At the Edge of the Universe

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  His eyelids are heavy over his amber eyes, and the tail of his own shirt hangs untucked, covering his khaki pants. And when he smiles, all white teeth and too-much gums, there’s nothing else. No world, no sky, no sun. Just me and Tommy and all of time.

  Tommy kisses the tops of my knuckles. “The condom. I should’ve brought more than one.”

  “Whatever,” I say. “It’s not like we’re worried about getting pregnant.”

  “I love you, Oswald Pinkerton.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “I never want this moment to end.”

  “Who says it has to?”

  Tommy pulls me against his chest and wraps his arms around my stomach. Strong arms. Not like my bony ones. His could move mountains. “And I’m sorry about dinner. I wanted it to be special.”

  “It was special,” I say. “Everything was.”

  “No, I should’ve taken you somewhere fancy.” Tommy shivers in the cool morning air. “But I didn’t have the money and—”

  I face Tommy and look into his beautiful eyes. I should be freezing, but Tommy’s my radiator. “I don’t need a fancy restaurant, Tommy. All I need is you.”

  “Tonight was supposed to be perfect.” His voice cracks. “I wanted our first time to be perfect.”

  I can’t keep from blushing. “It was.”

  Tommy shakes his head, tries to pull away, but I hold tight. “It shouldn’t have been on a sheet in an abandoned house, Ozzie. You deserve better.”

  God, he’s everything. “This isn’t some abandoned house. It belongs to us tonight. And I wouldn’t have done anything different. Not one damn thing.”

  “I don’t deserve you.”

  “You’re amazing, Tommy. The homecoming dance was amazing, dinner was amazing, and that thing we did back there, on that sheet? I can’t wait to do it again and again and again and—”

  Tommy kisses me. His tongue slides into my mouth, filling it with the taste of garlic. He claws at my belt, digs his thumbs into my hips, and pulls me closer.

  “Why are you crying?” I ask.

  “I’ll love you for always, Ozzie. Until my skin rots and my hair falls out, I’ll love you.” His lips brush mine. His hands barely touch me, and I shiver.

  “We should get some sleep before we go home,” Tommy says. “My dad’s going to kill me for staying out all night.” He turns toward the house, but I catch his hand and pull him back.

  I know Tommy’s joking about his father, but I also know he’s not. Still, the damage is already done. “Let’s stay and watch the sunrise.”

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “A little,” I say. “My jacket’s inside. I’ll go grab it.”

  Tommy rubs his thumb along my cheek and down the back of my jaw. “I’ll get it.” He walks into the house, not letting go of my hand until he absolutely has to. I only turn back to the sun when Tommy has disappeared, but the sun is nothing compared to him. Still, I stay to watch a while longer.

  263,715 AU

  DR. HAMISH LEGGE WAS A QUACK—practically part duck—and I knew it before he opened his mouth. I’m not one to discount the value of therapy, especially seeing as Renny, my parents, and Calvin all could have benefited from a good psychologist, but Dr. Legge was not a good psychologist.

  The motivational posters on his wall betrayed him. Pictures of penguins with sayings like, “Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.” Only a simpleminded fool believed the secrets to surviving life could be condensed into bullshit quotations.

  “Tell me why you’re here, Oswald,” he said.

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Because it was this or jump off the nearest bridge.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for therapy, but Mom had scheduled the appointment and had made it clear skipping wasn’t an option.

  Dr. Legge typed a note onto his tablet, pecking at the digital keys with only the first two fingers of each hand. He wore a bow tie tied so tightly it was cutting off the blood flow to his brain. His wispy more-gray-than-brown hair was combed neatly, and his beard precisely trimmed.

  “Do you often think about hurting yourself?”

  “Only when I’m in a useless therapy session.”

  For some reason, Legge smiled at that. “How was your holiday vacation?”

