How to Save the Universe in Ten Easy Steps

by Allison Rushby

  Molly’s expression changes immediately. She looks horrified.

  ‘So, it is true,’ I continue, watching her as her eyes dart around, unsure where to look or what to say. Again, not something I’ve seen from Molly much.

  ‘Well, I … it’s just that … no one but me knew … and the thing is it’s so …’ she stammers, caught out.

  ‘Boring for you …’ I finish her sentence. ‘So you decided to dress us all up. Like teddy bears. And make us speak like chipmunks.’

  Well, to be fair, that was only your teacher, Hale points out.

  Oh, well, then. That’s all right. Really, I don’t know what Molly’s going on about. This Hale guy – he seems … nice. Like, kind of weird and old-fashioned, with his perfectly parted hair and strange way of saying things, but nice enough. Harmless enough.

  And anyway, if he was really bad, he’d be dressed in black and have a cape, right?

  After another second or two of looking unsure, Molly cracks. ‘Why are you here after all this time?’

  ‘I thought you might need some help. Now that the end of the universe is nigh,’ Hale answers evenly.

  Molly’s eyes dart over to me, then back to Hale again. ‘I don’t need your help. We don’t need your help.’

  ‘Don’t you? Is that what you think, Cooper?’

  I stare at both of them. Personally, I think I need all the help I can get. ‘Um …’

  Now Molly takes two steps towards Hale, grabs him by one elbow and pulls him towards her. She then proceeds to say nothing, but I guess she’s saying a whole lot in her head, by the way she’s staring intently at him. As for me, I just stand back and try to work out what’s going on here. Which, frankly, seems to be my usual position these days.

  ‘Hey, um, so what’s happening?’ We’re all so engrossed in our little party that we don’t notice Ethan’s approach. He looks a bit wary and I don’t blame him. I suppose it’s pretty obvious something’s up. Especially with Molly now only centimetres from Hale’s face and practically frothing at the mouth.

  ‘Er, guys …’ I say and, instantly, Molly realises what she’s doing and pulls back. She smoothes her hair with one hand.

  ‘Ethan,’ her eyes flick over him. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Lovely to meet you.’ Hale sticks his hand out.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ Ethan shakes it, looking slightly confused at the formality.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I repeat Ethan’s question. ‘Not much.’ I nod towards the second lunchbox he has tucked under one arm. ‘You finally found it, hey?’

  ‘Finally!’ he answers in a mock huff. ‘I believe someone may have been hiding it. But I’ll find out who it is. Oh, don’t you worry, I’ll find out who it is …’ he says in his best detective-style voice, his eyes narrowing as he scans the playground (there are only a couple of other quite innocent-looking kids hanging about).

  ‘Yes, of course you will,’ I pat him on the back. Really we all know he’s just left it somewhere. ‘Come on, then. We’ll leave these two to, um … get better acquainted,’ I say, walking off.

  Ethan follows me. ‘What was all that about?’ he asks out of the side of his mouth (detective-style) when we’re a good distance away.

  I don’t turn around as I answer him. ‘Oh, nothing. Molly was just being … Molly. You know how she is … barely human … ha ha …’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ethan laughs. ‘Barely human is a pretty good way of describing her.’

  Ethan doesn’t know the half of it. But that’s only a tiny bit less than I do. Still, I know enough to see that Hale’s appearance is not nothing, but something. Really something. Like, something bigger than big, because it seems that, with Hale’s sudden appearance, I might just have found someone who can give me the answers to all my questions. Or at least a couple of the ones that Molly won’t answer.

  CHAPTER 16

  By the end of the school day I haven’t done a whole lot of work, but I do have a very doodled-upon, smudged list, kind of damp from my sweaty palms. At the top is a title, which reads:

  Things I know that might possibly be true

  Underneath are a bunch of dot points that go like this:

  •  The end of the universe is coming.

  •  Despite knowing nothing about anything, I’m supposed to stop this event (ha ha ha).

  •  Molly is supposedly guiding me through this event (badly).

  •  Peregrination is a (badly) made-up town.

