Light Years

by Emily Ziff Griffin

  “I used to wish that too. But then I might have tried to get clean at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. I might have failed and never tried again. I’m glad for every shitty moment of my life because all of that has allowed me to be here to live another day. That’s not promised to any of us.” I dig my nail in deeper, then look at the mark it’s left behind. “But you’re right,” he continues. “It is my fault she’s like that. That she became that way. And that breaks my fucking heart. Every day.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m being an asshole.”

  “You’re being honest about how you feel. And you’re being an asshole.” His eyes crinkle in a smile. “As for your mom, she’s angry at me, not you. Don’t forget that.”

  “So what do we do? About the Fellowship?”

  “I don’t know. But we’ll figure it out.”

  I stare out the window.

  “And know that I’m on your side,” he says.

  It’s nearly dusk when we arrive home. The streets are eerie and quiet and I can’t get inside fast enough.

  Ben comes tumbling down the stairs. “Dude, you okay?”

  “Janine collapsed,” I tell him. “They took us to the hospital.”

  “Shit. Is she all right?”

  “No. She’s not.” I start climbing the stairs.

  “Are you all right?”

  I turn and look back at him. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

  “Ben,” my dad barks. “You need gloves and a mask.”

  “I’ve decided I’m immune.”

  “This isn’t a joke,” he says.

  “I know, but—”

  “Shut up, Ben!” I freeze. That sharp tone. That rush to anger. That was him all the time before he got sober. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to snap. I’m just—I want to make sure you’re both safe.”

  “Okay, fine,” Ben mumbles. “I’ll find something in the basement.” He turns back to me. “What do you mean you don’t know if you’re all right?”

  “I mean I think my best friend might be dead and so I don’t know if I’m actually okay or what I am.” I turn and continue up to my room.

  I shut the door behind me and don’t even bother to turn on the lights. I look down at my clothes. I rip them off and stuff them into an old backpack. I zip it tight and shove it into the closet.

  I get into a hot shower. I concentrate on the act of getting clean. The soap that smells of jasmine. The shampoo that I’ve been using since sixth grade. I lean on what’s familiar and push aside what isn’t.

  I get out, get dry, and climb into bed with my phone. A missed call from my mom. I open the e-mail from Joe. I click Reply and stare at the blank screen. Thank you so much, I write. I’m excited by this honor. I add a smiley face, then delete it. Send.

  A reply appears instantly. From Bell. Luisa, hello. As soon as this little global catastrophe is behind us, we’ll get to work. Any questions? Yours, TS. Roses raining down. Holy shit.

  Reply: Just one. I hesitate. Why did you choose me?

  A long pause. Regret sweeps over me with a clicking sound.

  If you are searching for flattery, don’t. I will not spend my time validating your existence. I will spend my time lighting the path to your highest potential. I chose you because I expect our work will serve each other’s goals.

  I tap my foot against the bed to quiet the hissing that rises with a lump in my throat. Understood, I reply. I wait, but nothing else comes.

  I Google him. Over sixteen million hits. If I’m honest, it’s not the first or second or third time I’ve looked him up. I click on Images. Almost every picture is him from the chest up, midspeech. In some he looks cold and diabolical, in others charming, like some kind of frat boy jeans model. Always, though, those blue eyes with their piercing gaze.

  There’s only one person I want to talk to. Only one person who will say, “Who gives a shit about your mom? This is about you.” Only one person who will talk me out of worrying and tell me to shut the EF up and enjoy it.

  I dial Janine. Please pick up, please, please. Four rings and her voice mail. I click off. I look at my last text to her. I love u. I say the words out loud and shut my screen to black.

  That night I dream Janine and I are standing in front of a long, white tent. She’s dressed in a white satin suit and her hair is tied back in a braid. She looks vibrant and gorgeous, like a bride. Her skin is so luminous I can practically see through it.

  Everyone from school is lined up next to us. I’m holding a list of their names. George and Des from swim team step forward. Janine nods and I send them inside. Same with Annalise, Ben, hot Alex, that kid Francis. Then Rose Gerson and Madison Dewy, the girls from Missy’s party, step up. Janine shakes her head. I send them off the other way, teetering in their Jimmy Choos toward a dark, expanding void.

  “Is this your wedding?” I ask Janine as Clara Adams appears.

  “I’ve never been in love,” she answers.

  Clara coughs delicately into a handkerchief, leaving a bloodstain that matches her apple-red sweater.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. Her eyes are streaked with tears and iridescent makeup. I try to speak and suddenly I’m plummeting through darkness without anything to stop me.

  I wake up with a jolt and I know: Janine’s gone.

  That invisible weight again pressing on my chest as I try to stand. I go downstairs. I find my dad in front of the TV in yesterday’s clothes.

  Over forty thousand dead.

  Still, no one has found the infectious agent at the root. Quarantines and military hospitals are expanding to the outskirts of the major cities affected—New York, Boston, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Detroit, Austin, Columbus, Denver, and more. They’re calling them “death camps.”

  The din of the television news anchors makes me gag with a sour taste. The living room crackles with popping sounds and flashing colors. This sensory chaos is grief.

