I have to pry the phone out of her fingers. “Hello?”
“Stanley?”
What a relief. It’s not some unknown “girl from school,” it’s just Karen. She used to be one of my best friends. But that was before she started going out with Zach. Now she texts me every time she’s got a problem, but we hardly ever see each other. I guess now I’m her text-a-friend.
“Karen? Why didn’t you text me on my cell?”
“My phone got messed up and I lost all my contacts. And your cell number. I found your house number online. Is your mother mad?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “What’s wrong? Is it Zach again?”
Zach can be kind of intense. Let’s just say as far as being a vegetarian, or an environmentalist, he makes my parents and me look like posers. When we were ten, Karen, Zach and I used to hang together. We’d sit on our skateboards in front of the food coop, sipping carrot juice fresh from the juice bar, watching the hippies walk in and out of the store.
Good times.
But that was before Zach and Karen hooked up.
Before I messed up my knee.
“I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. Can I come over?”
“Come over? To my house?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Actually, I was going out for a walk.”
My mother shakes her head, reaching out a hand to touch my shoulder. “The moon,” she says once, quietly. “Stanley, it’s cold outside, and it’s a full moon.”
I hold my hand over the phone. “It’s not full yet, Mom—it’s just waxing gibbous. Like almost a week from full.”
She shakes her head.
“I don’t know,” I say into the phone, turning away.
“Is it too late?” Karen asks. “Anyway, hey, I’m on your front porch.”
“You’re on...?”
Lit up by our porch light, her red hai
r spills out from under a dark black hoodie. Karen is taller than me by several inches, maybe five foot nine? Her hair is a hot red, but her full lips are dark purple, and she’s covered in cold colors: black hoodie, dark blue shirt, dark black sweatpants and sneakers.
“You going to invite me in?” she asks, flashing straight white teeth.
“You want to come in?”
“Is that an invitation? Or a question?” she asks me.
“I don’t know. An invitation, I think.”
“You think?”
“I’m actually trying to get out of here.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” says my mom, from behind me, reaching out to grab my sleeve.
“Oh, Stanley,” Karen says. “Are you grounded?”