At the Edge of the Universe

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  As I worked—shifting books on the shelves to make room—I kept one eye on Mrs. Ross, though she hadn’t seemed to notice me. I lost sight of her while I was reorganizing the “Petridis Books Recommends” teen section. I’d made it my mission to highlight as many non-flavor-of-the-week books as possible. I’d written all the suggestion cards myself, but had used various aliases. “Liesa” loved books with superheroes, “Jamal” was passionate about books written by diverse authors, “Elisa” couldn’t get enough unlikable heroines, and “Anica” adored any book that featured characters who had dogs. I’d tried to recruit Lua to recommend books with a focus on music, but she’d never been able to commit to a book long enough to finish one.

  I took a break to peek around the corner and check on Mrs. Ross. Her table sat empty, while Skip was still clacking away at his magnum opus. I hadn’t heard the doorbell chime, so she might have been in the restroom or hidden behind one of the shelves where I couldn’t see her, but my curiosity drove me to see what she’d been reading.

  GED prep books, apparently—four of them—plus, a dictionary and a thesaurus. I picked up the topmost book and flipped through it. Mrs. Ross had never been shy about explaining that she’d dropped out of high school when she got pregnant with Tommy, but I’d never heard her express interest in getting her diploma. Tommy didn’t exist here, though, and I wondered why she’d dropped out of high school in the bizarro world in which I now lived, and why she’d decided to pursue her GED.

  The doorbell chimed, startling me, as Calvin walked into the store. He didn’t see me and wandered toward the register.

  “Hey,” I said, approaching from behind him. He didn’t hear me, so I tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey,” I said again.

  Calvin jumped, pushed his hood back, and pulled his earbuds out. His skin was splotchy, his eyes tired and bruised, and he was slick with a layer of sweat. He looked like he’d run straight out of a nightmare.

  “You’re here.”

  “Obviously,” I said. “I work here.”

  “Right.” Calvin glanced at the GED book in my hand. I’d forgotten I was still holding it. “The pep rallies and prom-mania finally got to you, didn’t they?”

  “Go, Sea Cows,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It’s not mine. A customer left it behind.” I tossed it on the counter, hoping Mrs. Ross didn’t return to her table and wonder why one of her books was missing, and it took heroic effort not to pin Calvin to the floor and threaten to dangle spiders over his face until he told me everything he knew about Tommy. “We can talk here, but I might have to stop to help customers.”

  “That’s fine,” Calvin said. “I don’t have anywhere to be.”

  The way he said it, I almost felt bad for him. But not so bad that I was going to let him off the hook about Tommy.

  “Last Friday,” I said. “At a/s/l. You mentioned Tommy.”

  “I did?”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t play dumb.” My jaw hurt from grinding my teeth. “Tell me what you know about Thomas Ross.”

  Calvin’s expression barely wavered. I thought I saw a hint of genuine recognition, but it might have just been an eye twitch. “Tommy? Does he go to our school?”

  “Yes!” I said. “You were on the debate team together! I think. You were on the debate team, right?”

  Calvin nodded. “I don’t remember anyone named Tommy.”

  I wanted to crush his fingers in a thumbscrew until he told me the truth. “At a/s/l you told me not to wait around Cloud Lake for Tommy. Why’d you say that if you don’t know who he is?”

  Calvin was quiet for a moment, and those seconds felt endless. All he had to do was say that he remembered Tommy and it would validate the last few months of my life. I could tell the shrinks and everyone who didn’t believe me to go to hell. All he had to do was say the words.

  “It was stupid,” Calvin said. “I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “So you don’t know him?”

  Calvin shook his head and dropped his eyes. “No.”

  He was lying. He had to be. “Then why’d you tell me not to wait around for him? How did you even know his name if you don’t remember him?”

  “I heard rumors,” he said. “I have Spanish with this girl whose sister is friends with your brother, I think. I overheard her telling someone about you and this Tommy guy.”

