We All Looked Up
Page 30
“With what?”
“With that disgusting cliché.” He put on Disney-big doe eyes and a cloying, high-pitched voice. “The people you care about never really die.”
“What was I supposed to say?”
“The truth. That you don’t believe that.”
“Fine. I don’t believe it.”
“Say it again.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Again.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Louder!”
Eliza finally raised her voice, as much because Chad was needling her as anything else, “I don’t believe that!”
“Tell me it’s bullshit!” he shouted back.
“It’s bullshit!”
“Tell me it’s a load of goddamn fucking bullshit!”
“It is!” Eliza shouted. “People die! They die and they’re gone forever!”
Somehow it felt totally natural that this last morbid statement made Chad laugh. “That’s better,” he said. “Eliza, why would you lie to me? I’m nobody. I’m just a tiny little character in the big book of your life. And you’re right. People do die. All of them. Bar none. So what does it even mean? I call someone crazy because not everybody is crazy. I call someone brilliant because not everybody is brilliant. But everybody dies. Squirrels die. Trees die. Skin cells die and your inner organs die and the person you were yesterday’s dead too. So what does it mean to die? Not much.”
“That’s a stupid argument,” Eliza said.
Chad gave her a little punch in the shoulder. “That’s the spirit!”
Eliza couldn’t help but smile, but as soon as she did, as soon as she let even an ounce of joy into her heart, she remembered Peter. “The boy who died,” she said. “I pretended to believe what he believed, at the very end.”
“What did he believe?”
Eliza blinked hard, struggled to keep her voice under control. “I don’t know. Crazy shit. Jesus. Forgiveness. Sacrifice and mercy and stuff. Love.”
“You don’t believe in any of that?”
“No.”
“You don’t believe in sacrifice or love?”
Eliza wasn’t sure what she believed anymore. Tears tickled her cheeks. Everything blurred as the world turned to liquid, and then she felt a warm, shifty weight settle on her lap.
Chad’s beagle.
“Give Ardor a hug,” Chad said.
“I thought his name was Sid.”
“I renamed him. I wanted to associate the asteroid with something loving.”
Eliza petted Ardor, who wagged his tail once or twice, in recognition of her efforts, than resumed his usual calm beagality. She remembered what Peter had said in the park, about wanting to be like a dog. A happy memory—hers to keep.
“Feel better?” Chad asked.
And the weird thing was, she did.
Anita and Andy were only a couple of songs into their set when it happened. Gabriel, the guy who’d brought them up to see Chad, pushed his way through the crowd.
“Eliza?” he whispered.
“Yeah?”
“There’s someone here to see you.” For a second, her heart leaped up into her throat, because she thought it might be Peter. But that was impossible.
“Who is it?”
“He’s over there.”
She looked to where Gabriel was pointing. A ghostly white spot, like a halo—her father’s pale, hairless head. He stood on his tiptoes, looking adorably old and out of his element. She ran into his arms.
“Hey, Lady Gaga.”
“You found me!”
“It wasn’t that hard. You’re a celebrity.”
“The apartment,” she said. “It burned down.”
“I wasn’t there when it happened.”
“Well, I know that now!” she said, laughing and wiping at her eyes.
After all the terrible stuff that had happened in the past few days, any good news seemed like some kind of miracle. They watched the rest of the show together, side by side. When it was over, Andy and Anita kissed (and thank God for that—they’d been circling each other from the very beginning).
“Loved the set,” her dad told Anita. “It was dope.”
Eliza shook her head. “Please don’t say that word.”
“Never?”
“Never ever.”
At some point during the performance, it had begun to rain. A typical Seattle drizzle, the drops like tiny puffs of cold air. Eliza realized she was holding hands with both her father and Andy, who in turn were holding hands with Anita and Chad. They were like Dorothy and her friends in The Wizard of Oz, skipping down the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City, Toto (a.k.a. Sid, a.k.a. Ardor) at their heels. Only in this case, the Emerald City was a 66.6 percent chance of ceasing to exist.
Chad led them out behind the hangar, to where an enormous crowd of stargazers sat on colored squares of blankets and cushions, a sparse but somehow unified checkerboard. They found a spot near the edge of the tarmac, where you could hear the faraway music only as a heartbeat thrum of bass. Above it floated the susurration of many thousands of people quietly talking, like wind on an empty beach. Chad had brought a couple of thick white quilts with him, and with one underneath them and another over their legs, it was almost cozy. Eliza leaned her head against her father’s shoulder. Ardor looked slightly different now—more twinkly than before. Time passed.
“I wish Mom were here,” she said.
“Me too. But we’ve got each other at least.”
“Yeah. We do.”
She considered telling him about Peter but decided against it. There would be time for grief later. If there were time for anything at all, there’d be time for that.
“Hey, Eliza,” Andy said. “Could I talk to you for a second?”
“Sure.”
He walked away from the group. Eliza stood up and followed him.
“What’s up?”
“Uh, sorry if this is weird, but I just wanted to say, well, I’m sorry.”
“About what?”
“I know I was the one who liked you, not really the other way around, but it still feels weird to suddenly be with Anita, after I was all in love with you.”
Eliza laughed. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
She worried her honesty lesson from Chad might have been a little too well learned, but Andy laughed along with her. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
“What am I missing?” Anita asked, joining them out where the pavement surrendered to the dirt and the weeds and the shadows.
“Andy’s being an idiot,” Eliza said.
“Sounds about right.” Anita looked upward, toward Ardor. “It’s such a little thing from down here.”
“I bet it feels the same way about us,” Andy said.
“Seen from the right perspective, pretty much everything looks tiny,” Eliza said.
They were silent for a moment, then Andy sang a bit of some half-familiar song: “‘Can’t believe how strange it is to be anything at all.’”
