I haven’t experienced it, so it’s not so different. I haven’t really seen a version of my different.”

“Yeah, I can definitely see how you’d miss that.” I’m tapping my fingers on the steering wheel. I make myself stop. “Sometimes . . .”

Knox doesn’t step into the silence. He waits. Another way he’s different from Cal.

“Sometimes I wonder who I’d be if nobody else was around. To see me, I mean, and judge. Or to need me. Like on a Saturday when I’m making my mom a sandwich at noon because she’s hungover, and if I don’t, she won’t eat, and it’ll be worse later. So what happens on a Saturday when I’m alone? What do I do at noon, if no one is looking or expecting anything from me?”

“You make a sandwich for yourself?”

I stuff a handful of chips in my mouth. “Honestly, sandwiches sound pretty good,” I tell him. Crumbs go everywhere.

“Ew.”

“Ew yourself,” I say.

“What’s a sandwich place that normal people go to for lunch?”

“Jersey Mike’s? Jimmy John’s?”

“Is it a thing that you need to have like . . . a clown dude nickname in order to sell sandwiches?”

When I burst out laughing, it’s like a crumb volcano. “Oh my God. I never thought of that. I mean there’s like Panera Bread, and Subway—”

“Are those better than these Mike and John guys’ sandwiches?”

“Knox. I can’t. I’m gonna drive off the road.”

He fiddles with my phone for a minute. “How do I find out where these dudes are?”

“Mike and John?”

“Yeah.”

“You look in the mirror at midnight and chant Bloody Jimmy John three times, and then you shut your eyes . . .”

“On your phone! How do I find a Jimmy John on your phone! We need to go there immediately.” He pauses. “Okay, I’m realizing that this means I’m asking you to buy me lunch.”

“Just stop. I still have my debit card, and there’s a few hundred bucks in my bank account. Let’s assume that lunch is on me for the foreseeable.” Then I tell him how to use Maps.

“Five point six miles. Wow, that’s exact. Okay, it’s set to take us there. I’m really interested to see if this place lives up to what I’m imagining.”

This is too good to resist. “What are you imagining?”

“Barbershop stripes, for some reason? It’s really bright in there. Everyone is dressed like a clown.”

“You’re stuck on this clown thing.”

“You know, like sandwich clowns.”

“You’re saying that like that’s a known thing, Knox.”

“I just mean clowns wearing aprons!”

“Just! What is this just? Did you have one of these in your living room growing up? Where on earth do you—”

After that we don’t talk. We can’t. Every time I try, or he tries, the other dissolves into helpless, giddy laughter.

A LITTLE LATER