At the Edge of the Universe

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  I ran back across the dunes. I stumbled and fell, and when I looked behind me, the ocean was gone. I forced myself to my feet and kept running up the hill to the road. I tripped and stubbed my toe. A flap of skin and blood and gravel hung off the end of my big toe, but I kept running.

  I reached my house and slammed the door behind me. I climbed the stairs to my room, and tried to shut that door too, but a force on the other side pushed back. A soundless wind blew into my room, carrying with it a crumpled scrap of paper that floated through the air and landed on the floor. I leaned all my weight against the door and finally slammed it shut. I picked up the paper, crawled into the corner, and hugged my knees to my chest. I didn’t know where the paper had come from, but I recognized the writing. It was from my journal. The journal from the world where Tommy had existed.

  The nothingness was all around me. I didn’t need a map to know that only my house and I remained.

  Finally, I was alone, and I smoothed out the paper and began to read.

  TOMMY

  TOMMY AND I LIE SIDE by side on top of his trailer. His father’s snores drift up through the thin metal. The Fourth of July is still a couple of days away, but one of Tommy’s neighbors is already shooting off fireworks in the distance. The dazzling lights dim the stars for a moment, except there are so many scattered across the sky they can’t be outshone for long. The stars look haphazard, though I know they’re not. Someone put them there. There’s some design. I just can’t figure out what it is.

  “Tell me we’ll always be together, Tommy.”

  I expect him to answer immediately. For him to tell me that nothing will keep us apart, that it’ll always be him and me against the world.

  But he doesn’t. And I wait.

  “Tommy?”

  “I can’t,” he whispers, even though his father could sleep through a nuclear bomb strike.

  “Come on. We’re going to be together forever, right?”

  “Actually, Oz,” he says, “I was thinking we need some time apart.”

  I slap Tommy playfully. “Stop fooling around.”

  “I’m not fooling.”

  I tilt my head and search his face, his eyes, for the joke, but don’t find it.

  “Since the day we met, our lives have been all about each other. I’ve spent years so focused on you and on us that I haven’t given hardly any thought to the rest of my life. I don’t know how I’m going to afford college, you don’t know what you want to do with the rest of your life.” He throws his hands up. “It’s like we’ve spent the last nine years being one person, and I don’t know who I am when I’m not with you.”

  “What does it matter?” I say. “I don’t even care about college. All I care about is you. Being with you.”

  Tommy sits up on his elbow. The metal roof groans. “And I care about you, but that’s the problem, you know? Being together isn’t enough if we’re not whole individual people.”

  “But I love you, Tommy. Don’t you get that?”

  “I do,” he says. “It’s just . . . I need to know who I am on my own. I need to figure out who Thomas Ross is, and I can’t do that with you stuck to my hip.”

  My heart is breaking. “I don’t know what to do without you.”

  “I know,” he says. “That’s the problem.”

  “Are you breaking up with me?” I already know the answer, but I need him to say it. I won’t believe it until I hear him say it.

  “Yeah,” Tommy says.

  There it is. I’ve known Tommy since second grade. He was my best friend and my boyfriend. And now? Now I don’t know what we are.

  Tears roll down my cheeks, bile rises in my throat, but I don’t move. I don’t leave. I can’t.

  “What happens now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe one day in the future, after we’ve both had time to figure out who we are, we’ll find each other again and see if the love is still there.”

  “But how will I find you?” I say. “The world’s a big place.”

  Tommy takes my hand. He’s broken up with me, but he still holds my hand. “Trust me: It’s not so big.”

  25 FT

  TOMMY HAD BROKEN UP WITH me.

  I’d remembered everything about Tommy—the deep thrum of his voice, the way his hands felt tender when he touched me even though his skin was rough, every fight we’d ever had, every single kiss we’d shared, the dimple on his left cheek, the freckle on his big toe. I could recall the most random details about Tommy and our life together, but I’d forgotten that night. The night he broke up with me. I’d rewritten every memory of Tommy I could recall from my journals, but I hadn’t rewritten that one.

