At the Edge of the Universe

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “We don’t have to become best friends to work on the roller coaster,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said, and maybe I was reading something that didn’t exist, but his eyes drooped and I swear he looked disappointed.

  “I’m not trying to be mean, but do you even care about the project? You don’t seem to care about anything lately.”

  “I care,” Calvin said. “It’s just . . . stuff.”

  “Ah, yes. Stuff does suck.” My attempt at a joke fell flat, and I didn’t want to miss the end of Lua’s show, so I said, “Look, we can work on our project, and I can’t stop you from stalking me, but you don’t need to pretend to want to be my friend.”

  “I’m not pretending,” Calvin said. “Whatever. You’re right. And it’s not like the project matters anyway.”

  “Of course it matters.”

  “Not if you’re going to waste your life waiting around Cloud Lake for Tommy.” Calvin stared at me like I alone existed. Like the club and Cloud Lake and the whole of the universe had melted away, leaving us floating together in an empty void.

  It took me a moment to process Calvin’s words. When my brain caught up, I said, “Wait, what? Do you remember Tommy?”

  Calvin stood. I was used to being taller than other kids my age except Tommy, but right then I’d never felt smaller. “I shouldn’t have come.” He took off inside.

  I leaped up and caught the door before it slammed shut. Calvin Frye couldn’t just come to my club under the pretense of watching Lua’s show, drop Tommy’s name, and run away. If he remembered Tommy, I needed to know, and I’d yank out his fingernails for the information if necessary.

  Onstage, Lua launched into her customary closing song, “Caligula’s Horse Was a Senator, Of Course.” The heat in the club choked me, and the stage lights cast dancing shadows on the floor and walls, making it difficult to locate Calvin.

  I climbed on top of a chair and scanned the crowd until I spotted him near the front door. I shoved and pushed my way toward him, ignoring the curses and grabby hands, and ran into the night. I stood on the sidewalk, looking east and then west, but Calvin had vanished.

  I turned to the bouncer, a tall drag queen who used the stage name Bella Donna but whose real name was Adonis, and said, “Did you see a guy leave? Black hoodie, blond hair?”

  Bella Donna smiled, her ruby-painted lips revealing glossy white teeth. She laid her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Oh, baby. Chasing boys is amateur hour. If he’s worth it, he’ll find you.”

  “It’s not . . . he stole something from me.”

  Bella shook her head, looking at me like I was some pathetic, horny kid. “Sorry, baby. I didn’t see him.”

  I missed Tommy so badly that nothing else mattered. I tried to hold on to hope, I told myself I’d find him or he’d return, but my life was crumbling—Warren had joined the army, my parents had fallen out of love, and the future was rushing toward me with ruthless inevitability. I could’ve handled those things with Tommy to share the burden. Without him, I collapsed under their weight. I crouched on the sidewalk in front of a/s/l and cried. I shook and sobbed, and I couldn’t stop.

  “Grow up, dude,” said a faceless passerby.

  “You want me to mess up that pretty face of yours, boy?” Bella said, her voice fierce and protective.

  “Faggots,” the other voice said, but it sounded farther away.

  Bella knelt beside me and wrapped her arm around my shoulders. I got snot on her sequined dress. “It’s all right, baby. No boy’s worth crying over. Trust me.”

  But she was wrong. I shed a million tears on the sidewalk that night, and Tommy was worth every one.

  By the time I got home, the universe had shrunk to ten billion light-years across.

  TOMMY

  I CHASE TOMMY DOWN THE sidewalk, calling after him to wait. My backpack, riding low on my shoulders, slaps my spine as I run.

  “Come on, Tommy! What’s wrong?”

  Cloud Lake Middle School is less than a mile from Tommy’s trailer, and Mom lets me walk home with him to play after school, but Tommy isn’t in the mood to play. I knew he was mad at me when class let out, and I should have ridden the bus home. But I want to know why he’s so angry.

  “Tommy? Why won’t you talk to me?”

