At the Edge of the Universe

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “Wuss? Really? Is that all you got?”

  “Don’t make me roll over there and kick your ass,” he said, which seemed like the funniest thing in the world. He started laughing, and I laughed because it was good to see Renny smiling again. But laughing must’ve hurt because he winced and held his sides.

  “Ow,” he said, but he kept grinning.

  “Walk it off, Renny.”

  “You’re an asshole, Ozzie. And I love you, too.”

  211,581 KM

  DR. MAKALI SAYEGH HAD BEEN STARING at me for the longest five minutes of my life. We’d exchanged pleasantries after she’d called me into her office, and then she just sat there, staring and smiling. She didn’t ask why I thought I was there. She didn’t ask how I was feeling. She hadn’t asked me anything other than whether I’d like a glass of water.

  I didn’t know what her game was, but I didn’t like it.

  Dr. Sayegh was a tiny woman—barely five feet tall—with gleaming white teeth, an overabundance of laugh lines, and wavy black hair shot through with gray. I admired her for aging gracefully rather than attempting to dodge time with harsh dyes or skin creams made from leftover baby foreskin. Besides, Sayegh didn’t act old. She seemed like the kind of woman who’d celebrate her fiftieth birthday by climbing to the peak of Mount Everest just to prove she could.

  I examined the walls to kill time, waiting for her to start the interrogation. A picture of the doctor grinning from inside a yellow raft, an oar in one hand, white water raging all around her, hung on one wall. An abstract painting that drew me into its chaotic world of red splatters and neat yellow boxes, probably painted by a man who’d cut off some extruding body part and mailed it to an unrequited love, hung on another.

  “My brother’s paralyzed,” I said when I couldn’t bear the silence anymore.

  Sayegh covered her mouth with her hand and her eyes widened. “Oh, Oswald. I’m so sorry.”

  “Fell off this tower thing in basic training.” Even though I knew Renny would live, I’d been moving through life like everything around me was distant noise. I spent my days sleepwalking through school and my nights sitting with Lua and Ms. Novak, watching bad reality TV. I hadn’t seen much of Calvin outside of physics, and he hadn’t made an effort to talk to me, either. “Cracked his skull and severed his spine.”

  “At least he’s alive,” Dr. Sayegh said. She didn’t have a tablet or a notepad to write on.

  “I wish Renny agreed.”

  “How are you coping with all of this?”

  I snorted. “Me? I can still walk. Who cares how I feel?”

  “I do,” Sayegh said. “Your parents do.”

  “Right.” I folded my hands together. “My parents are staying with Warren until the army doctors transfer him back home to start physical therapy.”

  “And what about you? Where are you staying?”

  “With my friend Lua. Which is fine. It’s not like I have a home anymore anyway.”

  “Why is that?”

  The downside to seeing a new therapist every week was constantly having to explain the same things over and over. It would’ve been easier if they’d shared notes. “My parents are divorcing, so they sold the house.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter, though. That house stopped being a home a long time ago, I think.”

  Dr. Sayegh shifted in her burgundy leather wingback chair and crossed her left leg over her right. “I spoke briefly with your mother before your appointment,” she said. “She mentioned I’m the ninth doctor you’ve seen in the last six months.”

  “Eleventh, actually.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Why are you number eleven?”

  I started to answer with my usual spiel about her being the next name on the list, but she cut me off. “Why do you keep changing therapists? I understand needing to find one you’re comfortable with, but eleven is uncommon.”

  None of the others had asked me that, and I didn’t know how to answer. But I was great at avoiding answers, so I said, “The moon’s gone, you know?”

  “What is a moon?”

  “Exactly. Don’t you think it’s strange that our entire universe ends right outside our planet?”

  “Not particularly. Do you?”

  “Obviously.” My attempt to ruffle Dr. Sayegh had failed.

  “We were talking about why you can’t seem to stick with a therapist longer than one session.”

  “Were we?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine,” I said. “You want the truth?”

