The Freak Observer (15 page)

Both rigs, Mom's crappy little Nissan wagon and Dad's truck, are parked in front. Given their work schedules and everyone's natural aversion to misery, this is weird. There must be some new craptacular emergency. I don't even want to consider the possibilities.

I avoid the kitchen door. I walk around to the creek-side porch of the house.

When I reach the porch, it isn't weirdly quiet. That's a relief. Dead people don't make noise. And there isn't a screaming argument punctuated with breaking dishes. No domestic dispute in progress.

The TV is on in the living room, but the room is empty. I just stand there for a moment with the door open. I'm home, but whatever is happening isn't my problem yet. I'm still between one state and another: knowing and not knowing, live kitty and dead kitty.

The fuzzy picture on the TV starts to flip and roll.

Little Harold blasts out of the kitchen fast as a garter snake with legs, “Ice-cream-a-ganza!” he yells.

It takes a minute to process his news. Especially since he piles into me so hard he almost knocks me on my butt. I think it is supposed to be a hug. Then he grabs my hand and drags me toward the kitchen.

We used to have ice-cream-a-ganzas when Asta was alive. We would eat ice cream for dinner and celebrate lesser-known holidays like First Buttercup Day or the Solemn Remembrance of the Last Yeti.

We haven't had an ice-cream-a-ganza for a very long time.

“What are we celebrating?” I ask when I step into the kitchen.

“Your mom is going to the university,” says Dad.

He and Mom have dishes of melting ice cream in front of them. They also have Pokémon juice glasses full of Wild Turkey 101. Judging by the level in the bottle, they have been paying more attention to the whiskey than the ice cream.

“Sit down, Loa,” says Mom, “It's an ice-cream-a-ganza.”

“Ice-cream-a-ganza,” says Little Harold. “We have Moose Tracks and Pumpkin. Do you want Pumpkin?”

“Pumpkin sounds good.” I know Moose Tracks, loaded with peanut butter and chocolate, is Little Harold's favorite. Pumpkin is better than it sounds, anyway.

“I'm going to school,” says Mom.

That confirms what I thought I heard. Those are the words. What the hell they mean, I don't know that.

“Your mom is smart. It's time she went to school,” says Dad.

I could use a little of that Wild Turkey, but I settle for a scoop of ice cream. “Wow,” I say.

“You kids and your mom will be moving into town. That'll make it easier. I'll be staying here, to keep an eye on things, to make sure the pipes don't freeze,” says Dad.

“Like, when? Next September?” By next September, the ice cream will be long gone and this particular plan will probably be long forgotten. A lot can happen in a year. A year ago, Esther was alive. A year ago, I was winking at Corey during debate practice.

“You'll be moving during Christmas vacation. She's going to be starting in the middle of the school year,” says Dad.

“Wow! Does she have time to take the tests and write essays and do all the other paperwork?” I wish I hadn't said that. I'm afraid I might have broken the spell and now everything is going to unravel. If I'd kept my mouth shut, maybe we could have been happy, all of us, for one night at least. Or as long as the ice cream and whiskey lasted, anyway.

“They have this thing called ‘conditional acceptance' for older students. I'm already conditionally accepted. I'm in. If I don't get at least a C+ average, then I need to take some tests. But I'm not worried. I think I can pull that off,” says Mom.

“Your mom is smart,” says Dad again, and he smiles into his Pokémon glass full of whiskey.

“Your dad used the land as collateral and took out a bank loan to tide us over until my financial aid comes through and I get a part-time job,” says Mom.

Until this very moment, I thought college financial aid was like welfare. I assumed that my parents disapproved of it on principle. Welfare is something our family doesn't do. We never got any help with Asta's care, so I can't wrap my head around them thinking financial aid is acceptable.

We don't accept welfare, we don't buy shit on credit, and we don't eat anything with paws. I thought those were the rock-hard truths about this family, about who we are, but I may need to fiddle with the focus a little more. “We” may not be exactly who I thought. And that leaves “Me” a little fuzzy around the edges, myself.

. . .

It has been a long time since I climbed to the roof of the woodshed. I used to do it all the time when I was Little Harold's age. The woodshed roof was my observatory then. Dad called it my castle and laughed about me being the princess of the kingdom, but he was wrong. I wasn't any boring old princess. I was a star watcher. Mom used to save the cardboard tubes from the inside of paper towels and give them to me. I used them for telescopes.

It's a fine example of little-kid weirdness, a cardboard tube telescope. The stars never looked any bigger or brighter. All it really did was limit the size of the sky.

But tonight the sky is bigger than I've ever seen it. It almost makes me dizzy, and it feels like the stars are rushing at me. I wish I had the security of a cardboard tube in my hand. Maybe, instead of looking at the sky, I would look at our house and my family in it. I think I might see a lot of things I've completely overlooked.

The woodshed roof is Little Harold's territory now. I don't know what stories he tells himself when he is up here. Dad calls him Tarzan. And he strung up a zip-line cable from a tree by one corner of the woodshed to the barn. I don't know if Little Harold thinks he is Tarzan, but he spends hours skimming through the air and then dragging the pulley back to the woodshed for flight after flight.

I've never tried it. I know it will hold me, because Dad tried it the first day he put it up, but I've never tried it. Tonight, though, it seems like the way to go, so I reach out and grab it and lean forward. Then I'm rushing through the dark. I'm a shooting star.

. . .

The guy who shows us our family housing apartment has two things to say, and he says those two things over and over. One message is that we were very lucky that the place had opened up when we needed it and that we qualified to be first on the waiting list for that particular residential option. The other message is that he was sorry it isn't nicer, cleaner, bigger, or more conveniently located to the laundry, parking lot, or playground. I get the feeling he is used to hearing a lot of complaints.