  He doesn’t answer. Tommy’s taller than me by almost half a foot. I take three steps to every one of his. He grew during the summer between seventh and eighth grade. Sprouted like a dandelion. His voice broke into a deep bass, and he grew fuzz on his upper lip that he refused to shave until Lua told him it looked like worn-out Velcro.

  We’re both sweaty by the time we reach his trailer. It’s actually a manufactured home—not quite a trailer, not really a house, and it rests on cement blocks instead of wheels—but Tommy’s always called it “the trailer.” The patchy grass out front is littered with cigarette butts and crushed beer cans. A semicircle of beat-up lawn chairs sits off to the side, and Mr. Ross and his drinking buddies will occupy them by sunset. One of my parents always makes sure to pick me up before Tommy’s father returns home from work.

  Tommy flings open the screen door and lets it slam shut behind him. I stand outside debating whether I should call my dad to see if he can cut out of teaching early to rescue me, which I know he can’t, so I end up shucking my backpack onto the dirt and flopping onto one of the chairs. The cheap plastic-woven straps creak, and I wonder how they don’t break.

  I’m only alone a minute or two before Tommy’s mom peeks her head out the door. “Ozzie? That you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to come in?”

  “That’s okay. I’m good.”

  Mrs. Ross scrunches her face and then steps out. I once asked Tommy why his skin wasn’t as dark as his mom’s—I was seven and stupid and Cloud Lake isn’t exactly the most diverse town in the world. I thought it was because his father was white, but Tommy said that wasn’t it, but he was glad, which I didn’t understand at the time because I thought Mrs. Ross was at least as beautiful as my own mother. She’s got sharp new-penny eyes and cheeks that honest-to-God glow when she smiles. But she moves slowly, like she’s afraid to disturb the air around her. Today she bound her hair in a handkerchief and is wearing frayed, paint-stained overalls. Also, she smells like turpentine.

  “You and Tommy fighting?”

  “I guess.”

  “What about?” She leans against the side of the trailer.

  “Don’t know.”

  I expect her to keep prying, and I’d tell her why Tommy’s angry if I knew, but instead she says, “Want to see what I’m working on?” I nod. “Follow me, then.”

  Mrs. Ross walks around the side of the trailer. The manufactured homes are set so close together I could reach out and touch them. Behind the trailer isn’t exactly a yard, but if you ignore the other trailers and the people peeking out their back windows, you can pretend well enough.

  The first thing I notice—because it’s impossible to miss—is an enormous crucifix propped against the back side of the trailer. The cross is painted red, white, and blue like the American flag.

  “You like it?” she asks.

  “I don’t get it,” I say. “Is it finished?” Jesus is wearing gray slacks and shiny black dress shoes, but he’s naked from the waist up.

  Mrs. Ross shakes her head. “I bought the pants at Goodwill for a dollar, but I’m having a devil of a time finding a shirt and jacket that fit.” She walks toward the crucifix, which is taller than her, and smooths a wrinkle out of Jesus’s pants. “It’s an interpretation of the corporate bailouts. How the government shelled out billions to save the folks who drove us off the cliff but didn’t give a damn about those of us really hurting.”

  “Oh.” I don’t know much about politics. Tommy’s interested in that stuff, but it bores me to sleep. “It’s nice.”

  She takes a last look at her work before sitting on a pile of stacked paving stones Mr. Ross has been promising for years he’s going to use to bui
ld a path to the front door. “You and Tommy have been friends for a long time. You’re good for him. Good for each other.”

  I kick the dirt with the toe of my sneaker. “He’s my best friend.”

  “Tommy doesn’t always know how to say what he means. He takes after his daddy that way. Sometimes what’s in his head and what’s in his heart are too big for words. You know what I’m getting at?”

  I shake my head. “Not really.”

  Mrs. Ross smiles. There are those cheeks, lit up like fireflies. “Give him time. He’ll work out how to tell you what he’s sore about.”

  “Okay. I think I’ll go wait for my dad around front.”

  I take up the same chair I was sitting in earlier. I’ve got an hour before Dad picks me up, so I dig out my battered copy of The Giver to start reading the chapters Mr. Strother assigned us.

