I want my mom and dad.
Annwn sits calmly on the curb. I don't sit with her.
"I don't understand why you're afraid of me," Annwn speaks to the air. "I told you before, I care about what happens to you."
"No you don't."
"Yes, I do. You're me."
"I'm me."
"I'm you."
She's lying, she's lying-- "You go to school with us. You're real. You're not--" It's crazy-- "You're Annwn Allender."
"I am me and I am you. You and I are sharing forty trillion atoms right now. This universe doesn't know the difference between any of us. That's because there isn't one."
The pain in my head won't go away.
"Your Superego wants to take you away from this world," Annwn says. "That's natural. Every human mind has one. So why don't you let yours take you away?"
Take me away.
She's come to take me away.
Headaches. Universes emerging from my head. One trillion protons colliding. Higgs boson. Swan Nebula. Macrocosmic snowflakes.
Rosa das rosas, e fror das frores.
Annwn smells sweet. Citrus. Lemon pies.
I want my mom. It's been half a year, and I want my mom.
"I can take you away from this dying universe," the Pied Piper promises. "I can bring you to a brand new one. You know exactly what you need to do."
She turns her head over her shoulder to show me her Great White smile. I shouldn't trust it. Why shouldn't I? That's the thing about Great Whites. They don't hunt you because they're cruel. They don't know the difference. To her, I'm just a hapless seal.
I go to school with an Annwn Allender. An Annwn Allender with a blue ribbon in her hair.
Annwn adjusts her beret. She laces her fingers atop her knees.
I look back at the apartment building behind me.
A few windows are boarded. A few windows are lit. A dog leash hangs uselessly from the broken parking meter out front. Yards away is the underground parking lot. Jude's car is down there somewhere. He built it himself.
Jude.
"I can't."
If I leave this universe--if I die--there's nothing keeping Judas alive. He said so himself. He's broken. Probably more than I am. If I die, I kill him. I can't kill my own brother.
"You can be with your brother in the next world," Annwn tells me.
"But the Judas who's right here..."
"Isn't it true that all objects, all individuals are multitasking by virtue of wave-particle duality?"
Superposition. Schrodinger's Cat.
"You have to be objective, Wendy," Annwn says lightly. "You can't save your brother in every reality. I'm sure there's a reality in which he's already died. I'm sorry. It can't be helped."
I'm sorry. It can't be helped.
"That's not what I want to hear."
Annwn doesn't answer me. Her face is sleepy and soft.
"Kill one brother to spare a different brother?" I ask. "Isn't that cold?"
"Are they different? I thought you said they weren't. I thought that's what you told your doctor."
I fall silent.
Annwn stands. She brushes the imaginary grit from her skirt. She stretches her arms in a soundless yawn. I don't know how she manages to be so graceful and so tactless all at once.
I know how. She's not real. I'm imagining this. This is all inside my head.
"You're right," Annwn says without looking at me. "This is all inside your head. But so is everything else you'll ever experience in life. The lime plaster frescoes from the Renaissance. The concert pianist with agile hands. There is no such thing as a reality free from perception.
"Change what's inside your head, and you change your reality."
* * * * *
I thunder up the staircase and into my apartment. I slap the door shut behind me and lean against it.
Judas starts. He mutes the television. He looks at me from the sofa, slow, confused.
"There's something wrong with me, Judas."
He stands. I hurry over to him. Suddenly I feel small. Suddenly I feel five years old. All I want is for him to decapitate my teddy bear and hang me from the coat rack.
He reaches for me. I bowl into his arms.
"What happened?" Judas asks. He sounds the way people sound when they don't want you to know they're panicking. "Did that boy--?"
"No. No, Azel would never--" Whatever it is he thinks Azel would do. "I'm sick. I'm really sick."
"You took all your meds today. I counted."
"Not that."
He sits me down on the sofa. I spill my heart out. I tell him about the hallucinations, the headaches. I tell him about the swan and its elegiac song. I don't tell him I want to die. He already knows that. There wouldn't be any point.
"Hallucinating is normal with a TBI like yours," Jude says. He lifts his hand. He drops it. Poor guy; I think he was going to pat me on the head. He doesn't know what to do. Neither do I. "Want I should call the doctor? No way he's in right now, but I'll leave him a message."
"I hate that guy," I swear. At once, I feel guilty. "Hate" is unfair; I barely even know Dr. Moritz. "They've given me all the medicine they can. Right? If there were a way to fix me..."
"You talk to your shrink about this? Never mind," Jude says at once. "She's weird."
"They're all weird. They're all creepy."
"Don't put a lot of stock in shrinks myself. I still say I'd yank you out of there if I wasn't afraid social services would move in like vultures."
I shudder at the imagery.
"Kiddo." He tousles my hair. It's long enough now. Imagine that. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you. But you should've told me earlier."
"I didn't want you to think I was a freak."
He gives me a weird look.
"What?" I ask, taken aback.
"I'm covered in scars and I can't smile straight. You think you're the freak?"
I almost want to laugh. Almost. "You're not a freak, you just made bad choices."
"I killed somebody."
"So did I."
Judas looks like he wants to say something more. I don't know what.