  “So, what? You heard gossip about me and decided to track me down at a club to offer unsolicited advice on a subject you know less than nothing about?”

  Calvin wouldn’t look at me. “I really did want to see the band, but then we started talking and you looked so sad—”

  But I’d stopped listening. “Who does that? How fucked up are you?”

  “Pretty fucked up.”

  Calvin didn’t know anything, and I’d gotten my hopes up for nothing. I was the only person in the entire world, it seemed, who remembered Tommy. I couldn’t even stay mad at Calvin for lying about it because he seemed so pathetic. Anyway, he didn’t matter; only Tommy mattered.

  “You can tell me about him,” Calvin said. “If you want.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Tommy. Not with you.” I climbed around the register and dug my physics textbook and notepad out of my bag. I didn’t want to spend a second longer with Calvin than I had to, but since he was there, I figured we should start our project so that I didn’t flunk physics. “We should work on our roller coaster.”

  Calvin reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded wad of graph paper.

  “I sort of sketched something already.” He spread his sheets of paper on the counter and tried to flatten them with his hand.

  I glanced at the drawings, not immediately sure what I was looking at. I was starting to say “We should figure out the math before we draw anything” when I realized Calvin had already designed a roller coaster.

  “You drew this?”

  His coaster began by catapult-launching the cars up a sharp incline and into the first drop before whipping into a looping corkscrew and finally ending with a camel back. He’d scribbled calculations I couldn’t pretend to understand near each section of the ride. On the other papers, he’d broken the roller coaster into smaller sections and included notes about speeds and g-forces.

  “I had some spare time at lunch,” Calvin said.

  I looked from the sketches to Calvin and back. “You did this during lunch?” While Calvin had drafted a kick-ass roller coaster, I’d been chugging chocolate milk.

  Calvin shrugged. “It’s only math.”

  “Only math,” I muttered. I read over his calculations, which seemed to indicate the ride, if built to scale, could reach a top speed of 82 mph. Not the fastest roller coaster, but the impressive twists and turns were theoretically capable of producing five positive Gs of force in some sections. “Can we actually build this?”

  “Yeah,” Calvin said. He pointed at the first steep hill. “This is the trickiest bit. We’ll need to devise a way to propel the cars up the incline. Most roller coasters tow the cars to the top of the first drop and allow their momentum to carry them through the rest of the ride.” He scrunched his forehead. “But if we slingshot the cars up the hill, they’ll hit the drop with greater speed.”

  A couple of customers interrupted, two of whom bought the Apocalypse Diet book. The other was a regular who usually loitered in the graphic novel aisle but never bought anything, who wanted to know if we had some YA book about ants and aliens I’d never heard of. When I returned, Calvin was busy working out more calculations. Without a calculator.

  “This is incredible, Calvin. Fuentes will crap her pants if we pull this off.” He may not have known anything about Tommy, but he was clearly a genius when it came to roller coasters.

  “Whatever.”

  “Whatever?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s only a grade.”

  “Maybe to you.”

  Calvin didn’t smile; he seemed bored by the conversation. Like rather than play video games or watch TV or
scour the web for porn to fill his empty hours like a normal person, he crunched complicated math problems.

  “Did you tell anyone what happened in the restroom yesterday?” he asked.

  Calvin stood quietly, the counter and his question between us. I’d honestly been so focused on learning what he knew about Tommy that I hadn’t given much thought to catching him cutting himself.

  After a moment I said, “Do I need to?”

  Calvin shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Then why?”

  “I told you,” Calvin said, slowly, like he was explaining differential equations to a toddler. “To trigger the release of endorphins and inhibit amygdala function.”

  Calvin’s bright blue eyes unnerved me. One was slightly wider than the other, and he didn’t blink often, making me feel like he was constantly studying me. Everything about him—his headphones, his black hoodie, his inscrutable Sphinx face—seemed intentionally tailored to repel people and their silly questions.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “You know that, right?”