  “That would be nice.”

  “I don’t trust you.” I leaned back in the peach love seat and spread out, taking up as much space as I could. “Not you specifically; therapists in general.”

  “You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist,” Sayegh said. “Indira Gandhi, the first female Prime Minister of India, said that.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You should frame that and hang it on your wall.”

  Dr. Sayegh chuckled. “You enter each new therapist’s office determined not to trust them, so of course you never will. But if you want help, you’ve got to try.”

  She acted like it was just that easy. But the truth was that I did want to talk. I wasn’t Giles Corey. The weight on my chest was killing me, and I couldn’t bear it alone anymore.

  “You want me to trust you?” I said. “Tell me something personal. Something no one else knows.”

  Dr. Sayegh cocked her head to the side. “I bite my toenails. It’s a disgusting habit I never outgrew.”

  “Something real,” I said. “If you want my trust, I need yours.”

  I figured my challenge would go unanswered—that Sayegh would wait out the clock and I’d move onto Dr. Turcotte—but after a pause she said, “I took Adderall throughout college. It was a new drug back then, and expensive, but I had money and friends who supplied me. I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with my course load otherwise. I could stay up all night studying. It nearly ruined my life.”

  I knew a couple of kids at school who took Adderall, but they all had prescriptions. “Seriously?”

  Dr. Sayegh nodded. “I might not have graduated without those little pills, but the price I paid wasn’t worth it.”

  It wasn’t the kind of secret that could ruin Dr. Sayegh, but I doubted it was something she would have wanted her patients to learn. I didn’t trust her yet, but she was the first therapist who’d trusted me, and that counted for something.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I said.

  “Of course.”

  “And it stays between us? You’re not going to run and tell my parents or anything?”

  Dr. Sayegh rested her hands in her lap. “Unless you pose a danger to yourself or someone else, anything you tell me is confidential.”

  “It’s not about me; it’s about this guy I’m dating. Sort of dating. I don’t know what we are. His name’s Calvin Frye.” Sayegh didn’t say anything, so I went on. “He was in a relationship with a teacher at our school. I think the guy molested him, and it’s really messing him up, and I want him to tell someone, but he won’t, and I’m scared for him.”

  Dr. Sayegh pursed her lips. “That is a serious accusation, Oswald.”

  “It’s not an accusation. It’s the truth. Calvin wouldn’t lie.”

  “Oswald, I’m obligated under the law to report the suspected sexual abuse of a minor.”

  “But you said it was confidential.”

  Dr. Sayegh dry-washed her hands, over and over. She looked sympathetic, but her voice was stern. “If you had admitted to robbing a bank or accidentally running a man over with your car, I would be bound by confidentiality. However, the law requires me to report crimes committed against children and the elderly. I’m sorry, Oswald. I have no choice.”

  I stood, my body vibrating. Calvin would never speak to me again if he learned I’d ratted him out. “I made it all up,” I said.

  Sayegh shook her head. “Do you know who the teacher is?”

 
; “I’m not telling you.”

  “Sit down, Oswald.”

  I couldn’t resist her command, and I sank back onto the love seat. I doubted my knees could have supported me much longer anyway.

  “I promised Calvin I wouldn’t tell.”

  Dr. Sayegh leaned forward and rested her elbows on her thighs. “Do you care about this young man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then reporting this crime and getting him help is the right thing to do, Oswald.” She stared hard at me. “If you know the identity of the teacher who is abusing Calvin, you must tell me. I can keep your identity confidential. No one ever need know you were involved.”

  I thought about the cuts on Calvin’s arms. About how he said he’d never seen the stars. No one should have to go their whole lives believing the universe is empty. But it wouldn’t matter if Sayegh kept my name out of it—Calvin would know I’d told, and he’d hate me.

