At the Edge of the Universe

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  Mrs. Ross’s head whipped up and she stared at me with narrow eyes. “How do you know about that?”

  Shit. I shouldn’t have known. I scrambled for an explanation while Mrs. Ross bored into me with her eyes.

  “Look,” I said. “I know you don’t believe me—and why should you?—but I grew up around your house. You were like my second mother.” I was doing a terrible job of explaining, and, judging by the way Mrs. Ross’s nostrils flared, I was screwing things up worse.

  “You take your coffee with honey,” I said. “And the only book you’ve ever finished is Their Eyes Were Watching God. You sing Lauryn Hill songs when you wash dishes, and you’ve seen every episode of the original Star Trek. You never cuss, your favorite flower is redring milkweed because it reminds you of your grandmother, and you hide money from your husband in a tin you keep in the toilet tank.”

  Mrs. Ross looked like she wanted to flee, but she didn’t move. “Have you been snooping in my house or something?”

  Skip had stopped typing. I caught him with his fingers poised over the keys, eavesdropping. I knew I sounded crazy, but Mrs. Ross had a right to know the truth.

  “In another life,” I said, “your baby didn’t die. You had him and raised him, and I met him and he became my best friend. How else could I know all those things about you? There’s no way I could learn your favorite flower by peeking through your windows.”

  Mrs. Ross pushed her chair back and stood. “I have to go. And don’t worry about hiding the books for me. I won’t be coming back.”

  “Please don’t leave,” I called futilely after her.

  She didn’t stop or look back, and all I could do was watch her leave.

  “You mind if I use some of that for my book?” Skip asked after the door closed behind Mrs. Ross. “It’s great stuff.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Fine. No sane person would believe it’s true.”

  253,221 AU

  I HATED BOWLING. ANY GAME a toddler can beat you at by granny-throwing a ball down the lane is automatically stupid. Of course, I wasn’t playing against a toddler—unless you counted the one two lanes over who kept throwing strikes, which I didn’t—I was playing against Dustin, and he was kicking my ass.

  “Damn, Pinks,” he said. “You really suck at this.” He waited for his ball to return so he could pick up the spare. Which he did.

  “You don’t. Though I wouldn’t go putting it on your college applications.”

  I munched cheesy nachos from the greasy paper container on the table and checked out the score. Even if I threw nothing but strikes for the remaining four frames, I couldn’t catch up to Dustin.

  Mrs. Petridis had given me Friday night off—she’d given me the whole weekend off, actually. She’d decided to keep Ana on full-time, which had meant cutting my hours, not that I’d minded too much except that I hadn’t known what to do with my night until Dustin guilted me into going bowling.

  “I feel like we haven’t hung out in forever,” Dustin said.

  “We haven’t.” I stuffed my fingers in the holes and hefted my ball. While I understood the mechanics of the game, I couldn’t translate that into meaningful action. I threw my ball down the lane, and didn’t bother watching to see how many pins—if any—I knocked down.

  My final score was pitiful, even for me, and we decided to give pool a try. Dustin racked the balls.

  “What’s new with you, Pinks?”

  “Uh . . . nothing?”

  “Hear from any colleges yet?”

  “If I had, you’d be the second to know.” I selected a pool cue at random and waited for Dustin to break. “What about you?”

  Dustin scattered the solid and striped balls across the table, knocking one of each into different corner pockets. Seriously, the kid didn’t know how to suck at anything. “I got into UF.”

  “Congratulations,” I said, though I wasn’t surprised. Any school that rejected Dustin Smeltzer was stupid. “That’s your safety school, right?”

  Dustin shook his head. “Nope. UF’s my school.” He lined up the cue ball and sank the fourteen. “You should go. We could room together.”

  “Wait. What about Princeton? And Duke and Cornell?”

  “Too expensive.” Dustin scratched. He waited for the cue ball to drop, retrieved it, and handed it to me. “Your turn.”

