Clues to the Universe

by Christina Li

  “The things I miss when I’m at work,” Mom said, a smile in her voice. She stirred the loose tea flowers. “I get busy and all of a sudden I turn around and my kid’s built a whole rocket. But that’s not even the part that surprises me.”

  She leaned forward. “How on earth did Benji end up in Los Angeles?”

  This was going to be a long story.

  “When Benji and I first became friends, we made a deal,” I said. “He would help me finish building my rocket, and I would help him find his dad.”

  And then I told her about Spacebound. How it was Benji’s favorite comic book series. How Benji had found out that the person who wrote the series, was, in fact, his long-lost dad. How I’d found out about this after we got put together as science class partners and after our folders got accidentally switched. How we’d stumbled upon each other’s secrets and made our deal; he’d help me with my rocket, and I would help him find his dad. How we came across clue after clue until we’d found the news of his movie premiere.

  “And so I told him that maybe we could go see him,” I said. The knot in my stomach was twisting tighter and tighter all this time. “And we had a big fight right before he ran away,” I said. My voice rose. “It’s all my fault, Mom. I know it. I didn’t make him go, but I got mad at him. He didn’t want to go at first. I feel awful now but at the time I just was thinking—” I took a jagged breath. “I was just thinking that his dad was practically right here and that it was so easy for him to just go and see him if he wanted and I wished—”

  I wasn’t really making sense anymore. I buried my face in my hands. “I don’t know.”

  Mom reached out and took one of my hands and squeezed it. “Baobao, I understand. Believe me, I understand.”

  I shook my head. “I almost ruined our friendship over this.”

  “But you didn’t,” she said gently. “And it’s not all your fault. And even if you said anything, I’m sure he forgives you.” She looked me in the eye. “You and Benji are such good friends. Even I can see it.”

  “You can?”

  Mom nodded. I grinned down at the table.

  We sipped our teas in silence for a bit. I looked at her plants on her shelves. Her English ivy vines were starting to cover parts of her brush paintings.

  She finally said, with a hint of a smile, “So, you and Benji—”

  “Mom.”

  “Aiyah, I was just wondering.”

  I didn’t say anything. I mean, Benji and I were just friends. Right? I knew how it felt to like someone. But not to like-like someone. What did that even mean? I thought of how I’d seen Danny and his girlfriend, Chelsea, when we ran into them at Vic’s Ice Cream, how they leaned into each other and grinned all the time. Maybe it was that. But I’d also once heard from one of the girls at the Day School that when you liked someone your face turned bright red and your words just turned to mush every time you wanted to talk to them. I thought of my words turning to mush every time I tried to talk to Benji. That just sounded inconvenient.

  Besides, how did kissing even work?

  It was all too, too complicated.

  For now, Benji and I were just people who split milkshakes and paid for each other’s fries, who would drive all the way to Los Angeles to rescue the other from their dad’s messed-up movie premieres. Who built rockets together and read comic books and shared Red Vines and told each other everything.

  “Friends,” I said, leaning back in the chair. “We’re just friends,” I said, as if it were the best thing in the world.

  Which it was.

  Mom nodded. She stirred her last bit of tea. “I just wanted to know,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been so caught up in my work that I haven’t had a good chat with my kid for a while.” She paused. “You know I’m so very proud of you, right? Dad would have been, too.”

  I nodded. I didn’t say anything for a while. “I won’t ever stop missing him, will I?”

  She paused. Her expression changed, and she reached for me, and folded me into a hug. I heard her cratered heartbeat through her shirt.

  “Oh, love.” She sighed. “You and me both.”

  I finally approached Drew one day after class as we both were walking to lunch. He saw me coming and tried to shift directions, but I had already stopped in front of him.

  “Hey,” I said, and he looked up at me reluctantly.

  I cleared my throat. It occurred to me that this was the first time that Drew and I were, in fact, speaking face-to-face since the slime incident. But after all, it did seem like he’d been avoiding me since the science fair. “You cleaned the poster up, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t say anything. He just shrugged.

