At the Edge of the Universe

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “Another guy?” The salesperson is watching us, and I suspect he knows I lied about the fundraiser, but I don’t care.

  “Not necessarily. We could go with Lua and Jaime, and Dustin and whoever he takes. It’s just, we’re always Ozzie and Tommy. I don’t know how to be anything else.” Tommy looks at his shoes before he heads back into the fitting room.

  I change into my regular clothes and we leave the shop. I’m afraid to speak, too afraid to ask him to explain what he meant earlier. Whatever is going on with him is bigger than his father. I’m not sure I want to know anymore.

  “Is it so bad being Ozzie and Tommy?” I ask.

  “You know I love you, right, Ozzie?”

  “But?”

  Tommy shakes his head and takes my hand. “No but. Just: I love you.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief. “I love you, too.”

  3.12 MI

  AFTER PROM THE LIMO DRIVER dropped us off at Lua’s house so I could get my car, and then I drove us all to Trent’s. Most everyone who’d gone to the dance, it seemed, showed up at the party. Trent’s parents were home, but they stayed in their bedroom and let us drink and dance and generally raise hell.

  I hadn’t wanted to ask Lua about Trent with Dustin in the backseat, but he’d run off the moment we got to the party, so, after I made the rounds, I found Lua alone in the front yard. He’d shed his jacket and was staring at the sky, which was only partially visible through the trees, but so dark and empty without the stars that it was difficult to tell the difference.

  “So,” I said. “You and Trent?”

  “Shut up about it or I’ll break your nose, Ozzie.” Lua stood rigid and proud. “There’s no me and Trent. He wanted a dance, so I gave him a pity dance.”

  I held up my hands. “I’m not judging. I have an imaginary boyfriend, after all.”

  Lua relaxed slightly. “Is Tommy really imaginary?”

  I looked around for somewhere to sit, and ended up settling for the ground, which was covered with pine needles. Trent lived out west, with dirt roads and almost as many horses as people.

  “Have you ever had one of those dreams that seemed so real you had trouble realizing it wasn’t when you woke up?”

  Lua sat beside me. “Yeah.”

  “Tommy’s kind of like that. Only, he’s not a dream. No one remembers him, but he’s real to me. I have these memories; an entire history of him and me. Of all of us.” A smile touched my lips. “Like this one time the three of us went skinny-dipping at the beach last year, and some dickhead stole our clothes. We couldn’t go home naked, so we drove to Walmart because it was the only thing open at two in the morning. All I had in my car was one of those crinkly silver blankets in my emergency kit. Tommy wrapped it around himself like a toga, went inside, and bought us stuff to wear. You got pissed because he’d picked out a One Direction shirt for you, and you tried to refuse it, but it was too small to fit me or Tommy.”

  I couldn’t help laughing at the memory, but Lua didn’t laugh or smile. “I don’t remember that.”

  “I do,” I said. “Maybe that’s what matters.”

  “No, this is what matters. You and me, Oz.”

  “You’re right. I know you’re right.”

  “But listen, if you need to find Tommy, I’ll help you.”

  “Why now?” I asked.

  Lua sighed. “You’re not the center of the universe, Ozzie—you’re not even the center of my universe—but Tommy is clearly the center of yours, and even though you can be such a selfish asshole sometimes—”

  “Christ, Lua, tell me how you really feel.”

  “I’m trying,” he said, and waited to see if I was going to interrupt him again. “Even though you can be a self-centered prick, I want you to be happy.”

  My anger slipped away. “What if I never find him, Lu?”

  Lua was quiet for a moment. Then he poked me in the ribs and said, “Maybe something better will find you.”

  He pointed across the car-littered front lawn to a shadow walking toward us. I didn’t understand until the shadow peeled away from the darkness. Calvin had shown up after all. He approached slowly, his hands buried in the pockets of his hoodie.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.”

  Lua hopped up. “I think I’ll leave you boys alone.”

  I wanted to stop Lua from leaving, but I didn’t. I stood and brushed the dirt and pine needles off my butt.

  “You look handsome in your tux,” Calvin said. His eyes were bloodshot and bruised. “How was prom?”