  But I just stood there holding the ball. I would’ve kept standing there if one of the girls at the next table hadn’t asked me to move. I didn’t understand what Dustin meant by “too expensive.” His parents were both lawyers and loaded. After the problems they’d experienced adopting Dustin when he was a baby, they’d started a successful family law practice specializing in helping other couples navigate the adoption process. But they made the bulk of their money handling wealthy couples’ divorces.

  I placed the cue ball at the end of the table, lined it up to take out the three ball, which was right in front of the side pocket, cocked my cue, and still missed, sending the three ricocheting off the side, where it scattered a cluster of balls.

  “Tough break, Pinks.”

  How could Dustin act so casual? He’d spent the last four years of high school killing himself so he could attend any school he wanted. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know what he wanted to study, because there was nothing he wasn’t good at. Brain surgeon, teacher, theoretical astrophysicist? He could’ve done anything, though that last one might’ve been a waste of time if the universe continued collapsing.

  “What’s going on, Dustin?” I said, finally. “UF’s a good school and all, and congratulations, but you’re better than a state college.”

  Dustin cleared two more striped balls from the table like it was nothing. When he finally missed a shot, he stepped back and leaned against the table. For a stoner, tidy had always best described the way he dressed. Navy shorts, short-sleeved plaid shirt. Like he was on his way to a polo match and had wandered into a trashy bowling alley by mistake.

  “My dad made a couple of bad investments,” he said. “No big deal. We probably won’t lose the house.”

  “Probably?”

  “Don’t make it a thing. Come on, your turn.”

  Clearly he didn’t want to talk about it, so I held the hundred questions I was dying to ask. By the time Dustin won the game—eight ball, side pocket—I still had four of my balls on the table.

  “You hungry?” Dustin asked. “I’m hungry. Let’s swing by Denny’s.”

  I’d driven to Dustin’s house, but we’d taken his Jetta to the bowling alley. He fired up his glass bowl in the Denny’s parking lot, filling the car with thick clouds of smoke, before we went in. The hostess stuck us at a still-damp but hardly clean booth in the corner. Most of the other tables sat empty, but the night was young and creepy.

  “How’re things working out with you and Frye?” Dustin asked. I sipped shitty coffee while he destroyed a chocolate milkshake.

  “Nothing’s going on,” I said, before I realized he’d probably been referring to our roller coaster.

  Dustin grinned. “Which means something is definitely going on. Spill it, Pinks.”

  I dumped the bowl of creamers onto the table and started stacking them. “Isn’t it weird how these things sit out all day but don’t go bad?”

  “Not really,” Dustin said. “Bacteria causes them to spoil, so the packages are sealed and then heated to kill it all off.” He set both hands on the table and raised his eyebrow. “You’re avoiding the question.”

  Of course I was avoiding the question. Just like he’d avoided discussing why he was throwing his future away at a state university—sure, UF was the top-ranked school in Florida, but it was no Princeton. Our discussions rarely ran deeper than school or our families or our favorite pizza toppings, but maybe talking about Calvin with Dustin wouldn’t be terrible.

  “We sort of fooled around.”

  Dustin broke out his stoner grin, highlighted by his bloodshot eyes. “I knew it! When? Where? Does it bother you he’s dated g
irls? Is he your boyfriend now?”

  “New Year’s Eve.” I ticked the answers off on my fingers. “In my car, parked in front of his house. Why would it bother me? And no.”

  “Was it bad?” Dustin asked. “Does he have a tiny dick? Because I’ve seen him wrestle and I would’ve guessed he was packing some serious meat.”

  “First of all,” I said, “gross. Second: How shallow do you think I am?”

  Dustin shrugged. “I don’t know. If television and movies have taught me anything, it’s that size matters.”

  Coming from anyone else, I probably would’ve been offended, but Dustin didn’t know how to be properly mean. It wasn’t in him to demean people. It was still weird, though. “Well, it doesn’t,” I said. “And, for the record, Calvin’s dick is dick-sized, and that’s all I’m prepared to say about it.”

  “Do you like him?” Dustin asked.

  “He called me a slut,” I said. “Right after we . . . uh . . . finished.”