  •  I’m really from Earth, not Morillius (in fact I doubt Morillius exists at all – it’s just another thing Molly made up).

  •  My sister really does know everything, instead of just thinking she knows everything.

  •  My dog can talk.

  •  My twin, my other twin (man, this is getting confusing) and my dog can read my thoughts.

  •  My other twin (or whatever you want to call him) can also make Molly unable to read my thoughts.

  •  Molly hates this other twin. A lot.

  •  Mr Gregory is even weirder than I originally thought.

  •  My parents and best friend are human. I’m doubtful about everyone else I’ve ever met.

  •  There’s no such thing as a dead goldfish.

  I run out of steam at the goldfish thing, which is kind of when the smudging and the doodling start. While I write, smudge and doodle, Molly and Hale spend the school day silently battling something or other out in their heads. I can see them doing it. They have this look of concentration on their faces, the sort that might make an adult offer you prune juice.

  By the time the bell rings, I’ve had enough. Enough of Molly. Enough of Molly and Hale arguing (even if it is silently). Enough of this end-of-the-universe business. Enough of Peregrination.

  As everyone files out of the classroom, I hang back and grab Ethan. I just need some normality for a while. ‘Hey, want to go somewhere?’

  Ethan nods. ‘Okay, my place? Your place? The pool?’

  I shake my head. ‘Nope, I have something else in mind.’

  Ethan looks doubtful. I can’t blame him. In Peregrination, there pretty much is nowhere else. ‘Where then?’

  ‘Come on,’ I tell him. ‘Follow me.’

  Ethan has his bike and he walks it over to my place where we pick up mine. Amazingly, Molly and Hale are nowhere to be seen. Maybe because Molly saw Ethan and me heading for home like any other day. I don’t know.

  When we both have our bikes, we set off. I lead and Ethan follows.

  It takes us about twenty minutes to get where I want to be – the town border. And it’s a good feeling, doing nothing. Just riding around town with Ethan, like everything’s normal again. Which for him it is, I guess.

  It doesn’t take long before the town sign comes into sight and I get yet another reminder of how my life has suddenly changed. And it’s funny, but even though I expect it, even though I know it’s coming and try to fend it off, I can’t. The feeling I’ve been waiting for floods over me the closer we get to the town sign – the feeling that I can’t go any further. I don’t know why I’d been hoping that today would be different.

  It starts with these really lame excuses as soon as the town sign is in sight. I start to think, I really should get home – I’ve got homework to do, I think there’s something on TV that I wanted to watch and it’s starting soon or It’s getting really hot. A swim would be great. I push each one of the excuses aside with a mental shove, telling myself they’re not real.

  It doesn’t take long before Ethan starts to slow right down on his bike. ‘Cooper,’ he calls out, ‘I’ve got to get home. I promised I’d feed the cat.’ He’s obviously having the same kind of thoughts. ‘Cooper, I really want to finish up the next level of that new game I’m playing. Cooper, I’m starving. Let’s get a snack.’

  ‘Okay,’ I call out. ‘But let’s ride out to the town sign first. See? It’s right there.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t know …’ Ethan sounds unsure.

  ‘Come on,’
I tell him. ‘It’s not far.’

  ‘Well, um … all right, then,’ he replies, but I notice he rides more slowly still.

  At first I think we might actually get there. That it might even be possible. But the closer we get, the harder it becomes to reach the sign and the more real my problems seem.

  Just behind me, Ethan starts to sound sort of panicked. ‘There’s something wrong, Cooper. At home. I think the house is burning down and everyone’s stuck inside. I’ve got to go!’ He turns his bike around and starts to ride off.

  ‘Stop!’ I tell him and, after a few metres, he does.

  ‘What?’ Ethan turns back.

  I think for a moment or two. ‘Is everything okay at your house?’ I ask him.

  Ethan shrugs. ‘I guess. But I want to go back and get a drink.’

  ‘Your house isn’t burning down, then?’

  ‘What?’ Ethan looks at me like I’m crazy. ‘Why would you think that?’