  I’m lost in the black-and-white world—where life is unambiguous and easy to grasp, everyone says what they mean with clarity and specificity, and each person understands their role in society—and I don’t notice Tommy standing in front of me until he clears his throat. I look up. He’s holding two plastic cups of apple juice; he offers me one.

  “Thought you might be hot.”

  “Thanks.” I take the juice even though I’m not thirsty.

  Tommy sits, leaving a chair between us. “You see what Mama’s working on out back?”

  “Pretty crazy.”

  “Yeah.”

  Tommy’s jaw muscles twitch and he bites the corner of his bottom lip. He’s gazing into his juice like he can scry the surface for answers. I wish I could help—I wish our lives were black and white, the solutions to our problems readily available—but I don’t even know the questions.

  Finally, he says, “You really taking Sonia to the Halloween dance?”

  “She asked me, so I guess.” I sip my juice, which is the cheap kind from the dollar store and mostly sugar. “She didn’t really give me a choice.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “You going to kiss her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Tommy throws me side-eye. “Do you want to kiss her?”

  At Noah Trumbull’s last birthday party—my first boy-girl party—some of the kids played spin the bottle. I sat out the game because the idea of kissing a randomly chosen girl scared me more than being trapped in a car while a rabid, blood-thirsty dog tried to break through the windows to eat me.

  I’m not scared of girls—Lua’s my best friend, after all—and a lot of my friends are girls, but the boys in my class who joke around about kissing and tell stories about the girls they’ve kissed—most of which are probably lies—act like kissing is no big deal. Only, I can’t help feeling like it is a big deal. Like it’s something that deserves to be treated as more than a party game.

  I turn toward Tommy. “Is that why you’re mad at me? Because you think I’m going to kiss Sonia?”

  Tommy shrugs. “No.”

  “Lua says Kimber’s got a crush on you. I bet she’ll say yes if you ask her to the dance. Maybe she’ll even let you kiss her.”

  “I don’t want to kiss Kimber,” Tommy says. He glances my way again. “I was kind of thinking I wanted to kiss you.”

  “Me?”

  Tommy clenches his jaw. “Yeah. You.” The way he spits out the answer feels like he’s daring me to rag on him for it.

  I’ve never considered kissing Tommy, but the thought of it isn’t nearly as frightening as kissing Sonia or a girl chosen for me by a fickle bottle’s spin.

  “All right,” I say.

  “All right, what?”

  “You can kiss me.”

  “Right here?”

  “Why not?”

  Tommy scans the area around the trailer. His father’s still at work and his mother’s in the back. No one’s watching. Tommy slides to the chair next to mine, closing the distance between us. “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  He licks his lips, leans over, and kisses me. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, so I close my eyes and push my mouth against his. The whole thing only lasts a couple of seconds, but a gentle electric current runs through my skin, and I feel a pleasant stirring in my groin that I like but don’t understand.

  When I open my eyes, Tommy’s staring at me.

  “Well?” he asks.

  I smile. I’m not sure if I’d feel the same way if I kissed a girl, but I suspect I wouldn’t. Kissing Tommy felt important. It felt honest.

  “How about we skip the dance, go trick-or-treating on our own—maybe egg Mr. Glass’s house for stiffing you after you cut his lawn—stay up all night, and watch scary movies in my room?”

  Tommy grins. When he flashes that gap between his front teeth, the world is right. Tommy’s smile is, and always has been, my favorite thing.

  “And maybe we can try kissing again,” I say. “I want to get it right, so I think we should practice. A lot.”

  9,970,000,000 LY

  NOT ALL OF MY THEORIES about Tommy’s disappearance were completely fantastical. The most likely hypothesis was that Tommy had simply run away, which was why I’d tried to fly to Seattle to find him, especially since his home life sucked so badly.

  Once, when Tommy was nine, he’d left the cap off the toothpaste. Mr. Ross had found it and dragged Tommy out of bed by his ear in the middle of the night, while Mrs. Ross sat in the kitchen unable or unwilling to stop her husband. He screamed at Tommy, and when Tommy couldn’t offer a satisfactory reason for not replacing the cap, Mr. Ross threw a plastic brush at him, which missed, hit the wall, and shattered. A plastic chip ricocheted, cutting Tommy below his eye. A millimeter higher and it might have blinded him. Then his father squeezed the entire tube of toothpaste onto the counter and forced Tommy to brush his teeth with it every morning and night until he’d used it all. Mr. Ross didn’t relent either, not even when ants swarmed and became trapped in the disgusting glob.

