Swansong (42 page)

“You know that day you took me to Tillamook Bay?”  I dip my ankles in the ocean.  The water is sun-kissed, surprisingly warm.  My socks, my shoes, are soaked.

Ash smiles fleetingly.  Both sides of his mouth smile this time.  The rumination in his eyes remains the same.

“Thank you,” I say.  “For that.  That’s how I knew I could go home again.”

We come from the ocean.  It’s in our cells.  It’s in our veins.  We long to return to the ocean.  It’s as primal as our pulse, every breath we take, every neuron firing in our brains.  It’s coded in our DNA.

I am home now.

Ash puts his hand on my head.  It isn’t as skeletal as it used to be.

My eyes cloud with gray tears.  I blink them away.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him.  “I’m sorry I killed you.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

“I don’t—I wanted to tell your family—write to them, or…”

“They wouldn’t have cared.”

The horizon is gray behind the storybook clouds.  Maybe silver is the better word.  It’s a mirror without reflection.  It really does look concave.

“I’m sorry,” I repeat.

“Don’t be,” Ash says.  “You let me be your brother.”

He is my brother.

I’m not leaving here without him.  I’m taking him with me.

* * * * *

“Shit,” Kory mutters, hurrying in from the balcony.

“Don’t curse,” Annwn says, distracted.  She cleans my paintbrushes with vinegar and a palette knife.  I didn’t ask her to.  I thank her anyway.

“What’s wrong?” I ask Kory.

“Cop cars.  Usually this neighborhood’s a ghost town.  It can’t be a coincidence…”

My blood ices over.  “Are they—have they parked outside?”  I don’t hear sirens.  I don’t see flashing lights.

“No,” Kory says, suddenly dispassionate.  “They’re just driving intermittently down the street.  All the same, we should probably leave.”

Azel looks at me.  I feel it rather than see it.  It’s dark in here, a single kerosene lamp turned on.

I turn off the lamp.

“What should we do?” Azel asks.

“We don’t have to leave,” I say.

I’ve already found a way out.

I touch the badger brush to the still-wet paint canvas.  I can’t see what I’m doing.  I don’t have to.  That’s okay.

I’m almost done.

* * * * *

Whenever you see an artist’s rendition of the Garden of Eden, they go with the obvious: an actual garden.  They toss trees and flowers and frolicking animals on top of a shining meadow and—if you’re lucky—Adam and Eve are naked.

That’s boring.  Eden is supposed to be a paradise.  Why would paradise look like any run-of-the-mill place you can visit on Earth?  Besides the naked people, anyway.  Although I’m sure there are resorts for that kind of thing.

My Garden is a nebula; because if you ask me, Earth isn’t even a fraction as breathtaking as the cosmos outside it.  Scattered asteroid infinitesimals serve as my walkway; I step across them and they wobble underfoot.  Stardust rains around me in a delicate shower of jade green and aqueous gold.  Through windows of stardust I can see the dark canvas of ethereal space, full and vivid in its emptiness, the distant galaxies like stars themselves.  I tilt my head back and I can see the ghost of a star hovering high above, still throwing off light, a cool and simmering light.

Rosa das rosas, e fror das frores.

“Nebulae eventually become stars again,” Azel says.

He’s with me.  I’m not surprised.  He told me he would come with me.  He never says anything unless he means it.

“Really?” I ask.  A smile lights my face.  I can feel it.  I can almost see it in his eyes, his eyes the color of stardust.

“My mom told me years ago.”  Azel’s wearing white salwar, his keffiyeh untied around his neck.  Don’t tell him, though—it was supposed to be Sinbad.  “Clouds of cosmic dust merge together to become stars.  At the hearts of those stars, atoms shred themselves to pieces.  Those atoms hurtle off into space to become galaxies and planets and us.  Without atoms, the stars die.”  Jude once told me most of the stars in the sky are dead already.  “But the dust left behind by the dead stars merges together.  And then…  See how it never ends?”

No beginning.  No end.  I can see how it might be the same for us.

“Quantum suicide,” I murmur, my smile faint, but constant.

“What did you say?”

“You know how you told me about Schrodinger’s Cat?  And superposition?”

Azel nods slowly, vaguely.

“I went to the library afterward.  I wanted to learn more.”  The thought that we’re multitasking—that reality branches every time an event has more than one possible outcome—I want—  “One of Schrodinger’s students took the experiment to the next level.  Instead of a cat, what if the test subject were a human?”

“I don’t understand…”

“Let’s say you have a revolver.  Let’s say you put one bullet in the cylinder.  You point the gun at your head.  You spin the cylinder and pull the trigger.  There are two ways this could go.  Either the chamber is empty, and you walk away unscathed; or the chamber has a bullet in it, and you blow your brains out.”

Azel winces.  “Russian Roulette?”

“Yeah.  So what happens?”