  I’d spent months searching for him, I’d almost died on a plane crash to find him, I’d waited around Cloud Lake hoping he would return, but Tommy was never coming back, and even if he did, he wasn’t coming back to me.

  The void waited outside my bedroom walls. I was alone in the universe.

  I still didn’t know what had happened. Even now that I remembered Tommy breaking up with me, I didn’t know whether I’d created this universe from my broken heart or if I was a brain scientists had plopped into a jar and were experimenting on, with Tommy nothing more than a part of the sadistic test, but I still had to decide whether to stay here, afraid and alone, or be brave like Calvin and see what, if anything, was on the other side.

  Lua had fought to achieve her dream. She knew she might fail, but she refused to stop. Trent had broken her fingers, but she still moved forward.

  Dustin had spent four years killing himself to get the best grades. He’d had a plan, and his parents’ bad choices had stolen that plan from him, but he hadn’t given up. He’d pivoted. Made a new plan. It might not have been the one he’d wanted, but he kept moving forward.

  Coach Reevey had nearly destroyed Calvin, but even he had found the courage to take a stand. To walk into the abyss without knowing what might lie on the other side. He’d embraced his fear, and I knew he hadn’t drowned.

  I looked at the page in my hand. The memory of the night Tommy had broken up with me, blocked before, throbbed in my mind. It hurt like it had happened just yesterday. I remembered hating him. Crying in my bedroom, swearing I’d never speak to him again. I’d hated him so much, I’d erased him from my life.

  But he’d been right.

  We’d spent so much time as Tommy and Ozzie that I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted without him. I thought Tommy disappearing and Flight 1184 crashing and the universe shrinking were messages telling me to stay in Cloud Lake. I’d spent months waiting for some kind of sign, but I was beginning to think none of this had ever been about me. I wasn’t special or important; I was just a boy chained in a cave, too stupid to know I’d been staring at shadows on a wall while the real world was happening behind me. And now the chains were gone, broken, and I had to make a decision. I had to choose.

  I opened my curtains. The void had stopped on the other side of the glass, and it waited for me outside my bedroom door. The universe was no longer contracting. I felt certain I could remain in my room until I grew old and died, but I’d do so alone.

  Or I could step into the unknown. Maybe I’d find Tommy and Calvin and Lua and my family. Maybe I’d discover the future or nothing at all. I knew what awaited me if I stayed, and there was comfort in that knowledge. My future on the other side of the void was unknowable and frightening. Here in my room, I was the center of the universe, the single star around which everything revolved. Beyond the void, I was probably just another insignificant particle floating amongst a vast sea of countless others, and that terrified me.

  The scariest thing in life is the door that closes and can’t ever be opened again. Once I opened the door and stepped into the void, that door would slam shut behind me and I could never go back.

  But maybe it’s okay to be afraid. Mrs. Ross hadn’t let fear stop her from walking away from her old life and slamming that door behind her, and maybe those slamming doors are the scariest
things in life, but they’re not the worst. The worst is never going through them at all.

  I didn’t know whether my world was merely shadows on the wall, but it was time to turn around and find out.

  I took a deep breath, held it, let it out. I gripped the knob, opened the door, walked into the void, and pulled the door shut behind me.

  ∞ AND THEN SOME

  I’D SURVIVED.

  I guess.

  The inside of the arena reeked of sweaty bodies, and despite the air conditioners laboring overhead, the air was thick and moist. I sat amongst my fellow classmates. We had all survived. Not just the universe shrinking; we had survived high school. Lua sat a row ahead of me, Calvin way up front where I could barely make out the back of his head.

  And Dustin stood onstage in his blue graduation cap and gown addressing the Cloud Lake High class of 2018.

