Swansong (22 page)

This universe is going to disappear.

“Could there be more than one universe?” I ask, unbidden.

I remember the universe, galaxies drifting farther apart in a snowy, childlike macrocosm.  I remember seeing double, my eyes blurry with pain.  Two universes.  I didn’t think much of it back then.  But now I…

Schrodinger’s Cat.  Superposition.  Particles are like waves.  Azel said so.  That makes it real.  Azel said there’s another place out there.  There has to be.

“Why not?” Annwn muses.  She reaches for one of the errant stars.  She can’t quite reach it.  It’s too big, too far away.  “We know our universe came out of a tiny particle we call the Higgs boson.  Nobody ever said there was only one Higgs boson.  All it takes is one trillion protons of energy to make another.”

Kory said there are more protons in the human body than there are stars in the universe.

“This universe,” I start.  I stop.

“It’s not worth it, is it?” Annwn says.

But there could be more.  More universes.  Maybe a universe where my parents are still alive.

A universe where Azel has a mother.

“Did your parents die?” I ask Annwn.  Maybe it’s too forward of me—but hasn’t she been forward herself?

Annwn looks at me.  For a moment I think I can make out her sleepy brown eyes.  She’s blurry.  Is she even here?

Am I?

“It’s so sad,” Annwn says.  “We share atoms.  We share a biosphere.  We are all one person.  In which case, I have never seen anybody more intent to kill himself than we are.”

11

Act Three

Monday morning.  Skittish, I dress for school.  I take my meds and pack my books and wrap my canvas in a sheet of bubble paper.  I’ll stretch the canvas later.  I cook eggs for Jude and wrap them and put them on the stove warmer.  I’m not very hungry myself.  I drink a glass of orange soda; and then I leave for the lobby.

“This sucks,” Kory complains.  He’s standing under the mailboxes, a giant cardboard box at his side.  “Can’t I just airlift it to the school?”

“Why didn’t you sculpt it at school to begin with?”

“Sabotage, Wendy.  We don’t want the grubby underclassmen putting their little hands on it.”

“I thought you were dating an underclassman?”

“Yeah, but she hates me.”

It’ll be winter before long.  The Spit has yet to take notice.  Warm gray winds barrage us the moment we step outside the apartment building.  I hold on tight to my paint canvas.  Kory grumbles about not having a car of his own.  I don’t think I’ll ever want one.

We walk underneath the filthy overpass.  We walk past the crumbling apartments.  I want to see Azel dance.  If I hold onto that sentiment, maybe I won’t feel like I’m falling.  When I hold still, I feel like I’m falling.

It feels like flying
, Azel said.

“How do you feel?” I ask Kory.  “Are your allergies alright?”

“Oh, sure,” Kory says.  “Just as long as I don’t eat any nuts, shellfish, red vegetables, cinnamon…”

We step inside Cavalieri’s pristine glass lobby.  Heads turn our way.  Eyes linger.  I pretend I don’t notice.

“I have a quiz second period,” I tell Kory.

“Then I should hope you’ve studied for it.  I have to run to the fifth floor.  See you in Comp?”

“See you.”

We take separate elevators.  I board the lift to the thirteenth floor.  Talk about falling.  As the city drops around me, I feel compelled to drop with it.  I feel compelled to close my eyes.

Another universe.  A place where my parents and Jocelyn didn’t die.

I’d give up this universe in a heartbeat.  I think I would.

* * * * *

I jot down halfhearted notes in Comp class, seated on the back bench beside a very indifferent Kory.  Mr. Reiner goes off on a tangent about
toward
vs.
towards
.  That’s about when I lose all ability to focus.

“Kory?” I whisper.

“Hm?”  He eases his elbow off the archaic wood table.

“Do you know how to find people by their social security number?”

Kory stares at me while Mr. Reiner rattles off example sentences.

“Whatever you’re thinking of doing,” Kory says, “I’m fairly certain it’s illegal.”

“What?  No,” I whisper.  I really don’t have to.  In a room full of one hundred…  “Another man died in the car accident.  I want to apologize to his family.”

“And you need his social security number for that?”

“It’s the only information I could find.”

“Just send a card in to the police station,” Kory suggests.  “They’ll know where to find him.”

I’m sure he’s right.  Still, a card seems cold, impersonal.  I guess I could write a letter instead.  But I’m hardly any good at putting words on paper.  If I say the wrong thing, if I make it worse…

“Are you sure you should be doing this?” Kory asks.  “What if you make things worse?”

