Light Years

by Emily Ziff Griffin

  He looks up at Phoebe. “One of these trains going to New York?”

  “That one,” she says, pointing to the train on the farthest track. “He said that one leaves tonight, going east.”

  Ben nods and looks back at me. I grab my bag and pull out a Mountain House meal pack and a nutrition bar.

  “Here, take these. And some water.” I hand him my canteen. He takes a long sip. He’s careful to keep his lips from touching the rim. He passes it back.

  I press my hands against the cool steel of the train floor to stave off the sadness that’s starting to swirl in me. “Te quiero, hermanito,” I say.

  “Yo también, hermanita.” My eyes follow him across the yard until he disappears into the darkness of an empty car. I lean back against the wall and take a drink.

  “How much water is there?” Kamal asks.

  “It’s almost full.”

  “Okay, so we’re not going to die from dehydration. Probably.”

  “Did I say I was sharing it with you?” I smile and take another glorious sip. Then I pass it to Kamal, who does the same and passes it to Phoebe.

  “About half gone now,” he says. “Let’s not drink more until we absolutely have to.” I nod. “What about eats?”

  I open my bag. “I’ve got mac and cheese, cherry pie, lentil stew, and six bars, which are each a full day of calories.”

  “Cherry pie, please,” Kamal replies immediately.

  Phoebe takes the lentils and I go with the mac and cheese. I pull up my mask and take a bite. “Oh, holy shit, that’s disgusting!” I spit it out the door of the car.

  Phoebe breathes through her mouth, “Mine tastes literally like dirty socks.”

  “Mine’s delicious,” Kamal chirps with a devilish, grinning mouthful of syrupy red pie goop.

  “Jerk,” I tease.

  He pauses, eyes bright.

  “Gentleman,” he corrects, breaking off a piece of pie. I take it, then look away. I try not to smile too wide.

  We sit and wait for the train to move. The cicadas outside work up a racket and the air cools as the sun goes down.

  “Too bad about Ben,” Phoebe says after a while. “I was just starting not to loathe him.”

  “Yeah, he can be an asshole.” I check my phone for the one-hundredth time. “And he can be the best.”

  “But it’s better he’s going back,” she adds. I look across the yard to the empty car where Ben is sitting. He’s going home to our house, to my tree in the garden, his room, his bed, a kitchen full of food, and our parents. Or, our mom.

  “I hope I’m not making a mistake,” I mumble.

  “You’re not,” Phoebe says. The train lurches, then glides smoothly forward. I leap to the doorway and Ben appears from the shadows of his car.

  “Be safe,” I whisper. We stand looking at each other until we lose sight. I sit back down next to Kamal.

  “He’ll be fine,” Kamal says. I nod.

  Phoebe tucks herself into a cool, dark corner and shuts her eyes. The smell of diesel and hot metal melts into waves of honeysuckle and bergamot, grass and hay. The breeze cools my skin. The click-clack rocks us with the easy rhythm of a mother’s hand. I close my eyes for a minute and let it trick me into forgetting where we are and why.

  When I look up, Kamal is sitting at the edge of the car with his feet dangling out the door. This makes me nervous.

  “Be careful,” I tell him.

  He keeps his eyes on the rolling landscape outside. “I haven’t heard from my parents in ten days,” he says.

  “Where are they?”

  “They went to our place in Bermuda two weeks ago. I talked to them once after they got there. Then all this started and they haven’t called. They don’t answer the phone or e-mail or texts.”

  “Is there someone else there you can maybe reach?”

  “Tried our neighbors; no answer. Our club told me they hadn’t been in for a week. The thing is,” he continues slowly, “I’m not sure I care that much.” He turns toward me. “I mean, I would obviously be sad if something’s happened. If they’re dead. But in a lot of ways, if they died, my life wouldn’t actually be that different. Awful to say. But I think it’s the truth.”

  “Maybe it’s just impossible to feel it in the abstract, until it’s real.”

  “Maybe,” he replies quietly, looking back outside.