  “I went skydiving yesterday. I’ve been skydiving a lot lately, actually. I didn’t tell my friends or my parents—surprise!—and yesterday was my first solo jump.” Dustin was so far away that I could barely make out his face, but I knew he was sweating and nervous. I hadn’t known he’d gone skydiving, but it didn’t surprise me. It was a very Dustin thing to do.

  “Falling isn’t the scary part. You’d think it is, what with the falling and screaming and plummeting toward the ground. But a moment after you begin to fall, you reach terminal velocity, and you realize that you’re not falling. You’re flying. Maybe it’s an illusion created by wind resistance, but that’s okay because you’re still flying. You can hold your arms out and soar or pin them to your sides and shoot forward like a rocket. How you descend is totally up to you.

  “No, the falling isn’t the scary part. Falling is easy. Jumping is hard. Jumping is scary. Until yesterday, I’d made all my jumps tandem, with an instructor strapped to my back. I couldn’t really screw anything up because she was there to correct my mistakes—to tell me what to do if my brain froze—but yesterday, I jumped alone.

  “I stood outside the open hatch, holding onto the rails, my feet planted on something solid, and I knew that I’d need to push off. To jump into the open and unforgiving air. Alone.

  “There was this moment where I was like ‘Oh, hell no, I am not doing this.’ And I could have climbed back into the plane and ridden it down, but I didn’t. I’d taken the right courses; I’d listened to my instructors. I possessed all the knowledge necessary to make it to the ground safely. Sure, it was still dangerous. My chute might not have opened or I might have freaked out and forgotten all the things I’d learned. Skydiving isn’t without risk, but flying is totally worth it.

  “So I took one last breath, I let go of the railing, and I jumped.”

  Dustin wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He paused and stared out at us. I wasn’t sure he could pick me out of the ocean of caps and faces, but I liked to imagine he could.

  “Graduating seniors of Cloud Lake High: It’s time for us to jump.”

  • • •

  I stuck my tongue out at the camera as I shielded my eyes from the sun.

  “Come on, Ozzie, don’t be such a spoilsport.” Mom stood with her hand on her hip while Dad tried to snap a picture. “This is for posterity.”

  “You’ve already taken a million. How many more does posterity need?”

  My parents hadn’t fought since Mom had arrived earlier that week for my graduation. She’d tried to get a hotel room, but they’d all been booked by relatives who’d traveled to see their nieces and nephews and grandchildren graduate, so she stayed with me and Renny and Dad. I wound up sleeping on the couch while Mom took my room. I liked to think that their newfound friendship was repayment for my having to camp out on the most uncomfortable sofa bed in existence. But maybe this was the new normal for them. Now that they were no longer husband and wife, they’d found a way back to the friendship they thought they’d lost.

  “Ozzie,” Mom started, but Renny jumped in and said, “How about one with me?”

  I took a knee beside Renny and slung my arm around his shoulders. “This is super lame,” I said.

  Renny grinned, all teeth, and whispered, “Suck it up, brother. If I had to suffer through this shit when I graduated, so do you.”

  All around us, kids in blue gowns were being similarly tortured by their parents. Graduation had been a grueling three hours, but now that it was over, I almost wished it had lasted longer. Almost.

  Mom and Dad started arguing about how to work the camera, and all I could do was sigh. Okay, so maybe they had a way to go still, but I’d take what I could get.

  “When’s Mom going back to Chicago?”

  “Tonight,” Renny said. “You know Dad planned a party back at his place for when we’re done here, right? Aunt Lila and the brats will be there. Mom tried to convince Uncle David to leave the cabin, but you know how he is.”

  “He has a phone now?”

  Renny shook his head. “She’s been writing letters to him for months.” Renny snapped his fingers. “And you’ll never guess who else is coming.”

  “Then save me the effort and just tell me.”

  “Aunt Mary.”

  My mouth fell open.

  “I had the same reaction,” Renny said. “She and Mom buried the hatchet, and neither one ended up with it in her back.”

  “That’s unexpected.”

  Renny furrowed his brow. “Promise me we’ll never stop talking like that.”

