Excerpt from Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Well ... cool," Zeke said, and I believed him. "I want to be an artist," he told me, like we were both admitting that we weren't human. We didn't understand how normal this was, to be young, to believe that you were destined to make beautiful things.

"What kind of artist?" I asked him.

"Comic books," he told me. "Drawings? Weird stuff, really." His eyes lit up. He looked so happy. "And real art, too. Like, big things, complicated things. I want to make something that everyone in the world will see. And they'll remember it. And they won't totally understand it."

"I know what you mean," and I did.

"That's what we should do this summer," he said, like a lightbulb appeared over his head. He, honest to god, snapped his fingers.

"What?" I asked him.

"We should make stuff," he said.

"Well," I said, nervous, "I'm still working on the novel. It's not finished. It's just a rough draft, really."

"Okay, okay," he said. "We can figure it out. It would be fun to do something together, though."

"Just spend all summer making art?" I asked, confused.

"All summer," he said. "What else were you gonna do?"

"Okay," I told him, nodding. "But what if your dad fixes himself and you go back in a few weeks?"

He thought about this. "I don't think that's gonna happen," he told me, and we both laughed.

And that was it. That was going to be our summer. If something happened to me, it would happen to him. The next few months opened up, turned shimmery in the heat. We'd make something.

So, we were friends now. And maybe, by August, we'd be best friends. It had been a long time since I'd had a best friend. Zeke was still smiling, still staring at me, like I was supposed to say something, like I was supposed to do something important. I felt like if I did the wrong thing right now, if I messed up, it would all go wrong. But I was frozen, staring at him. Finally, he said, "So are we gonna eat lunch?"

I took such a deep breath. "Oh, yeah, sure. Let's, um, let's go to Hardee's," I told him. "My brother works there. He'll give us free fries."

And after I scrounged around my room for money, we went outside, where my shitty Honda Civic was parked in the driveway. I tried to remember what was in the cassette player, if it was cool. Maybe it wouldn't matter to Zeke. Right now, with the sun so high in the sky, we walked side by side. We'd make art later. There was, I thought, so much time.

Excerpted from Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson. Copyright © 2022 by Kevin Wilson. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.