“Cool.”
“I’m not even at the cool part yet, Mel.” She frowned at me. “Listen. All that hydrogen eventually gets burned up. Used up. Right? And when it’s gone, there’s just the one force, gravity, pushing in. So the core of the star collapses.”
“Weird. Just the core?”
“First the core.” Suzy bounced up and down on her toes, and the streetlight’s pale glow caught on her feathers in a shimmer of color. She looked like the northern lights. “But that core is so dense…it’s a baby black hole, Mel. A brand-new baby black hole.”
“Cute.” I knew this would bug her.
Sure enough, she frowned at me. “Not so cute. Because that baby black hole starts sucking in the star around it. Consuming it. Cannibalizing it.”
I made a face. “Nice image. Remind me never to have a kid.”
“Here’s the part that I love. Love love love.” She bounced harder than ever and then paused to make sure she had my full attention. “At that point, the star doesn’t even know its core has collapsed. From the outside, everything still looks normal.”
I gave a sudden involuntary shudder. “That’s horrible,” I said, more vehemently than I meant to.
Suzy looked taken aback. “It is?”
“Just the idea that, you know, it’s dying and it doesn’t know it.”
“Well, it’s just a star. It’s not really alive or conscious or anything.”
“Yeah, I know.” I pointed at her collection of candy. “So. More trick-or-treating, or are you done?”
She jiggled the bag, weighing the loot. “Maybe a few more houses.”
I grinned at her. “Onward ho.”
Suzy gave a Papageno-style chirp—Pa-Pa-Pa!—and dashed off, flapping wildly. I laughed, but I felt chilled deep down inside. I couldn’t stop thinking about Jeremy, heading home to hand out candy with his mom, with the stark absence of Lucas between them.
And I couldn’t get that image of Suzy’s damn star out of my mind.
Lucid Dreams
It must have been a few days after Halloween that Jeremy brought up lucid dreaming again. I remember it clearly, not because it was all that significant in itself, but because it was the closest we’d come to having a fight.
We were at school, sitting by our big oak tree. Jeremy was leaning back against the trunk, wearing faded jeans and a gray, long-sleeved T-shirt that made him look paler and thinner than ever. I was looking at him, trying to figure out if I was attracted to him or not. Everyone assumed that we were a couple, and I thought about him all the time. I wanted to lean up against him, rest my head on his shoulder, stroke his hair. He wasn’t exactly good-looking—too skinny, and that beaky nose—but there was something about him that pulled on me.
“I’m quitting smoking,” I told him.
“Yeah?”
“After this pack.” I couldn’t stand how guilty I felt every time I had a cigarette. I kept imagining how upset Vicky and Bill would be. Plus I was so paranoid about them smelling it on me that I sprayed on perfume and brushed my teeth for, like, five minutes before I left school every day.
“Yeah, so you keep saying.” Jeremy frowned at me. “Hand it over.”
I passed the pack to him, and he opened it. “I’ll have this. You’re done.”
“You hate smoking,” I said.
He shrugged. “Maybe I want to learn to blow smoke rings.”
“Don’t. If you start, I’ll feel guilty.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Fine. I’ll give it to my mom.”
“Your mom smokes?” I raised my eyebrows. “And she rolls her own?”
“Yup.”
“Fine. She can have it.” I looked at him. “So when am I going to meet your parents?”
“My dad, probably never. He moved out a year ago.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah. My mom though? You can meet her anytime. You want to?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“She’s out a lot,” Jeremy said. “She coaches the girls’ track team.”
“I thought she was a math teacher.”
“Yeah. She is. But she’s a runner too. She runs five miles every morning before work.”
“And she smokes?” I raised my eyebrows again.
“I lied about the smoking,” Jeremy said. “Oops.”
I stared at him. It kind of freaked me out that he’d lied so easily. “But she’s really a teacher? And a runner?”
“Sure, Mel. Don’t panic.”
“I’m not panicking,” I said. “But I don’t like being lied to.”
