We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman (read aloud txt) 📕

“Sounds familiar. Let me check.” Ira heads to the corner that used to house travel, cookbooks, and parenting books, but that’s the shelf that broke and the books are scattered on the floor.

“Wouldn’t it be in the middle grade/career section?” I ask Ira.

He swivels around and heads to the back corner where that section is. Or was.

“Middle grade/career section?” Bev asks.

It was the particular way Mom cataloged our inventory, not by subject of the book but by behavior of the reader. She came up with this system not long after they opened and she began to notice that when moms (and in our town, it was always moms) came in looking for books on how to potty train, they wound up lingering in the travel section, looking at the glossy books of Icelandic geysers or French soufflés. She realized the new moms needed escapism and began shelving parenting with travel. And she shelved early-reader books with career guides because by the time the kids could read, a lot of those moms were trying to go back to work.

Her system, like so much about this place, made sense when she was here. But without her, and with Ira stashing orphan books in every nook and cranny, we can’t find a thing.

Ira starts in on the picture books, sending an avalanche of them tumbling down.

Bev grimaces. “I didn’t mean for you to go to all this trouble.”

“No trouble. No trouble at all.”

Ira flaps around a bit longer, lost now, in his own bookstore. Bev checks her watch. “I can just Google it. And order it online.”

Ira stops dead in his tracks, face pained.

Et tu, Bev?

“No!” Ira insists. “Come back. I’ll find the book. I know we must have it. We’re just a little disorganized these days.”

Poor Bev. She thought she was going to a real-life bookstore, not the fossil of one. And poor Ira, his first shot at a new customer and he’s blowing it. All the starch has come out of him. “Can you come back?” he asks.

She must hear the raggedy edge of desperation in his voice. Because she promises she will. But as she leaves, Ira sinks into his chair, sick and dispirited. Like me, he knows that once things are gone, they never come back.

Just Kids

After the Bevacle, Ira falls into a funk. He sits in his chair all day, coughing and snorting and emitting a low level of contagious misery. So when Chad waltzes in, we are both in a mood.

“Hey, dawg,” he says, holding his hand up for the high five. “How’s it swinging?”

“It’s not swinging,” I say, limply slapping his palm but declining the elaborate handshake that follows.

“So check this out. I have a crazy idea.”

“Does this one entail building you a ramp you don’t need? Tricking me into getting you carried down a flight of stairs?”

Chad strokes his invisible goatee. “Are you pissed off about something?”

“Why would I be pissed? I mean, you make me build you a ramp and then disappear.”

“Disappear?” Chad looks behind him. “Did I disappear? I don’t think so. I’m here.”

“Whatever.”

“Dude, did we bone or something?” Chad asks.

“What?”

“I mean, I’ve never done that with a guy before, and it doesn’t totally appeal, but, you know, a lifetime of heteronormative conditioning might have something to do with that. But if we did and I failed to call you or text you or send you heart-shaped emojis or do whatever’s got you in such a snit . . .”

Suddenly, I’m not mad so much as tired. “What do you want, Chad?”

“I wanted to see if you wanted to take a trip to Seattle.”

“Why? You need me to haul you down a flight of stairs or something?”

“Damn, shorty, are you always so paranoid?”

“Says the guy who conned me into building a ramp and getting him carried down the stairs at some club and then disappeared. And stop calling me shorty. I’m taller than you.”

“Everyone’s taller than me now. And I mean it as a term of endearment.”

“Oh, do we have endearments?” I point back and forth between us. “I wouldn’t know.”

“So you are pissed!”

“I’m not pissed. I just don’t appreciate being used. It’s like you only come by when you need something.”

“So you think I’m, like, booty-calling you?”

“If the booty-call fits.”

Ira blows his nose loudly.

“The thing is, dawg, I thought you’d want to go with me to the big city. I have some business to take care of. And . . . Beethoven’s Anvil might maybe be playing tonight. But we don’t have to go to that. I know you don’t like them.”

“I don’t not like them,” I say, trying to play it cool, trying to pretend that I haven’t been thinking about Hannah, Googling the band. “It was just really loud standing by the speakers. My ears rang for a whole day.”

“This club has no stairs. We can stand wherever we want. But I get if you don’t wanna go. We can skip the show. I really just need a wingman for my other thing.”

Ira starts hacking.

“You okay there, Mr. Stein?” Chad calls.

“Ira,” Ira rasps. “And I’m fine. Nothing a hot bath and a good night’s sleep won’t fix.”

He’s right. Might as well give him a day to recover. I turn to Chad. “Sure,” I say. “I’ll go.”

“So what I am wingmanning you for?” I ask Chad on the drive to Seattle. “Some girl you like?”

Chad laughs. “Nah, dawg. We’re gonna see a man about a dick.”

“What?” I ask, panicked.

Chad laughs. “Relax, dawg. Nothing like that.”

“So what is it like?”

“How much do you know about SCIs?”

“What’s an SCI?”

“So nothing, basically. SCI is short for spinal cord injury. When I fell off that cliff, I severed my spinal cord at the thoracic vertebra four.” He reaches over and touches me below my shoulder. “But not all the way through.”

“So does that mean you’ll, like, walk again?”

“Probably not. But, hey, I have total control of my hands.” He lifts both off the steering wheel to sparkle