Now you’re nervous, because you’ve previously attended this exact rodeo on thousands of occasions, and also because you want to choose the thoughts that are called yours. The river was filthy, after all. Had you gotten some river water on your hand? It wouldn’t take much. Time to unwrap the Band-Aid. You tell yourself that you were careful not to touch the water, but your self replies, But what if you touched something that touched the water, and then you tell yourself that this wound is almost certainly not infected, but the distance you’ve created with the almost gets filled by the thought, You need to check for infection; just check it so we can calm down, and then fine, okay, you excuse yourself to the bathroom and slip off the Band-Aid to discover that there isn’t blood, but there might be a bit of moisture on the bandage pad. You hold the Band-Aid up to the yellow light in the bathroom, and yes, that definitely looks like moisture.

Could be sweat, of course, but also might be water from the river, or worse still seropurulent drainage, a sure sign of infection, so you find the hand sanitizer in the medicine cabinet and squeeze some onto your fingertip, which burns like hell, and then you wash your hands thoroughly, singing your ABCs while you do to make sure you’ve scrubbed for the full twenty seconds recommended by the Centers for Disease Control, and then you carefully dry your hands with a towel. And then you dig your thumbnail all the way into the crack in the callus until it starts bleeding, and you squeeze the blood out for as long as it comes, and then you blot the wound dry with a tissue. You take a Band-Aid from inside your jeans pocket, where there is never a shortage of them, and you carefully reapply the bandage. You return to the couch to watch TV, and for a few or many minutes, you feel the shivering jolt of the tension easing, the relief of giving in to the lesser angels of your nature.

And then two or five or six hundred minutes pass before you start to wonder, Wait, did I get all the pus out? Was there pus even or was that only sweat? If it was pus, you might need to drain the wound again.

The spiral tightens, like that, forever.

SIX

AFTER SCHOOL THE NEXT DAY, I joined the swarm of people filing out through the overstuffed hallways of WRHS and made my way to Harold. I had to change the Band-Aid, which took a few minutes, but I preferred to let the traffic thin out a bit before driving home anyway. To kill time, I texted Daisy, asking her to meet me at Applebee’s, our go-to restaurant for studying together.

She responded a few minutes later: I have work until 8. Meet you after?

Me: Do you need a ride?

Her: Dad picked me up. He’s taking me. Has Davis texted?

Me: No, should I text him?

Her: ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Her: Wait between 24 and 30 hours. Obviously. You’re intrigued but not obsessed.

Me: Got it. I didn’t know there were Texting Commandments.

Her: Well there are. We’re almost there so I gotta go. First order of business, drawing straws to see who has to get in the Chuckie costume. Pray for me.

Harold and I started our drive home, but then it occurred to me that I could go anywhere. Not anywhere, I guess, but nearly. I could drive to Ohio, if I wanted, or Kentucky, and still be home before curfew. Thanks to Harold, a couple hundred square miles of the American Midwest were mine for the taking. So instead of turning to go home, I kept driving north up Meridian Street until I merged onto I-465. I turned the radio up as a song I liked called “Can’t Stop Thinking About You” came on, the bass sizzling in Harold’s long-blown speakers, the lyrics stupid and silly and everything I needed.

Sometimes you happen across a brilliant run of radio songs, where each time one station goes to commercial, you scan to another that has just started to play a song you love but had almost forgotten about, a song you never would’ve picked but that turns out to be perfect for shouting along to. And so I drove along to one of those miraculous playlists, headed nowhere. I followed the highway east, and then south, then west, then north, and then east again, until I ended up at the same Meridian Street exit where I’d started.

The journey around Indianapolis cost about seven dollars in gas, and I knew it was wasteful, but I felt so much better after circling the city.

When I parked in the driveway to open up the garage door, I saw I had a series of texts from Daisy:

I just drew the short straw so I have to get inside the fricking Chuckie costume.

See you later if I survive.

If I die weep at my grave every day until a seedling appears in the dirt, then cry on it to make it grow until it becomes a beautiful tree whose roots surround my body.

They’re making me go now they’re taking away my phone REMEMBER ME HOLMESY.

Update: I survived. Getting a ride to Applebee’s after work. See you.

—

In the living room, Mom was grading quizzes with her feet up on the coffee table. I sat down next to her, and without looking up, she said, “A Lyle from the Pickett estate brought over our canoe today, repaired. Said you and Daisy were paddling down the White River and hit a rock.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You and Daisy,” she said. “Paddling on the White River.”

“Yeah,” I said.

She looked up at last. “Seems like something you would only do if, say, you wanted to run into Davis Pickett.”

I shrugged.

“Did it work?” she asked.

I shrugged again, but she kept looking at me until I gave in and spoke. “I was just thinking about him. Wanted an excuse to check on him, I guess.”

“How is he doing, without his father?”

“I think he’s okay,” I said. “Most people don’t seem to like their dads much.”

She leaned into me, her shoulder against mine. I knew we were both thinking about my dad, but we had never been good at talking about him. “I wonder if you would have clashed with your father.”

I didn’t say anything.

“He would’ve understood you, that’s for sure. He got your whys in a way I never could. But he was such a worrier, and you might have found that exhausting. I know I did, sometimes.”

“You worry, too,” I said.

“I suppose. Mostly about you.”

“I don’t mind worriers,” I said. “Worrying is the correct worldview. Life is worrisome.”

“You sound just like him.” She smiled a little. “I still can’t believe he left us.” She said it like it was a decision, like he’d been mowing the lawn that day and thought, I think I’ll fall down dead now.

—

I cooked dinner that night, a macaroni scramble with canned vegetables, boxed macaroni, and some proper cheddar cheese, and then we ate while watching a reality show about regular people trying to survive in the wild. My phone finally buzzed while Mom and I were doing the dishes—Daisy telling me she’d arrived at Applebee’s—so I told Mom I’d be back by midnight and reunited with Harold, who was, as always, a pure delight.

Applebee’s is a chain of mid-quality restaurants serving “American food,” which essentially means that Everything Features Cheese. Last year, some kid had showed up on our doorstep and talked my mom into buying a huge coupon book to support his Boy Scout troop or something, and the book turned out to include sixty Applebee’s coupons offering “Two burgers for $11.” Daisy and I had been working our way through them ever since.