Exactly.

“It’s been almost half a year since that accident,” Kory says.  “His family may have just begun to heal.  You don’t want to rip open old wounds.”

Half a year.  The hair on the back of my neck stands up.  I can’t believe it’s been that long.  How can it have been that long?  It—it can’t have.  It feels like it was yesterday.

I touch the charm bracelet around my right wrist.  The swan with her wings folded.  Her head bowed.

I was behind the wheel.

* * * * *

In Precalc I keep an eye out for Annwn.  I don’t see her.  I pass the quiz—by the skim of my teeth.

After Precalc is Studio.  I unwrap my paint canvas, stretch it, and set it up on a spare easel.  Miss Rappaport walks around putting stickers on the backs of the canvases and writing our names down in her log book.  She gives me a watery, sympathetic smile.  It makes me want to hide.

Probably the only worthwhile part of the day comes during free period.  I meet with Azel on the fifteenth floor and we walk down the vacant glass hallways, classroom doors standing open, metal fans blowing noisily inside.  The smell of wet mold hangs in the air.  This must be the Plastics floor.

“Is your time slot today?” I ask Azel.  The plastic city peeps at us from behind translucent walls.  It’ll be winter soon.

“It was supposed to be,” Azel says.  “I got bumped back a few days.”

“Jerks.”

We round the corner.  Suddenly we’re standing on a long glass breezeway stretched between 15-A and 15-B.  Gray clouds drift sluggishly above our heads, the ceiling reinforced, the vents invisible.  Gray clouds swim around us, celestial cohabitants peeking through the walls.  I almost feel as if I can reach out and push the clouds apart.  I’m sure if I do, I’ll find the sun’s hiding place.  I look down.  Through the glass floor I can just make out the bulbous courtyard ceiling.  It’s fifteen stories below us.  I swallow a pang of nerves.  I feel like I’m falling.

“Are you alright?” Azel asks.

It feels like flying
, Azel said.

I smile.  “I’m fine.”

We sit down together.  Vertigo gnaws at my head.  I think a part of my brain can’t understand how the air keeps moving around us if the breezeway keeps standing still.

Azel takes my hand.  His fingers twine between mine, dark on light.  His skin is soft, his knuckles scarred.  I’m grounded.

“When I was six,” Azel says, “I burned my hand on the oven rack.”

So that’s where the scar comes from.  “What were you doing with the oven?”

“I wanted to make breakfast for my mother.”

Here comes the ruddy red flush.

“Mama’s boy,” I tease.  I laugh fondly.

“Every child favors a parent when they’re young.  Didn’t you?”

“Oh, sure,” I say.  “My dad.  He used to take me out on the ocean all the time.  Mom went bonkers whenever she found out.”

“She didn’t want you on the ocean?”

“We had salmon sharks out that way.  And Dad’s coworkers were all rough-and-tumble types.  Not ideal for a little girl.”

“But you enjoyed it.”

“I like the ocean,” I say.  The more I consider it, the more the swirling gray clouds around us remind me of soft ocean slate, post-storm.  The similarity soothes me.  “Biologists say we emerged from the ocean during the Cambrian Explosion.  There was no life on land before then.  When you think about it…I don’t know.  Maybe there’s a part of us that wants to go back to where we came from.  Maybe it’s only natural to love the sea.”

Azel’s thumb runs calming patterns into the back of my hand.  My hands are unscarred.  I thought…  There were a lot of things I thought.  I was wrong about most of them.

“Do you know Sinbad the Sailor?” Azel asks.

“Sure,” I say.  “What about him?”

I catch Azel smiling.  It’s a small smile, but it’s there.  “He’s ours,” Azel says.  “The legend, the stories.  They all started in Oman.  They say he comes from the seaside ports of Sohar.”

“You lived by the sea?” I ask, mystified.  “I thought you came from the desert.”

“I never lived by the sea myself.  Half of Oman is coastal.  The other half is desert.  I’m from Nizwa.  We sit on the edge of the Wahiba Sands.  We’re a stone’s throw from the Emirates.”

“What’s it like?” I ask.  “Living in the desert.”

“Sandy,” Azel reports, his tone appropriately dry.

I give his shoulder a playful shove.