  “Oh lord,” I said. “Are you getting emotional? Are you going to cry? I don’t think I could deal if you cried. At least not until Mom and Dad get the camera working so I can record photographic evidence of it.”

  Renny slugged me in the shoulder. “You’re such a dick, but promise anyway.”

  “You’re my brother, Renny. My dumbass, gimpy brother. And I’ll be around to annoy you until the day you die.”

  “Yay me.” But Renny was smiling. Even though my brother had only been in the army for a few weeks, those weeks had changed him. He might have lost the use of his legs, but he still looked taller to me. More confident. Skinnier, too, which Mom and Dad seemed hell-bent on correcting.

  I bit my lip. “So, about the party,” I said. “Think anyone will notice if I don’t show?”

  Renny’s smile morphed into a disapproving frown. “Does this have anything to do with the packed duffel bag I saw this morning?” He waved his hands to cut me off. “Actually, don’t tell me. I’d prefer to maintain plausible deniability.”

  “I’ll be back in a few weeks.” Renny raised an eyebrow. “Don’t worry. I’ll call Mom and Dad and let them know when I’m on the road and they can’t try to stop me.”

  “They’re going to kill you.”

  “Maybe. But I still need to do this.” I stood and stretched my legs while Mom and Dad continued bickering over the camera. At this rate, I’d never escape. “How about you, Renny? Think you can survive without me for a few weeks?”

  “I’ll manage.” I might not have believed him before, but this new Renny was easy to believe. “Did I tell you I signed up for a couple of classes at community college?”

  “I’m surprised you have any space left in your schedule, seeing how much time you spend sucking face with Emilia.”

  A blush crept into Renny’s cheeks. “Shut up about it.”

  Yeah, Renny was definitely going to be all right.

  • • •

  “Nice speech,” I said.

  Dustin kept looking over his shoulder at where his parents stood chatting with Principal Brzezinski under a shady palm tree. “Yeah.”

  “Skydiving?”

  Dustin offered a halfhearted shrug. “Let’s just say I wasn’t handling the news about my parents’ financial situation as well as I’d led you to believe.”

  “No judgment here.”

  A burst of rowdy laughter erupted from Dustin’s parents and stole his attention.

  “Doing anything over the summer?” I asked.

  “Building
houses with Habitat for Humanity before I leave for UF,” he said. “I convinced Priya to join me. It’s not quite the kind of quality time she was hoping we’d spend together, but she seems enthusiastic.” Dustin slapped my arm playfully. “Speaking of UF, did you make up your mind about college?”

  “UC Boulder,” I said.

  “I’m going to miss you, Pinks.”

  “You could come. Pot’s legal in Colorado.”

  Dustin rolled his eyes. “Which is so wasted on you.” He glanced at his parents again. “But, no. My parents would sell everything they owned to send me if I asked, but I can make this work. Besides, Calvin’s going to UF too, so at least I’ll know someone.”

  I hadn’t known that about Calvin, but I was glad. “Good for him.”

  The stress of not knowing what horrifying stories his parents were telling Principal Brzezinski was beginning to become too much. “I should . . .”

  “We had a good run, didn’t we, Dustin?”

  “The best.” Dustin flashed me one last stoner grin before trotting over to join his parents.

  • • •

  I zipped through the crowd looking for Lua, stopping whenever someone I knew grabbed me to tell me how crazy all this was and how they were going to miss me even though we hadn’t known each other well. And I let them, because it was the end of one chapter of our lives and the beginning of another, and everyone deserved to leave with happy memories.

  I spotted Calvin and his father across the parking lot, hanging out with some older people I assumed were his grandparents or other assorted relatives.

  After I’d stepped through the doorway, the next thing I remembered was waking up in my empty room in my old house, and I’d driven immediately to Calvin’s place. He hadn’t seemed surprised to see me, but he didn’t remember anything that had happened between us other than working on our roller coaster. To him I was nothing more than his lab partner in a class he no longer had to suffer through.