Eliza thought about all the things she’d hoped to do in her life, all the lives she’d wanted to live. She could see them now, jagged paths cut into the shadowy future, lit up in small bursts of light: her first day at college, her reconciliation with her crazy mom, her first real boyfriend (something between Andy and Peter, maybe, or maybe something totally new), her first gallery show in New York (Apocalypse Already: A Retrospective), her wedding (if she wanted a wedding), her first child (if she wanted to have children), her divorce (because would she, of all people, really get it right the first time?). Magazine profiles. A professorship. Lovers. Living in Europe. A dinner table full of well-dressed friends. An affair. The Mediterranean. Grandchildren. An ashram. Her own garden, somewhere in Europe with light the color of wheat. Illne
ss. Death.
Were Andy and Anita having the same sort of thoughts right now? Was everyone? And if they all managed to make it out of this alive, would the world be different when they woke up tomorrow? Would it be better?
Andy leaned over to kiss Anita’s cheek. Maybe they’d stay together for the rest of their lives. Maybe they’d break up in a week. Maybe they’d both be successful musicians. Maybe they’d become record producers, or sculptors, or plumbers. Who could say? And even if Peter had survived, that wouldn’t have guaranteed anything; he and Eliza might have turned out to be totally incompatible. Or maybe she would have ended up dying of leukemia a year from now. Whether Ardor landed or not, there was no way to know what would become of any of them. Eliza felt all her guilt and regret disintegrate in the face of this colossal knowledge. It turned out they’d been right here all along, standing in the darkness, appealing to the stars for some sign of what was to come, and never getting anything back but the shifting constellations of a swiftly spinning, precariously tilted planet. She let herself fall against Andy’s side and felt Anita’s arm reach around and come to rest on her hip. They were interlocked now, like the links of a chain.
“Red Rover, Red Rover, send Ardor right over,” Eliza said.
They laughed. The asteroid was a little bigger now, brighter, and still they went on laughing. Laughing in the face of what they couldn’t predict or change or control. Would it be fire and brimstone? Would it be Armageddon? Or would it be a second chance? Eliza held tight to her friends, laughing, and felt a pair of hands land soft as feathers on her shoulders, like the hands of a ghost, laughing and laughing as Ardor swept along its fated course, laughing and through that laughter, praying. Praying for forgiveness. Praying for grace. Praying for mercy.
A NOTE ON THE MUSIC
For a while, Eliza floated along with just the sound, until a few of the lyrics clarified in her conscious mind—something about the number of lovers someone would get in a lifetime. Eliza realized that Andy had written this song for her . . .
As a singer-songwriter and novelist, I’ve long dreamed of bringing my two passions together in one project. And as soon as I realized that some of the characters in We All Looked Up were going to be musicians, I knew I’d found my moment. We All Looked Up: The Album is my attempt to bring the songs of the book—and a few others written on the general themes of the book—to life. Visit my website for a free song download or to buy the whole album in digital or physical form. The record is also available at all major online retailers, and probably some minor ones too.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the record!
—Tommy
tommywallach.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First off, thanks to John Cusick, literary agent and fashion plate. You made me replace that terrible second half. Next up, Christian Trimmer, editor and humanitarian. You made me replace that only slightly less terrible second half all over again. Then there’s Lucy Cummins, who designed my cover, for which she deserves a medal made out of chocolate. General thanks to everyone at Simon & Schuster, for being warm and welcoming.
A shout-out to the hundreds of coffee shops that have allowed me to sit and write over the last twelve years and seven novels (“I had a tea the other day!” “You couldn’t pay.” “Oh yeah . . .”), including Kávé, where most of We All Looked Up was written.
Thanks to my many forgiving mentors, especially Seth Kurland, who gave me sage advice about plotting that I should have listened to sooner. Also to Thomas Ertman, for all the notes, and to Jeanine Rogel, for the wild horse.
Love to my family: Stephanie Wallach (mom), Bob Dedea (alternating father/brother figure and artistic comrade-in-arms), Stephen Terrell (the distant fatherly type), Doug Myers (father and IT expert), and Ryan Davis (brother).
Finally and foremost, to Tallie Maughan. First you taught me to be an artist, then you taught me to be a man. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photograph by Tallie Maughan
Tommy Wallach is a Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and novelist. His fiction and nonfiction works have appeared in McSweeney’s, Tin House, Wired, Salon, and other magazines, and he is the recipient of a MacDowell Colony Fellowship. As a musician, he has put out an EP with Decca Records and performed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. We All Looked Up is his debut novel. Read, hear, and stalk him at TommyWallach.com.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2015 by Tommy Wallach
Jacket design by Lucy Ruth Cummins
Jacket photograph copyright © 2015 by Meredith Jenks
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wallach, Tommy.
We all looked up / Tommy Wallach. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: The lives of four high school seniors intersect weeks before a meteor is set to pass through Earth’s orbit, with a 66.6% chance of striking and destroying all life on the planet.
ISBN 978-1-4814-1877-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4814-1879-9 (eBook)
[1. Meteors—Fiction. 2. Self-realization—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction.
4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Science fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W158855We 2015
[Fic]—dc 3
2014004565
Contents
* * *
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One
Peter
Eliza
Andy
Anita
Part Two
Eliza
Anita
Peter
Andy
Part Three
Peter
Andy
Eliza
Anita
Part Four
Andy
Peter
Anita
Eliza
Part Five
Anita
Eliza
Andy
Peter
Part Six
Eliza
Peter
Andy
Anita
Part Seven
Eliza
Andy
Anita
Peter
Part Eight
&
nbsp; Andy
Eliza
Anita
Peter
Part Nine
Andy
Anita
Eliza
Peter
Part Ten
Andy
Anita
Eliza
A Note on the Music
Acknowledgments
About the Author