“Sorry. Really, Mel. I just wanted to help you quit smoking.”
There was an awkward silence, and I felt like we were teetering right on the brink of a fight. I shook my head. “It’s okay,” I said. “Forget it.”
Jeremy grinned at me. “Forgotten. Hey, I meant to tell you: I totally had a lucid dream last night.”
I wondered if he’d been able to talk to Lucas this time. “What was it about?”
“Swimming. I was in a pool, swimming along underwater, and I realized I was dreaming. I told myself to stay calm, not wake myself up. I swam to the edge and got out and looked around. There was no one else there at all.”
Not even a lifeguard. “So what did you do?” I asked.
“I decided to check the change room. I told myself, Lucas will be in there. He’ll be sitting on the bench, putting his shoes on, ready to go. We’ll walk out together.”
“Did it work?”
“Sort of. He was there, just like I told him to be.” Jeremy hesitated. “But when he saw me, he stood up and walked away. He just left. And I ran after him. I followed him out of the change room into the lobby, but he just disappeared. And then I woke up.”
“Well, that’s progress, right?” I didn’t understand why he was so focused on this dream thing. It wasn’t like dreaming about his brother was going to bring him back.
“In a way. I mean, I’m getting better at knowing I’m dreaming. But—well, he’s refusing to talk to me. He’s angry.”
I stared at him. “It’s a dream, Jeremy. It just means that you’re scared he’s angry. He’s not really angry.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Uh, yeah, I do. He’s dead. Dead people aren’t angry.” I reached out and touched his sleeve. “It was only a dream.”
He pulled his arm away. “Some people think dreams are very significant. That they mean more than we think.”
“Sure. I mean, I know people interpret dreams and all that,” I said, “but I don’t see how they can tell you anything about your brother beyond what’s already in your head.”
“That’s because you’re just buying into the mainstream way of thinking,” Jeremy said. “Some cultures think dreams are powerful. That in dreams, we can actually move from this world into another world.”
“Yeah, but—well, you don’t really believe that, do you? Anyway, doesn’t science kind of take the mystery out of dreaming? I mean, you can hook someone up and see their brainwaves and all that. REM sleep, right? Twitchy eyes?”
He snorted. “Science is a long way from being able to explain dreaming.”
“Isn’t it something about memory? Transferring stuff from short-term memory to long-term memory? Or something like that. I read an article about it.” I made a face. “Geek alert, I know. But my parents keep stacks of old Scientific Americans in the bathroom.”
“There are tons of theories,” Jeremy said dismissively. “And they all contradict each other. And none of them really explain why or how we dream.”
“And you have the answers, do you?” It came out sounding ruder than I meant it to, and I softened my voice. “It sounds like you have a theory.”
He shook his head. “It just seems to me that we have to look beyond science. That maybe the answers are to be found somewhere else, you know? In the spiritual realm. The mystical realm. Some people believe that when you dream, your spirit leaves your body.”
�
��Yeah, and some people believe the earth is flat,” I said.
He shook his head. “You know what, Melody? You’re being narrow-minded.”
“I’m not. I’m just being skeptical.” Skepticism is a core value in my family. I felt uncomfortable imagining my parents’ reactions to what Jeremy was saying.
“You’re being Eurocentric. You’re stuck in the dominant Western scientific paradigm and you’re not thinking critically. In fact, you’re rejecting anything that threatens your way of thinking.”
That stung. “That’s not fair,” I protested. “I’m listening, aren’t I?”
He nodded. “Sorry. I just really want you to understand this. Because it’s, well, it’s really important to me.” His cheeks were flushed, eyes shining. “Mel?”
“Okay. I’ll read some stuff. Send me some links or whatever, okay?” If he really believed that Lucas was still out there somewhere—and that he could communicate with him through his dreams—I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it.