  I shrugged. “Lame. You didn’t miss anything except Trent and Lua dancing.”

  Calvin wore his surprise openly. “Trent? And Lua?”

  “Yep. Lua says nothing’s going on, but stranger things have happened.”

  “Wow.” Calvin stalled a couple of feet away, and I felt more uncomfortable than when I’d caught him cutting himself in the restroom at school.

  “Listen,” I said. “I’m really sorry I told my therapist. I didn’t know she’d call the cops, not that that’s a good excuse. I shouldn’t have told anyone. And while I’m being honest, I also told Lua. She didn’t tell anyone, but you deserve to know.”

  Calvin bobbed his head like he was floating in water, everything below his chin submerged. “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “You’re right,” Calvin said. “It’s not. But I forgive you. I’ve been talking to my own therapist. My dad forced me to go after he found out about Reevey and the cutting, and it was either that or a forced stay at a psychiatric hospital.”

  “Who is it?” I asked. “I’ve been to a lot of therapists.”

  “Dr. Sayegh? Makali Sayegh.”

  I chuckled. “Yeah, I know her. She’s not terrible.”

  Calvin shrugged. “She told me it was a good thing it all came out. That keeping the secret might have killed me.”

  “I’m glad it didn’t.”

  “Some days, I’m not sure I am.”

  Calvin started walking, and I jogged to catch him. We wandered down Trent’s driveway, onto the dark dirt roads. I wanted to hold his hand so badly, but I didn’t know what it meant that Cal had come to the party. He said he’d forgiven me, but you can forgive someone and still never want to see them again.

  “It’s fucked up, you know?” Cal said. “I saw these pictures of myself—pictures Coach took while I was drugged—and I don’t remember them. But I still love him and I think he loved me. Isn’t that fucked up?”

  “No. Reevey is fucked up. He hurt you, and that’s not your fault.”

  Calvin walked with his head down and his back bowed. “I feel like he stole part of my life I’ll never get back. I feel like there’s nothing left for me.”

  “I’m here for you, as a friend or more. It’s totally up to you. I’ll respect whatever choice you make.”

  “You love Tommy,” Cal said. “I know it and you know it. You’ll always love him.”

  “True, but Tommy’s not here. I don’t know where he is, and I may never find him. But maybe he’s where he’s supposed to be, and maybe I’m where I’m meant to be too.”

  We walked for a while, not talking. I wasn’t sure whether I believed what I’d said. It was true that I didn’t know if I’d ever find Tommy, but I didn’t know if I believed never finding him would be okay. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to move on with my life if I couldn’t at least tell him good-bye. It was all so confusing, and Calvin complicated my life even more.

  “Can we go somewhere?” Calvin asked when we reached the end of the street. He slipped his hand into mine and stared into my eyes. Without the moonlight or the stars, it was almost impossible to see his face, but I imagined I could still see his eyes, and they were beautiful.

  “Sure,” I said. “I think I know just the place.”

  1.89 MI

  I LAY IN THE DARK on the floor of my old bedroom beside Calvin. Sweat chilled my skin, and my chest rose and fell heavily.

/>   I’d had a feeling that, even though my parents had vanished, my old house would still be empty. That the universe would have come up with a reason to keep anyone from moving into the house in which I’d once lived with people who no longer existed. And I’d been right. I didn’t have a key anymore, but the sliding glass door on the far side of the house had been open. It hadn’t even felt like breaking in this time.

  “You all right?” I asked Calvin.

  “No,” he said.

  I hadn’t intended to have sex with Cal—that’s not the reason I’d brought him to my old house—but then he was kissing me in my bedroom, and he was unbuttoning my shirt and pants, which now lay in a heap on the floor in the corner. His hands had trembled. He was scared of the drop—we both were—but we’d reached the top of the incline and had fallen together, and we hadn’t crashed. We’d survived. At least, I thought we had.

  I sat up on my elbow. “Was it . . . was it bad?”

  “God, no. It’s not you, Ozzie. I just—”

  “What?”