We don't care.

I can clean a house. It won't take long.

He says we can paint if we want to, but only if we get paint from the manager's workshop. The approved colors are bone white, navaho white, antique white, and vanilla. He isn't sure which of those colors are on the walls already. The difference between bones and vanilla is pretty subtle, I guess. We can get paint chips for comparison at the manager's workshop. He has to emphasize that we are only permitted to use the approved colors. He looks at us and taps the wall for emphasis. Antique-vanilla-boneblank it is. So much for my evil plan to paint everything truck-stop-bathroom green or eggplant-milk.

After he makes sure that the kitchen faucet really drips and it isn't just not-quite-turned-off, he says goodbye and leaves us to explore our new habitat.

“Cable!” yells Little Harold, “We have cable.” He picks up the black wire and stares into the widget on the end like he can already see the wonders of KartoonLand.

“Don't get excited,” I say, “It doesn't work if you don't pay the company.”

“Don't get excited,” says Mom, “There are people living below us and on both sides. It's not like at home. Take your boots off and stop jumping around. But we
do
get cable, just basic cable, just like we get water and garbage pickup. We only have to pay for power and phone.”

There are two bedrooms. Mom gets the small one and Little Harold gets the even smaller one. I will sleep in the living-dining-kitchen area. I'm OK with that. I have the entry closet as my own space, and I can sleep on a couch after everyone else has gone to bed. After we get a couch. It's a plan.

The oven is unbelievably cruddy. The tub seal needs to be replaced. The closet bolts on the toilet are loose so the whole thing rocks when you sit down. We are supposed to have the manager schedule repairs. That's what the guy said when he was fiddling with the leaky faucet. It will be faster if we just fix things ourselves. We will be outlaw toilet-bolt tighteners, even if we abide by the painting rules. It's just the way we are. At least, I think that's the way we are.

The three of us sit on the floor waiting for Dad. He is bringing our stuff in the truck so we can get all moved in today. The first truckload is the essentials, the basics. We thought we would look around and see what else we needed before we gathered stuff for a second load. Now, after seeing the apartment, it is pretty clear that one load of stuff will max this place out.

After Dad arrives, we wrestle the mattresses and bed frames in, we put the cardboard boxes full of kitchen stuff on the counter, we bring in the dresser drawers. Little Harold dumps a big box of his prized possessions on the floor of his room to mark his territory and make himself at home. Then Dad says he needs to be going. He says he has to get back to build the fire again so the pipes don't freeze.

Then he kisses my mom on her eyelids and goes.

Like I said, some great romance.

. . .

“Who wants pizza?” says Mom, “We can get one delivered.”

“Delivered!” The neighbors are going to hate us. Little Harold is not used to being quiet.

“That's a yes?” says Mom. She is enjoying his happiness so much she doesn't even tell him not to yell. It's a bigger deal than it seems, that pizza. When you live in the back of beyond, delivery pizza is an alien and desirable custom. Little Harold is ecstatic. He is happy in his new home.

. . .

There are some other, minor, details I have to work out.

For one thing, I have to decide if I want to keep attending the same school. Mrs. Bishop says she can work it out if I want that, but our new address is really in the other high school's boundaries. The curriculum options are virtually the same, the schools have the same academic rating, and they even serve the same lunches. So the question is really if I wanted to start over socially.

I feel like I am going to be starting over socially no matter what. I'm going to be starting over socially for the rest of my life.

And I want to actually finish the Freak Observer thing for Mr. Banacek. All he wants is a brief definition in a couple of sentences. I don't need any extra credit. It's unfinished business. That's all.

Loa Lindgren

Physics per. 1

Extra credit/makeup assignment

 

The Freak Observer (Boltzmann Brain)

The Freak Observer is a conscious entity that pops into existence in its own universe. It is hypothesized to exist because an infinite number of universes have been hypothesized to exist. Given so much infinity, it is probable that something like a naked brain floating in space just spontaneously happens.

Ludwig Boltzmann was a physicist who died in 1906. He is most famous for his formula about entropy. He lived at a time when it was assumed that there was only one universe and it had existed forever. He thought that if we observed the universe long enough, we would see the equivalent of an egg unscrambling.

New observations have led to the conclusion that the universe had a beginning, the big bang. Because the universe is still expanding, time (for us) flows in only one direction. As long as the universe keeps expanding, we will not see an egg unscramble. But since our universe had a beginning, it suggests that there might be other events, other universes, or parts of universes that also begin and end. The Freak Observer is that sort of event.

(PS: Thank you, Mr. Banacek. I learned a lot from you.)

. . .

I didn't tell Mr. Banacek that I'd been using the problem of the Freak Observer like a bunch of jingling keys to distract my brain. I didn't tell him the Freak Observer is my space suit when I'm floating in the cold and the dark. I didn't tell him that I cry for the other Freak Observers. I didn't include that stuff, because that's emotion—and emotion doesn't belong in physics.

New school, new halls, new bodies in the halls, same classes, different teachers. My locker handle doesn't need to be jiggled to get it open.

There is no waiting for the school bus, no ride home. Instead, I just walk on sidewalks, past houses and record stores and coffee shops. The snow gets pounded into dirty slush by the traffic in the streets.

I still can't figure out what the deal is as far as French spelling is concerned, but my new French teacher told us that there was a nefarious plot in the Middle Ages to make written French difficult so the riffraff couldn't learn to read and write. It may be a lie, but it is a convincing lie.