  “I just had a feeling you did. I don’t know why. Maybe you didn’t. We ended up having to make a new one, anyway, so I guess it wouldn’t have really mattered in the end.” I took a deep breath. “But I just wanted to say thanks anyway. If you did. It meant a lot.”

  Drew’s expression softened. But still, he didn’t say anything.

  “See you around, I guess.” I turned to go.

  “Congrats, by the way.”

  I turned around. “What?”

  He met my eyes with just a tiny hint of a smile. “On the science fair, smarty-pants. I heard.” And when he said smarty-pants, it almost sounded like a compliment.

  He turned and walked away.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Benji

  I SAT IN front of the phone, smoothing down the folded napkin from the diner in Los Angeles. I’d pulled a chair from the dinner table up to the kitchen counter and heard it creak as I sat up in it. I picked up the phone. I double-and triple-checked the numbers before I dialed them with shaky fingers.

  What if my dad wasn’t there? What if he was stuck in traffic coming home from someplace? What if he gave me the wrong number and I was dialing some random person in Los Angeles? And then he’d move and I’d never see him again—

  “Hello?”

  I slumped back in relief.

  “Um, hi,” I said. I cleared my throat. “Hi, Dad.”

  Cripes, it sounded so weird. I’d spent years dreaming about just this moment. And now I could hardly bring myself to call him Dad.

  “Hi, Benji.” It felt strange to hear his voice right next to me and not be able to picture him. Where was he? Was he, too, at the kitchen counter, stretching the cord on the phone? Was he looking out over the Los Angeles skyline? Was he dressed up in a fancy suit, off in his studio, surrounded by colored pencils and markers and drawing paper? I could imagine it: the bright lights shining down upon him and the slabs of paper, the mess of acrylic colors on his desk. Because of course his desk would be messy. “I was hoping you’d call.”

  I nodded, and then realized he couldn’t hear it over the phone. “Yeah. I wanted to.”

  A pause. “How are you doing, kid?”

  I swallowed. “I’m . . . doing okay, I guess. Just kinda busy.” I racked my brain for something, anything, to say. “Mostly science fair stuff with Ro.”

  “I thought science fair was three weeks ago?”

  “Ro and I qualified for the state fair. It’s in a few weeks.”

  “Oh, wow,” he said softly. I could hear the grin in his voice. “Looks like you guys made it on time after all.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That was a crazy night.”

  “I bet it was.” Another pause. “And how’s your mom and brother doing?”

  “Good,” I said. “Mom’s working as always. She seems a little happier now, though. And Danny’s doing great. With baseball and all.” I paused. “I gave him your number, too. I don’t know if he’s called you yet.”

  When Mom had told Danny about Dad pitching in for college during dinner, he’d scowled a little bit and pushed his fork around the pasta Mom had made.

  Mom had looked at him. “I know that things have been complicated with him, but we should be grateful that your father’s helping out.”

  He set his fork down. “He sho
uld have been helping out a long time ago.” And then he didn’t say anything for the rest of dinner. There seemed to be a wall that Danny had built up between him and Dad. We all knew. Even Dad could tell.

  “He’ll come around to it.” Dad sighed. “If he wants to.”

  This time there wasn’t just a small pause. The silence stretched on. My neck prickled with sweat. How did this room suddenly feel so warm? I could almost feel the walls closing in. My throat got tighter. It was that feeling again. The feeling when you were in an elevator with a stranger and couldn’t find a single thing to say.

  Except this stranger was my father.

  It wasn’t supposed to feel like this. We’d met. We’d made up. We’d already had a long talk in Los Angeles. It was supposed to get easier from then on. When did the inside jokes start coming? The conversations on the way to picking up burgers and shakes at a drive-through?

  What if it would never get easier?

  “Benji?” my dad said from the other side of the phone. “You still there?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sorry. I guess this is . . . kinda hard for me. I don’t know.”