  “I keep wishing it were my mom, not my dad,” I confess. “And then I feel like the worst person alive.”

  Kamal pulls his mask up onto his head and looks at me.

  I pull mine up and meet his eyes. This act of rebellion is like diving into the Red Hook pool in the middle of the night—freeing, and dangerous enough to make it worth doing. I inch closer to him so I can smell his smell underneath the fragrant air. I tell myself to remember every last detail of this moment so I can share it with Janine.

  And my heart breaks a little more.

  “What were you praying about in the chapel?” I ask.

  “I was praying for an end to this. I was praying for all the sick. ‘As’alu Allah al ‘azim rabbil ‘arshil azim an yashifika, which means ‘I ask Allah, the Mighty, the Lord of the Mighty Throne, to cure you.’ ”

  “That’s beautiful.”

  “But I was thinking especially of your dad.”

  I let the train rock me toward him just a little closer. My legs dangle next to his and I grip the floor with one hand to steady the sensation of falling.

  “Even though, in Islam, you aren’t supposed to pray for nonbelievers.” I look out at the setting sun’s golden beams flashing across the sky. They mix with silver sparks of my own creation as we chug across the plains.

  “ ‘As’alu Allah … ,’ ” I begin, then stop. Kamal says the whole prayer again. “One more time,” I ask. I commit it to memory.

  “You’re meant to say it seven times,” he says. And so we do. Seven times, together.

  I don’t expect a miracle, but the act of speaking words that have been said by millions of others for over a thousand years, of asking for the thing I want most, connects me to something beyond myself. It lets me take action when I don’t know what else to do. If it’s possible for a prayer to be answered, then maybe mine will be. If it’s not, then I’m no worse off than before.

  “Thank you for that,” I say.

  He nods. I get lost for a second in the arcing lines of his shoulders curving down across his broad chest, meeting at his narrow hips.

  “Why did you come on this trip?” I ask suddenly.

  “Phoebe,” he replies.

  I pull my legs up into the train and glance over at her. She looks gentle and harmless asleep. Like a tiger.

  “She’s so focused and furious about the things she cares about,” he explains. “It’s good to be around someone like that.”

  “Right,” I manage to say.

  “I guess I was afraid that if I didn’t go with her, I would end up in my parents’ ridiculous apartment drinking myself into oblivion, then passing out and drowning in the hot tub, or something equally pathetic.” He pauses. “I was basically just afraid of being alone.”

  I think back to the moment I first saw Phoebe, her eyes sparkling like a cat’s and her red hair shimmering like waves of fire. How powerful she seemed. How small I felt next to her.

  “But you know we’re just friends, right? We’ve always just been friends,” he says.

  A smile creeps across my face. “Good,” I say.

  His smell is getting stronger by the second.

  “Good?”

  And his eyes glimmer in the twilight.

  “Yeah. Good.” A flash of red light explodes across our faces. For a split second I think it’s just me who saw it, that it’s a signal someone sick is close. But then I hear the boom and I realize: It’s fireworks.

  “No way,” I marvel. Another one bursts wide across the sky, then another.

  “Happy Independence,” Kamal says.

  I laugh. “Thank God we got away from t
he scourge of English tyranny.”

  We sit and watch. We don’t speak. I think of my family and the years when Ben and I were little, how we would sit on the beach eating buckets of fresh clams and watermelon, waiting for the fireworks to start. How we’d snuggle under blankets when the salt air grew brisk and fall asleep in the car on the way home. Memory is a kind of time travel, but it eventually demands we accept that there is no going back.

  “Why did you come?” he asks. “Do you really think you can save him?”

  “I’m afraid that if I say no, that’s what will happen. But the truth is I’m not sure. I’m trying not to think about what will happen if I can’t.”

  Kamal places his gloved hand down next to me, palm up. An invitation. My thoughts race. A flash of orange and a wave of pine. I put my own hand on top of his. Our fingers interlace. The bright, exploding lights fade away and the stars take their place.

  The train rocks us.

  “I feel almost safe,” he says after a while. “And maybe … does it sound weird to say I feel, like, more alive than usual?”

