Dear Universe

by Florence Gonsalves

  “No, try this for a few months,” the doctor urges, nearly turning her back to the bed. It’s like my dad has been dismissed to his own universe now, the Universe for People Who Can’t. It’s a million degrees, but I snuggle closer to the warmth of his body.

  “I really wish you’d brought him in sooner,” Dr. Bhatti says to my mom in a hushed voice. “We could have been treating him properly, and this whole incident might not have happened. It’s really dangerous not to undergo proper treatment when—”

  “I was complying with his wishes.” My mom’s face stiffens. “Besides, was it really so crazy then to think—I mean, couldn’t it be the accident?”

  Dr. Bhatti touches my mom’s arm. “Mrs. Myles. Scott has Parkinson’s. I know you want to protect your husband, but the best way you can protect him is by giving him the proper care.”

  My mom walks the doctor out and they talk in lower voices than before. Progressive… confusion… stiffened gait… hallucinations… trouble swallowing… I stuff my fingers in my ears so I don’t have to hear about the inevitable: how the disease will progress, which symptoms are likely to get worse, what will inevitably happen when it wins.

  “Bye again,” the doctor calls before she leaves. “I hope to run into you at the Brain Degeneration Walk later this month!”

  “Yes, you too,” my mom grumbles.

  My dad opens his eyes and puts his hand up, then pushes the button to sit up in his bed.

  “What walk?” I ask my mom when the door closes, pretending this is the first I’ve heard of it. She doesn’t seem to hear me.

  “Let’s get out of here,” my dad says to my mom. “Please.”

  “I know this was a lot,” my mom says, getting my dad’s shoes and clothes off the spare chair. “But we’re going home now, honey. Things are going to get better.”

  “Much better,” I echo, but my mouth tastes like aspartame as soon as I say it.

  “It’s not going to get better,” he says, ignoring the sweater my mom is holding out to him. “And neither am I.”

  Dear Universe,

  I would guesstimate that if the average human spirit weighs 13.8 pounds, mine is coming in around an ounce. There comes a point when you can’t operate from two separate worlds anymore. They have to line up, otherwise it’s impossible to function in either. Science dubs it an eclipse when the earth, moon, and sun form a line, casting shadows and obscuring each other, but there’s no specially named event for their collision. In other words, eclipses are cute. You can get special glasses for them. A collision, on the other hand, would be gruesome: no catchy phrase, no witnesses. You know the dinosaurs? No, you don’t. You know their fossils.

  12

  Days ’til prom: 49

  “OH MY GOD, IS EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT?” ABIGAIL ANSWERS when I call her on Sunday after a long sleep. “I was so worried.”

  “Yeah, everything’s okay.” Except that my dad hasn’t left his room, and anytime my mom or I bring him food, he says, “Get me out of this place. I want to go home.” His face is even angry when he sleeps. “I’m sorry I missed your show.”

  “Aw, thanks. Don’t even worry about missing it. Just like, what happened? I know it couldn’t be good if you missed the whole night.”

  I look up at the ceiling. When my projector isn’t on it’s just an expanse of black. “Um, my dad had this whole episode thing and we thought he was having a heart attack and yeah.”

  “Oh, Cham, I’m so sorry. That must’ve been terrible.”

  “It was a lot,” I say, recalling how steely his eyes were when he said I was a disappointment. “But how was Friday night? What did I miss? Was it fun?”

  “So fun! I mean not so fun,” she adds quickly. “It’s not like you missed anything big, and there’ll be plenty of other fun nights, like prom and stuff, so don’t worry about it, but, yeah, it was good.”

  “I saw the video. You broke it down as usual.”

  She laughs. “Thanks.”

  I open up my senior year time capsule and move the items around. “Did anyone even sleep? I saw the mats getting set up in the gym and people getting sleeping bags but—”

  “Hardly. I mean, it was probably four AM when that started.”

  “And how did superlatives go?”

