Dear Universe

by Florence Gonsalves

  “It’s worrying about not being invited to things like sleepovers and parties and bowling nights and movie dates.” I look at Abigail. I didn’t know she worried about those things.

  I pause, then say more seriously, “Seventeen is being very aware of this thing called other people’s eyes and what you look like in them and who you really are when you’re alone at night and your phone just died. Seventeen is a lot of mornings cursing alarm clocks and wanting so much to tell someone something, but no one’s invented the vocabulary for it yet, so it sits in your throat like a bolus of FUUUUUUCKKKK!”

  “FUUUUUUCKKKK!” Abigail yells back.

  “Seventeen is the suspicion that an emoji understands you better than your own parents. It’s having to write a stupid college essay, when instead of trying to answer fake questions, you could actually be asking real ones.”

  The drums wind down and Abigail waves hurriedly at me. I put my face very close to the camera. There’s no way we’re sending this to Evelyn, but it matters even if no one sees it but us. “Seventeen is Cham about to turn eighteen and she’s officially asking the universe what the hell she’s supposed to do. She will donate a boob if she has to, just show her a sign, a flash of brilliance, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. It could be a freaking tampon applicator, something so that she knows. Because she wants to know.” I lean in closer so it’s only my blue lips filling the screen. “She’s ready.”

  18

  Days ’til graduation: 11

  FOR MOST OF SENIOR YEAR, I COULDN’T WAIT TO CHARGE OUT the doors of the Gill School and flash the world because I did it. I graduated high school. Now that it’s actually happening, though, it’s less of a tits-out situation and more of a shit-my-plaid-skirt situation. Everyone’s talking about college and gap years and a summer spent backpacking the edge of the freaking universe, but do any of them have a dad who may or may not live through the summer?

  The good news is that as long as I don’t think about the end, it’s marvelous. The teachers in all my classes besides English have officially stopped bothering to teach. The window of opportunity to educate has closed, and every senior is standing behind it, smiling and waving. (Okay, some people are making obscene hand gestures. Others are perfecting a good old pants-down-ass-up mooning.)

  English is another story, of course. I sent Evelyn the video Abigail and I made of my college essay, but she hasn’t said anything about it, which is either a great sign or a dismal one. I’ve put it out of my mind because we’ve gone into full-blown final-project mode. The cool thing is that Evelyn gives us class time to work on it, which, let’s be honest, means do anything but it. The less cool thing is it’s due in a week, and Cham’s Personal Philosophy is currently a three-word document: Cham’s Personal Philosophy. It’s in a really nice font, though.

  “How have you written so much?” I ask Abigail in class on Friday as she scrolls through what could be an ebook’s worth of work.

  “I keep thinking about the A I’m going to get so I graduate high school without a single B.” Gag me with a compostable spork. “You just have to get some words down. Even if you hate thinking about philosophy and life and stuff, just write something down. It gets easier after that.”

  “I have written—”

  “Titles don’t count. No matter how long you spend trying different fonts.”

  I pause and pick at something under my chair that could be gum. Brendan sits on his desk, paging through a copy of Caligula.

  “Actually, I don’t mind thinking about this stuff at all,” I say. “I kind of like it. I just don’t want to do anything more than think about it.”

  Abigail looks behind her. “How have we not talked about the fact that Brendan was at your house.” She adds knowingly, “I bet getting out of high school is going to be really good for him.”

  He sees us looking at him and stands up. I feel something weird when he walks over. Like nervous? Nah, probably just hungry.

  “Hey, Abigail, hey, Cham,” he says. I look up and he meets my eyes. I look away quickly and attempt a garbled sound that I swear is a greeting. Abigail looks at me like Excuse me?

  There’s a tapping on my desk and I turn around. “Can I talk to you in the hall?” Evelyn asks. “We’re about to transition to silent thinking time, but I wanna chat a bit before then.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  Abigail does the sign of the cross over her chest, and I follow Evelyn out of the room.