  “It sounds the opposite of weird,” I reply. “I know exactly what you mean.” The chilly air swirls around us and we sit like that. Rocking, holding hands, looking out into the crisp night.

  And then I decide to tell him.

  “So I have this thing,” I begin. “It’s what my brother was talking about before.”

  “Okay… .”

  “It’s not like something horrible.” Part of me wants to pull my hand away from his. But I don’t.

  Maybe I even grasp a little tighter.

  “It’s just a condition. Where I feel my emotions differently from normal people. I feel them with different senses, like I see and smell and taste them.” I’m afraid to look at him. “Sorry. I’m not used to explaining it to people. So it’s hard for me to describe.”

  “Keep trying.” His voice is gentle, curious.

  “Well, like, right now, I’m nervous. So I’m seeing little bursts of yellow light. And pink from the cold. And I can smell you.”

  He sniffs his own armpit and laughs. “I guess I do kind of stink.”

  “Not like that,” I say. “When I’m feeling a lot, of whatever kind of feelings, people sometimes make me smell or taste or hear things. With you, I get the smell of pine trees.”

  “Pine trees. Like Christmas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I quite like that actually. I love Christmas trees.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’m glad it’s not something disgusting. I mean, does anyone ever smell like dog shit or something?”

  “Not so far.”

  He looks at me. “What about Phoebe?”

  “She tastes like salt.”

  “Huh.”

  Silence.

  My free hand slides over the lip of the door frame. I move it back and forth over the edge. What is he thinking?

  “It’s really kind of cool,” he says finally.

  I exhale relief. “You think?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve always hated it. I’ve always thought I had to try and override it. Keep it in check. I always thought it made me weak. And weird. But since all this started, I don’t know. It’s like I’m starting to understand it better and it’s actually not so bad.”

  “Is that what happened with the guy who stole the car? Did he give you some sort of feeling?”

  “I’m still not sure what that was about. I did feel a warm sensation between us. Like I could feel his fear in my own body somehow. What I’ve started to notice, like with him and the guy at the gas station, the guys in the tunnel, is that I seem to know by sensing something inside them what they really want, and what they might be about to do.”

  “So you are a Jedi.”

  We both laugh.

  “Obviously.”

  “Can you tell what I want?” he asks, turning serious.

  We lock eyes. Colors scream in all directions. My legs seem to crumble underneath me.

  It’s just waves.

  “I think so,” I say softly.

  His hand tugs on mine and, without words, we move to the corner of the car and lie down facing each other. We put our masks back on, but there are only inches between us. With each inhale, we move closer together. We exhale and separate. The rumble of the train shakes the floor underneath us.

  Kamal was right: We are more alive than usual.

  At some point, I let my eyes close and I drift into a dream.

  I’m at the top of the Empire State Building with the woman who gave me the Bible. We’re looking north over Manhattan. It’s dusk. The city sparkles like diamonds against a lavender sky. The wind blows through my hair, long and dark like it was when I was a child.

  “Can you feel it?” she asks. “The wind? That’s God’s hand, washing you clean.” I look down and see she’s very pregnant. A second later she goes into labor, but it’s nothing like it is in the movies. She closes her eyes. She concentrates. Seconds later, a perfect little baby boy with dark curly hair pops out from underneath her dress. His face is blissful, serene. His eyes are closed and he doesn’t cry.

  The woman turns to me, beaming. “Look at him. Just look!” She puts the baby in my arms. I hold him nervously, his plump red lips making soft sucking sounds. “Let’s call him Lazarus,” she says.

  I nod yes.

  “Lazarus,” I say, looking down at his sweet face. And then his eyelids flutter open, revealing blank spaces of skin where his eyes should be. I jump back and wake up terrified, grasping to remember where I am.

  The train has stopped dead in the middle of a field.

  “Lazarus,” I whisper to myself. Kamal and Phoebe are both asleep. I look at my watch: 11:35 p.m. “Lazarus.” I scramble to my pack and take out the Bible. I move toward a pool of moonlight by the door and impatiently page through the chapters until I find it: the story of the Raising of Lazarus in the Book of John.

