by Jen Malone
Being curious is helping.
Which is why I point to his head and respond, “What other creepy factoids you got in there?”
Will peeks up at me while whrring a screw into place. “I’m not sure if creepy is the right word for it, but one of my roommates is convinced we’re all just avatars in a giant simulation being run from the future and any time someone dies they simply re-spawn and play on.”
“What’s going on up here?” Alex and Sibby burst onto the roof, carrying bottles of water.
I accept one from Alex and answer, “Nothing much. Just building a kickass tarp roller while we chat about Victorian funeral dolls and re-spawning. As one does.”
Sibby’s gaze slides immediately to me, her eyebrows asking the question, You okay with this?
I purse my lips and nod. Would it be my first choice of topics? Maybe not. But am I hyperventilating with fight-or-flight symptoms? No. Weirdly, no.
And besides, this fits my curiosity mission. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but tell me more about this ‘we’re all in a simulation model’ concept.”
“Oh man, not that crap,” Alex says. “Sibby, can you pass me that drill?”
“Nope, but I can use the drill wherever you point me,” she replies. “What crap? What’s a simulation model?”
“According to my roommate Arun? Widely respected scientific theory,” Will replies.
“But what is it?” I ask again, squatting gently on the roller to hold it in place for Alex and Sibby.
Will lines up beside me and lends his weight too. “Okay, so, many scientists think it’s very possible that we are all living in a simulation right now, kind of like the Sims game, but created by an advanced civilization.”
“Um, what now?” Sibby asks.
Alex scoffs. “I’ve read about this—it’s ridiculous.”
Will laughs. “I’m not saying I don’t agree, but way smarter people than us believe it could be a genuine possibility. Elon Musk. A ton of physics professors at MIT. They’ve had entire conferences about it.”
“So you’re saying we’re living in the Matrix? What would be the point? We’re some alien’s entertainment?” Sibby asks.
“More likely it’s an evolved version of the human race. And maybe not for entertainment. They could be running different versions of our history, altering essential details here and there to find the best possible outcome for our race. Like, they could run one where someone else won the 2016 election to see if—”
“I want to be in that model!” Sibby interrupts.
I can’t help but smile at her, despite the fact that this entire conversation is weirding me out a little. Still, I’m proud of myself for being here, for listening.
“This is the dumbest BS I’ve ever heard,” Alex says, shifting out of the way to accommodate Sibby’s drilling.
“Although you have to admit, it does explain déjà vu perfectly,” I say.
Will laughs. “I have a hard time believing someone would make me—their avatar—do so much ridiculous minutia, like flossing my teeth or sitting in traffic or standing in the soup aisle for twenty minutes trying to figure out what I want for dinner. I’d like to think our lives mean more than that!”
Me too. If only I knew what that was, though.
“Shit, it just shifted and I can’t line up the last screw,” Alex says. “I need all three of you to lean our weight into it and push.”
We’re too consumed by the task at hand to continue the conversation from there, and once we finish securing the roller, we all head back to street level to examine the progress Sibby and Alex have made with the chalkboard paint. They’ve painted a whole quadrant in the time Will and I were up there—it’s amazing to have so much help. If only they could do my whole design for me, this mural would be done in no time flat.
“I’ll take a turn on the ladder,” Will offers, reaching for a paintbrush. “What do you think the odds are of cranking down the windows on your mom’s car and putting the Sox game on the radio?”
“I’m all over it!” Alex says, darting to the hatchback.
Sibby and I watch Will climb the ladder and she whispers, “I’m feeling really guilty about calling him a fuckskillet because he’s way too nice for his own good.”
“You should feel guilty, you coldhearted bitch.” I pause. “I’m feeling really guilty about sticking my tongue down his throat.”
Sibby throws me a look. “Yeah, I’m wondering if he might not have minded that so much.”
I laugh. “Could be. Maybe somewhere out there, there’s a simulation version where my phone never interrupted us that night.”
“Or a version where it did, but you got the liver and then both rode off into the sunset together,” she adds, somewhat wistfully.
“Or a version where he noticed me back when I was crushing on him in middle school and we had all kinds of time together before . . .”
“Or a version where you were never born with BA in the first place,” Sibby says, which makes us both stop and sigh.
We’re quiet for a few seconds. Alex finds the game right as the opposing team scores on a double and Will’s spare paintbrush falls off the rung below him when he kicks the ladder in annoyance.
Sibby’s smile returns at that, and she says, “Maybe in this version of reality, at some future date to be determined, you guys might . . .”
Will looks down after his brush, then over at us, his eyes widening when he finds us staring up at him. But then the corners of them crinkle into his familiar smile and my lips follow unbidden.
“Mmm,” I answer Sibby. “Maybe someday.”
I bend over and pick up my own paintbrush and a bucket of paint. “First things first, though,” I tell her, nodding at the wall.
As I paint, I replay the conversation I just had with Sibby and the one I had with Will on the roof. I still can’t quite believe I was able to talk to them about stuff related to death. So yeah, the research I’m doing is helping, though it’s not like I’m expecting any of this to suddenly get easy. I’m nowhere near cured. And I don’t mean my BA—I mean my fear of everything that comes with it. I’m very much in the messy middle.