  “Not good, not good,” my dad mutters to himself.

  I grasp the back of the couch with both hands. “Hey,” I say.

  He looks up. His eyes are wild. “Hey. Lu.”

  “Have you slept?” I ask him.

  “I fell asleep down here for a while. I tried Carol again. No answer.”

  I slump down at the kitchen table. “It doesn’t matter,” I tell him. I already know: Janine is dead. I don’t need to hear it from her mother. I lean forward and press my cheek against the wood. My eyes trace the grooves of the grain. “I wish I could go for a swim,” I say.

  “You are not to leave, do you understand?” That sharp tone again.

  “Okay,” I mutter. My dad just stares at me. “I said okay.”

  “I keep thinking about what Carol and Tom are going through. If anything were to happen to you, I just—”

  “I know,” I interrupt. “But I’m fine. I am.”

  “Well.” He softens. “You’re not exactly fine.” He’s looking at me in that way, like he sees into my heart. “There’s no way to prepare for this. I wish I could take away the pain and the fear.” Wind rushing through trees. “I also know this will be one of the things that defines your entire life in ways you can’t imagine.”

  If I don’t die too.

  “There has to be something we can do,” I say. “There has to be a solution. Isn’t there always a solution to every problem?”

  “I guess. Yes. But solutions don’t always look like we think they should. Often there’s more than one potential answer. And one answer may open up other questions, or problems. Things aren’t always simple.”

  “I just want to fix it,” I say. “The whole thing.”

  “Me too.”

  “So what do we do? How do we fix it?”

  “Well. I play the piano.”

  “I’m serious, Dad.”

  “So am I. That’s my gift. That’s what I have to offer. So I make music. Even if no one hears it but me. It changes things, I think. On some level.”r />
  “I don’t think my gifts change anything,” I say.

  “I would say your gifts are still revealing themselves. One of them is that you care. That matters. That helps, even if you can’t see how.”

  Right now I don’t want to care. I just want to stop the world in its tracks and spin it in reverse.

  I point my attention at the television, to the sound of the president’s voice.

  “Dr. Timmons at the CDC has just given me a briefing, as has General McCall. We’re asking for everyone’s cooperation while we get this situation under control,” she says, speaking from an underground bunker. “Regarding the infectious agent and whether it’s something we’ve seen before, or might be an act of chemical warfare, we are investigating all possibilities. We are working hard to contain the spread swiftly. That is our best and most immediate means of minimizing the loss of life.”

  The TV runs a banner underneath the president: ARNS DEATH TOLL CLIMBS RAPIDLY.

  “Real swift,” I say.

  “We are seeing cases emerge in other countries and are working with our allies to share information and resources. Additional updates will be provided as more details become available. In the meantime, stay calm. Stay strong. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.”

  The screen switches to a news anchor standing in a studio.

  “That was President Cartwright speaking from an undisclosed secure location. Now we are taking a deeper look back at what has become known as the ‘Hugo video.’ ” The anchor steps aside and a screen comes into view. Hugo’s plaintive face is frozen in the center.

  I shiver in a wave of red. “Have you seen this?” I ask.

  “It’s unbearable,” my dad replies, transfixed as the video begins to play. I go into the kitchen.

  My watch buzzes. My mom: Please let me know you’re OK.

  Fuck it. I tap Call.

  “Hello,” she answers.

  “Hey, it’s me. I’m calling you back.” I put on the kettle.

  “I’ve been worried,” she says.

  “I’m fine. We’re all fine. It’s all a little crazy, obviously.”

  “It’s only going to get worse,” she says flatly.

  I watch the flame on the stove. “Why do you always assume the worst?”

  “I don’t always do anything. But they don’t know what this thing is. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, trust me.” I bring my hands close to the flame. “I want you to take this seriously. If you stay in the house, you should be okay. But lock the doors. Keep the lights off. Don’t go out.”

  What if it’s already too late?

  “Janine got sick,” I tell her. “She went to the hospital.”

  Silence.

  “Hello? Are you there?”

  “That’s terrible,” she says.

  “It’s not her fault,” I say.

  “No. I didn’t say it was.”

  My eyes are trained on that flame like it might solve the mystery of the whole universe. The heat starts to be too much. I pull my hands away.

  “Do you have enough food?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says. “You don’t need to worry about me. I’ll check on you tomorrow. I have to get to the lab now.”

  “You’re going out?”

  “I have to work. I have to try and help.”

  “Oh,” I say. The kettle whistles.

  “I’m sorry about Janine,” she says.

  “Me too.” I pause. “Love you.” But she’s already hung up.

  I make a cup of tea and go back into the living room.

  My father looks up at me. He’s weeping. “That video is just—it’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s—how could they put that on the air? The boy’s eyes—” He curls up on the couch and trails off into sobs.

  The news drones on about the quarantines. People are dying covered in their own piss and shit because the doctors and nurses can’t tend to them quickly enough.

  I have to get upstairs, away from him, away from the TV.

  I retreat to a chair in my room. Each sip of tea spreads warmth across my chest. Each sip brings me closer to normal.

