Consider

by Kristy Acevedo

  The radio announces that Artemis is on schedule to rendezvous with the comet in two weeks. Dominick glances at me in the driver’s mirror, and I beg him with my eyes to wait two more weeks. If his mother and brother weren’t here, I’d beg with other body parts.

  The normal fifty-minute ride to Quincy takes five hours. When we finally reach the crowded vertex, a blur of heads fills the area like a screen of giant pixel dots. They never showed this scene on the news. At the sight of all the people, my brain flashes a memory of the vicious mob scene, and my body flinches. It’s different from a panic attack. It’s like the pores of my skin have gone into high alert.

  The four of us walk through the slush on the ground and join the line. Dominick hands me his car keys. “I won’t be needing these anymore.”

  Normally, I’d refuse such a gift.

  We stand in silence as the line inches forward. The tension in my body relaxes as it realizes the crowd is following social rules. As we wait in the line, protesters walk past and chant random phrases like, “Don’t be a lemming” and “Jesus is the only savior.” I want to join in with the protest and stop Dominick from leaving. I say nothing. What’s left to say?

  My body goes numb, and I don’t think it’s the cold. Around us people get impatient. One family quits the line; a teenager curses under his breath. The religious chanting continues.

  More waiting. Dominick hugs me. I take in his heat, his touch, his physical presence. The crowd doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. It’s just the two of us, barely talking, our breath escaping and mingling together in a mere wisp of cold air and then dissipating. Like us.

  Over an hour later, we reach the front. I begin convulsing in massive waves of grief. It’s like Dominick’s walking to his death and I am forced to watch.

  “I can’t. I can’t,” I whimper.

  He puts his forehead on my forehead. “Alexandra,” he whispers and wipes my tears. He never calls me that. “I love you. Promise me. Promise me.”

  “I promise. I promise. I love you. I love you.”

  I kiss him one last time as if our lives depend on it.

  His mother checks in with the guards, and they add their three names to the list. I spot Benji on duty off to the side, avoiding eye contact with me. I’m probably embarrassing him again with my wacko behavior. I don’t care what he thinks anymore.

  As Dominick’s about to step through the vertex, he turns around and waves to me. The last sliver of him I see before he vanishes forever into an ocean of electric blue is one of his red sneakers disappearing into nothingness.

  By the time I get into Dominick’s car, I can’t see straight. The TARDIS air freshener dangles in front of me, and I rip it down and throw it into the backseat. Over and over I slam my fists into the steering wheel, the horn bleeps and bleeps, and people start looking at me. I hate life. I hate everything that made this happen and took him away from me. I change my mind. I want to go. I want to run back and jump in and make everything the way it was. Pull him back out and make him stay with me until I’m ready.

  But I can’t. I can’t.

  I can’t stop the pain with any amount of medication. I keep pounding and pounding and hoping that something will change and fix it and make it all better. It can’t be real. It has to be some bizarre nightmare. Somebody wake me up. Please.

  Wake me up!

  I open my eyes and find myself slumped over in Dominick’s car still parked near the vertex site. It’s dark outside the windows and much of the crowd has gone.

  I visit the vertex again, alone. I need time to look into the eye of the vertex without the pressure of people I care about standing next to me. I want an unbiased view. Benji should be gone by now, thank God.

  At the vertex, I watch as a young family takes one last look at each other. They enter one at a time, in a chain, holding hands. Father, mother, sister, brother. And I see it in each of their faces. They don’t know if it’s the right decision, but they don’t know that it’s wrong either. They have hope. They have each other. There’s strength in making a choice. Strength in choosing a side.

  What have I chosen? What side am I on? What do I believe in?

  Both Rita and Dominick walked through the swirling dark haze, one for freedom from religion, one for a promise made to his dying parent. Hundreds of years and parsecs between us, and I can still feel them here with me. I wonder what they are doing right now, somewhere, on another planet, in another time.

  Rita could run into Dan the Drunk Dude. I can only imagine what he’s up to by now. He has to be sober. Imagine that hangover. I’m where?

  Maybe Dominick will meet Dan. Maybe he’ll deck him for me.

  My two best friends will each have to figure out how to start over. What to do with their lives in a world that doesn’t require work or money. That is, if they’re still alive. That is, if the holograms are telling the truth.

  I am surrounded by ghosts of the past and possibility. And I don’t know where I fit in the present.

  As I walk back to the car, I notice the same crazy lady as before lying on the ground near the road. She must just hang out at the vertex. She looks worse than ever if that’s possible. As I get closer to her, I see that she’s foaming at the mouth and shaking. I yell for help. Even though she’s nuts, I can’t let someone suffer alone. I understand crazy.

  Her whole body begins spasming and her head bangs against the concrete. I know what to do. I’ve seen the school nurse handle seizures before.

  Clearing the area is my first task, but the ground near crazy lady has nothing except melting snow. I crouch near her and roll her to one side. When the jerking of her head and body slows, I allow her body to lie flat again.

  She looks up at me in a moment of clarity. I can see it in her blue eyes—something clicks. She grabs my arm, squeezes, and sputters a series of non-words. I scream for help, and running footsteps approach from behind.

