Chapter Text
Louis sits in Mr. Boodhari’s office and thinks.
(It’s nearly time to go back to class, but Mx. Jimenez doesn’t seem to mind if Louis is a little late coming back from Mr. Boodhari’s office, which is weird. They’re pretty strict, usually.)
He and Mr. Boodhari have been talking about double-dip feelings.
“What do you think that means?” Mr. Boodhari had asked, and Louis had thought about it for a minute and said,
“Like you’re not supposed to follow one feeling after another because it’s gross and unsanitary?”
“Oh, okay, you’re thinking about chips, yeah, I could see why you’d think that. I was thinking more about ice cream. A double dip is when you get two scoops, yeah? And they can be different flavors.”
Louis makes a face, because a lot of ice cream flavors probably aren’t good together. Mint and peanut butter. Coffee and Superman. Banana and literally everything. Chocolate and — no, that’s a bad example, chocolate is pretty good with everything. Okay, so maybe two flavors sometimes could be nice.
“Sometimes we have double dip feelings, just like double dip ice cream. Sometimes we feel two different ways about the same thing. Can you think of a time when you felt like that?”
Louis carefully flattens his Silly Putty and rolls it into a tube, pinches off the ends, and squeezes it in his fist until the air bubbles make the crack sound that he likes.
“Sometimes when I’m mad at Alma?” he says. “I mean, I know I’m supposed to love her because she’s my sister and I guess I do, but sometimes she’s mean to me and that makes me angry.”
“Yeah, man!” Mr. Boodhari says, and gives him the big smile that makes Louis feel all warm and shivery. Huh. That’s two, too.
“I want you to think about what’s been going on at home,” Mr. Boodhari says, “And see if you can name some of the things you’ve been feeling. Will you give that a try?”
Louis flattens his Silly Putty again and nods.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Louis sits and thinks.
He thinks about waking up in the night and wanting to go ask Dad for a glass of water but Dad’s not there anymore. He thinks about walking in on Alma crying, and how mad she’d been that he’d seen. He thinks about Thanksgiving and the wine spilling on the white tablecloth, how the stain had grown and spread until nearly the whole thing was maroon. He thinks about how cold he’d been in Chicago when they went ice skating, but how he hadn’t said anything because he hadn’t wanted to go back to Dad’s weird-smelling apartment. But then he thinks about Dad a few weeks ago at the zoo, and the shiny rocks that Louis has been sleeping with under his pillow. He thinks about how Mom had looked last night over dinner, laughing with Alma about something that had happened at school. Mom didn’t used to laugh that much, but she’s doing it a lot more now. He thinks about Doug, who bought him a book on frogs, and Mom’s new friend Evelyn who had spent the night a few weekends ago and shown Louis pictures of her giant cat Ned on her phone. He thinks about Alma’s play. He hadn’t really gotten most of it, but seeing Alma on stage transformed into someone else – he’d been proud of her, and a little scared, and a little jealous, too. He wants to be able to turn into someone else for a while.
Huh. That’s, like, way more than two things.
“Mr. Boodhari?”
“Yeah?”
“Can we call my dad real quick?”