  I put on a recording of my dad playing the piano. The first quiet notes move into languid, cascading trills. I close my eyes and listen. It’s uplifting, bright. Silver and orange. The pace builds and the colors bombard me. I recall how that Italian physicist described a wave as a disturbance, how he said a wave is not a thing; it’s a change within a thing. I picture a beach. I conjure the feeling of sand under my feet. I bury my toes in it, like the roots of a tree.

  Okay, I think. Let them come. One swell after another. I hold my breath. Apricot and coral, amber and tangerine, all mixing with the piano’s rising and falling. I reach toward the colors, but there is nothing to touch. Just like we can’t hold words, only the objects they point to, I can’t grasp the waves with my hands.

  I could plot them on a graph or describe them with mathematics—certain colors of light vibrate at certain frequencies—but they aren’t quite real. They exist only inside my own experience. A fabrication of my mind. And they belong only to me.

  The piece ends and I open my eyes. I feel unusually calm. I sit in the stillness and let out a long, slow breath.

  Then I notice a new x.chat message glowing on my screen. A shiver when I see the sender’s name: Theodore_Nam.

  The thought that roots and wends its way around the tree of life

  Will choke the throat of mortal men and thrust them into strife.

  We watch the poison turn them blue then tear their minds apart

  And spread itself like the dying star of your exploding heart.

  What the hell is that supposed to mean? I copy and paste the text into Google. Nothing comes up.

  Thank you? I reply.

  You have to at least try, Nam writes.

  I read through the message again. Then again. My eyes dart to a shelf of books along the wall. I scan the color of each spine without registering the titles.

  I stop. I close my eyes and listen to the silence in my room. I look back at the screen and three words suddenly leap out: Throat. Poison. Blue. There’s a Hindu myth about gods and demons churning the ocean to make the nectar of eternal life. But one of the things that come from their churning is a poison called halahala. The god Shiva drinks the poison. It’s so powerful it begins killing everyone. Shiva’s wife grabs his throat to prevent him from swallowing it and destroying the universe, which was said to reside in his belly. The poison turns his throat blue and ultimately he is saved.

  Halahala, I write.

  Was that so hard? Nam writes.

  What do you want? I demand.

  To chat, he replies.

  About?

  Are you afraid of ARNS?

  I’m afraid of dying, yes, I answer.

  What’s the antidote to fear?

  I stare at the screen. Knowledge, I write.

  Correct.

  And? What knowledge do you have? I wait for more, for something, anything. But Nam dissolves the chat and logs off. I Google Theodore Nam. The Billings Gazette in Montana says he was a fisherman who committed suicide on his 100th birthday. He left a note saying his wife and all his friends were dead. He couldn’t stand to be alone anymore.

  I go down to Ben’s room. My whole body is vibrating with excitement.

  He’s jumping rope, a pair of weights at his feet. His breath is heavy. His wiry body glistens with sweat. He’s strong and fit and in this moment I am certain he can protect me from anything. He glances at me without breaking his rhythm, without a word. His eyes are raw and red. His whole face is drooping like an old man’s.

  “What’s up?” he mutters.

  “You tell me.”

  The rope whips against the air. “Annalise is dead.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “Oh my God.” I sit down on the floor, my gut tight. “How do you know?”

  “People just started texting me. Des, George. Everyone.” He
lets the rope drop. His breath slows and he sits on his bed. “I just can’t believe it, you know? I mean, I don’t believe it. I can’t get it to sink in,” he says.

  “I know. Same with Janine. I can’t actually fathom it. Like, what does it even mean? She’s gone? Gone where?”

  “I can’t help feeling like, of all the people, of all the douchebag assholes we know, why her? Annalise was a good person; she cared about people. She was so special.”

  A cloud of peppermint drifts toward me. “She was,” I agree. “She was great.”

  Teardrops land in quick succession on Ben’s leg. He smothers them with his palm. “I’m sorry about Janine,” he says. He wipes his cheeks on his shirt.

  “Yeah.”

  We sit in the quiet. I watch the sunlight pouring through his window hitting particles of dust that float in the air. They look like the gold flecks inside a snow globe, like slow-motion glitter rain.

  “Are you worried?” I ask softly. “Like, did you guys hook up the other night?”

  He shakes his head. “She wanted to, but she was wasted, so I put her in a car and sent her home. Nothing happened.”

  I exhale.

  When our mother moved out, Ben sat at the foot of my bed night after night. He would hold my feet and I would cry. He would promise me it would be okay.

  I move next to him. I hold him steady as his body shakes like the earth releasing energy along a fault—big, messy, a relief.

  He leans his head against mine and settles. “Let’s talk in the morning?” he says quietly. “I just want to be alone now.” I nod even though I want to sit on his bed and hold his feet until dawn. I bury a kiss in the mess of dark curls above his ear and go back to my room.

  In physics, there’s a law that states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant over time—energy is neither created nor destroyed, but merely converted from one form to another. I try to imagine all the people who died before I was ever born, all the lives that had been so important to the people living them, gone, and in most cases, forgotten.