But that still counts for something, right?
No more novocaine.
I tune back in when the guys cheer over a Sox hit, just in time to hear Sibby say, “If you guys are into this baseball stuff, I should introduce you to cricket. Pretty much baseball, except the games last for something like three days. You’d adore it.”
“Introduce me to?” Will scoffs. “I don’t think so! My grandfather spent some time in India as a kid and he played in a club there. You’re being conservative, he told me about one game that lasted nine days.”
Sibby is nonplussed. “Will, if you’re gonna hang around with us, there’s something you need to learn real fast.”
“What’s that?”
Oh, this should be good.
My best friend uses her brush to add a swooping tail on the giant unicorn she has painted on her section of wall, instead of brushing back and forth to cover the bricks in straight lines like the rest of us have been doing. “I am never—never—conservative.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing and then I figure screw that and let loose with a chortle that earns me a flick of paint from Will’s paintbrush, which only makes me laugh again.
This right here?
This is a pretty decent remember-when.
32
I FEEL ABOUT FIVE YEARS OLD AGAIN. MY MOTHER IS TUCKING me into bed and I should be embarrassed about it, but . . .
“Hey. Just try to get some decent rest tonight, okay? We’re headed back to Dr. Wah’s first thing in the morning so she can reassess this cold of yours.”
“It’s probably just allergies, Mom. The guy on the news tonight said the pollen count is”— my case isn’t helped when my protests get interrupted by a coughing fit that burns my lungs, and my mother’s eyes sharpen as she watches my chest cave in on my inhales—�
�off the charts,” I finish weakly.
“Nothing’s ‘just’ when you have a compromised immune system, sweetness.” She sighs and tucks the blanket around my chin. “Do you need anything? More water? Want me to run a white noise app on your phone to help you fall asleep?”
I shake my head. Falling asleep is not going to be a problem. I can barely keep my eyes open as it is. As far as colds or allergies or whatever go, this one has me knocked on my ass. I’ve missed the past two days of school, including our first graduation rehearsal, which sucks. Not just because that actually sounded fun, but because the gossip mill is starting to go into overdrive. Sibby stopped by earlier with the news that the “Save Amelia” chant went up twice as the seniors practiced their line formation for filing in and out of the Fieldhouse.
I can’t even.
“I’m fine,” I insist.
“How about we let Dr. Wah decide what is and isn’t anything to worry about, huh?” Mom says.
She perches on the edge of my bed and rubs my arm through the blanket before leaning over to kiss my forehead.
Like I said, five years old.
Except I can’t lie; it’s not the worst.
I jerk awake.
“Shhh. It’s okay, Sunshine,” Dad whispers. “I’m just trying to prop you up a little more to help some of the coughing.”
Coughing. As soon as he says the word, my chest rattles and I have another fit of it. I feel like utter crap.
“What time is it?” I ask when I can speak again.
Dad tucks a second pillow under my head and helps me adjust. “Middle of the night—go back to sleep.” He leans closer, his breath tickling my cheek. “Love you like fireworks, baby.”
I’m halfway asleep already. “Love you, Daddy.”
“Sunshine?” Dad’s voice is tunneling through a thick fog. I try to roll away from it, but even that slight movement makes my spleen ache with raw tenderness and my blanket is a straitjacket.
Not my blanket. My chest.
Breathe, I order myself.
Can’t. Hurts.
The words drift closer, edged in haze. “I wish I could let you keep sleeping—I know you were up half the night, but Mom got you an appointment first thing with Dr. Wah.”
Shapes. Haze. Snap of shade. Wince of light.
Breathe.
Can’t. Hurts.
“Hey. Am I gonna have to tug you out from—”
Cool fingers. Clammy cheek.
“NATALIE!!”
After
33
USUALLY THERE’S A HEADS-UP WHEN YOU’RE APPROACHING moments that will mark a permanent Before and an After in your life, like a “Welcome Guide for Incoming Freshmen,” or a printout of an ultrasound picture, or a save-the-date postcard for a wedding.
But sometimes they slam into you with no notice at all.
It was a cold. My best friend got a simple fucking spring cold.
The kind where you feel a bit knackered, sniffle for a couple days, then resume your life.
The kind that can sometimes turn into pneumonia, if you happen to be living with a compromised immune system, say due to organ failure.
Lia’s liver was the wanker, but it was her spleen that caused the bigger problem. The larger it grew to help compensate for her liver’s failures, the less it was able to do its own job of filtering out the damaged blood cells and producing white blood cells to fight off bacterial infections—or so I learned that nightmare of a morning.
They took her straight to the ICU.
When your best friend tells you she’s got a disease that could end her life, you put on a brave face and you fight like hell because anything less would make it seem as if you’re giving up on her, and you are literally her blocker; your job is to clear all obstacles from her way.
You don’t say goodbye. Goodbyes would be admitting defeat and you would never do that, not until she reached her dying breath.