  In the story, Jesus goes to visit the tomb of his recently deceased friend Lazarus. The villagers, including Lazarus’s two sisters, are upset that Jesus didn’t come sooner and save this man whom they all loved. Jesus tells them that if they believe he is the Son of God, Lazarus will rise again. Then he goes to the tomb, tells the Jews to move the stone that blocks the entrance, and calls to Lazarus to come out. He does. The dead man, risen from the dead.

  I studied the Bible as literature in school, but there is one line from this story, one important line I had forgotten. And now, as I sit on the floor of the boxcar, awake in the fresh air, I find it, printed in condensed, soft black letters on the middle of a whisper-thin page.

  Jesus sees the villagers crying. He is deeply moved and the Bible says, “Jesus wept.” I pull up Nam’s last poem on my phone:

  From dust he bloomed, a fragile rose whose petals slowly fell

  As the seed inside kept burning still, the mind at least was well

  They tore their clothes and begged for help, a nightly vigil kept

  But when he was gone, all hope was lost and they, like Jesus, wept.

  The poem is about the resurrection of Lazarus. Now I see the thread that ties this message to the first one, and both messages to ARNS. They are about somehow stopping death. ARNS has put the entire world on a mission to stay alive, to cheat death. We’re just like the Gods in ancient India and the Jews in Bethany. We are looking for the magic potion or even the divine miracle that will save us. Maybe Nam holds the key to it. I open x.chat.

  Halahala. Lazarus. I get it. I want to know what you know, I write. I have one bar of service, but the message goes through.

  He responds instantly. What is it that you “get?”

  That the poems are about stopping death. So stopping ARNS. And I think you know how. I tap Send, but my signal drops out. I move closer to the door and stick my phone outside. The air is still and cool, pulsing with the sound of crickets. The full moon has risen high and the land is bathed in its shimmering glow. One bar of signal now, but the m
essage won’t go out. I climb down from the car.

  My feet sink into the dewy earth. I look out across the field. There’s a small house about forty yards away flanked by woods. Its warmly lit windows are a beacon. They remind me of everything I long for—food, a warm bed with sheets that feel cold when you get into them, an old movie on TV, family in the next room. I move toward the house, watching my phone. Ten paces become twenty become thirty and finally, one more bar. The message sends.

  I think you know how, Nam responds within seconds. I stand staring at the words, held by the windless air.

  Tell me, I implore. Waiting for his reply feels like trying to catch a handful of falling snow, like I will never be able to grasp enough before it all disappears. Tell me how, I write.

  If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me, he writes. I shake my phone like the answers I want will come loose through force.

  But there is a way to stop it? I ask.

  A long pause. I hold my breath.

  There is.

  My eyes close. The dank, mossy ground under my feet, the radiance of the moon all around, and the idea, however vague, that there may be a way to save my father. I begin typing, asking for more, but Nam dissolves the chat.

  “Fuck!” I cry out at top volume. My voice echoes across the plain. In reply comes a strange sound. It’s a bone-rattling yowl. It’s as lonely as a locomotive whistle, as loud as a siren. It’s a sound I’ve heard only once before.

  I look out toward the treeline and see her, dipping in and out behind the tall pines that guard the edge of the forest. A wolf. Her silver coat sends a wave of heat over my skin, like a blanket I can’t see.

  She howls again. I step toward her like I stepped toward the ocean waves tumbling over my kissing parents when I was small. I take another step. She slows her movement. Her dancing gait eases into a panting stance. Her eyes sizzle like bolts of lightning and my pulse booms. But somehow, I am not afraid.

  I am you, I think, the words I’d written to Nam springing up. “I am you,” I say softly as heat builds behind my ribs. She howls again. Her head lifts toward the stars, then circles down and around in a bow.

  I’m walking toward her. My mouth opens to call to her, but the air on my vocal cords is stifled by a different sound: An engine releasing its brakes with a heavy wheeze.