I babysat Suzy that evening. She lives in Driftwood, which is this incredibly cool little neighborhood on the Big Bayou. You drive under this wrought-iron sign arched over the road, and it’s like you enter another world: narrow, winding roads, huge oak trees dripping with moss, thick green ferns and bamboo, and all kinds of wildlife. Sometimes I persuade Suzy to go exploring along the beach, and we’ve seen everything from squirrels to herons to black racer snakes. Mostly, though, she prefers to be indoors on the computer or reading a book.
Their house is gorgeous—built-in bookshelves, huge windows, even a fireplace. A safe haven. I could kind of see why Suzy didn’t want to leave it too often.
That night, I was glad to be there: I wanted a safe haven. Something about my conversation with Jeremy had gotten under my skin. It wasn’t just that he was mad at me. I didn’t like that—I hate conflict and generally avoid it if I can—but what really bothered me was feeling like his worldview and mine were sort of slipping apart. I just couldn’t understand how he could believe things that were so illogical.
As soon as Suzy went to bed, I looked up lucid dreaming on her laptop. The stuff I read seemed straightforward enough. Weird, but there wasn’t anything mystical about it. It was just being conscious that you were dreaming, that was all. After a few science-oriented articles, I stumbled upon a link about astral projection, which sounded more like what Jeremy was talking about—stories of people claiming to actually leave their bodies and travel in some other realm. I didn’t see how Jeremy could really believe that was possible but wondered if it was his way of coping with what had happened to Lucas. Maybe he needed to believe it. Maybe it wasn’t any stranger than any other set of beliefs—heaven, hell, purgatory, reincarnation, whatever.
I heard Suzy shout something, and I leaped to my feet, startled. I opened the door to her room. “Suzy?”
She was fast asleep, her arms flung wide, face flushed and hot. She slept with the light on and the blankets pulled right up to her chin. I pulled her covers back a little and brushed her hair off her forehead. Suzy’s ceiling was covered with glow-in-the-dark stars, which she never got to see because she was scared to be alone in the dark. Funny, for a kid so obsessed with astronomy. I’d asked her once what she was afraid of, but she’d just shrugged and said she didn’t know. I got up to leave and something caught my eye. A shimmer of green on the floor. I bent down and picked it up: a feather from her Halloween costume.
“Mel?” Suzy opened her eyes and looked at me.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Just thought I heard you say something, but you must have been talking in your sleep.”
She sat up. “I guess I was dreaming.”
I perched on the end of her bed. “Bad dream?”
“Not really.” A frown creased her forehead. “Just about school. Only there was a beach where the gym should be. It was weird.”
“Dreams are weird,” I agreed.
“Mel?”
“Mmm.”
“What you and Jeremy were talking about on Halloween? About his brother?”
I looked at her, startled. “You overheard that?”
“Just a bit of it. His brother died, right?”
“Yes.”
She lay back down and pulled her covers up, tucking them under her chin. “Was he sick?”
“No. He drowned.” I bit my lip, wondering about the beach in her dream and whether she had already known that. “I’m sorry you heard that, Suzy. I didn’t mean for you to.”
“It’s okay. I like to know things.”
“I know you do.”
“Is Jeremy really sad? Is he okay?”
I wasn’t sure how okay he was. “He’s fine. Don’t worry.” I stood up. “Go back to sleep, Suzy.”
Things were tense at home after Halloween. Vicky was working overtime, trying to drum up public support for her cause, because there was an execution scheduled for November 12. The prisoner’s name was Ramon Hernandez, and he was thirty-six years old. He’d been on death row since he was twenty-two. I knew all about him, because Vicky’s friend Pam had made a web page for him. I knew that he was almost illiterate, that he liked listening to audio books, that he enjoyed sketching. I knew why he’d been sentenced to death.
Ramon had stabbed two men in a brawl outside a bar. He hadn’t even met them before that night. He’d pulled a knife and two men had died. Vicky said he’d been so drunk he didn’t even remember why he was fighting, but he’d stabbed one of them in the throat and the other in the chest, multiple times. It was pretty gruesome to read about. His girlfriend had been there and seen it all happen. She’d testified in court. She was pregnant, but neither of them knew it then.