“Because all particles function as waves…  I suppose reality would fork.  You’d survive in one reality and die in the other.”

“But what if you try again?”

“What do you mean?”

“In the reality where you survived.  What if you try again to kill yourself?”

“Then reality branches once more.  And…”

“And on and on.”  I smile.  “Quantum suicide.  Quantum immortality.”

Azel’s eyes round themselves out.  “I see.”

I see.  His eyes are so beautiful.  Wagon wheel spokes in one eye.  A tangled forest in the other.  No two eyes on the planet are the same.  Two hundred and sixteen billion eyes, and none of them look like Azel’s.  Only his.  Only him.

Skin grafts on my hand, bumpy and raw.  Red scar on my hand.  White scar on his.

I take his hand and our scars meet.  His fingers wrap around my fingers.

I’m going to find Adam.  I’m going to make sure he keeps dreaming.

We step across the asteroids.  White waters spring from the rocks, rushing, snaking.  Where there’s water, there’s life.  All life comes from the stars.

The farther we travel through the nebula, the larger the asteroids become.  Soon we’re climbing across a mossy asteroid the size of a hill.  At the top of the hill I stop; I look around.  If this nebula has a center, I can’t find it.  But then that’s silly.  The universe has no center—unless it’s you.

Oh.

Azel sits down.  I sit with him.  Brown curls curtain his sharp prestezza face.  They can’t hide the vibrance of his green eyes.

At the foot of the hill are tangled tree roots, rising from the moss, drinking from white waters.  They stitch themselves upward into smooth brown bark.  A tree grows slowly in front of my eyes.

“I never understood it,” Azel says.  “Why God banished Adam from the Garden.”

“For eating from the Tree, right?”  It does sound silly.  If you don’t want people picking fruit off your trees, don’t plant them in the first place.  If I share my lunch with a friend, I’m not going to get mad at him when he eats it.

“I wonder whether we’ve gotten it wrong over the years,” Azel says.  “Maybe God didn’t cast Adam out of the Garden.  Maybe Adam strayed from God willingly.”

“How do you figure?”

“When Adam left the Garden, that was when he coupled with Eve.”

“Adam left God so he could have kids?”

“Adam is a metaphor.  Remember?”

Rushdiyya
.  One Mind.  Collective Unconscious.  Adam split himself one hundred and eight billion ways.  One hundred and eight billion different universes.

It was lonely.  It was lonely when we were only Adam.

Fat, rosy apples bloom on the leafless tree.  I’ve never found apples so appetizing before.

Where is Adam?  I need to see him.  I need to give him mass.  If I’m going to keep this universe alive—its various realities, its beautiful dreams—if I’m going to take Judas with me—

“Oh,” I realize.  “Oh, no.”

Azel looks up, attentive.  “What is it?”

“This is the wrong place.”  Because Adam left the Garden of Eden.  Adam wouldn’t be here.  Adam would be—

“The place where Adam and his progeny were banished to.  It was a valley,” Azel explains, “far to the east.”

A valley.  Where am I going to find a valley?  “What valley?”

“Azel.”

I look at Azel.

” ‘And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azel.’ “

Azel looks embarrassed.  Here comes the red again, suffusing his swarthy complexion.

So this is Adam.  So this is one hundred and eight billion souls.  One hundred and eight billion universes inside two hundred and sixteen billion eyes.

I have never seen eyes like his before, kinder than the cosmos, but derivative of their prowess.  I have never seen so much interstellar dust in one iris.  I have never seen so many wagon spokes in one eye.  We are all spokes on a wagon wheel.  We don’t intersect; but we derive from the same source.

The whole entire universe is in his eyes.

I see myself reflected in his eyes.

“Don’t wake up,” I beg him.

He takes me into his arms.  It feels like Heaven and Earth.  It feels like everything between.  It is Everything.  He is Everything.  He is warmth and strong arms, a soft embrace, a tight embrace; sharp chin on my crown; soft curls tickling my cheeks, soft throat against my forehead.  He is the pinnacle of everything I’ve ever known and a few things I’ve yet to learn.  He is everything I love about this world and want to take with me when I leave it.  He is the kind stranger in the keffiyeh who brought my dropped doll back to me when I was nine years old.

He is the universe, and I don’t want him to die.  I don’t want him to leave me.  I don’t want him to wake up.

I put my arms around his neck.  I kiss him.  His arms encircle my waist in a mandala.  He descends with me when I pull us to the ground, when I pull him between my knees.  If his face is hot with embarrassment, I pretend I don’t notice.  In truth, I’m too busy being endeared.  I’m too busy running my fingers through his hair, brushing away the green-and-gold stardust that falls in his curls.

Sorry, Dad.  I’m just another one of those kids who never listen to their parents.

My head hurts.  It’s the good kind of pain.  One trillion protons colliding.