  “Harsh. Why?”

  “I wish I knew. He tried to tell me he was only joking, but it didn’t feel like a joke.”

  Our waitress delivered our food. Scrambled eggs, pancakes, bacon, sausage, and hash browns for Dustin, and a BLT and fries for me. I wasn’t hungry, but Dustin’s munchies demanded greasy satisfaction.

  “Maybe I overreacted,” I said, picking at my fries.

  “Your reactions do tend toward the extreme.” Dustin talked with his mouth full. “Not quite Lua territory, but you definitely overthink shit, Pinks.”

  Of course, Dustin probably thought everyone overreacted about everything, but only because he possessed the emotional range of a potato. If I’d found out my parents were broke and couldn’t send me to college, I probably would have burned my house down, or something less destructive but equally terrifying. Not Dustin, though. He was either the most Zen person I knew, or he was going to implode one day soon.

  “Isn’t sex supposed to be special, though?” My only other experience had been with Tommy, and it had been special.

  “Don’t know,” Dustin said. “Don’t think about it much.”

  “Sex?”

  “Yeah.”

  “For real?” I said. “I think about it all the time. Like, since I first popped wood, my brain has been stuck on sex overdrive.”

  “Weird.”

  “How can you not think about sex?” I asked.

  Syrup dripped over the side of his pancakes and pooled near his eggs. He scraped together a mouthful of both, mixing the salty and sweet, which was practically anathema to me, and ate them. “Just don’t.”

  This was a side of Dustin I’d never known. “What about when you need to fire off a few practice shots?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I whack it sometimes. It’s like flossing, though. Necessary but tedious.”

  “Wow. Is that why you’ve never dated anyone?”

  Dustin had cleaned his plate while I’d barely eaten half my sandwich. Denny’s was starting to fill up with the Friday night after-club crowd, but Dustin and I existed in our own world. “I guess. Like, I’d be down to spending time with someone cool, cuddling and shit. But then there’d be all that pressure to have sex, and I’m just not into it.”

  I had difficulty understanding where Dustin was coming from. Even though Calvin had ruined it at the end, I still remembered kissing him, and the feel of his hands on my chest. If I were weaker, I might have forgiven him so we could do it again. The idea that Dustin didn’t care for or think about sex intrigued me.

  “Maybe you should give Frye a chance to explain,” Dustin said. “He’s not a bad guy.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We had economics together last year.”

  “But that was normal Calvin, not emo Calvin from the darkest timeline.”

  “People go through shit,” Dustin said. “Some handle it better than others.”

  “Like you?”

  Dustin pushed his plate away and then wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Nah, I’m a mess.”

  “Yeah, you’re a five-car pileup.”

  I’d tried to bait Dustin into talking about college, but he didn’t bite. “Look, all I’m saying is that maybe Calvin wasn’t actually after sex. Maybe he just wanted to feel close to someone—that someone being you—and thought sex was the way to get what he wanted.”

  “He could’ve just told me he wanted to talk.”

  Dustin shrugged and looked down at his empty plate. “Let’s be honest, Pinks. You’re not exactly the easiest person in the world to talk to, and you’ve been pretty focused on other things the last few months.”

  I would’ve been pissed if anyone other than Dustin had said it, but he wasn’t wrong. I’d been so concerned with my own problems—my parents and Renny and finding Tommy—that I’d been ignoring everything else. It was entirely possible Calvin had needed something from me, I’d missed it, and he’d thought sex was the only way to get it.

  “The real question,” Dustin said, “is whether this was a one-time thing between you and Calvin or if you want more.”

  It was easier to hate Calvin for being a jerk than talk to him. It was easier to think I’d made a mistake—the kind of mistake Tommy could forgive me for when he came back—than that something real had happened between me and Calvin.

  “For someone who doesn’t think about sex,” I said, “you seem to know a lot about it.”

  Dustin shook his head. “I don’t know anything about sex. But I know you, Pinks. Stop overthinking it and talk to the guy. Just, you know, keep your clothes on this time.”