Around Halloween, Ramon had met his daughter for the first time. Pam hadn’t used her name on the website, to protect her privacy, but I knew she lived with her mother and her stepfather in Miami and was the same age as me. I guess her mom thought she should meet her father before he died.
I couldn’t imagine it. It bothered me a lot, thinking about her. Knowing that this man who was her father was about to be killed.
Vicky said there wasn’t anything we could do to stop it—Ramon’s last appeal had been rejected—but she wanted to use the execution to sway some people’s opinions about the death penalty. She wanted to give Ramon a human face, to counter the media’s attempts to portray him as a monster who was getting what he deserved.
“How come it bothers you so much?” Jeremy asked me.
We were up in my room and I’d just shown him the web page Pam had made for Ramon. His sketches were there, including one he’d done of his daughter. I didn’t think anyone was likely to recognize her from it; he wasn’t all that skilled an artist. “I don’t know,” I said. “I think it’s because of how deliberate it is. And, you know, official.” I shrugged. “It’s murder, isn’t it? It just feels so wrong.”
“Maybe he’ll be better off.”
“Dead?”
Jeremy shrugged. “I think he’ll be back. He’ll have another chance. Get this shitty life over with and start fresh.”
I looked at him. “Even if you’re right and reincarnation is, well, real, it doesn’t justify killing him.”
He moved away from the computer and flopped down on my couch. “I’d kill myself if I was him. Why wait around?” He picked at his thumbnail. “Sometimes I think I’d rather start over.”
His eyebrows were pulled together, lower lip caught between his teeth. His thumb was bleeding where he’d been picking at it. “Jeremy? Are you…okay?”
“No. Not really.” He scowled. “I wrote something last night. A poem. You want to see it?”
“Sure.”
Jeremy grabbed his backpack, pulled out a notebook and flipped through it. Then he handed it to me. “There. That pretty much says it all.”
I took it from him and started reading. I hate ninety-nine percent of everything, it began. I want to delete myself. His writing was jagged and sharp, all capital letters. I glanced up at him, but he
was slumped forward, elbows on his knees, staring down at the floor. I looked back at the poem.
I hate ninety-nine percent of everything,
I want to delete myself.
Annihilate, obliterate…
There’s someone always watching.
The aim of life is death
I want to free myself.
“Wow,” I said. “Jeremy? That’s pretty intense.”
“Intense?” He looked up at me, a lopsided, mocking grin on his face. “Yeah, I guess.”
“It’s really good though,” I said hastily. I felt embarrassed, like I’d seen something I didn’t want to see.
He shrugged. “I used to write a lot. That’s the first thing I’ve written in a while though.”
“Cool,” I said. “You’re a good writer.”
Like that was the point.
Event Horizon
Finally, my parents drive me home from the hospital. I sit in the backseat, behind my mom. Dad drives. None of us are saying much. I’m going over the last two months in my mind, trying to understand. Meeting Jeremy back in September. Hanging out, getting to know each other. His obsession with lucid dreams and with seeing his brother again. Trick-or-treating—he’d been okay that night, chatting with Suzy. He’d seemed fine. But that poem he wrote…and the things he said the day of the execution…
“Melody?” Bill says softly. “Please don’t blame yourself for this. When someone commits suicide—or, well, attempts it—it’s normal to think about what you could have done. How you could have prevented it. But please don’t. There’s no way you could have seen this coming.”
He’s wrong, of course, but he has no way of knowing just how far down this path I walked with Jeremy. And I don’t know where or when we crossed the line. I don’t know when we slipped from kidding around to planning to die together. And that makes me think of something else Suzy told me about. The event horizon.
I lean against the window and close my eyes, and I picture Suzy’s dark eyes fixed on me as she’s pacing back and forth, bouncing on her toes as she talks. “The event horizon—it’s like the edge of a black hole, but it isn’t a physical thing. Once you’ve crossed it, though, that’s it. You’re basically doomed to get sucked into the black hole.”
The World Without Us Page 6