  The posters in the hallway are different now that school is almost over. The GET YOUR TICKETS TO PROM signs have been replaced with GET YOUR CAP AND GOWN signs. Apparently, you have to buy tickets to go to your own graduation, which is one of eight thousand reasons why I’ve decided I’m not going. When they hear about the buy-your-own-tickets scam, I’m sure my parents will understand. For sure.

  “I got your e-mail,” Evelyn says as she closes the door and traps me in the large open space of the hall. “I’m sorry to hear that your dad is sick.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I can definitely extend the deadline on your essay when you’re having such a hard time at home, and I’m glad to hear you got some tutoring on it, but the video won’t work.”

  “Darn,” I say. I can see over Evelyn’s shoulder into the classroom. Brendan’s got a fortress of books stacked on his desk.

  “Get a written version to me by the last day of class, okay?” Evelyn says, obstructing my view with a subtle shift of her body. “I don’t want you to miss out on Nicaragua.”

  I turn toward the door, hoping that’s all she wanted to talk about. “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  She looks at me with those shovel eyes that threaten to probe your depths and churn up all your funky soil. “How’s your final project coming? Have you started your outside research?”

  “Um.”

  “Never mind, don’t answer that. Do you know what you’d like your statement to be?”

  I look down at my feet: two combat boots nearly covering two rather sallow-looking socks.

  “I don’t know,” I say, gazing down the hall to where a pair of freshmen have clambered up the stairs and are starting to make out. “Literally, I have no idea.”

  “Get to class,” Evelyn calls to them, then smiles at me with a shake of her head. “Living in the questions is good.”

  Why do teachers always speak in sentences that don’t make sense?

  “How about if for now you don’t worry about forming a cohesive project. Just write down whatever questions you have, no matter how small or seemingly silly.”

  “Like just write down all my questions?” She nods. “Sure, I can do that.” That’s the most manageable thing she’s asked of me all year.

  “Good! I’ve been thinking about what you said about high school and beyond high school and the moon. I like that you went there, Cham,” she says as I subtly inch toward the classroom door, the noise inside having gotten louder and louder as Evelyn’s been out here talking to me. “A lot of people just want to get a good grade, and they’re afraid of offending me or something, but sometimes I think you have to be a little offensive to really learn something.” She pauses and reconsiders. “Well, maybe not. All I’m saying is that a lot of philosophy came out of realizing just how strange normal life is. Keep thinking. And don’t forget to be researching an outside source too, okay?”

  “Sure,” I sigh, glaring up at the sign reminding seniors to get caps and gowns ordered before graduation. “Likelihood that I’ll pass your class?”

  A particularly loud laugh reaches the hallway, and Evelyn opens the door. “Quiet down, everyone,” she says, then turns to me. “Just give it everything you can, okay? I know you want to go to Nicaragua.”

  “Right, yes, of course.”

  Because I definitely want to be stuck in a foreign country for six weeks with my ex-boyfriend and no way of knowing if my dad is dead.

  “You got this, Cham. I believe in you.”

  “Thanks,” I say, lingering in the
hallway and suddenly not wanting to leave. “I’m not totally positive what there is to believe, but I appreciate the faith.”

  Dear Universe,

  1. Does this shirt make my boobs look flat?

  2. Should I really wear sneakers while running, or are bare feet the soul of moving?

  3. What the hell do I do now that everyone’s moving forward and my dad’s health is moving backward and I’m moving at 8.0 on the treadmill, clocking mile after mile, but never getting any farther than my own basement?

  Days ’til graduation: 6

  “Here, Cham, don’t forget your papers and your deposit when you go to school,” my mom says after dinner one night during the last week of school. She hands me a large packet covered in red ink that swears she won’t sue the Gill School if I get killed by the spirit of volunteering.

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “I talked to Mr. Garcia,” my mom says, getting the Swiffer out of the hall closet and sweeping with a bit of a swing to her hips. “Seems like Nicaragua just depends on this English assignment. You can do it, sweetie. Want me to help you?”