  “Let’s see,” I said. “I found out my father is a cheater, my brother left for the army yesterday, my best friend is about to achieve her dream and leave me behind, and I gave a blowjob to a guy I thought was my friend but who followed it up by calling me a slut, which I deserved. How was your holiday vacation?” I didn’t mention losing all the stars or the universe shrinking to just over four light-years because I still couldn’t believe it had happened. I mean, rationally, I knew it had, but my brain couldn’t process it. Also, I was already pushing my luck with that joke about jumping off a bridge, and I didn’t want to give the doctor any additional ammunition he could use to lock me up.

  Dr. Legge shifted on his couch. “Quite nice. I took my children to Paris. We toured the Louvre.”

  “It was a rhetorical question,” I said. “You’re the worst therapist ever.”

  “You’re not a particularly wonderful patient.”

  I stood up. Sitting, I’d still been taller than Legge, but standing, I towered over the man. “Christ, I’m not even going to have to make up a reason not to see you again. You’re a jerk.”

  “Sit down, Oswald.”

  I sat.

  “Now,” he said, “the one thing you need to understand about therapy is that I can only help you if you want me to.” Legge stared me down. “Do you want me to help you?”

  “I don’t think you can.”

  Dr. Legge nodded and made a note in his tablet. “Then I believe we’re done. It was nice meeting you, Oswald.”

  He’d dismissed me. No doctor had ever dismissed me. Even when I’d ridiculed them, they’d still tried to figure me out, to force me to open up. I didn’t know what to do.

  After a moment I stood and walked toward the door.

  Before leaving, I stopped, turned to Dr. Legge, and said, “The guy I mentioned. Was he right for calling me a slut?”

  Dr. Legge didn’t look up from his tablet, but he said, “Sometimes when people lash out, when they call others names, it’s themselves they’re putting down.” His two-finger typing was infuriating. “That answer was free. The next will cost you. Good-bye, Oswald.”

  255,024 AU

  I WASN’T SURE WHETHER I was angrier at Calvin for calling me a slut—even if he was only joking—only minutes after I’d blown him, or at myself for so easily forgetting about Tommy. Either way, I’d deleted Calvin’s texts unread for the rest of winter break, though I didn’t know what I was going to say to him now that we were back in school.

  Thankfully, Dustin arrived to physics before Calvin and regaled me with tales of his vacation at his grandparents’ house.

  “So then Bubbe runs out of her bedroom, flapping her arms, yelling like the house is on fire about how the toilet’s overflowing, and Zayde marches in, suited up with yellow dish gloves and armed with a plunger, and comes out ten minutes later holding three wet Barbie heads, asking Bubbe what the hell she’s been eating.”

  It felt good to laugh, and I loved hearing stories about Dustin’s crazy family. “Barbie heads?”

  Dustin nodded. “Apparently, Sasha didn’t like the way Avi’s Barbies were looking at her, so she decapitated them and flushed the heads down the toilet.”

  “Your cousins are so weird.”

  “You have no idea, Pinks,” Dustin said. “Graeme’s going through this phase where he wants to be a comedian, so he spent the entire vacation telling the worst jokes.”

  “Come on. That’s kind of adorable.”

  “Did you hear about the man who stole a calendar?” Dustin said, deadpan. “He got twelve months.”

  I busted up laughing.

  “Seriously, two weeks of that crap,” Dustin said. “It actually made me look forward to
working with Ortiz. If he shows up.” Dustin looked over his shoulder at his still-empty lab table. “What’d you do? Anything good? Renny shipped off, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Fifteen weeks. If he survives that long.”

  Dustin clapped me on the back. “You worry too much. He’ll be fine.”

  I didn’t expect anything too terrible to happen to Warren—other than possibly having to spend fifteen weeks cleaning latrines with a toothbrush as punishment for oversleeping. It was what happened after basic that scared me. But I didn’t want to talk about that, so I changed the subject. “You missed an amazing show on New Year’s Eve. Lua and the band blew a/s/l away. For real. Their set was hands-down the best.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Dustin said. “Our Lua’s gonna be famous one day.”

  “Other than that . . .” I considered telling Dustin about Calvin, but the final bell saved me from oversharing. Anyway, Dustin had never had a girlfriend, so I doubted he would have had any useful advice for me. He left for his table as Calvin slid into class at the bell and took his seat. Ms. Fuentes dove into the next chapter, hinting she’d be quizzing us on the material sooner rather than later.