  I didn’t want to lose Cal, but he was drowning, and no matter what he said, I didn’t believe he could breathe underwater. I’d kept my promise to Tommy and hadn’t called the cops on his father for beating him, and I’d lost him and couldn’t help wondering if things would have turned out differently if I’d broken that promise. Maybe this was my chance to make up for not keeping Tommy safe. I made up my mind. Even if it meant losing Calvin to keep him from hurting himself again, I had to take the risk.

  “His name is Reevey,” I said. “Calvin’s wrestling coach. He’s the one.”

  207,832 KM

  I SUPPOSE IT WAS TECHNICALLY breaking and entering, even though I still had my key, but it wasn’t really a crime unless we got caught. Right?

  I held Calvin’s hand and led him into my house, hiking my backpack higher on my shoulder to keep it from slipping.

  “Don’t peek,” I said.

  “I’m not peeking.”

  I hadn’t been home since the movers had packed up our belongings and carted them away. They’d taken some of the boxes and furniture to my father’s new condo and had put the rest in storage. The house didn’t belong to us anymore, but the new owners hadn’t begun remodeling yet, so it had been sitting empty since the day we found out about Renny’s accident.

  “Just so you know,” Calvin said. “I don’t actually like surprises.”

  “You’ll like this one. Now hush.”

  It had been a couple of days since I’d told Dr. Sayegh about Calvin and Coach Reevey, and the cops hadn’t dragged Reevey away in handcuffs, though I figured it was only a matter of time. Despite part of me hoping Sayegh had changed her mind about reporting what I’d told her to the police, I knew she hadn’t, and I was determined to make the most of what little time I had with Calvin before he learned I’d betrayed him and he never spoke to me again.

  I let go of Calvin’s hand. “Don’t move, and don’t open your eyes.” I watched him for a moment to make sure he wasn’t trying to spy through his eyelids. When I was satisfied, I unzipped my backpack and arranged my supplies. It took about five minutes to set everything up, and I’d done a pretty brilliant job if I do say so myself.

  “Careful,” I said, taking Calvin’s hand again and pulling him to the floor. “Lie back, but watch your head.”

  We both lay on the cool tiles, and my stomach fluttered, wondering how Calvin was going to react.

  “Can I open my eyes now or what?” Calvin said. “This is starting to get not-in-a-good-way freaky.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I watched Calvin’s reaction as he first opened his eyes, took in what he saw, and opened them wider.

  “Are those . . . ?”

  “Stars,” I said.

  The wide vaulted ceiling glittered with twinkling pinpoints of light. When I was ten, I’d had one of those domes with the constellations that beamed onto the ceiling in my bedroom. Since stars no longer existed, those little planetariums didn’t either, so I’d had to build my own. I’d bought a pair of blue and white LEDs that dimmed alternately and a sheet of heavy black paper, into which I’d punched a thousand tiny holes, trying to recreate the constellations from memory. I’d put the lights into a cookie tin and arranged the paper over the top in a dome. When the lights blinked, they gave my stars the illusion of twinkling.

  I pointed to a series of stars in the shape of a U. “That’s the constellation Corona Borealis. And over there is the Big Dipper.”

  “Ozzie. They’re amazing.”

  “Eh,” I said. “They’re a poor approximation of the real thing, but this was the best I could do.” I tried to imagine what they looked like to Calvin. He’d never seen stars and only knew the word because I’d explained it to him. They must’ve looked so alien to someone who was used to a dark and empty night.

  “And the whole sky looked like this?”

  “Yeah. In remote places where there weren’t any other lights around, you could sometimes see other galaxies.”

  “What’s a galaxy?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s not important.”

  Calvin didn’t speak for a while. He stared at the ceiling, his eyes lingering on one spot for a moment before moving to another.

  “Why did you do this?” Calvin asked. “I mean, thank you, it’s beautiful, but why?”

  I wasn’t about to tell him I’d arranged our DIY planetarium show because I felt guilty about ratting him out to Dr. Sayegh. And, anyway, that was only partially why I’d done it. “I’m worried about you,” I said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.” I fumbled for the words. “I didn’t say that to make you feel bad. It’s just, I thought if I could show you the stars, you might understand.”

