An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes (14 page)

Sam sits down cross-legged on his bed and sets the keyboard in his lap. He places his fingers over the keys and pauses like he's trying to resurrect the dead. No clear memories emerge, and, for the first time in his life, he wishes that he had not thrown that one fit in the third grade that resulted in his father allowing him to quit piano lessons.

Not to be deterred by a mere lack of skill, Sam presses the power button. The keyboard comes to life.

He starts pressing random keys. The sounds he makes are horrible, discordant. His playing does not improve over time. Sam cannot even recall the major and minor chords. Giving up on his first idea—writing Sarah a song—he sets aside the keyboard and makes his way upstairs to try to carry out his second.

“Can I borrow some money,
Nanay
?” he asks his mom.

She stops singing and lowers the karaoke mic. On the television screen, the words to a song continue to light up in rhythmic sequence as the instrumental track plays on. A montage of random tropical scenes shows in the background. “What hab you done to earn it?” she asks, her accent confusing V with B.

Sam scratches the back of his head. “Um.”

“You go back to work in the restaurant,” she says, “and you will hab money.”

His mom goes back to her song, and with that, Sam's second idea—buying Sarah a meaningful present—dies a sudden death.

He was hoping it would not come to the third option. It requires so much more work. But it is the only way.

Sam sighs and returns to the basement. He decides that today is an unlucky day, so, instead, he will win back her love tomorrow.

Sam waits until dark and then grabs his backpack and heads to Sarah's house. But he does not knock on the door. Instead, he climbs on to the porch railing where it meets the side of the house, trying to make as little noise as possible.

Once he's standing on top of the railing, he slips off his backpack and swings it onto the portion of the roof that hangs over the porch and under Sarah's window. He listens for a moment to see if it will roll back down, but it stays. Reaching up, he grips the edge of the roof with both hands. He counts to three in his head and hops, pulling himself up the rest of the way. It is neither easy nor elegant nor noiseless. But with considerable effort, he manages.

Leaning over, he grabs the backpack and then scoots up and over until he is out of the square of muted light that spills from her room. He leans his back against the side of the house.

Sam exhales, taking a moment to rest and appreciate his accomplishment so far. He brushes off the gravel bits from the shingles that have stuck to his palms and then shakes off the hand he injured the other night. He looks out over the neighborhood. A few streetlights are blinking to life.

He notices that the white car is back in Sarah's driveway. It is not hers. It is not her dad's. Maybe she has a relative in town.

Sam's attention shifts when he hears music start playing inside Sarah's room. Though it is muffled by the walls, he can make out the melody and the sound of male and female voices rising and falling in harmony. It sounds familiar, but Sam cannot recall the name of the song or of the band.

He listens for a moment longer. Wonders what Sarah might be doing at that very moment. Probably just lying back on her bed with her phone in hand, checking her social networks.

He eases closer to the window and starts to lean over for a peak—but then stops. If she sees him now, that will ruin everything. First, he must set up.

Unzipping the backpack, he takes out the flannel blanket. He shakes it out and then lays it down on the roof. Next, he pulls out a couple bottles of alcoholic lemonade that he stole from the fridge. He sets them down, not pulling his hands away until he's certain that they won't slide down the gradual slope. Then he removes paper plates, plastic silverware, and a couple of containers with food that he heated up just before leaving his house.

After he finishes arranging the rooftop picnic, he pulls out one final item from his backpack: a fat, temporary paint marker used to write on car windows. He scoots over to the window and begins writing, trying to make as little noise as possible.

I
, he draws, a foot tall, across the top of her window.

L-O-V-E
, he draws across the middle.

He starts to write the final line across the bottom of the window. But before he finishes the
O
, the curtain pulls back. Sarah peers through the window at Sam, an expression of utter confusion on her face. It is not the adoring gaze of rekindled romance he was hoping for.

She pulls open the window and sticks her head outside. “Sam? What the hell are you doing out here?”

“Um,” he says.

“Why are you writing on my window? What's all that stuff?”

He realizes for the first time that, from her perspective, his message was backwards, his actions perhaps pervy. “Oh, um, I wanted to—”

He stops speaking as he beholds the inside of her room.

It takes him a moment to register what he is seeing. He blinks. Rubs his eyes. But it's still the same.

Bare walls. Stacks of boxes. Missing furniture.

He blinks again. “You're moving.”

“Shit,” she says, “I didn't want you to find out like this.”

“Where?”

“Seattle—my dad got a new job with—”

“When?”

“. . . Tomorrow. Morning.”

Without saying anything, Sam tosses the marker over the house. He starts to gather everything and stuffs it all into his backpack as quickly as possible.

“Look, Sam, calm down. Come inside so we can talk about this, please.”

He zips up his bag, climbs back down, and walks away.

“Sam,” she calls after him, but he keeps walking. Down her driveway. Past his house. Past his neighborhood.

He does not stop walking until he reaches the playground. He finds a trash can, stuffs the backpack inside, and crawls inside a tunnel slide.

“Mommy, there's someone in here.”

Sam slowly stirs. He is uncomfortably warm because the morning sun has heated the inside of the tube. Opening his eyes, he looks up the slide and sees a child peering down at him from the top.

“Sorry,” Sam says. He crawls out the bottom of the slide and stretches his sore limbs. A woman—probably the kid's mom—is staring at him, phone in hand. Sam waves to indicate that he is not planning to abduct her child, and then starts for home.

As he reaches his street, he spots the moving truck in Sarah's driveway. A couple of men—who look exactly like how he imagined moving men would—are lifting a bookshelf into the back of the truck.

Sam walks into his house, glad to find it empty. He does not feel like explaining to anyone what is going on, where he has been. As if they would ask. The only texts he received last night were from Sarah who wanted him to come back so they could talk, and from Dante wondering where he was. Sam's parents probably didn't even notice that he was out all night.