  I refused to look at Calvin. What we’d done had definitely been a mistake. Maybe. Definitely probably. I’d been lonely and horny, and I couldn’t even begin to guess what kind of demented thoughts had been going through his brain that night. For all I knew, Trent had been right and Calvin was a pathological liar.

  All morning I’d half expected to find out Calvin had told the whole school what we’d done, the way Alex Molitor had done to Shay Kristoff after she gave him a hand job in the theater during rehearsals for And Then There Were None, but I would’ve heard about it by now if he had. Calvin kept his head down and his mouth shut throughout class, and he ran off when the bell rang.

  I made it through the rest of the day, though I couldn’t remember anything that my teachers had talked about during my last two classes, since all I could think about was going home, locking myself in my room, and sleeping until the weekend. When the last bell finally rang, I grabbed my bag and headed toward the parking lot.

  Lua caught up with me in front of the library. She was decked out in striped leggings and a black dress that skirted the school’s rule on appropriate length.

  “I’ve been dying to talk to you,” Lua said.

  “About what?”

  “I would’ve told you at lunch, but Dustin was there and I wanted you to be the first to know.”

  Lua’s coyness was bordering on annoying. “Is this about Jaime? You’ve broken up and gotten back together so many times, I’m not sure I want to hear it if it’s about Jaime.”

  Lua grabbed my hand and pulled me to a stop. “It’s not about that,” she said. “But I did break up with Jaime for good.”

  “Oh.”

  “I didn’t want to string him along, since I’m going on tour.”

  I started to tell her I was glad she’d been straight with Jaime—finally—but I stopped when the last thing she’d said registered in my brain. “Tour?”

  Lua nodded, grinning madly. “The lead singer of Cinderfellas invited the band to open for them on their tour at the end of the summer.”

  “You’re going on tour?”

  “We’re going on tour.”

  “You’re going on tour!” I grabbed Lua’s other hand and jumped up and down. She screamed and we laughed and I didn’t even care that it meant I’d soon lose her, because how could I stand in the way of her dreams?

  “Holy shit, you guys are fucking losers.” Trent Williams stood in the grass sneering at me and Lua.

  “Go fuck yourself with a power drill, asshole,” Lua said, still smiling, still grinning her face off.

  Trent muttered something and trudged away.

  “He totally wants you.”

  Lua rolled her eyes. “As if.”

  “I can’t believe it’s really happening,” I said. “We should celebrate. We’ll get Chinese and you can tell me everything. I want all the details.”

  “I can’t tonight,” Lua said. “Rehearsals. I’ve got to write some new songs and we only have a few months to practice.” She stopped for a moment. “Shit, Ozzie. This is real.”

  I held my smile even though it was already starting. Lua was leaving. “Whatever. This weekend, then. And don’t say no.”

  “Yes,” Lua said. “This weekend. You and me and MSG.”

  We kept walking toward where I’d parked, both of us repeating some version of “I can’t believe this is happening” over and over until I saw Calvin Frye leaning against the hood of my car. Lua flashed me a questioning look.

  “Leave me alone,” I said when I got near enough.

  “Ozzie, just listen, all right? Give me one minute to explain.”

  “If you want to discuss our roller coaster, fine. Otherwise I have nothing to say to you.” I opened the door and threw my backpack in the backseat. Lua stood to the side all narrowed eyes and jutting hips, like she might beat the crap out of Calvin if she had any idea what was going on.

  Calvin straightened and turned toward me. “What I said . . . it was a joke. A bad one. I didn’t mean it. I’m so stupid and I ruin everything and I shouldn’t have said it.” His shoulders drooped. “I’m sorry, Ozzie. I really am.”

  I stood in front of the driver’s side door, clutching the handle, gripping it so tightly my fingers hurt. “Fine,” I said. “Thanks for the apology.” I opened the door but didn’t get in.

  “Can we at least meet to work on our project?” Calvin sounded so pathetic, I almost believed he was actually sorry.