  “You’re an ass.”

  “I know.”

  I abandoned my BLT, and we paid and left. When we reached Dustin’s house, I stood at my car and we stared at the empty sky. I still couldn’t fathom that the stars no longer existed, and found it even more difficult to believe that I was the only one who knew they ever had. The sky felt desolate without them, but it also felt heavy. Like it might fall and crush us under its weight. The whole thing was difficult to even begin to wrap my brain around. I kept hoping I’d look up and find all the stars back where they were supposed to be. Like with Calvin, it was easier to ignore the problem than to deal with it.

  “Are you going to be okay?” I asked Dustin.

  “We’re all going to be okay.”

  “With the college thing,” I said. “You could get scholarships.”

  Dustin waved me off. “So what if I can’t go to an expensive school? I’m luckier than most. UF’s a good college, and I’m still the smartest guy you know. I’ll be fine.”

  “I wish I had your confidence.”

  “You can choose to be happy with what life gives you,” he said, “or spend your life miserable. I choose happiness. It’s really that simple.”

  239,924 AU

  I LAY IN BED UNTIL noon on saturday thinking about Calvin. Wondering if Dustin was right and I was overthinking what had happened. Maybe what Calvin had said had been more about him than about me, and he’d explain if I gave him the chance. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to give him that chance. Because if Calvin did have a good reason for what he’d said, and I forgave him, I’d have to deal with what we’d done. I’d have to deal with what hooking up with Calvin meant for me and Tommy.

  I was certain I loved Tommy, and I refused to accept that he was gone and might never come back, but Calvin was here and Tommy wasn’t. It was possible that I actually liked Calvin, that something real might have happened between us on New Year’s Eve. And if it had, well, I doubted I could forget about Tommy and jump into a relationship with Calvin, but I at least owed him the opportunity to explain.

  I finally texted Calvin to see if he wanted to get together to work on our roller coaster. He answered “yes” almost immediately, which meant I needed to get out of bed.

  I stumbled downstairs in my boxers. A realtor had been holding open houses while I was at school, and the house was cleaner than normal. It already looked like we’d never lived there. T
hey hadn’t just swept away the crumbs on the floor, they’d swept up the memories we’d made. Swept them up and dumped them in the trash.

  My mom walked into the kitchen as I reached the bottom of the stairs. She was wearing a black bikini with a flower-print sarong wrapped around her waist, and she’d tied her hair into a ponytail.

  “My eyes!” I yelled. “They’re burning!”

  Mom pursed her lips. “Don’t be dramatic, Ozzie. You breast-fed until you were two. Besides, I’m not the one wearing underwear.”

  I glanced at my Super Mario boxers. “They’re more shorts than underwear.”

  Mom pulled out a pink water bottle and a yogurt from the fridge, setting both on the counter.

  I sat at the kitchen bar, hoping she’d leave soon so I could make myself brunch in peace. “Going to the beach?”

  “Yes.”

  “With Ben Schwitzer?”

  Mom shook her head. “I’m not seeing Ben any longer. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Did you realize you had more in common with his parents than him?”

  Mom rested her hands on the counter and leaned forward, her arms straight. “This isn’t easy for me, Oswald.”

  “How would I know? None of you talk to me. And you keep secrets from me.”

  “I’m forty-two,” Mom said. “I’m forty-two and I never thought I’d be dating again. When I married your father, I believed we’d stay together until we died.”

  “Then tough it out. I know he cheated on you, but Ben Schwitzer makes you even now, right? Don’t give up.”

  Mom’s anger lines receded, replaced by a weariness that made her look older than forty-two. “We’ve changed too much, Ozzie. People can begin on the same trajectory only to wind up, twenty years later, so far from one another that it’s impossible to chart a course back.” She sniffled, and I thought maybe she was crying, but it could have been allergies. “That’s just life, Ozzie. It happens. It’ll happen to you.”

  I thought about Tommy, and wondered if we would have eventually grown apart. I couldn’t imagine a life where I didn’t love Thomas Ross. “Does it have to?”