Returning to the basement, Sam can't shake the terrible feeling that settled into his stomach the moment he saw Sarah's packed up room. It stirs within him like something alive. He imagines it as a malevolent creature, covered in bristly hair and spikes, amoebic and expanding.

He slides underneath his blankets and tries to go back to sleep. But he can't. The creature won't let him.

He sighs a pathetic sigh and wonders if it's even possible to sigh nonpathetically. He gives it a few tries and concludes that it is not. He sighs, pathetically, once more and climbs out of bed. He goes to the small ground-level window on the side of the basement that faces Sarah's house.

Sam observes the moving men work for about ten minutes. His patience is rewarded when he sees Sarah emerge. She walks out of the garage, head down and thumbs hooked into the belt loops of her jeans. She steps across her lawn, approaching Sam's house.

Sam panics—He has not showered. He hasn't brushed his teeth. He's still wearing the same thing as last night. He strips and puts on a different set of crumpled clothes that he gathers up from the floor.

Sam waits at the bottom of the stairs for Sarah's knock. He does not want to appear too pathetic. He does want to look like the visual form of the sighs he had been practicing earlier.

But the house remains silent.

Sam continues to wait, allowing time for a shoe she might have stopped to tie. He moves back to the window. Sarah is nowhere in sight. He stands on his tiptoes and presses his face to the dingy glass in an attempt to gain a new angle. But still no Sarah.

Sam climbs the stairs but finds only one of his shoes next to the door. He returns to the basement to search for the other one, but he does not have time to look for it. So he opts to cover his other foot with one of his mom's bamboo house slippers and steps outside.

The sky is overcast. The wind carries the scent of rain. A lawn mower drones in the distance. The hollow stomping of the mover's boots upon the inside of the truck resounds through the neighborhood.

It feels like his hair is sticking up in back. He tries to smooth it down with his hands. It doesn't work.

As he approaches Sarah's driveway, he peers inside the truck. It's nearly full.

“Out the way, kid!” a mover calls to Sam while backing out of the garage.

He's carrying one end of a beige couch. His partner emerges a moment later with the other end. Sam catches a whiff of body odor and sawdust.

He steps aside and recalls the nights he had spent on that couch with Sarah, sharing a blanket and watching movies. It feels wrong that the movers' hands are on it now. It feels as if they are groping not just the couch but Sam and Sarah. He hates the movers in that moment, even though he knows his hatred is illogical. He looks at their stupid moving belts and stupid gloves without fingertips and thinks of how stupid the movers are. He wants to yell at them to be more careful. To be less stupid.

Whatever.

Sam slips past them, through the garage, and into the house.

Given the contents of the truck, Sam knows the rooms will be nearly empty. But the barren quality still shocks him. It's just so alien. On his way to Sarah's room at the end of the hallway, he peeks through the passing doorways. Nothing remains. This is real. He continues up the stairs.

He finds Sarah's door slightly ajar. He takes a moment to return the blank stare of the bare wood and then enters.

The room Sam had known was dark and chaotic. Band posters, advertisements for concerts, and album covers had covered every inch of the walls and even some of the ceiling. Clothing, sneakers, and books had littered nearly every inch of the floor. On one side of her room had been her bed, sheets perpetually in disarray. White Christmas lights—which Sarah referred to as “party lights” when out of season—had lined the ceiling. And during the day there was always a red glow cast by the sunlight shining through her red curtains.

Now, her room is nothing but light and air. For the first time in years, Sam looks at the actual walls. They are lavender. He looks at the carpet. It is beige. He looks out a window. There is a pine tree.

Sam feels as if he is a space traveler, marveling at a barren planet that was once some great civilization.

“Sarah?” he calls. The word echoes.

“In here.” Sarah's voice drifts out of the closet, small and distant.

The sound anchors this moment in reality. It is actually happening. Unlike Archie, Sarah isn't moving across the river but across the country. Sam sighs.

He follows her voice and wonders once again at the transformation. Without clothes crammed on the racks and junk piled on the floor, it is apparently a small walk-in closet. Sarah sits on the floor with her back against a wall.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” Sam says.

She sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of her sleeve.

Sam sits on the closet floor against the wall opposite her.

“Hi,” Sam says again.

“Hi.”

“So you're all packed?”

“Mostly,” she says. “I ended up just throwing a lot of stuff away. But I saved something for you.” Sarah gets up, slips out of the closet. She returns a few seconds later holding a record. She hands it to Sam and then sits down next to him.

He examines the cover, puzzled. “Thanks . . . but I don't have a record player.”

“Really? You don't know why I'm giving you this?”

“Um.”

“That's the album that was playing when we first kissed. Back in seventh grade.” She cocks her head, an unhappy smile on her face. “You honestly don't remember?”

“I'd have to hear it,” he says, though in reality he has absolutely no recollection that music was even playing. He does, however, remember that a Christmas decoration on the roof glowed through the window. That her parents were downstairs watching a movie. That her lip balm tasted like green apple.

“If you don't want it . . .” she says, reaching for the album.

Sam pulls it away. “No, I do.” He examines the cover and then sets it down on the floor next to him.

She looks at Sam for a bit and then relents. “I wish you would have come inside last night. That was kind of a dick move leaving like that and then not responding to my texts.”

“A dick move was not telling me you were moving. What was the plan, just to call me from Seattle?”

A long minute passes in silence. Neither wants to fight. Between them is a confused mess of everything they are feeling and everything they want to say but are not saying and everything they do not want to say but should say.

Sam feels a lump forming in his throat. Sadness threatens to overtake his anger.

“I can't believe you're moving,” he finally says. “To the other side of the continent.”

“I know,” she says.