  With the rest of her energy, she hands me a sweaty piece of crumbled paper. Scrawled in neat penmanship, it reads:

  When the truth is shrouded in fear and clouded by dreams,

  when fact and fantasy become deviant lovers,

  maybe there are no real heroes anymore.

  Maybe that’s when heroes are born.

  I recognize the phrase right away. I wrote the same message that day in my journal, the day I thought about taking all my pills to escape. The end of the sentence is different, though. It’s been edited to be more positive. I had written “maybe there are no real heroes anymore.” I don’t understand. How did she get it? I didn’t post it online or anything. It’s been sitting in my journal. Did she rip it out somehow? When all our food was stolen?

  Maybe I’m really going insane. Maybe we all are.

  “Where did you get this?” I ask her, holding up the note. “Did you go into my house?”

  Soldiers stationed at the vertex come to assist. Her body collapses in its own weakness.

  An ambulance arrives, and I wait with her. I wonder if she has a family, and if they will go through a vertex somewhere and live in another time and space while her body remains lost in this fading world.

  As soon as I get home, I pull my journal from my bookshelf. It doesn’t look like it’s been tampered with. I compare my version to crazy lady’s note. It’s verbatim except for the ending.

  Did I tap into some cosmic phrase? Some sort of alien telepathy from first exposure to the vertex?

  I enter it online to search for an author or reference to it. Nothing. I wish I knew crazy lady’s name so I could search for her at the hospital. I want answers to how she read my mind.

  Part 3: Message Three

  “This is the way the world ends

  Not with a bang but a whimper.”

  —T.S. Eliot

  Chapter 22

  Day 161: January—572 hours to decide

  Ques
tion: Does your planet have oceans and other bodies of water? Mountains and deserts?

  Answer: Yes, much like Earth’s. Except our oceans look crimson from a distance, and our mountains are bigger. We do not have deserts since we can control the climate.

  One week later, my phone rings at four in the morning. As I reach for it, half awake, I expect Dominick’s voice to be on the other end of the line. At the sight of my mom’s name, I lose my breath realizing once again that Dominick’s gone and that she might be calling to tell me Dad’s gone, too.

  On the contrary, Mom’s voice screams into the receiver, “He’s talking. Not clearly, but he’s awake.”

  Using my phone as a light, I stumble in the darkness to wake up Benji and Marcus, who have been staying with me in the dark house. Without changing clothes, we race outside, choosing to take Dominick’s car since it has the most gas left. Benji grabs the keys from me since I’m crying so much. I don’t even fight him on it. I’m starting to wonder if people have a finite number of tears. I feel like I’m reaching my limit.

  I never thought I’d be so happy to hear Dad’s voice again. Then again, I never thought Benji would be driving around in Dominick’s car while Dominick’s in another universe.

  At the hospital, Mom sits at Dad’s bedside. I am afraid to look. Afraid to celebrate too soon. Afraid of hope. Dad stares back at me. The ventilator’s gone. His coloring’s still off, though.

  “Alex?” His voice barely registers in my ears.

  “Dad.” My voice hurts my throat.

  He seems to be searching his own brain. “Dominick?”

  Whoa. He used Dominick’s full name.

  “Dominick’s fine,” I say then choke on the reality of what I just said.

  Fat tears roll down my cheeks, and I manage to add, “Dominick’s gone through a vertex.”

  “He saved you,” Dad whispers. My skin is on fire, and sweat pours down my back.

  “What?” He must be confused. “Dad, no. We were all attacked.”

  “No, you went down. I couldn’t.” He takes in a labored breath. “The tear gas. He jumped on top of you. Protected you.” Tears escape Dad’s eyes, and I wipe them for him.

  Dominick saved me? “He didn’t tell me that.”

  “I need to thank him. Tell him I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Dad,” I say, sobbing uncontrollably. It’s really not okay because Dominick’s gone, and I should have gone with him. And I’m grateful and pissed off that he saved my life and never told me before he left the planet. He was willing to sacrifice his life for me, and in the end, I couldn’t even say yes.

  We gather in the hospital hallway to let Dad sleep. As people pass us in a stream of unending misery and various states of unrest, I know that I need a team of my own to make it through this. What happens with the comet isn’t my concern anymore. My focus is on leaving, not staying and hoping for survival. I promised Dominick.

  “We should convince Dad to leave,” I announce to Mom and Benji.

  “About time you say something that makes sense,” Benji says.

  Mom looks out the window of the hospital floor and says, “He’s too weak. We have to give him all the time he needs to heal before we can move him.”

  Wait, was that a yes? “So you will convince him to go?” I ask.

  “He’ll go if I say it’s time,” she states.

  “Since when?” Benji says. “He doesn’t listen to anybody.”

  “He’ll go if I say it’s time.”

  I realize she’s right. He will.

  “Yeah, okay.” Benji walks off. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  His lack of faith makes me all the more determined to help Mom convince Dad and show Benji that we’re stronger than we seem.

  On January 10, the news reports the release of the second round of prisoners to exit the planet via vertex. Dad’s in and out of consciousness, so Mom and I haven’t had the chance to speak to him about leaving. Doctors say his condition is slowly improving, although they are still not sure about possible brain damage. They say moving him now would likely kill him.