  Um, because you just told me it was a moment or two ago? I think to myself. But, ‘Oh, nothing,’ I say. ‘I just didn’t hear you properly.’

  ‘Riiight,’ Ethan says. Like I’m the crazy one. Which I am, actually, because all sorts of similar thoughts are running through my own head. That Mum’s fallen down the steps at home and no one’s there to help her. That Dad’s car has broken down and Mum needs to be told to pick him up from the pool. All sorts of oddball things.

  All of a sudden, I turn to Ethan. ‘I’m going to touch the sign,’ I tell him. ‘You stay there.’

  ‘Sign touching. Scary stuff.’ He practically guffaws from his position of safety further down the road. ‘I guess I can hang around a moment longer to cheer you on.’

  I roll my eyes at him. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Well, go on then.’ Ethan waves me onwards. ‘I’m waiting to see you touch the dangerous metal thing sticking out of the ground.’

  With a shake of my head, I turn around on my bike and close my eyes for a moment, trying to rid my mind of all the thoughts running through it that are making me want to ride as fast as I can in the other direction. I’m also sort of worried about what might happen beyond this point. I mean, the voices in my head telling me to turn around are pretty strong already and I still have about fifteen metres to go. I’m guessing things are going to get unpleasant here.

  Before I can think too hard about what might happen, though, I take one deep breath and set off. As I go, I chant in my head in the hope of silencing the thoughts. Over and over, I yell the same thing to myself: ‘Touch the sign, touch the sign, touch the sign, touch the sign …’

  However, the closer I get to the sign, the more unbearable my thoughts become and the more I’m desperate to turn around and head for home. The freakiest thoughts pop into my head – puppies are being systematically tortured in my bedroom and only I can help them; there’s a shortage on toilet paper at the shops and if I don’t get the last few rolls, we’ll have none for years. It’s insane stuff, designed to send me into a frenzy, to make me run home like a mad thing. I know it is. But, at the time, it seems so real. Completely believable.

  ‘Aaaggghhh!’ I scream out loud now, frantically riding the last few metres just as something else entirely enters my head – a horrible, screeching noise that gives me an instant headache. With everything I have left in me, I manage to touch the sign and turn around and ride back, my legs pedalling away like they’ve never pedalled before.

  The closer I get to Ethan, the more normal everything seems. The noise stops, the suggestions to run home and save adorable puppies from electrocution stops, the thought that my mum has tripped down the back steps and hurt herself stops. I even get kind of ‘meh’ about catching up on my TV watching.

  When I finally reach Ethan himself, everything’s fine, though Ethan has a very strange expression on his face that’s directed at me. ‘Wow,’ he says. ‘You’re like super unfit. That looked way too hard. Maybe you should get one of those exercise things off the TV – the ones that store really easily under the bed.’

  I sigh. ‘Ready to go home now?’

  Ethan looks around us. All there is to see is the long, long road leading in and out of Peregrination. And the one going out is obviously some kind of optical illusion, judging by that screaming noise in my head – there’s no way I could have gone any further without my brain popping. Then there’s Peregrination’s standard-issue green dirt on either side of the road and a couple of trees dotted around. I guess because Molly had a few spare nanoseconds to get creative. What absolutely cracks me up, however, is that, today, Molly has set our bubble on some planet or other where the sky is an eerie, ominous green, with not one but five visible moons, and no one seems to think that’s at all weird.

  ‘Am I ready to go home? Yeah, I think so,’ Ethan finally says, in his best sarcastic voice. ‘If you’re done touching inanimate objects.’ He doesn’t move, but stays in the one spot, staring at me.

  ‘What?’ I finally ask him.

  ‘Why are you being so strange lately?’

  ‘Me?’

  Ethan glances around us at the vast wasteland of empty space. ‘Yeah, you,’ he finally answers.

  I think about this, unsure how to answer him. ‘Um, sorry. I guess I’ve just been a bit … distracted lately.’ For something to do, I turn my bike around, narrowly missing some kind of weird black slug in the middle of the road.

  But when I turn back again, Ethan is still watching me. It’s then that I see his shin. ‘Hey, you’re bleeding,’ I point out.

