Chapter 58

The first time I visit Zelda’s apartment, it doesn’t feel like it’s hers. Her personality is packed away, with all her comic books stacked in cardboard boxes, her posters fitted snugly into tubes, and her boho furniture wrapped in sheets of plastic. She’s even reverted the walls to their standard white, though she’s done a sloppy job because I can still make out slivers of yellow paint along the baseboards and near the ceiling. I also detect a few dried spaghetti stragglers hanging on for dear life over her stove, and they make me nostalgic for Zelda’s spunk in the early days of our acquaintance.

“I don’t even know why I bothered packing.” She hands me a broom and a dustpan. “Except that the Council told me to, and I’m ultimately accommodating, apparently.”

I sweep the wood floor in the living room while she mops the kitchen. I collect the detritus of her life here in my dustpan: graham cracker crumbs, sea green sequins, and torn-up bits of construction paper. I also find one of her silver buttons, Hg-80, otherwise known as mercury, one of the most toxic elements on the periodic table. It’s so strong it has the power to dissolve gold and silver.

The pin begs me to crush it under my foot. A metaphorical stamping out of the choice she’s making. But if I do that, I’m part of the problem. I’d be another loser guy who thinks of her only as a shiny concept and not as a real person with complicated constellations inside her.

So I pick it up delicately and set it on her empty table. She can decide what to do with it.

When she finishes in the kitchen, she takes the full dustpan from me. She raises an eyebrow when she sees the button lying forlornly on the table, but she doesn’t comment. She empties the dustpan into a trash bag, wipes off her hands on her jeans, and goes over to a box and digs around in it.

She pulls out a container with her button-making machine and supplies, all neatly organized, and hands it to me. “I wanted you to have this. I know you’ll appreciate it.”

I hug it to my chest and will myself not to cry. I don’t want her last memory of me to be tearstained. “Will I see you again?” I ask, though the chances are slim to absolute zero.

“You never know.” She pushes me against a wall.

And she kisses me. On the mouth. And the universe spins like it might explode from the sheer awesomeness of it.

I slip my hands around her waist and pull her closer to me, and we allow our bodies to communicate all the feelings our minds never found the right words for.

Why does our first kiss also have to be our last?

If I don’t open my eyes, can I stay in the moment forever?

“Don’t forget this.” Zelda slips away from me.

“Like I ever could.” I think she means the kiss. But when I finally open my eyes, she holds out the button-making kit.

“Goodbye, Riley. And good luck in the Pixie-Off and beyond.”

I’m so choked up at this point, I can’t even speak. So I merely take the kit from her. I blow her a half kiss and walk out her door and out of her story.

On her doorstep, I get a last-ditch idea. I take out one of the silver pieces of cardstock and a black marker. I form ZE in large block letters, but instead of a number, I write: “Be your own element.”

I stamp all it together in the machine and leave the button on her doormat.