I considered telling Frankie or Christina, but Frankie would just try to top it by telling me all the people he knew who died. As for Christina, traumatizing her with this was a bit different from telling her our basement was sealed off because of the zombies. Besides, who goes to their younger sister for advice? She does have a spiritual streak, though, I’ll admit that. In fact, lately I’ve found her sitting in her room, in lotus position, trying to levitate. She read somewhere that monks in the Himalayas have special spiritual mantras they repeat over and over that will make them float in midair. I’m open to all possibilities, but I told Christina that her mantra of “Ama Gonna Levitato” sounded more Harry Potter than Himalaya.

No, this whole thing needed to fly under my family’s radar for a while.

Few things got by our school radar, however. It could have been Howie or Ira who overheard Gunnar at the Empire State Building—or maybe Gunnar had been selectively confiding in other kids as well. Whatever the reason, Gunnar’s life-span issue was all the whisper around school on Monday.

That was the day we had to sign up for John Steinbeck lit circles in English class. Apparently Of Mice and Men was just a prelude to a whole lot of reading. I showed up a few minutes late, and all the short books like The Red Pony were gone, leaving monsters like The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.

Gunnar and I were in English together, and I noticed that he was in the Grapes of Wrath group. The Cannery Row group consisted of Wendell Tiggor and the tiggorhoids—which is what we called all the human moths that fluttered around Tiggor’s dim bulb. I make it a habit never to join any group where I’m the smartest member, so I put my name under Gunnar’s and prayed that The Grapes of Wrath wasn’t as deep as it was long. If nothing else, it would give me a chance to get to know Gunnar better, and figure out what Meaningful thing I could do for him.