But then she goes into septic shock and she does reach her dying breath and you still don’t get to say goodbye, because your cell phone gets terrible reception at school, because even when you finally get the voice mail and “borrow” a moped from the student parking lot and run every red light, you aren’t even allowed into the ICU despite some very aggressive protesting. Because you could never have imagined that morning would be your last chance to—
Because even though you knew your best friend had this serious disease, you still never let yourself imagine she might actually—Fuck. I can’t say the words.
Goddammit, if she’d just gotten that liver the first time. If there was a surplus of them instead of a shortage, she never would have—
For her sake, I’m glad it was sudden like that. I hope like bloody hell she didn’t have time to be scared.
But I have time to be scared. I have all the goddamn time in the world to be terrified.
I’m afraid of the space between blinks and of the hollow in my belly . . . because now I know.
Now I know that you can soak your skin in starlight and scrub your lungs with noonday winds and trail your fingers through ombré sunrises and call yourself the granddaughter of the witches they couldn’t burn, and none of that breath or beauty or blaze is ward or amulet.
Because the harshest truth, the truth that’s been there all the while, is that the worst thing you can ever imagine happening . . . ?
Some days it actually does.
34
I’VE BEEN STARING AT LIA’S MURAL FOR FOUR MONTHS NOW. There’s a lot I get and a few things I really, really wish I could ask her about.
It’s unfinished. Like her.
Though she’d made heaps of progress on it in just the few short weeks she’d had to work, it takes up most of the wall, a series of circles inside one another. The outermost one is a clock face, more specifically it’s a sundial face, with bright, happy rays extending from its edges. Roman numerals marking the hours form a semicircle around the top three-quarters, and tick marks between each designate the quarter hours. A swirling wave fills the bottom quadrant, and inside it is a compass rose marking north, south, east, and west. Around the outer edge of all of it is a Latin phrase in Lia’s perfect calligraphy script.
It reads: Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice. But for those who love, time is not.
The piece is titled “Only Questions.” It’s subtitled “This Is Not My Masterpiece.”
I am obsessed with it.
Most of the people who’ve walked by this over the past few months—at least on sunny days when the tarp wasn’t protecting it—never thought to step closer, would never have known to look for the tiny images Lia hid among the mandala pattern of the innermost circles. They wouldn’t have noticed the saluting soldier wearing the bottom half of a furry costume or the phrase “false hope” with a line through it or the game controller. Or the word oxyphenbutazone, which I googled and learned was the highest scoring word ever played in Words With Friends.
They never saw the sea witch or the washing machine, both of which make me wonder if I really knew her.
Or the llama that tells me I did.
“Ready?” I whisper to Alex.
“No. But yes.” Alex’s eyes are glued to the mural.
Despite us being vigilant about keeping the tarp in place whenever rain is in the forecast (even if it’s meant trekking back from my dorm at Tufts these last couple weeks) and despite our retracing some of the lines that have flecked away over the weeks, the chalk won’t hold up forever.
It’s time.
Lia’s death was rushed and messy and inelegant. This send-off won’t be, even without her parents here. I wish we’d been able to talk them into it, but they’re not really doing all that well these days. Who could blame them?
At this hour on a Sunday morning the sidewalks are nearly empty, though it’s not so early that the line cooks at Zuzu’s Petals haven’t already clocked in to begin prepping for bru
nch. They helped us hook up our hose to one of their sinks and propped the back door open enough for us to snake it out to the parking lot.
“Should we say something first?” Alex asks.
“I don’t know. How about just . . . I love you, Lia.”
“Love you, Li,” Alex whispers, closing his eyes briefly.
We catch glances and nod to signal our readiness, then squeeze the trigger together.
A spray of water arcs onto the lower third of the wall and streaks of colored chalk bleed and run in rainbow rivulets down the wall. I thought I could watch, but I can’t. I know it’s just a chalkboard, but it’s my best friend’s heart and soul up there and my tears are salty in my throat. I spin so that my back is to the melting mural, swapping hands to keep one in place next to Alex’s on the trigger.
A second later, Alex’s arm drops, bringing the nozzle and my hand with it. “Sib,” he whispers, wonderstruck.
I pivot to take in what he’s seeing.
The lower half of the mural is gone, the bright colors of the sundial/mandala washed clean. But instead of just a plain black chalkboard beneath, pale letters shimmer where the sun meets water droplets.
Sweet fuck all!
It’s another design entirely.
She hid a complete other design underneath her chalk rendering.
“Lia, you dazzler,” I murmur, allowing my grin to crack my face in two. It’s like she’s reached out from . . . wherever she is . . . and laughed at me. I can hear her too: Sib, you Aussie freak, did you really think you’d get rid of me so easily?
“Oh my god, I’ve heard about this stuff!” Alex says. “There’s this spray you can get that has a chemical in it that repels water. A group in Boston uses it to paint sidewalk poetry that only shows up on rainy days. The stenciled words ‘appear’ because the rest of the concrete darkens when it gets wet, and the part that’s been treated with this stuff stays dry. She must have coated the chalk layer we painted, after we left. Before she started the actual mural design.” He pauses, then adds, “Wow.”