  “I thought doing it with you would make me happy. That being with someone who cared about me would fix everything. But it’s all the same. I’m still the same.”

  “I’m sorry, Cal. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have—”

  “It’s not your fault, Ozzie. I wanted to do it; it was my decision.”

  “Do you want to go back to the party?” I asked, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Party?”

  “At Trent’s house.”

  “Who’s Trent?”

  I crawled across the room, dug my phone out of my pocket, and pulled up a map. The entire world, the entire universe had shrunk again. Everything west of my house was gone, and there wasn’t much left east, either. Just some of the beach and the ocean. And each time I reloaded the map, the world shrank a little more. I didn’t even know where my phone had come from. Who’d built it or where I’d purchased it. I’d thought the universe was confusing before Tommy had disappeared, but the smaller it got, the less it made sense.

  “What’s wrong?” Calvin asked.

  “Everything’s gone,” I whispered. “I thought maybe it would spare Cloud Lake, but even that’s disappearing.”

  “I want to see.” I started to hand Calvin my phone, but he said, “Not the map, the edge of the universe.”

  We dressed in silence and darkness. Confusion rippled through me. Sleeping with Tommy had brought us closer together, but both times with Calvin seemed to drive us further apart.

  “Did you ever figure out why the universe is shrinking?” Calvin asked while I sat on the floor and tied my shoelaces.

  I shook my head. “No, and I don’t think I’ll be able to stop it before it swallows everything.”

  “Oh.”

  “I saw the roller coaster, by the way. Ms. Fuentes loved it so much she’s taking it to show her roller-coaster-building group.”

  “Ms. Fuentes?” Calvin asked.

  “Forget it.” My heart broke. He didn’t remember Ms. Fuentes or Trent, which meant he probably didn’t remember Coach Reevey either, but he was still affected by what Reevey had done to him. Not even the universe could fix what Reevey had broken.

  I stood and helped Calvin to his feet. Our faces were so close and I wanted to kiss him, but I didn’t. “Do you think this is my fault? That I’m the reason the universe is shrinking?”

  “Maybe,” he said, and it wasn’t the answer I’d expected. “Honestly, I don’t know, but I think it means something that you’re the only person who remembers the way things used to be.”

  “Doesn’t it seem weird to you that the whole of existence is just part of one small shitty town?”

  “Not really,” Cal said. “Though I do find it odd I grew up so near the edge of the universe and have never gone to see it.”

  “Are you sure you want to now?”

  Calvin nodded. “Definitely.”

  • • •

  The beach wasn’t far from my house, so we walked. Outside, in the middle of the night, the universe didn’t just feel small, it felt deserted. We saw no people, no animals, no cars. As far as I knew, Calvin and I were the only humans in existence. It should have been comforting not to have to face the collapse of the universe alone, but it wasn’t.

  I held Calvin’s hand while we walked, thinking back to that first night Tommy and I had slept together. I’d wanted to climb to the top of the tallest building and shout about it for the world to hear, but it wasn’t the same with Calvin. Instead, I wanted to keep what we’d done to myself. I wasn’t ashamed, but I did wonder if it had been a mistake. Maybe whatever invisible hand had pushed us together had only ever intended for us to be friends, and I’d crossed a line by allowing us to become something more. Or maybe it had never been about me at all.

  We reached the beach road and found a path through the dunes. I kicked off my shoes and socks, and Calvin did the same. I knew something was different before we cleared the sea oats and bushes. I still hadn’t gotten used to the empty sky, but what I saw on the horizon was deeper than emptiness.

  “So,” Calvin said. “That’s it.”

  Less than a quarter mile off the beach, the sky had disappeared, replaced by a void. That was the only way to describe it. It wasn’t black, it wasn’t gray. It was the complete and total absence of everything. Even the word “empty” implies something that can be filled, but the vast nothing in the sky was bottomless. Calvin and I could have poured forever into it and that boundless zone of negative space would have simply devoured all that we were and remained more than empty.

  “It’s moving toward us,” I said.

  “Is it?” The universe must have rewritten Calvin’s memory every time it shifted. He could have remained standing at the edge of the ocean until the universe consumed him, and he would’ve thought it normal.