  Ethan looks down. ‘Oh, yeah. I scraped it on my bike before.’

  I stare at the small trickle of dried blood. ‘It’s red. It’s real,’ I don’t even realise the words are exiting my mouth until they’re out.

  ‘Well, yeah. What do you expect? Green blood? That I’m an alien or something?’

  I laugh nervously at this. ‘Hey, you never know.’

  Ethan watches me for a second longer, then shakes his head. ‘You really are weird. What’s the time? I told Mum I’d be home by four.’

  ‘Three forty-three.’ And fifty-two seconds.

  ‘Come on, then, let’s go.’

  We ride off in silence. I don’t mind the silence, though, because, as we go, I spend the time thinking. About how I need to contain my weirdness. And about the town sign and how I was right about Peregrination being a jail. Now, I go back over all the times we tried to leave Peregrination and it never worked out. About the trips we planned and never made, because there was always some excuse when we headed out of town. Weekend drives, camping trips, holidays that never happened. About how Mum was always desperate to see the cherry blossoms in Japan. How she went on about it every year, then let it go. About how we were stuck. Stuck in Peregrination. All of us. Because of me. Because of Molly.

  Because of me and this end-of-the-universe thing.

  Because of me and some kind of heroic deed I very much doubt I’ll be able to pull off anyway unless we all need to be somewhere on time.

  CHAPTER 17

  I drop Ethan off at his house and ride back home. If I’d wanted answers by pushing myself to touch the town sign, I hadn’t got any. All I’d come home with was a headache and the news that (surprise!) I wouldn’t be leaving Peregrination anytime soon, which I think I’d already worked out years ago.

  After I ride around into the backyard, wave at Mum and Dad in the kitchen, and ditch my bike, I see Molly down by the back fence doing her weird hand-waving thing once more. She turns around and looks at me as soon as I see her.

  Not the Ecens again? I say, those tails still way too clear in my mind.

  You’re wasting your time with the town sign. She doesn’t answer my question.

  I stand there and stare at her from across the yard for a moment or two, mostly wondering what her problem is. She’s sent here to look after me and this is what I get? Seriously, she’s not held together with cells, she’s held together with attitude. Well, universe, thanks for that. Thanks for nothing. I kick a
bit of dirt around with the toe of one sneaker, thinking about all of this. When I look up once more, Molly is still waiting for some sort of response. Without thinking about it another second, I decide to give her one. I stalk across the wide, flat, dry (oh, and let’s not forget ‘green’ – she couldn’t pause for a moment to give us a bit of decent grass?) backyard to her.

  When I get right up to her, lush, green grass springing up under my feet as I go, she simply shrugs. ‘So, you’re angry because you can’t leave, but, as you said yourself, you already knew that.’

  I know it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t care.

  Molly stares at me evenly. ‘Don’t you think I did it for a reason?’

  I shake my head at the unfairness of it. ‘But all those years. All those trips we planned and then couldn’t take. Especially Mum. They really meant something to her, those trips. Plus, I think she remembers stuff. Places she wanted to see, to go to. You know, stuff from … before me.’

  This makes Molly pause slightly. ‘You’re right. She does.’ She hesitates before asking her next question. ‘Do you think that’s wrong? That it would have been better to forget everything before? And everything that’s happening now? Do you think it would be better if, after all this, I placed you all on Earth and you never remembered what’s happened here. Or … me?’

  ‘Like there’s going to be an after!’ I say, then regret my words and groan slightly. Now I just sound like Molly. ‘I don’t know.’ But, in a way, I do know. I know that I’d be angrier than I already am if she’d taken everything away from Mum. That I wouldn’t want to be living a lie. And as much as Molly annoys me, I can’t really imagine a life without her. Ugh, she just heard me think that. I’m sure of it.

  ‘I don’t always know what to do, you know, Cooper,’ she tells me, turning her back on me.

  I watch as she goes back to her web-weaving, that sticky stuff coming out of her palms. So disgusting. ‘Anyway, what do you mean by that?’ I say to her back. ‘Don’t you have, like, a boss to ask, or something?’