Zen and Xander Undone Read Online Free PDF

way!”
    â€œWhat? Is Mom making you do something too?”
    â€œShe can’t make me do anything.” She smashes up her letter and throws it on the ground, but the breeze pushes at it until it starts to roll, so she runs after it.
    â€œI’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” I say to her when she sits back down, leaning against Mom’s headstone.
    â€œShe told Grandma I was coming over to spend the evening with her for Mother’s Day. But I won’t! I won’t do it!”
    â€œLucky,” I say. “She’s making me go to the prom.”
    Her jaw drops and she stares at me, her dark eyes brimming with glee. “Oh, that’s a good one!”
    â€œIt’s not funny!”
    â€œAre you kidding? It’s hysterical!” She holds her belly and rolls on the grass. She laughs so hard, she almost makes me see the humor. Almost. “Who are you supposed to go with? All the decent guys are taken already!”
    I drop my head. There’s no avoiding it. She’s going to find out sooner or later. “Adam.”
    Complete silence. “Oh. My. God.”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œHow the hell did she rope him into
that,
do you think?”
    â€œHe didn’t have to be
roped!
”
    â€œOh, trust me. He was roped.”
    â€œWhat’s so awful about going to the prom with me?”
    â€œWell, for one thing, he has no chance of scoring with you. Whatsoever.”
    â€œJust because I’m not a slut like you doesn’t make me totally closed off.”
    â€œThen why don’t you ever go out on dates?”
    â€œBecause no one asks me.”
    â€œBecause you give out ice queen signals.”
    â€œI can’t help it if I’m naturally reserved.”
    â€œYou’re naturally frigid.”
    â€œLet’s just pay our respects and get out of here.” I pick at the weeds growing around the ivory-colored stone and brush away the dirt collecting in the carved letters.
    Â 
Marie Lillian Vogel
1965–2007
Beloved Wife and Mother
    Â 
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
    Â 
    The poem is by Percy Shelley. My dad chose it for her because they met in graduate school in a class on English Romantic poetry, and because Mom loved birds so much. The poem is sort of about a bird, but it could also be about a woman. I guess it’s a good choice for her tombstone, though Xander doesn’t think so. She wanted to have them engrave lyrics from Mom’s favorite Rolling Stones song. When Xander suggested it, Dad said, “
Nothing
Mick Jagger says is going on your mother’s tombstone!”
    â€œâ€˜Ruby Tuesday’ was Mom’s favorite song!”
    â€œThe lyrics don’t even make sense!”
    â€œThe Stones
never
make sense! That’s not the point!”
    I didn’t want to fight about it, but the epitaph I wanted wasn’t by a poet or a rock band. It was something Mom whispered to us herself on her last day alive: “Every moment with you has been wonderful.”
    That’s the kind of thing that should be carved in stone.

Blackstone Legal
    X ANDER AND I are quiet in the car on the way home. I can’t tell if Xander is angry or sad. Maybe she’s both, like me. She’s sitting hunched, her nose two inches from the top of the steering wheel, hanging on it as though her backbone is made of soft licorice. She’s chewing my grape bubblegum at about 500 rpm, and I can tell by the way her dark eyes are darting over the street that she’s thinking hard.
    It’s not until she rolls right by Williston Road that I get any inkling we’re not headed home. “Hey, where—”
    â€œI just want to see if he’s in his office,” she says. Xander always skips preliminaries like explaining who
he
is, or what office she means. She just waits for