  “It’s never going to stop.”

  Calvin pulled his hoodie over his head and tossed it aside. Then his undershirt.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked.

  He continued undressing. He unbuckled his belt and kicked off his jeans. “Why wait?”

  “Calvin, stop.”

  “I want to know what’s on the other side.”

  “Nothing!” I yelled. “There’s nothing on the other side.” I grabbed him before he could strip off his underwear, and he pushed me away. I tackled him to the ground, but Calvin was a champion wrestler. He swung his legs, wrapped them around my waist, and held me in a headlock. I struggled, but I couldn’t defeat him, so he let me go.

  “Do you want to be trapped here forever?” Calvin asked. “What if we’re meant to escape? You keep saying you’re waiting for Tommy and your family to return, but how do you know they’re the ones who have vanished? What if you’re the one who disappeared, and they’re on the other side waiting for you to find your way home?”

  I didn’t know. Calvin’s theory made as much sense as anything else, but I couldn’t know for certain.

  “I’m scared,” I said.

  Calvin took my hand, helped me up, and kissed the tops of my fingers. “It would be weird if you weren’t.”

  “But why is this happening?”

  “Why does anything happen?” he asked. “I sure as hell don’t know. The only thing I know for sure is that we can do nothing and maybe we’ll wind up taken like you said Tommy and your family were, or we can face the uncertainty and see what’s on the other side for ourselves.”

  “It’d be easier if someone would just give me the answers,” I said. “If everything that’s happened—Tommy vanishing, Flight 1184 crashing, the universe shrinking—is a message, why not come right out and tell me what I’m supposed to do?”

  “That’s not how the world works, Ozzie. Some things, you have to learn for yourself.”

  Calvin was right. Since the day Tommy disappeared, I’d been waiting for him to return, but he hadn’t, and now everyone had vanished. Every person I ever knew or loved. And soon, with or wit
hout me, Calvin would follow them. I didn’t know if the universe was a simulation or a bubble about to burst or even a spooky quantum reality I’d willed into existence. All I knew for certain was that I’d wind up alone if I stayed.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go.”

  I squeezed Calvin’s hand and pulled him toward the ocean. But he didn’t follow.

  “Come on. We can do this together.”

  He shook his head and let go of my hand. “I think you should do it,” he said. “And I want you to, but I need to do this part on my own.”

  “You sure?”

  “No,” he said, laughing.

  I didn’t want him to leave—I didn’t want to face the void alone—but I understood why he needed to do this himself. If he was going to survive what Coach Reevey had done to him, even if he couldn’t remember who Reevey was, he needed to face the future on his own terms.

  “Whatever happens,” I said, “I want you to know that I care about you, Calvin Frye. Maybe this universe was never real, but you are. You’re the only real thing in it.”

  “That sounds like a good-bye,” Calvin said. “But I think we’ll see each other on the other side.” Cal stripped off his underwear and turned toward the water. He walked until the waves lapped against his bare feet. The void grew closer. With each second that passed, it devoured more of the ocean.

  “You’re going to find your way, Ozzie.” He took another step into the water.

  “Just wait,” I called after him. “Wait for it to reach the shore. It’s too far out to swim. You’ll drown.”

  Calvin glanced at me over his shoulder. He was smiling. “I won’t drown, Ozzie. I can breathe underwater.”

  He walked until the water reached his waist, and then he dove in and swam. I watched Cal until his pasty skin disappeared under the stygian sea.

  Calvin Frye was gone.

  I sank to my knees. I thought maybe I would feel the moment Calvin entered the void or was swallowed by it or whatever happened when he reached it, but I didn’t. And there was no one left to tell me he no longer existed.

  I wished I could’ve gone with him. I wished I had his courage. I knew if I waited long enough, the emptiness would swallow me. I wouldn’t have to do anything but stand on the shore and let it take me. I thought watching Calvin swim to the void would give me the strength to do the same, but I was a coward. The nothingness shuddered and moved closer. I couldn’t do it; I’d already lost everything and everyone I ever cared about, and if I died, no one would remember them.