  Calvin glanced at me side-eye. “Understand what?”

  “What we’ve lost.”

  “You mean what you’ve lost. The rest of us can’t miss something we don’t remember.”

  I wasn’t sure Calvin was talking about the stars anymore. “Sometimes it’s hard to focus on what’s right in front of me when all I can think about are the things behind me,” I said.

  “Like Tommy?”

  The wonder in Calvin’s voice had vanished, replaced by a density greater than all the stars combined. I tried to think of a way to explain it that would make sense, not only to Calvin but to myself. “You know how adults are always telling us that high school is the best time of our lives?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “It’s bullshit, right?”

  “I guess.”

  I watched the lights on the ceiling twinkle, knowing my memories of the real stars were filling in the gaps between the reality and what I was seeing. Our memories and experiences are the lenses through which we see the world, and even though Calvin and I were looking at the same exact lights, I knew we were seeing different things, and I wished I could see them through his eyes.

  “I think people who believe high school was the greatest only remember their triumphs. They were adored as sports legends or were popular because they were beautiful. They had everything they ever wanted, and then they were thrust into the real world where no one knew anything about them. Their bosses and coworkers didn’t give a shit that they’d scored the winning touchdown in the homecoming game or had been surrounded by more friends than they could count. The real world is a disappointment to them because their past burned so brightly.”

  Calvin was chewing his bottom lip. “So I’m a disappointment?”

  “No!” I said more forcefully than I’d intended. “That’s not what I’m saying.” I was messing everything up. “Those people ignore the beauty in the present because they can’t stop living in the past. Which is stupid.”

  “Oh,” Calvin said. Then, “Are you going to wait forever for Tommy to come back?”

  “I don’t know. Would I be dumb if I did?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  I sat up and leaned on my elbow, angling my body toward Calvin. “I like you, Cal. I really do. But I’m terrified of what might happen if Tommy does return. Eith
er way, I’d end up hurting one of you.”

  “You’ll hate yourself if we get together and Tommy comes home, and you’ll hate yourself if you wait around Cloud Lake forever and Tommy never returns.”

  “I guess none of it matters if we’re just brains in jars, right?”

  “We’re not brains in jars, Ozzie.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. I’d only planned to bring Calvin to my house to show him the stars to cheer him up. I hadn’t expected to discuss Tommy or us or anything. Instead of lifting Calvin from his dark mood, I’d thrust him deeper into it.

  “I’d be lying if I claimed to understand what you’re going through,” Calvin said. His voice echoed against the walls, trying desperately to fill the void my family had left behind. “But how about this: I like you too, Ozzie. Maybe you’re right and we’re living in a simulation or a false vacuum or some parallel universe. Maybe none of this is real, but you’re real. This thing between us is real.”

  “Cal—”

  “So let’s see where it goes. For all we know, we could end up hating each other.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “That’s a terrible sales pitch,” I said. But he was right. My own parents were proof two people could spend half their lives together and wind up strangers.

  “I don’t know, Cal.”

  Calvin glanced at me but kept most of his attention on the stars above. “Let’s give whatever this is a try,” he said. “Go on a couple of dates, maybe go to prom. And if Tommy does come back, I’ll walk away. I won’t make you choose.”

  “Why?”

  “I think you might be worth it.”

  Calvin was so different from Tommy, but the same in many ways. I didn’t deserve either of them.

  “Just say yes,” Calvin said.

  “But it’s not fair to you.”

  Calvin turned toward me. “I know you’re afraid no one is going to live up to your memory of Tommy, but you’re lucky, you know. I’m afraid everyone is going to be like Coach Reevey. At least you know what it’s like to be in love. To know the guy you’re with loves you more than anything. I don’t have memories like that. All I have is a head full of nightmares. So, no, life’s not fair, and I’m still willing to take the risk. Are you?”