Finn looked over at her sister.He has nowhere to go,she mouthed.
Zadie shook her head.He’s not coming with us.
Why not?
Because he’s… Joel.
Finn gave Zadie a chastising look and nodded in his direction.Look at him.
Sniffing back tears, Joel bumped against the lamp on the desk and attempted to straighten the crooked shade to no avail.
Did Zadie have a burning desire to spend hours, possibly days, in a car with her ex-boyfriend? Not really. But sometimes, rather than start an argument, she found it easier to just hitch her cart to Finn’s horse and hope it didn’t run them into a bog.
Zadie sighed. “Joel?”
“Yeah?” he replied feebly. The whites of his eyes were pink like they’d been washed with a red sock.
Cart. Horse. Bog.“Do you want to come with us?”
“Really?” He brightened. “But… I thought you hated me.”
“I never hated you, Joel.”
“I annoy you, then.”
“You annoy the shit out of me, but most people do.”
By the way he smiled then, you’d think she’d just professed her undying love. “Thank you, thank you!” he said, brimming with new tears, happy ones. He circled behind Zadie and hugged her shoulders with his forearms as if he was strapping her in for a roller-coaster ride. Zadie stiffened, as she did in ninety-nine out of a hundred hugs, and waited for it to end. She could see her sister grinning out of the corner of her eye, like she was Dorothy watching the Tin Man finally get a heart.I guess that would make Joel the Scarecrow,Zadie thought, and couldn’t help but smile herself.
“I can’t believe you still have the Wedgie Wagon,” Joel, laughing, commented from the back seat of Zadie’s car.
Zadie raised an eyebrow at him in the rearview mirror. They’d just pulled out of the parking lot, and it was obvious to Finn thather sister already regretted her decision to let him tag along. “Don’t call it that.”
“Why not? It’s funny.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Is it because the seats make your underwear ride up?” Finn asked.
“Yes! See? Finn gets it.”
Zadie looked at her sister pointedly. “Whose side are you on?”
“I’m on the side of funny nicknames.” She twisted around in her seat. “So, Joel. What have you been up to these days?”
“Oh, you know me… various pursuits. I have many irons in the fire, as they say.” Joel wasn’t aware of the origin of that particular expression, but he used it liberally. That was because he always had some project he was working on, some “big idea” that was going to make him rich. Finn thought some of his ideas weren’t actually terrible—the Cookie Toaster, for example—but no matter how good the idea was, Joel lacked the follow-through to make any of them a reality.
“Like what?”
“I’m writing a screenplay.”
“Oh. Cooool.”
Zadie made eye contact with Finn and shook her head as if to say,Don’t ask him what it’s about.
But Finn pressed on. “What’s it about?”
“Get this,” he said, animated. “It’s likeFreaky Friday, but with dogs.”