  She pauses. For a second I wonder if we have a bad connection. “Hilary and I won Class Friendship,” she says finally.

  “Oh,” I stammer. “Congratulations.”

  “It’s just ’cause we’ve been friends so long, you know? It’s not that we’re closer than anyone else.”

  “Yeah, totally, one sec.” I stuff the time capsule box back under my bed and cough a little, not knowing what to say.

  After a few seconds she says, “So have you talked to Gene? It must kinda suck that you didn’t get to your special night?”

  “Not yet. I feel really awkward about kicking him out of my house and kind of disappearing on the night we were supposed to do it.”

  “It was a family emergency, though.” Not when I kicked him out. “True. Hey, I saw like eight pictures with him and Helga together. It’s stupid to be jealous, right?”

  “Yeah… they were having some long talk ’cause they’re in this group project and—”

  She goes on and on about how security has to come from “inside oneself.” Then she catches me up on everything I missed. Doug hooked up with Jared. Danika snuck booze in and almost got caught ’cause she was too drunk again.

  It’s too much. I need a shuttle back to that world to comprehend that it exists. I just don’t know if there’s a vehicle that can move fast through dark space.

  After Abigail and I hang up, I torture myself by looking through more pictures of the night. I know I have an e-mail from Evelyn about my essay, but I just don’t see how I can focus on that when there’s this picture of Abigail and Hilary receiving their big BFF hearts. Oh, and Gene with Helga again. Speaking of, why the hell is Gene being so distant? I know it wasn’t cool to keep him out of my house, but Abigail’s right. Family emergencies should be a free pass to be an impolite hostess, secretive girlfriend, and whatever else I need to be to keep my worlds separate.

  Nervous text exchange with Gene that I just want to get over with:

  I’m so sorry about Friday night. I know I owe you an explanation. Can we talk? C

  G I need a little space, Cham.

  Well wanna go for a run? C

  Sorry, I guess that’s not really space. C

  Ok, guess I’ll just see you in school tomorrow. C

  We’re okay right? C

  Days ’til prom: 48

  Selfie in the girls’ bathroom, where a certain girlfriend attempts to explain her rudeness with the help of her friends who are better friends with each other than they are with her (not an opinion, but a fact the whole school voted on): high ponytail, freshly brushed teeth, honest eyes.

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine after you talk in person,” Hilary says, handing me a bag from inside her backpack. “Do you want to borrow some of my makeup?”

  “Yeah, Cham, you just need some color,” Abigail chimes in, pinching my cheeks in front of the mirror.

  I splash water on my face. Once Abigail’s passed me a paper towel, I burrow my face in its starchy brown ill-absorbent material.

  “Seriously, you’re welcome to any of my makeup,” Hilary says.

  “Is that a hint?” I ask.

  Hilary shakes her head innocently, then unzips the makeup bag. “Well, okay, maybe a small one.”

  Abigail frowns and tilts my face toward hers. “It looks like you haven’t slept since you hit puberty.”

  Hilary swipes blush on me and takes out some tinted lip balm. When she opens it I say, “Ew, what is that?”

  It smells like vanilla got it on with cinnamon and had a baby called strawberry fields. You know when too much of a good thing becomes an awful thing?

  “I hate makeup,” I say, fanning my now-stinging cheeks.

  “Well, sometimes it’s good to
expose yourself to the things you hate,” Abigail says. “You know, for personal-growth reasons.”

  Hilary attacks my lip with the balm and dons her British accent. “You’re gonna love it, darling, just love it.” She pockets it again and heads out of the bathroom. “Good luck, Cham darling.”

  “You got this,” Abigail says knowingly, and slaps my butt as she follows Hilary out.

  “Okay, thanks, bye.”

  I wait until she’s closed the door to turn to my reflection. After a few seconds of licking my sticky lips, I nod and say, “Okay, time to find Gene.” A girl flushes the toilet and comes out of the last stall with a creeped-out look on her face. Like she’s never talked to the mirror before? Please. I have my best conversations with things that don’t answer.