  The only problem with my theory about Tommy running away was that it left me with unanswered questions like: Why hadn’t he taken me with him? And how had he erased himself from everyone’s memories but mine?

  There was also the issue of Flight 1184. I didn’t believe for a second that the crash had been an accident or a coincidence. The NTSB investigators had recovered the plane’s black box, which they said had indicated a mechanical failure of some sort—though I suspected they hadn’t been completely forthcoming with the information—had caused the crash, but I had a feeling it was connected to Tommy and the shrinking universe. I just didn’t know how.

  No matter which way I turned the puzzle in my brain, I wound up with too many questions, exactly zero answers, and more theories than I could hope to test. Like that my life was a dream. Or a computer simulation. I was a self-aware character in a metafictional book à la The Neverending Story. Each scenario was wilder and less plausible than the ones before, but any one of them was possible.

  Worst of all, I couldn’t ignore the most obvious question: What if I made Tommy up?

  But just because I couldn’t ignore the question didn’t mean I considered it the answer. Besides, I needed to believe in something, so I chose to believe in Tommy.

  • • •

  I arrived early to physics to talk to Calvin.

  If Calvin remembered Tommy—even if he only remembered passing him in the hall or seeing him at some party from across the room—he could prove I hadn’t made him up, and then my friends and my parents and the endless parade of therapists would have to believe me. As screwed up as he seemed, Calvin was my first real lead in months.

  I’d barely slept Sunday night, rehearsing what to say to Calvin. My stomach had twisted itself into balloon animals through my first four periods, and by the time I reached physics, I wanted to puke. Only, Calvin wasn’t there when I arrived.

  Ms. Fuentes was standing in front of the whiteboard, and she smiled at me when I threw my backpack on my lab table. “Morning, Ozzie. You’re
early today.”

  “Trying to catch Calvin before the bell.”

  “Good for you.” She turned from the board and rested her hands on her lab table. “I expect you boys to build me an exceptional roller coaster.”

  “No pressure or anything.” I sat on my stool as other students, none of whom were Calvin, filed into the classroom, their faces buried in their phones.

  Dustin swept through the door and slugged me on the shoulder. He scanned the room for Jake Ortiz, who had actually made an appearance, though he looked rough and crusty.

  “Better go check in with my slacker lab partner,” Dustin said.

  “Good luck with that.”

  The final bell rang, and Calvin Frye rode its fading echoes through the door, took the seat next to me, and immediately rested his head on the desk. He wasn’t even carrying books, and he smelled like sour gym socks.

  Ms. Fuentes launched into our next lesson, and I waited until she turned her back before I elbowed Calvin.

  “Hey,” I whispered. “Wake up. We need to talk.” Calvin grunted but didn’t move. I nudged him again. “Don’t pretend you can’t hear me.”

  “Ozzie?” Ms. Fuentes asked. I hadn’t noticed she’d stopped drawing diagrams on the board. “Is there a problem?”

  “No, Ms. Fuentes.”

  For the rest of class, I chafed at not being able to talk to Calvin. I was so close to maybe getting some real answers, and I couldn’t even get him to acknowledge me. I wanted to grab him around the neck and shake him until he told me everything he knew about Tommy, but instead I had to wait. I watched the sadistic clock at the front of the class slowly count down the minutes, and I definitely didn’t hear a single word of Ms. Fuentes’s lecture.

  The bell rang, and Calvin Frye rushed out of the classroom. I refused to let him escape, so I left my bag and chased him into the hallway, ignoring Dustin, who called after me. Calvin walked quickly with his head down and his hands in his pockets. I was nearly carried in the wrong direction by a river of hungry students heading toward the cafeteria, but I saw Calvin duck into the boys’ restrooms, freed myself, and followed him in.