When We Were Infinite

by Kelly Loy Gilbert

  Somehow my brain was still struggling to make sense of all the pieces, but piercing through the jumble there was a colorlessness to his voice that alarmed me. I needed to see him; I needed the reassurance of his physical presence. “Do you want to meet up somewhere?”

  “I think another time would be better.”

  “You could come over here,” I said. “Or I could go to you—I’m not doing anything right now, if you wanted to talk about—”

  “It’s all right. I’ve got some things to do here.”

  When I hung up, the room constricted and then expanded again with every beat of my heart, and I was struggling to breathe. Brandon would just be leaving tutoring now, and I called him three times before he picked up. When he answered, I said, “I’m really worried about Jason. I’m scared he might try again.”

  “Are you serious? What’s going on?”

  Breathe, I told myself, and I tried to iron out my voice. Where would I even start? “Um,” I said, “it’s—it’s kind of a long story.”

  * * *

  I told him everything—how Jason had applied, how his parents had found out, how we’d snuck to New York for the audition. How much it had meant to him, how when we were there it was the only time since Christmas he’d seemed like himself and the only time he’d seemed happy. When I finished, Brandon said, “I can’t believe you pulled off secretly going to New York.”

  I hoped I was imagining that there was something strange in his voice. “I wanted to tell you guys. He was just so afraid of his parents somehow finding out.”

  “I don’t know whether to be insulted by that or impressed you actually pulled it off.”

  “Okay, but anyway,” I said, “he just found out he didn’t get in. And I think having that possibility—”

  “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you get in?”

  “No, of course not. But anyway, that’s beside the point, and the point is that I think having that possibility was everything to him. It was like an actual future he was happy about and he wanted, and I think that was something he was really holding on to, and now—now I’m just scared—”

  “I’ll call him.”

  “I don’t know if he’ll pick up.” I hesitated. “Also—I don’t think I was supposed to tell you about Juilliard.”

  “So do you think I should try to talk to him or not?”

  “What do you think? You’re his best friend.”

  “Well, it’s your secret.”

  “I think we should try to go see him. Maybe we could make up an excuse and then just show up. I just feel like we should make sure he’s—”

  “I have to leave in like forty-five minutes to go to Salinas.”

  “You’re still planning to go to Salinas?”

  There was a long silence. “You think I should skip the game?”

  “I mean—do you think you should go?”

  “Did he say something in particular that’s making you worry? Because, I mean, it sucks to get rejected, but if he’s just disappointed and he’ll get over it—”

  “He didn’t say anything, but—” Why was I having to explain myself? Why was Brandon not already on his way over? “Obviously last time he didn’t say anything either. I don’t think he would tell us in advance.”

  “My whole family is coming to Salinas,” he said.

  “But if he’s—”

  “I know. I know.” He sighed. “Fuck.”

  “We could just try to go over now, and then you could still make—”

  “I’m just going to call him,” he said. “I won’t bring up Juilliard if you really don’t think I should, but I’ll just call and see how he sounds. Okay? I’ll call you back.”

  I laid my phone on the bed and lay down next to it, waiting for him to call back. I was having either a panic attack with entirely new symptoms, or some kind of neurological episode—I couldn’t focus my vision on anything without it wavering, and my fingers were numb. A minute went by, then two.

  “He didn’t answer,” Brandon said when he called back. “I tried like six times.”

  I sat up. There was a tingling pain up and down my left arm, which I vaguely remembered as being a possible symptom of a heart attack. “Do you think we should just go over there?”

  Brandon was quiet a long time. Finally, he said, “Does it make a difference if I specifically am here? I mean, are you going to just go over anyway whether I go with you or not? Because I’d do anything for Jason, you know that, but if I just bail on the game and then it was all a false alarm—”

  I was suddenly furious. “Fine,” I snapped. “Go to Salinas. I won’t waste more time trying to talk you into it. Have fun with your game.”

  * * *

  But after hanging up, I didn’t know what to do. I could bike to his house, or I could call someone else, but either option felt eternal and also untenable. If it was just me, and I showed up alone—what if I wasn’t what he wanted? What was there about me, exactly, that would tether him back to the world? It was like that hypothetical where you’re drowning in an ocean and there’s a life raft on either side of you, at equal distances away, and you can’t decide which one to reach for, and you perish. I would sit here, wracked with indecision, while he slipped away.

  Sunny called while I was sitting there, and when I picked up, she said, “I cannot believe you went to New York without telling me.”

  “You talked to Brandon, I see.”

  “Were you just literally never going to tell me? Or—”

  “Don’t be mad,” I said. My voice was shaking. “Also, remember how you made me promise I’d tell you if there was anything? Can you go to Jason’s with me? Right now?”

  She was at my house in just under seven minutes, and I loved her for that. I was shaky and hot getting into her car, and the comforting familiar smell of it enveloped me when I shut the door behind me. I was trying not to cry.

  “I really think he’s probably okay,” she said, pulling out of my driveway, and there was something kind of stiff in her tone. “I remember reading statistics a while ago, right after, and it was something like nine in ten people never try again. It’s like people get into this zone and they can’t see past it, but then if they wait long enough they can think more clearly.”