  “Uh, that’s okay.” I dart around her, not wanting to interrupt this romantic moment between her and the mop. “Where’s Dad?”

  “In his room, I think.”

  I walk in and he’s in his wheelchair in the corner, holding Motorcycle Maintenance. His glasses are on and he’s squinting at the text.

  “Hi, Cham,” he says, voice clear and eyes bright.

  “Hi, whatcha doing?”

  “Giving this old book a try again. I feel good today, but—” He shakes his head. “It’s too…” He pauses and taps his finger against the book. “Mmm, I’m not processing things like I used to. Anyway, enough about me. How are you?”

  “Mom gave me my paperwork for Nicaragua,” I offer.

  “Nicaragua?”

  “The volunteer trip thing.”

  “Oh, right.” He frowns and looks out the window. I doubt he does remember about Nicaragua. “I don’t know if I want you going alone to a foreign country where you don’t know the language. I only have one daughter.”

  “That we know of,” I say, and smile wickedly.

  “Chamomile Myles.”

  “Sorry.” I pick a piece of lint off my sweater. “You know, Dad, I don’t have to go to Nicaragua. I could stay here.”

  “So it is dangerous?” he asks.

  “What? No. I promise, the chaperones have our asses covered.”

  “Don’t swear, Cham, it’s not becoming.”

  “Sorry,” I sigh. “I just mean with your motorcycle accident and everything, I didn’t know if you wanted to spend some time together this summer or something.”

  He locks and unlocks his wheelchair, then looks up at me blankly. He’s not getting that I just want his permission to leave, but of course that’s not what I want at all. He’d never ask me to stay. So what am I really asking? And who?

  “Cham,” my dad says, wheeling closer to me. “Why would you want to sit around with your old man and watch Netflix for the whole summer?” He looks over at the TV like Can you believe this girl?

  “We don’t have to just watch TV,” I say, suddenly frustrated and wishing I hadn’t brought this up at all. “I could read to you about the boring art of motorcycle maintenance. I was probably supposed to read that like two months ago for school anyway.”

  “Don’t tell me that, Cham,” my dad says, picking the book up off the table, then putting it back down at a slightly different orientation. “You loved learning so much as a kid. You know you skipped kindergarten?”

  I gasp. “You mean I taught myself how to finger-paint?” He laughs, and I try to say what I mean, which I guess is that time isn’t infinite, not for any of us, but it seems even more finite for him. What comes out is “I’m serious, Dad. I could stay.”

  He wheels toward me and pretends to plow me over with his chair. “For me? Nope.”

  My mom pokes her head in, cleaning bucket in her rubber-gloved hand. “What’s going on in here?” she asks, searching the room for dust, lint, and hairballs.

  “Nothing. Cham was just packing her Nicaragua bag,” my dad says. “Can you bring Mace on an airplane?”

  “Sure,” I say eagerly. “I’ll just hide it in my machete case.”

  The two of them laugh, and then my mom prods me with her bucket.

  “Don’t you have an essay to finish?” She pushes me out of the room, and my dad says something about me “finishing high school on a strong note,” and before I can escape, it’s just me, my mom, and the unfinished essay in my room.

  I take my laptop from my desk and hold it like a baby. Maybe if I coddle it properly, the Word document will grow up to be a strong, healthy essay.

  “I overheard you talking to Dad,” my mom says, leaning against the door to my room. “That was sweet of you to offer to stay, but you know we’d never want you to. You have a whole future ahead of you.”

  “I know,” I say, sinking onto my bed. “But it’s not that simple.”

  The silence between us holds a lot of silences that have come before. I feel a boulder in my throat. “I think I forget that he’s not just what’s happening to him,” I say.

  She sits on the edge of my bed with me and she kisses my forehead, moving a frizzy curl aside. “I know, baby. I know.”