“Nizwa is unique,” Azel amends.  “It doesn’t know whether it comes from the past or the future.  You’ve got those old adobe houses and terracotta
riyad
—manors, I mean, those are manors—I’m sure they look the same as they did in the time of the Prophet.  But then there are the big corporate buildings that came out of nowhere.  It’s weird.  You can’t walk without tripping over a date tree, or some ramparts from an old fort, but if you want a video rental, it’s right down the block.  Either direction; it doesn’t matter.  And everything smells like frankincense.  The people are obsessed with it.  They burn it in the homes, in the streets.  They put it on their clothes, their tassels, their rugs.  They bathe in it.  I rather think they’d put it in their coffee if it didn’t drown out the cardamom.”

“Nizwa sounds cute,” I say, endeared.

“There’s a Ya’rubi era castle there.  Big one, very well-preserved.  You might like it.”

“With a princess and everything?” I ask, laughing.

“Why?  You want the position?”

“Could I order everyone around?”

“I’m sure you could.”

I’m not entirely certain what he means by that.  On the one hand, he could be complimenting me.  On the other hand, he could be calling me bossy.

I doubt it’s the latter, somehow.

“Why did you leave home?” I ask.  “For school?”

“For school,” Azel confirms.  “Particularly this school.  It couldn’t be anything else.  The economy’s better in Oman.  Crime rate’s lower.  Healthcare’s free.  So’s university.  Most university students are women, though.  I’m not sure why.”

“Men are underachievers.”

“Do you know this for a fact?”

“I’ve been studying your kind for a very long time now.  I think it’s safe to make a hypothesis.”

“Did you use the Scientific Method?”

“Even better.  I used the Woman’s Intuition.”

“Where can I get one of those?”

“You can’t.  You’re an underachiever.”

Azel pulls me against him.  It’s meant to be the defeating argument, I think, the one where his arm’s around me, and his face is Most Displeased, but Defiant, and his hair’s so soft I want to lean into it.  He wins.  I lose.

I don’t really lose.

“Do you miss your home?” Azel asks.  “On the Bay?”

“I—”  I wither.  “Only all the time,” I admit.  “But it’s like you said.  You can never go home again.”

“Never,” he agrees.

I curl up against him.  He tucks my head under his chin.  The planes of his body are hard.  He radiates with warmth.

“I don’t want to die,” I tell Azel.  “But sometimes I think I do.  Is that weird?”

“No,” Azel says quietly.  “Everybody has those thoughts at some point.”

“Everybody?  Really?”

“Just look at the society we’ve built around us.  How can you live in this society without wanting to escape it?”

For a while I don’t speak.  My view is torn between the stark green of Azel’s shirt and the slate clouds churning all around us.

I don’t feel so alone when I talk to Azel.  I don’t feel like such a terrible person.  If Azel’s in this world, I don’t want to leave it.

I just wish there were a world where we weren’t such a lonely, self-destructive species.  A world where Azel never lost his mother.  A world where I never killed mine.

“Do you know what I love?” Azel says.  “About this world?”

Am I that transparent?  “What?”

“The moon,” Azel says.  “It looks the same, no matter where you see it.  You can’t say the same for a sunrise or a sunset.  A valley sunrise looks different from a coastal sunrise.”  Rayleigh scattering and Mie scattering, I know.  “But the moon…  The moon I saw in Nizwa was the same moon you saw on Tillamook Bay.  I like that.  The moon rises and the night connects us.  It’s the only time I feel connected to the seven billion strangers sharing the planet with me.”

I pull back from his grasp.  I smile.  “We’re not strangers, you and I.  Are we?”

“I should hope not.  Strangers don’t kiss one another.”

“They do if it’s Mardi Gras.”

“What is that?”

“You’ve been in the US for three years, and nobody’s ever flashed you?”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

I laugh.  Azel’s face does that twitching thing, that horrified thing, and I laugh harder.  My sides hurt; my throat hurts.  It feels so good.  I wish every laugh were a laugh that hurts like this.

“Can you do me a favor?” I ask, once I’ve settled down.

“What is it?”  Azel doesn’t hesitate.

“Always stay this sweet,” I say.  “No one else is like this.  Probably no one on the entire planet.  It would be a waste if you were to change.  There’s never going to be another you.”

Azel’s eyes soften.  It’s like watching the shifting of the cosmos, ethers and dust making way for new stars.  It makes me wonder what he’s seeing.  It makes me wish I could see it for myself.  If I could, I reason, it probably wouldn’t be as special.