  The lunch line is short, and I order two chicken sandwiches just so I can have two sides of Tater Tots. When I catch sight of Gene at the other end of the cafeteria, and he catches sight of me, it’s not the war-separated lovers’ look I had hoped for. It’s confusion. Distance. He says something to Doug, who turns around to look at me, and then Gene walks the perimeter of the cafeteria toward me. I do the same, past tables of people separated by grade and interest, even though we’re probably separated by much less than we think.

  “Hey,” I say to Gene when I reach the table where he always sits.

  “Hi,” he says, hands in his pockets.

  “How are you?”

  “Um, you know, okay.” He sits down and I pull a chair toward his. We’re on the outskirts of the cafeteria, but I feel like we’re on the outskirts of two separate universes.

  “So what happened?” he asks. “You kicked me out of your house and pretty much disappeared all weekend. I had no idea—”

  “I know, I’m sorry.”

  “Like that was really shitty.”

  “I know, but please, just listen.” I reach for his hand, but he pulls away. The lines on my palm don’t get a chance to cross the lines on his. “I promise it wasn’t just me screwing with you. My dad has this health issue that’s really hard to talk about, so I had to go home and be with him, but then we ended up having to go to the hospital and—”

  “I don’t get it, though,” he says. “You still could have told me something instead of pushing me out.”

  “No, I really couldn’t, at least not then, but everything’s okay now, well not okay, but—”

  I drift off, he picks at some foreign object on the table between us. “Well, I’m glad things are better, but I have to tell you something too,” he says apologetically.

  “What?”

  He looks down at his hands. “There was this thing with Helga at Senior Night.” I see her across the cafeteria with Rose and a few other girls from the dance team. No no no no no. “And, um, well, it’s just that I kind of think—” He finally looks up from his hands, and his voice goes up like it’s a question I’m supposed to answer. “I kind of think that maybe we should break up, ’cause Helga and I kind of kissed?”

  “What?” I jerk away from him and my elbow ends up in the ketchup on my tray. It’s a minefield, sitting this close in the cafeteria, but we are soldiers of love. Or so I thought.

  “I’m sorry, Cham, but I was upset Friday night and I started talking to Helga—”

  I back my chair up into the chaos of the cafeteria. “Helga Helga?” As in the German exchange student who tongued a hot dog roll in front of the whole senior class? Yes, it was hot, but c’mon. Anyone can tongue a hot dog roll.

  “She opened up to me about how hard it is being so far away from home, and I was really comfortable talking to her about stuff too, and we ended up talking for like hours—”

  “So while I was at the hospital with my parents, you were with another girl?”

  He blushes. “Well, yeah, but you pushed me away—”

  “BECAUSE MY DAD WAS SICK.” I clench my fist and stare at my chicken patty. If it weren’t dead already, I’d murder it.

  “Cham, I didn’t mean for it to be like that.”

  “We were going to do it this weekend. And now, two days later, we’re breaking up?”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m really sorry.”

  “I can’t believe you.”

  “You’re the one who was acting so sketchy,” he says exasperatedly. “You never let me come in when I pick you up, even when it takes you forever to get in the car because those boots lace up all the way to your knee. I mean, you literally pushed me out of your house the other day, and I don’t know, I have this feeling you’re not letting me in.”

  “Not letting you in?” But what if it’s a mess inside? What if keeping you out is the neighborly thing to do?

  “And that’s fine, ’cause like this is just a fun high school thing, but then we should have fun. We’re graduating soon and going to college. It’s not like—” He loosens his tie and doesn’t look at me as he says, “What I mean is, high school is almost over. I realized when I was talking to Helga that I want to have fun for the rest of it, not be tied to one person, you know?”

  I peel the bun from the chicken patty, feeling its meatiness between my fingers. Then I wind up and slap him across the face with it. The grease coating my fingers feels damn good.

  “What the hell!” he cries, jumping back out of his chair. He’s touching his face like he’s a burn victim, but the patty was lukewarm. “Are you kidding me?”