  “Statistics never feel all that comforting.”

  “Yeah, maybe not. I guess someone has to be the bad ones.”

  I couldn’t stop the images of us showing up to his house only to be too late—us finding him on the floor somewhere, us not finding him at all. “I really wish Brandon weren’t going all the way to Salinas.”

  “It’s not that far.”

  “It’s over an hour.”

  “Well, I mean, it’s not New York.”

  I flinched. She sighed. Then she said, with a little less heat, “I just really can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

  “I wanted to tell you, Sun. If it had been just me, you know I would’ve. But Jason was just so worried that somehow word would get back to his parents. It was really awful not telling anyone.”

  “But you didn’t have to go along with it! You really think I would’ve somehow told his parents?”

  “Of course not, but maybe if—I don’t know, if your parents were going through your phone, or—”

  “My parents barely know how to use their own phones.”

  “I wish I’d told you,” I said, which was the truth. I would’ve been less alone with it.

  “Okay, but also, like—would you guys have gone if you’d gotten in?”

  I should’ve lied, and I knew it, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it—I think even though the dream was over now, it felt too precious still to deny. “I think so.”

  Her expression changed. I wished, desperately, that I could tell her and all of them that I’d gotten in. They would understand what it meant to me, both the magnitude of having gotten in and also having to sacrifice that now. When we pulled onto the street before the turn for
Jason’s, Sunny said, “And you just weren’t going to tell us? Because I was willing to give up UCLA.”

  “I always knew I wouldn’t get in, though,” I said. I had to fight to keep my voice steady. “So it was just a fantasy. When I said I would’ve gone—I mean, I would also, I don’t know, say yes if someone offered me a spot tomorrow in the Vienna Philharmonic or something. That doesn’t mean I ever thought it would really happen.”

  “I guess.”

  “I think it was something he needed to do, but that’s different from making an actual plan. The plan is still Berkeley.” Then I added, quietly, “I wouldn’t have gone to Juilliard by myself. You have to believe me.”

  “All right,” she said. We pulled in front of his house, and she exhaled, looking toward it. “He doesn’t know we’re coming, right? Should we just—knock?”

  On his doorstep, waiting, there was a boiling feeling inside me, and my skin felt stretched too tight to contain everything. I felt dangerously on the verge of some kind of outburst—yelling or sobbing or breaking something. I tried to swallow it back. After a few moments, his mother answered the door in slippers and with wet hair, and she looked surprised to see us. “Oh—you come to see Jason? Come in, come in.”

  We followed her up the step and slipped our shoes off at the door. She was short, shorter than both of us, and as we followed her through the entry I imagined her folding up all those hundred-dollar bills, slipping them into their red envelopes to give to Jason.

  Jason was sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of instant ramen. He’d just made it, I think—it was steaming, and there was a small pot still on the stove. He looked solid and ordinary there, and seeing him like that—my body didn’t quite know how to catch up with it. My pulse was still galloping, and I felt weak.

  “Oh,” he said, frowning a little, “what are you guys doing here?”

  “They come to visit you,” his mother said. She said something to him in Taiwanese and then opened the fridge. “How nice. You want something to eat, Sunny, Beth? Maybe melon? Or—”

  “Oh, no, that’s okay,” I said quickly. “We just wanted—”

  “They just had to drop something off,” Jason said. He stood up. “I’ll walk you guys out.”

  * * *

  So then we were back outside on the front step, and Jason shut the door behind him, glancing toward the window before turning back to us. He crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “We were worried,” Sunny said. “We were making sure you were all right.”

  “Why were you worried?”

  He looked at me first. I swallowed.

  “I told her everything,” I said. “About New York, and—”

  Sunny cut in. “Because we’re your friends and we care about you,” she said, “and honestly, we want to support you however we can, but I don’t think never talk about it is some kind of one-size-fits-all solution, so. We just wanted to come and make sure you were okay.”

  I thought he would blow up at her for saying all that, or at me for telling her, but instead he sighed. He rubbed his temples with his thumb and forefinger. “Well, that really wasn’t necessary, but thanks, I guess.”

  “Also, Jason—we’re here if you need anything. All of us are. You know that, right? I always assumed you knew, but just in case we never explicitly said it.”

  He nudged her a little with his elbow in a fraternal, affectionate way. “You don’t need to worry. All right?” When he looked at me, he seemed sad and tired and empty, a little bit, but also his expression was gentle. “Really. I promise. I just want to be alone.”

  This was the outcome I’d wanted, of course. This was the best-case scenario. It was absolutely unthinkable that any part of me would feel disappointed or anything remotely akin to a letdown. I should be only happy and grateful and relieved.

  It was just that—it felt like it had all been for nothing. I had been terrified, and I had snapped at Brandon and then hung up on him, and I had, in a way, preemptively lived through disaster; I had emotionally gone through it because it had been real to me—and for what?