  He didn’t talk for a while. My palms were clammy. What if Dad just gave up? Hung up the phone?

  What if we never talked again?

  “I know it must be hard,” Dad said, exhaling. “I know things . . . aren’t going to be the easiest. We haven’t seen each other for years. I didn’t reach out when I should have.”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “But it’s good to talk,” Dad said. “I’ve dreamed about this for a long time. I hope we can still try to . . . have these calls. Even if it’s difficult. And maybe things will get better over time.” He paused. “That is, if you want.”

  I had to take small steps. But they were steps nonetheless.

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah. I do.”

  “And I would love to see you again, too.”

  “Yeah. That would be kinda neat.” I took a deep breath. “How’s the movie coming along?”

  I could almost hear him relax. “Oh, it’s doing just fine. It’s amazing seeing all those billboards, you know. Kind of out of this world. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. But I guess now that the movie’s premiered and all that, I’m focusing on sketching out the next issue.”

  I perked up. “Are we going to find out the secret of the alternate universes? Or Woz’s origin story?”

  “What do you think? Got any ideas?”

  I was floored.

  “Are you asking . . . for my ideas on the next issue of Spacebound?”

  “Why not? Can’t promise I’ll use all of ’em, but I’m definitely all ears.”

  I grinned. But then a thought occurred to me. “Actually . . . I’ll let you surprise me with this issue. I can’t wait to read it.”

  He laughed. “Sounds good, Benji.”

  “But . . .” An idea had come to me. A crazy, out-of-this-world idea. “Let’s say I was thinking about making my own comics. Got any pointers?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’d love to help.”

  He was right. This wasn’t going to get easy anytime soon. But the weight on my chest was letting up. We were talking. And for now, I was okay with that.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Ro

  AT THE STATE science fair in May, so many people came up to our table that some were craning their necks to get a look at our poster board. Adults dressed up with fancy jackets and name tags pored over every inch of our project. They passed around the rocket and scribbled things on their clipboards and asked us all kinds of questions. They closely inspected the airframe and fin designs. They seemed especially fascinated with the radio transmission system.

  “It’s like a satellite,” some college professor said. “They’re doing a lot of things with that now, NASA and the government. They’re trying to put together a map of the world with satellite signals so you can know where you are in the world at all times. Like a virtual atlas. And there’s another satellite project that’s trying to look for extraterrestrial life.”

  Benji looked up. “Say what now?”

  I grinned and turned to answer another question.

  “You’ll never believe this,” Benji said excitedly when we were on break. “Rumor is there’s an actual place that’s opening up this year that’s built just for looking for aliens. And get this: it’ll be right near San Francisco!” He stuffed half a sandwich in his mouth. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this space stuff is actually pretty cool sometimes.”

  I laughed and took a sip of Dr Pepper. “Who even are you anymore? What happened to the real Benji?”

  “Taken over by an alien, actually. There’s a faulty chip in the back of my neck. You have forty-eight hours to remove it or the entire planet is in danger.”

  I rolled my eyes. Benji was back again. “It’s nice to see you nerd out over something other than comics for once.”

  “Hey,” he interjected. “Not a nerd.”

  “Two more months and you’ll be answering questions in class.”

  “You’d have to wake me up first.”

  The thing was, Benji actually paid attention in class sometimes. He still doodled in his notebook, but I rarely had to wake him up. I, on the other hand, had started hiding issues of The Flash under my notebook in class. At first, it was a little hard to believe—how could someone survive lightning and then develop superpowers?—but I had to admit, I was hooked. Now, I was through the first two volumes, and the scribbles and doodles from the corner of Benji’s notebook had spilled over to mine.

  “You know,” he said. “The new Spacebound issue comes out today.”

  “Will you get it?”