  A few people nearby gasp/laugh, which is a combination of Oh shit! and LOL. They point their phones at me, but I can’t stop my hands. I pick up a handful of Tater Tots and whip them at him one by one: assault by tiny compact potatoes. I keep firing my deep-fried ammunition, but the laughter does something to me. Suddenly my eyes are burning.

  “Come on, Cham. Those are too good to waste on him,” Abigail says, coming up behind me and gently pulling me away. “Get back to your lunches,” she directs the gawkers, shooing their stares with her hand. “Mind your goddamn business, okay?”

  “Psycho,” some guy behind me says.

  “Fuck off,” I say to no one and everyone. One of the lunch aides is headed toward me, shaking her head. I turn around and weave through tables, thinking that the faster I run, the faster I’ll disappear. And it’s true to an extent. The sooner my feet hit the floor, the sooner I’ll get to the place where no one can see me. And if no one was there to see me, did my heart really break at all?

  13

  Days ’til prom: Still 48

  IT’S CHILLY AND GRAY WHEN I BURST OUT OF THE BUILDING. Even in my skirt and combat boots, running feels as good as hell, just me and my feet coming down on the ground, getting far, far away from Gene and school and everything else in that world.

  “God fucking dammit,” I yell, then run faster, past the fire station and the sub shop and the dog-grooming place. The air smells like mud and new things being born in mud. Instead of feeling refreshed, I feel like I’m under mud too. Mr. Garcia gave me five days of detention. Five! The world just has no sympathy sometimes. Gene kissed someone else. My worlds finally got in the way of each other. Everything’s coming apart. Where am I going? Where do people go?

  I keep going past the center of town, toward the office buildings, the strip malls, the dump. The muscles in my legs burn as I run up a sand hill in the back of a parking lot. The hill is high enough that I can maybe figure out where to go from here. When I get to the top and the only view is more parking lots and sand and office buildings, Evelyn’s voice rings in my head, pouring her heart out about philosophy: It’s not just an academic subject. It’s the consciousness we bring to our lives. I laugh out loud in between gasps of catching my breath.

  Suddenly I get it. People don’t ask questions because they want to give another generation of kids too much homework to do. People ask questions because they’re scared and confused and lonely and exhausted and tiny and outraged and at one point really, really unsure of everything they never thought to question. The universe is wild and chaotic and untrustworthy and for some reason we’re
here in the middle of it ordering lattes.

  Dear Universe,

  AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO JUST REALIZED THIS IS FUCKING ABSURD?

  “Cham?” my mom says when I get home. My feet are more blister than skin, and I leave my combat boots at the door. “Would you like to tell me why I got a call from school?” she asks, leaning against the doorway of the mudroom.

  I sigh. “It was just a week of detention from stupid Mr. Garcia.”

  “Detention?” my mom says incredulously. She grabs the bottle of Pledge off the floor and sprays the area by our feet. “What detention?”

  “Um, just a small five-day penalty in the grand scheme of things. I didn’t even hear Mr. Garcia give it to me; school just sent an e-mail. Like how impersonal do you get?”

  She makes a tsking noise and continues spraying the floor as she makes her way into the living room. I figure I’d better follow her. “It was your English teacher who called, and it wasn’t about detention. She says you haven’t turned in your college essay, and she’s very worried about you.” I sink into the couch and she sits next to me. “I know I haven’t been focused enough on your schoolwork, but I thought you had it under control.” She looks at me with her asymmetrical eyebrows, which is exactly where I got them from. “I’m guessing that if you haven’t finished your essay, you haven’t finished college applications.”

  I shake my head and she sighs. “You said you were going to do them a month ago. I need you to tell me what’s going on in your little world over there.” Which one? “What was this detention about?”

  I dig my knuckles into the balls of my feet, then dab at the blisters lining my achilles. “Gene kissed someone else,” I say, my face quivering. “And I got a little mad and—”