  “Actually, it does. The pain caused by cutting causes the central nervous system and pituitary gland to release endorphins, which inhibit pain signals and produce feelings of euphoria. Simultaneously, the pain also hinders amygdala function, suppressing emotional overactivity.”

  Calvin’s explanation did nothing to clear up why he’d cut himself. It sounded scientific, but it also sounded like bullshit, and it begged two questions: Why did he need to suppress his emotions, and what would he do if cutting stopped being enough? “It’s dangerous,” I said.

  “Nah. It’s harmless.” Calvin shrugged, brushing me off. “I used to get hurt worse during wrestling practice.”

  “If you say so,” I said, though I remained unconvinced.

  Calvin fidgeted with his earbud cord, looking at the register and his papers and not at me.

  I turned my attention back to our assignment, so we could finish and Calvin could leave. I shuffled the papers and said, “I should copy these so I can go over them at home.”

  “Sure,” Calvin said. That and nothing more. I was angry at him for messing with me, but I also felt sorry for him. Yeah, he was a dick for making me think he’d remembered Tommy, but, though I didn’t know why he’d done it, I didn’t get the impression he’d acted out of malice.

  I spread the pages on the floor and snapped pictures of them with my phone. Calvin stood close to me—too close—and each time I scooted away, he edged even nearer. Clearly he lacked a basic understanding of personal space. When I finished, I returned his papers.

  “I should go,” Calvin said. “It’s a long bike ride home.”

  “You rode your bike here? How far is that?”

  “A few miles. No big deal.” He stood near the door but didn’t leave. “You doing anything over the break?”

  “Not really,” I said. “I’m trying to forget it’s almost Christmas.”

  “You should take my number.”

  “Why?”

  “In case you want to work on our roller coaster.”

  Against my better judgment, I unlocked my phone and handed it to him. When he returned it, I said, “Have a good Christmas,” though I was thinking, Try not to cut yourself.

  “Hey, Ozzie?” Calvin called as I turned back toward the register; Mrs. Petridis would kill me if I didn’t finish shelving before we closed.

  “What?”

  “I’m really sorry about Tommy.”

  Calvin stood half-in and half-out of the store, wearing his baggy jeans and hoodie, his hands shoved in his pockets, and his face angled down. His messy hair looked weedy, like he hadn’t bothered to brush it in weeks, and he looked up at me through his lashes.

  “Whatever,” I said. “Just . . . don’t pull anything like that again and we won’t have a problem.”

  “That’s not . . .” Calvin shook his head. “I mean, I’m sorry he’s gone.”

  Calvin looked like such a lost soul. His hunched back and bent shoulders and drooping head gave him away. Like in a world of seven billion people, he felt completely isolated from everyone. Calvin stared at me for a long, strangled second before walking out of the store. I watched him through the windows as he mounted his bike and peddled away.

  5,560,000,000 LY

  I FOUND MY MOM SHARPENING knives in the garage when I got home from work. I’d always thought my mother was the most beautiful woman on the planet. Straight dark hair; intelligent, slightly devious eyes, like she was smarter than you and knew it. My anger at her over the divorce hadn’t dulled that feeling, though she did look sinister sitting in a lawn chair next to her sedan, dragging a long carving knife across the surface of the whetstone in silence.

  “Feeling stabby?” I asked. Since my parents had announced their divorce, I’d tried to avoid my mom whenever possible. Maybe I was treating her unfairly, but she was the one who’d pushed Dad for the divorce, and blaming her took less effort than trying to understand her.

  Mom looked up. I thought she’d heard me pull into the driveway, but she froze like I’d snuck up on her. “What?” She glanced at the knife in her hand. “Oh. They needed sharpening.”

  “Right. Well, if Dad winds up dead and full of holes at the bottom of a canal, the police might find this moderately suspicious.”

  Mom rolled her eyes and continued working on the knife. She drew the blade slowly and precisely across the whetstone, the measured sound hypnotizing. “I’m not planning to murder your father, Ozzie.” She paused for a moment. “At least not today.”