  Benji shrugged. “Yeah, eventually. I mean, I still read the series. I like it a lot. I’ll probably read just to find out what happened to Gemma’s spacepup. But after meeting my dad I went back to them and . . . I just wasn’t obsessed with them anymore. Is that weird?”

  I shook my head. “Not at all.”

  “I’ve been reading a lot of X-Men now,” he said. “I wanted to read some other stuff. But I’m starting to talk to my dad some, so that makes up for it.”

  “Yeah, you’d mentioned,” I said. “How’s that going?”

  There was a tentative smile. “Getting better, I think.”

  “That’s good, I guess.” I straightened up and checked my watch. “Awards are soon. Should we call everyone back in here?”

  Benji looked around the room. “Yeah. Our moms are probably looking at the high school stuff. And Danny—” He froze. “Wait a second.”

  I followed Benji’s line of sight right down to the guy walking down the row toward us. He came right up to our table, put his hands in his pockets, and smiled.

  “Hey, kid,” David Allen Burns said. “Surprise.”

  We didn’t win the California State Science Fair. We got third.

  But still, when the judges announced our names, and everyone clapped, and Mom and Benji’s mom and dad cheered like crazy, and Mr. Devlin looked like he’d faint from happiness, I looked out from the podium and thought, It doesn’t get better than this.

  Except it did.

  Because after we were handed our medals, Mr. Devlin pulled Benji and me aside.

  “So people have been talking about your rocket,” he said. A smile spread across his face.

  Benji and I exchanged looks.

  “Some people from the NASA Ames Research Center were there,” he said.

  “The NASA?” Benji asked incredulously. “Like . . . the one that sent people to the moon?”

  “The one and only,” Mr. Devlin said. His cheeks were bright red with excitement. “They have a base in the Bay Area. The folks over there loved your experiment. They said you two should seriously think about a future in this kind of stuff.”

  My heart dropped into my stomach.

  It was all we could talk about when we went out to Vic’s. I ordered my usual strawberry milkshake. Benji looked
over at me. “Come on,” he said. “Not gonna celebrate with a little extra?”

  I shrugged. “I know what I like.”

  “I guess so,” he said. And then he picked up the menu and ordered the deluxe sundae, toppings and all.

  All of us ended up staying hours at the ice-cream shop. Benji’s older brother, Danny, came by, still in his baseball uniform and everything. He’d brought his girlfriend, Chelsea, and they squeezed into the booth that wasn’t quite meant to fit seven people but managed to anyway. It was the first time I’d talked to either of them. Chelsea wore big hoop earrings and had her blond hair pulled up into a ponytail, and Danny had an easy smile and eyes just like Benji’s. Danny ordered a vanilla milkshake and told us that he could drink milkshakes in under a minute, and when we dared him to, he downed the whole thing, leaving him with a goofy lopsided whipped cream mustache. We all laughed at him. Chelsea shook her head, but she was smiling, and then she leaned her head on his shoulder.

  As I was finishing my strawberry milkshake, I realized that Benji’s entire family was together, finally. I mean, sure, cramming them all into one booth might not have been the best idea. And I couldn’t tell if Danny was ignoring their dad, or if he was just super-focused on his girlfriend. But the whole time, Benji was grinning from ear to ear. And my heart swelled up in my chest in this good and inexplicably painful kind of way.

  “It was really great, seeing them all together like that,” I told Mom at dinner, over our bowls of rice. “Benji was really happy.”

  Mom smiled. “I saw.”

  “He’s been talking to his dad lots now. He even invited us to come visit LA sometime this summer. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Benji and I are making a list of all the things we have to do once school’s out.”

  Mom paused before looking down. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that.”

  “About LA?”

  “No, about this summer,” she said. “I just got off the phone with your grandparents.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes!” Mom said sharply. “I mean, yes, of course. They’re fine. We were just discussing . . . our future.” She didn’t quite meet my eyes. “And we talked for a long time and I was thinking that maybe . . . it’s best to be closer to them.” She shifted in her seat. “As in, live closer to them.”