It’s impossible to view anything outside your head.  The whole entire universe takes place in your head.

Isn’t it ridiculous?  Isn’t it beautiful?

You are at the center of the universe.

And there’s never going to be another you.

18

Quantum Suicide

I’m alone when I wake up in the ice-cold factory.  A thin carpet of snow has accumulated by the window, the light leaking in a blinding, fierce white.  A City High poster stares back at me from the peeling wood wall, the band members’ profiles shadowy and grave.

I pull my jackets tight around my body.  I wrap one of Jocelyn’s blankets around my shoulders.

A startling clarity settles on my shoulders.  I’m alone.  I don’t know how I got here.  I don’t know how much time has passed.  What day is it?  It’s still December, isn’t it?  It won’t be December for long.  It’s the end of the year.

The end of the year.  I got to see the end of the year.

Maybe I’ll go home right now and eat apple pie with Dad.  Maybe Mom will scream at him when he wrecks the tablecloth.

I like that.  That’s what I’ll do.

“Azel?”

My voice echoes across concrete and snow.  It sounds raspy, as if I haven’t used it in months.  That can’t be.  He can’t be gone.  I want to live.  Nobody really wants to die.

Did I die?  The accident.  The accident that never happened.  Maybe I didn’t survive it.  Maybe I survived it but I never woke up.  Maybe I…

I don’t care.  I’m going home.  I’ve decided.  I’m going home and I’m taking Judas with me.

There’s blood in my hair.

In half a stupor, I stand from the floor.  I tread out onto the balcony.  The white sunlight is overpowering.  The terrace is surprisingly dry.  I guess the air wasn’t cold enough for a snow accumulation.  That’s news to me.  The wind chaps my face.  The icy railing burns my hands when I place my palms on the metal.

My left hand is dipped in an ugly red burn.  Raw skin grafts climb up my numb wrist.

Oh.

He didn’t leave me after all.

I smile to see it.  My eyes are hot and cold.  Cold from the wind.  Hot from unshed tears.

There’s no reason to cry anymore.  I won’t do it.

“Wendy.”

Time’s up.

I got to see the end of the year.

Marguerite Modesto steps out onto the balcony.  Bright purple bangs fall in front of her eyes.  That’s unprofessional, isn’t it?  UNICOR hires inmates.  Right.  I guess they don’t care.

She grins at me, quick, sharklike.

She’s going to kill me.

Azel.  What should I do?  I think I’m trapped this time.  Is that so?  Isn’t there anywhere left to escape to?

I shouldn’t think of it that way.  There’s always a way out.  There’s always a way home.  Look.  I can see Cape Meares from here, a beautiful sliver of winter gray water shivering under a bleak white sky.  Somewhere off the Cape is Shell Island, where the elephant seals live, and Tillamook Bay, where I’ve lived all my life.

Home.  You can always go home again.  I’m taking Azel to Cape Meares this summer.

I could take him now.

Someone once told me it only takes one second to fall four stories.  I’m standing on the terrace off the nineteenth floor right now.  If I fall from here, it’ll take me five seconds to hit the ground.

Five seconds can feel like an eternity under the right circumstances.

“What are you doing?” Modesto says.  I can’t recognize the tone of her voice.  She draws closer to me.  I back against the railing.

I swing my leg over the side.

Did you know there are more protons in the human body than there are stars in the universe?  And there are five hundred billion galaxies in this universe.  Each galaxy houses at least four hundred billion stars.  That’s not counting the stars that have already died to give us life.

Each of us alone is bigger than this universe.  And there are seven billion of us walking the planet at the same time.

That’s terrifying.

That’s beautiful.

I love this universe.  It made me; and I made it.  I can’t say for sure which of us is the Potter and which of us is the Pot.  I don’t think it matters.  I don’t think there’s a difference.  I think I understand Lady Lazarus now.  That poem horrified me when I first heard it.  Why did she try to take her life if she knew she was only going to resurrect?  Why wouldn’t the people who loved her let her die?  The poem wasn’t about her dying.  It was about her coming back.

Nobody really wants to die.  All anybody ever wants is a way out.

I swing my other leg over the side of the railing.  I stand on the precarious concrete edge.

Modesto shouts my name.  Her voice melds into background nuisance.  I push it to the back of my mind.  The city below me has peeled itself away.  Where the ground ought to be, I see the supervoid of space.  Where the sidewalk ought to be, I see stars flaring and dying and flaring again, birthing countless universes.  I get to choose which one I want.  I get to choose, because each of us has a different reality behind our eyes.  I get to choose, because all of reality takes place inside your head.

My head hurts.  It’s the good kind of pain.  One trillion protons colliding.

A silver-gilt charm bracelet jingles around my wrist.  A badger brush sits tucked behind my ear.

I swan-dive off the building, into the cosmic sea.  It welcomes me home.

It’s my birthday, and my mother has burned the cake.