  Maybe I would’ve laughed if she weren’t surrounded by an arsenal.

  “Why aren’t you working inside? It’s hot as balls out here.”

  “I was enjoying the peace and quiet,” she said, her tone implying that I’d interrupted her. Whatever. I was sweaty from unpacking the extra stock Mrs. Petridis had ordered for the holidays and answering stupid questions posed by deliberately clueless customers, and all I wanted at that moment was to take a shower.

  “What’s for dinner?”

  “Leftovers.”

  “Oh boy.”

  Mom tested the edge of her knife against her thumb. Satisfied, she set it aside and chose a delicate paring knife. “You and Renny are welcome to prepare your own meals if you’re unhappy with mine.”

  I figured it unwise to challenge my mother while she was armed. “It’s fine. Pot roast is always better the third time.” I watched her work and had to admit there was something soothing about the repetitive motion and the soft scrape of metal against stone. “Besides, remember what happened the last time Renny tried to cook?”

  Mom pursed her lips. “There’s still chicken stuck to the ceiling.”

  This was our longest conversation in weeks, and I couldn’t wait to end it. I edged toward the door. “Yeah, so enjoy your nonmurdery knife sharpening. I’m off to wash away the retail stink before it sticks permanently.”

  Mom paused. “Oh, Ozzie, I almost forgot—”

  “To tell me we’ve won the lottery and you’re buying me a new car? Gosh, Mom, thanks!”

  “To talk to you about your therapy.”

  I stopped my hand on its way to the knob and stared at my mother’s bare feet. “Sorry, those discussions are confidential.”

  Mom set the knife and stone aside and leveled the full power of her guilt-inducing stare at me. My mother had two superpowers: the ability to be in two places at once, and that glare. She didn’t have to remind me that she’d carried me for eight months and clothed me and fed me for seventeen years. Her stare said it for her.

  “You need to stop playing musical psychologists, Ozzie.”

  “It’s been a long day. Can we talk about this another time?”

  “We’re not talking,” she said. “I’m telling you that if you don’t find a permanent therapist to stick with, I’m going to select one for you.”

  My mother and I may not have had much
in common, but the one quality we did share was our stubbornness. “It’s not my fault every doctor you send me to is incompetent.”

  “Now I am feeling stabby,” Mom said, mostly to herself, and I was grateful she’d set her knives down, though they were still within easy reach. “Enough excuses, Ozzie. Choose a doctor. We will not have this discussion again.”

  I snorted. “A discussion implies a two-way stream of words in which my input is equally valued.”

  Mom shook her head. “Your grandmother is laughing in her grave right now.”

  “Because Nonna’s a zombie?”

  “When I was your age and made her angry, she would tell me that karma would repay my behavior by giving me children as willful as me.” Mom paused, staring at me thoughtfully.

  “I’m nothing like you,” I said. “I don’t give up on the people I care about.”

  Sadness crept into my mother’s eyes. She touched her bare ring finger with her thumb. “I’d hoped you would inherit your father’s and my best qualities, but I fear we’ve given you the combination of our worst.”

  She might as well have thrown her sharpened knives at me. A knife in my eye, one in my heart, and one in my back as I turned around and walked inside.

  TOMMY

  TOMMY’S NOSE IS SWOLLEN AND purple, and he can’t open his left eye. He sits on a stool at the kitchen counter while I fill a gallon-size plastic bag with ice from the freezer.

  “I’m calling the cops,” I say.

  “No you’re not, Oz.”

  “Stop me.” My hands tremble; I can’t zip the bag shut. Tommy reaches across the counter and takes it from me, closing it and pressing it gingerly against his face.

  “One of these days he’s going to kill you,” I say.

  “No he won’t.”

  “How can you say that?” Shouting at Tommy isn’t helping, but I can’t stop. “Last year he broke your wrist. This time it’s your nose. What happens when he cracks your skull? I won’t sit around waiting for a call telling me you’re dead.”