"I don't want you leaving home without me or a friend," Judas decides.
"What about groceries?" I ask.
"I'll handle those. I want your phone on you 24/7."
It's funny. When Judas says the word "home," I still think about Tillamook Bay.
"There's no way to fix me, huh?" I ask. I smile.
"You don't need to be fixed," Judas says. So that's a no. "You're fine the way you are."
"I'm not normal."
"Normalcy is a spectrum."
He's said that before.
"Jude," I say suddenly. "Don't die."
If I were in a better mood, I'd find it comical the way his face morphs: scarred mouth sagging, gray eyes rounding, like he's just starting to realize Yeah, my sister is crazy after all.
"I won't if you won't," Jude compromises.
I expected as much.
* * * * *
It's dark in my bedroom, the lamp on low. The mess on the floor--clothes I need to wash--makes me think of Azel. A paint canvas from school leans against the closet door, a watercolor swan emerging from a nebular sea.
I sit in front of the paint canvas in my Neon City pajamas. A silver-gilt swan hangs from my right wrist.
Energy can't be destroyed. All we are is energy. Our atoms come from the energy produced by the deaths of stars. Our thoughts are bioelectric pulses. Where do thoughts go when we've finished thinking them? If they can't be destroyed, they have to go somewhere, don't they? This universe will lose its mass one day and fall apart. Our thoughts won't. They can't. They don't have any mass to lose. They don't have any shape.
You can't destroy consciousness. Consciousness will always be here.
You can't be conscious unless there's something to be conscious of.
I stare at the watercolor swan. The shadows from the lamp make her look hazy, indistinct
.
Mom. I want my mom. I want my dad. I want my best friend. I want a world where Jocelyn and Kory can sit together in the same room. I want a world where Dad goes fishing with Mr. Asad and Azel makes breakfast for his mother and he doesn't have a scar on the back of his hand.
I want many worlds like that.
I want a world where Judas never went to prison.
If Judas never went to prison, would we be as close as we are today? If Azel never lost his mother, would he have empathized with me the way he did?
They scare me. These questions. They scare me.
This world is already going to die. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tonight. Nobody knows exactly when. That's the Accelerating Universe model. The more it expands, the faster it expands. The faster it expands, the faster it dies.
If the universe dies in three days, and Judas dies with it, what's the difference? If he dies in ten years, what's the difference? Either way you look at it, he's going to die. We all are. We are born and we die and nothing, absolutely nothing, can change that.
Now I sound like Kory. We barely even knew each other before he started telling me how meaningless the human experience is. There have been humans before us; there'll be humans after us. We don't matter nearly as much as the universe around us does.
But he was also the one who told me we are the center of the universe.
If we are the center of the universe, I can't see how we don't matter.
What should I do?
Why do I have to fight so hard to want to live? Why does my every instinct want me to die?
No. Nobody ever wants to die. All anybody ever wants is a way out.
I could leave. I want to leave.
I can't leave Judas. If I die now, and the world dies three days later, that's still three days in which Judas is alone.
I don't want Judas to be alone anymore. Not in this universe. Not in any universe.
I'm trapped.
* * * * *
The next morning I toss our laundry in the lime green bin. I drag it to the stale brown elevator and down to the basement.
The basement is dingy and cold, the walls scratchy and concrete. One of the light fixtures on the ceiling is broken. So are two of the five washing machines. A sign on the wall lists the Laundry Room Do's and Don't's. Somebody scribbled a sharpie phallus all over Rule #4.
Hypnotized, Kory stares at the dryer on the wall, clothes spinning noisily behind the glass door. I sincerely hope they're his clothes. Otherwise this is pretty creepy.
"Torque is fascinating, isn't it?" Kory breathes.
"S-Sure."
I sort my clothing piles. I look for the detergent. I find it standing in an empty litterbox. Why is there a litterbox in the basement? Cats aren't allowed in this building. If they were, Judas would have one.
A cat. How much do those cost?
"Can we hang out later?" Kory asks. "More importantly, is your pantry stocked?"
"Sure," I respond. I don't know which question I'm answering. Maybe both.
"Great!" Kory beams. "I've been reading up on the Chandrasekhar limit, I'll tell you all about it."
The washing machine whirs and sloshes noisily. I dump in the clothes, the detergent. Mom always said to let the washer fill with water first. I don't know why. I close the lid. Kory hops up and sits on it, his legs swinging leisurely.
He peers at me closely. "You are in a sober mood."
"Huh? Sorry."
"Penny for your thoughts? Not that a penny can buy you anything these days. Wow, that idiom has got to go..."
"A universe came out of my head," I say.
Kory takes his glasses off. He rubs them on his shirt. It freaks me out when he does that. His eyes are too small, his lashes too long.
"How many times do I have to tell you?" Kory asks, replacing his specs. "I deplore philosophy."
"Not philosophy. I had a headache and a universe burst out of my head." I think back to the first time I heard Annwn play the violin. I saw the universe. I saw double. My head was searing with pain. "It might have happened before."
"That's...well," Kory says, at some kind of loss. "That is certainly one strange hallucination."