  WE LOST the championship game in Salinas; it wasn’t close. I’d been waiting to see if anyone would update me, but no one did, so I saw it on a bunch of Instagram posts. I wanted to say something to Brandon, but also I wanted him to say something first.

  My mother drove me to our spring show the next day—none of my friends said anything about carpooling, and I didn’t want to ask. I knew she would immediately notice that I was sitting in the first chair, so I’d told her Jason was sick.

  When I saw Brandon backstage, he didn’t break into his usual, easy grin, that one that always felt like home to me.

  “Hey,” he said, and I said, “Hi.” Then I said, because it seemed absurd not to, “I’m sorry about your game.”

  “Yeah.” He ran a hand through his hair. It was loud backstage, a stuffy room with low ceilings and faded carpet. “Sunny said everything seemed fine, though? With Jay?”

  “I guess so.”

  He started to say something, then stopped himself. I’d almost never seen Brandon do that—he always just said what he wanted to, and if it didn’t come out the way he wanted, he would fumble around aloud until he hit on what he’d meant, and he didn’t mind that you were there for the process. It was something I loved about him; it was one of the ways he shared himself.

  Today, though, he didn’t give me that; he said only, “All right, well. Good to hear.”

  GRACE WAS the first one to see the email: Berkeley!! I didn’t get in , she wrote in the group chat on Saturday afternoon. I was reviewing for the AP Bio exam on my bed, flash cards taking over the comforter, and when I jumped up the cards went flying. A flash of hot-cold electricity surged through me, and my hands shook as I tried to check my email. I couldn’t hit the right keys.

  It’s out? Sunny said, and then, a few seconds later: I got in! Grace, forget them, you’re better than them.

  Brandon had gotten in too, and Jason. But I kept getting an error message on the website—it must have been overloaded from everyone trying to log in and check. When I ran downstairs, though, the mail had come, and the letter from Berkeley was there. I tore open the envelope, ripping faster at the end so the scratchy, fibrous sound of paper tearing became a tiny crescendo.

  I hadn’t gotten in.

  As soon as I opened it, I wished I could take it back, could go back to that moment before I knew, but the rejection had already fused to my bones. I didn’t cry. I didn’t move. I didn’t do anything, actually; I lay very still in my bed trying to empty my mind, to chase away every thought that came for me. When that didn’t work, I ran to the bathroom and threw up.

  And then I cried, heavy sobs that I was worried my mother would hear. I turned on the shower and got in, turning the water as hot as I could stand.

  Soon I would feel all the deaths of the dreams I’d had for Berkeley one by one; soon my fears about next year and what we’d do, how we’d keep our promise now, would come corrosive as acid into my chest. For now, though, the words pounded again and again against me like the shower water: I’m not enough. I’m not enough.

  * * *

  I didn’t turn my phone off this time—after Christmas I would never do that again—but I set it next to me on the desk and watched the messages roll in, and I didn’t touch it. For an hour, then two hours, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. It would make it real; it would mark me, forever, as a failure. But what was I waiting for—what difference did it make? It wasn’t like prolonging it let me pretend to myself, so finally I told them. Jason called within minutes.

  “I’ll come get you,” he said. “Can I? Do you want to go somewhere, or did you just want to be alone?”

  I never wanted to just be alone. He was at my house in fifteen minutes, and we went to Taro, a cafe in downtown Congress Springs where they had coffee and tea and Asian pastries. It was crowded that night, but we found a table by the door, and whe
n we sat down, he said, quietly, “Beth—I’m really sorry.”

  I felt that telltale shakiness behind my eyes, but I held myself steady. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I know how much it meant to you, though. And I think—I mean, I know it doesn’t help, but I think it was their mistake. Anywhere would’ve been lucky to have you.”

  I tried to breathe control into my voice. “Did you want coffee?”

  “Right, yeah.” He stood, reaching into his pocket for his wallet. “You want anything?”

  There were so many things I wanted. “I’m all right.”

  I watched him looking at the menu in line, his hands shoved into his back pockets, all the contours of his expression and his body so familiar to me. And so close by but so distant all the same, that impenetrable wall that always existed between us, that always existed between you and another person no matter what. And maybe I already knew then, on some level, not the specific way things would fall apart but that they had to, that it’s always so fragile, so fragile, the way things are held together. You blink and you disturb the whole universe.

  Jason came back with a hot chocolate for me even though I’d said I hadn’t wanted anything. I drank some, obligatorily, and burned my tongue.

  We made a promise, I told myself. We made a vow. I would trust that. We could go somewhere else, all of us together.

  But these moments when I felt close to him also made me feel so deeply the limits of that closeness. Later that night, he’d go back to his home, and who knew what would happen there—whatever darkness he was carrying around inside wasn’t anything he felt like he could share. And I would go home and I still would’ve lost one of the most precious hopes of my life. The ways you love someone can feel like a shield around them, as if surely all the force of your caring creates its own gravity, but then the illusion always breaks.

  “Did you tell your dad yet?” Jason asked.

  I shook my head. “I still haven’t seen him. That was going to be—I hoped the next time I saw him we’d go out to celebrate Berkeley together. Or something. It was stupid.”