  So we wait.

  Days later, while Mom sleeps nearby, I watch television in Dad’s hospital room, thinking about Dominick and wondering what he’s doing right now. If he’s even still alive. Actually, if he’s in some far-away future and I’m living in the past, then for him I am long dead. The thought unsettles me on such a deep level that I take a pill to stop the roller coaster of crazy, sci-fi paradoxical thinking that my brain cannot seem to avoid.

  At midnight, a news flash from Boston appears on the television. The holograms have a new message. I turn up the volume and watch a gray-clad holographic human deliver its new speech to a crowd:

  “If you are still listening to this message, you have been unwilling to admit the urgency of your situation. In eighteen calendar days, a comet will strike your planet and destroy your people. This is your known destruction; there is no way to prevent it.

  “You are in grave danger. Put aside your pride and possessions for your lives. Simply walk through the vertex. We are willing to help you. You can survive. It is your individual choice.

  “This is the last automatic message. You only have four hundred thirty-two hours left to decide. The vertexes will remain open until then.

  “Consider. Save your people. Save yourself before it is too late.”

  I watch Dad’s unconscious body and will him to get better. I need him to get better.

  What would it be like to leave Earth forever? I mean, really. I imagine the brilliant sunrise and the calming sunset, the thoughtful moon and the hopeful stars, the lapping of the ocean and the magic of snow. Can I live without these things? Will I be the same if my world changes?

  I tried to follow Buddhism a few years ago to try to quell my anxiety. But basically, Buddha says everything changes. Everything. And that if we accept that, we will find peace.

  Change can suck it.

  I need to hold on to something. I need something to stay exactly the way it should.

  It's January 15. Artemis should reach the comet today. Everyone in the hospital waits, staring at televisions, computers, tablets, and cell phone screens for the play by play. It’s like a cosmic sporting event. Who knew that in a world disaster, rather than fighting for ourselves, the majority of us would simply stare helplessly at technology waiting for someone else to rescue us?

  I try to focus on the screen, waiting to hear news, but my mind keeps wondering about Dad’s latest condition so I can ask him to leave. I’m worried that Benji will be right, and I’m waiting for nothing. Either Dad will never wake up again, or he will wake up and refuse to go.

  “Did we miss anything?” Marcus asks as he and Benji join me and Mom in the hospital room to watch the state of humanity unfold before our eyes.

  “Any minute now,” Mom says. “I don’t think I can take the pressure.”

  “You sound like me,” I mutter.

  “No one was meant to take this kind of pressure,” Marcus says. “I just hope it works.”

  “No trial runs,” Benji says. “One miscalculation and it blows the comet to pieces.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Mom asks.

  “The pieces would still kill us,” I say.

  “What Ms. Optimism said,” Benji comments.

  Sometimes—ugh. Maybe I’ll lock Benji in a room, and the family can escape through a vertex while he stays here.

  The television breaks from regularly scheduled programming for an important announcement. The Secretary of Defense fills the screen, clears his throat, and says in an unwavering voice, “Unfortunately, our efforts with the United Nations to divert the comet with the CORE project have failed. The president will be making a public address shortly. We have a scientist from NASA here to answer questions.”

  We watch in ho
rror as the scientist scrambles to show diagrams of what he thinks happened. Some navigational math error. Despite the nuclear blasts’ enormous energy, it had no effect on the comet’s trajectory. The scientist on screen is shaking, apologizing, not understanding what went wrong. The consolation prize: no nuclear fallout as far as they can tell.

  It’s over. Within seconds, the media frenzy kicks in. They seem almost happy that it missed. More dramatic footage. More manic reporting with rapid-fire speech and microphones shoved in people’s faces, “How do you feel knowing NASA failed?” How do they think people feel? It’s not like winning the Superbowl. They don’t want to go to Disney World. The world is ending. Drop the freakin’ mic.

  Mom, Benji, and Marcus are all on their feet. Mom has her hands over her face. Benji starts moving back and forth from the bed to the windows. People move when they panic. Marcus starts to cry. I rub his back.

  Panic: from Pan in Greek mythology, a satyr who was known to create irrational, sudden fear in people for fun. Something that happens to everyone except me, apparently, when an Earth-crushing, hot mass barreling toward the planet is imminent.

  What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I not panicking? I think I’m broken.

  When the time is right for the feeling of panic, I feel the way I always do. There’s a comfort in this. Panic cannot get bigger. It caps off. I feel the same tightness in my chest, the same pulse in my ears, the same inability to catch my breath. And for the first time in a long time, I’m not battling it alone.

  I fit in. I don’t look weird or out of control to others. Instead, I can stay remarkably calm and provide comfort. I’ve practiced. This is my normal.

  Maybe deep down, I wanted CORE to fail so we would finally have an absolute reason to join the others. If CORE had succeeded, we’d have stayed, and Dominick and Rita would’ve been lost forever. I mean, how would we have gotten them back? The thought that I would want the planet to blow up makes me start to gag on my feelings. Just call me Nihilistic Girl.