"I think it was real." But just because it's a hallucination doesn't mean it isn't real.
"Wendy," Kory says. "Come on."
"Why can't it be?" I press. "You told me one trillion protons colliding makes for an entire universe. You told me we have more protons inside our bodies than--"
My head hurts.
"Your head looks very intact right now, if you ask me," says a cautious Kory.
"I don't know. I don't know anymore..."
"Wendy. Everything has a logical explanation."
"You told me science doesn't know everything."
"It doesn't. But it can. It just needs more time."
Time. We don't have time. The world around us is falling apart.
"You believed me," I go on, my mouth dry. "When I told you about Mars and Jupiter."
"Of course I believed you. You're not smart enough to know about orbital velocity on your own. I mean that kindly," he says quickly.
"I know you do."
"Do you really think your headaches are creating universes? Or something to that effect?"
I don't know. I don't know. I want to get away...
Kory hesitates, very tentative. "Assuming you could somehow produce a bioelectric output large enough, I suppose it's not outside the realm of possibility..."
"Do you know how to fix me?" Kory knows everything.
"Neuroscience is not my forte," Kory tells me. How can anything be his forte? He's sixteen. "But I'm going to tell you something relevant."
He's a lanky mad scientist on a rumbling washing machine. His arms and legs are long and thin. He's the tallest friend I have, I think. Considering I only have two friends, I'm not sure that's such a feat.
"Do you know what a Schwarzschild radius is?" Kory asks me.
I shake my head. I stop. Hurts too much.
"Let's just say it's a number," Kory says. "Every object in existence has a unique numerical value. Think of it like the barcode on the back of the cereal box you're considering buying."
"I have a...numerical value? And you?"
"Everyone does."
I'm a number. That's crazy.
I'm crazy.
"That numerical value is always lower than your actual mass," Kory tells me. "But then listen. Something strange happens. Sometimes a Schwarzschild radius grows much bigger than its mass. The mass, then, can no longer sustain it. So the mass collapses."
"What happens after that? Do you die?"
"You become a black hole."
I stare at him, the ugly fluorescent ceiling lights glinting off his owlish eyeglasses.
"I thought only stars became black holes," I finally say. But then some don't. I wonder why that is.
"No," Kory says. "Anything can become a black hole. Even you and me. Even this washing machine I'm sitting on top of. All it takes is a compression of mass. A cosmological fluke."
I try and imagine the washer turning into a black hole while Kory's still sitting on top of it. It's a weird visual, to say the least.
"Have you figured out why I'm telling you all this?" Kory asks.
"N-No."
"Because our entire universe sits inside a black hole."
The crown of my head lights with pain. The pain spreads to the base of my skull, to the backs of my ears.
"If you think that sounds implausible, consider what a black hole really is. It's a location in spacetime you can't escape from unless you're traveling faster than the speed of light. Special relativity tells us it's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. So it's impossible to escape a black hole. Once you're in it, you don't leave. That 'point of no return' is called an event horizon."
"But..."
"This universe is finite, but unbounded. I've said that before. If you travel far enough across the universe, you'll arrive back where
you started. You can't just get up and leave it, no matter how fast you're traveling. What is that if not the textbook definition of an event horizon? One often hears space described as a vacuum. Well, what do you think a black hole is? A vacuum, of course! Another thing. The torsion inside of a black hole pushes objects apart from one another, kind of like a magnet in reverse. Why do you think the universe is still expanding billions of years after its birth? The black hole theory is the only explanation for the Accelerating Universe model that successfully bridges the gap between quantum mechanics and general relativity. Something scientists have been trying to do for centuries."
Accelerating Universe. This universe is dying.
Is it a coincidence? I think I'm dying with it.
"If we're all capable of becoming black holes," Kory says, owlish eyes on the ceiling, "and we know our universe sits inside of one--and you tell me there are universes coming out of your head... It's not illogical. I have to approach it as a physicist. I'm not sure I'm sold on this, but I'm sure I can't dismiss your claims. Anyway, I don't think I'd be a very good friend if I told you you were muy loco."
I crack a smile. "Te lo agradezco."
"Stop speaking gibberish, Wendy, this is America."
I laugh. It's real. It takes me by surprise. Kory flashes me an unassuming smile. He really is a good friend. He's not conventional, I'll give you that. But he doesn't have to be.
The washing machine rattles and hums beneath him. Thank God it's not a black hole.
"Can I buy you a Christmas present, Kory? Is that okay?" I don't know if that's proper. I don't want to offend him.
"Are you kidding?" Kory clamors. "I never turn down free stuff! Especially food," he hints.
"How do you stay so skinny?" I wonder. "You eat like a horse."
"Haven't you noticed? It all goes straight to my giant, inflated head."
"Kory. That was actually funny."
"I have my moments."
* * * * *
"A cat, Wendy? You know pets aren't allowed in our building."
"It's not like the landlord ever checks in on us..."
Kory follows me through The Spit, looking dopey in his zipper earrings and his camouflage jacket. Occasionally he rambles. I don't mind. I check the city map on my cell phone. Somewhere south of the hospital there's supposed to be an animal shelter. Judas likes cats.