  “Sure. The quicker we get it done, the quicker we never have to speak again.”

  Calvin nodded. “Okay. I’ll wait for you to call me.” He walked away. I watched him until he turned the corner at the end of the sidewalk by the library before getting in the car and starting the engine.

  “Do I want to know what that was about?” Lua asked.

  “No,” I said. “You really don’t.”

  • • •

  Mrs. Petridis disappeared the moment I walked into the bookstore to work. I might have worried she’d snuck out the back door and run away if I hadn’t heard her swearing in her studio.

  I busied myself shelving books, letting the rhythmic clicking of Skip’s Royal Quiet De Luxe lull me into a trance. My mind wandered back to earlier in the day, to Calvin’s face as he stood in front of my car. I tried to imagine how I would’ve reacted if Tommy had said what Calvin had. I probably would’ve laughed about it—we would’ve laughed about it together—but I hadn’t laughed when Calvin said it because, whether he’d been joking or not, I thought it was true. Maybe not in the most literal sense, but I had cheated on Tommy, which made me feel like dog shit smeared on the bottom of my shoe, and maybe it wasn’t fair to blame Cal for my own mistakes.

  I was trying to decide whether to stay mad at Calvin or forgive him when someone tapped me on the shoulder. Mrs. Ross stood over me, wearing a cautious smile. Thick makeup hid most, but not all, of the bruising around her eyes. Unlike when Calvin cut himself, I doubted Mrs. Ross thought much about her amygdala when her husband was wailing on her.

  “You know where the books on American history are?” she asked. “I need one that deals with the Adams administration.”

  “Sure.” I led her to the history section and helped her pick out a couple that looked promising.

  “That FOIL thing worked,” she said as I walked with her to a table.

  “I’m glad.” I motioned at her stack of GED books. “If you want, I can keep those behind the register so you don’t have to find them every time.”

  Mrs. Ross blushed. “I feel bad enough as it is coming here and not buying anything.”

  I shook my head. “Mr. Petridis wouldn’t have minded.”

  “Mr. Petridis?”

  “The owner. Well, he died, so he’s not technically the owner anymore, but he wanted to create a place where people could
enjoy books, whether they bought any or not.”

  Mrs. Ross settled at her table and started flipping through the pages of one of the thick history books. She’d brought along a set of index cards and a marker.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said.

  Mrs. Ross froze. Her muscles tensed. “I know you think—”

  “It’s not about Tommy,” I said quickly. “I was just wondering why you dropped out of high school.”

  “That all?” Mrs. Ross relaxed slightly. I figured I’d crossed a line. I was talking to her like we knew each other, but we didn’t. The woman I’d known, Tommy’s mother, didn’t exist. But then she blew out a sigh and said, “I got pregnant.”

  “You did?”

  Mrs. Ross nodded. “My folks kicked me out of the house. I spent some time living in a shelter and working at McDonald’s until Carl and I could afford a place of our own. School’s not a priority when you can barely afford food.”

  A seed of hope sprouted fragile tendrils in my chest. I’d heard the story before. But how would this story end? Did she give Tommy up for adoption? Was he still out there with a different name, waiting for me to find him?

  “What happened to the baby?” I asked, careful not to use Tommy’s name or push too hard and risk spooking her.

  “Stillborn.” Mrs. Ross breathed shallowly, and she blinked more than normal. “I tried going home, but my parents wouldn’t take me back.”

  The same but different. Mrs. Ross had gotten pregnant and dropped out of school, but instead of giving birth to Tommy, her baby died and she wound up stuck in a shitty life with an abusive husband anyway. But at least it proved Tommy wasn’t to blame for the way his mother’s life had turned out.

  Too bad he wasn’t around for me to tell him.

  “And you were going to name him Thomas, after your grandfather, right?

  “Nope,” she said. “Carl was pretty insistent we name the baby after him.”

  “You were going to name him Carl Jr.? Maybe it’s better he—” I stopped myself and coughed to cover what I’d nearly said. “Do you still make art?”