  Suddenly I have so many flavors of bitter and sweet in my mouth that I can’t really taste anything, just coffee and honey, but much more than coffee and much more than honey. “Remember how he played Elvis Christmas songs every day one summer?” She nods. “And how he never remembered Valentine’s Day until the day after, so we always got double amounts of discounted chocolate?”

  My mom laughs and puts her arm around my shoulders. “I miss how he used to tell the same joke when I sang. ‘Don’t quit your day job, Judy!’”

  I giggle and lean into her more. At first all I smell is organic bleach and lavender, but then I get a hint of her perfume too. I close my eyes and say, “He doesn’t do that stuff or like the same things anymore, and I’m mad about that sometimes or I miss him.” I wipe my eyes. “I just want him to cook pancakes for dinner and drive the car around in the afternoon. I want to argue with him about using the push mower over the big gas-guzzling lawn mower. I want him to be the one locking the doors because, no offense, but you never remember.”

  “We get attached to people as they are, but people change,” my mom says, running her fingers through my hair.

  “I know.” I take a deep breath, but there’s still more in me. I guess when you don’t say anything for a long time, there comes a time when you have a lot to say. “I want to remember that he’s still all those things, but he’s also neighbors in the tree and shaking hands and broken bowls because he’s not not his sickness either. Do you know what I mean?”

  My mom nods. Her eyes are closed. Outside my window the stars are nailed to the sky and looking very sturdy up there, like completely unmoving dots of light. Her voice softens to nearly a whisper.

  “And then at some point he’s beyond all of these things, which you know already, because we all are.” She yawns and holds me tighter. “At least that’s what I believe.”

  19

  Days ’til graduation: 5

  ON MY LAST NIGHT OF HIGH SCHOOL, I STAY UP ALL NIGHT WITH Abigail’s copies of all the books we were supposed to read for English. She still has her sticky notes in them, and she gave me her class notes, so basically I’m going to do better than I possibly could’ve done on my own. I also have my dad’s copy of Zen and Motorcycle blah blah blah because Evelyn’s project description said DON’T FORGET TO USE AN OUTSIDE SOURCE! I’m probably just gonna Google a bunch of quotes from it, but maybe I’ll read it someday. Or absorb it through osmosis. Or take up motorcycling. Just kidding.

  STATUS OF COLLEGE ESSAY: 18 percent complete

  TITLE: The Sicknesses We Have

  SPOILER ALERT: It’s about how my dad is sick and humans are sick, but talking about it any
more is going to make me sick.

  ANXIETY LEVEL: Get Xanax @now.

  STATUS OF CLASS PROJECT: A little nonexistent, though Evelyn wrote on the top of my project description Live the questions! So at least that gave me a vague starting point.

  CURRENT MATERIALS: Like six thousand questions that range from Why is my left nipple starting to grow a black hair? to What happens when we die and get eaten by wolves?

  My projector is humming, but the stars aren’t visible because all the lights in my room are on. I’m surrounded by a case of Red Bulls, with my English materials splayed out on the floor. My strategy was to finally read Caligula with the hope that Camus King-of-Misery-and-Nothingness would inspire my personal philosophy and give me a passing grade in English. At an unknown wee hour of the morning, I finish the last page with itchy eyes, then throw the book to my floor on top of piles of things I’ve accumulated over the last week, or perhaps my whole lifetime.

  “Are you serious?” I ask my projector, then call Abigail ASAP. I’m so tired that I’m not tired, just terribly awake and agitated.

  “Cham, it’s so early,” she groans when she answers.

  I drain my sixth Red Bull with a loud slurp and bounce up and down on the edge of my bed. “I’m sorry, but why did Evelyn spend so long on Camus? Camus freaking sucks.”

  “I was having a dream about half men, half turtles. Can I please resume it?”

  “There are like a billion more important questions we could be asking than whether life is worth living!”

  There’s silence on the other end. My alarm clock professes the time in neon blue lights: Way Past Cham’s Bedtime.

  “Jesus, Cham, there’s like ten hours until class. What are you going to do?” Abigail asks. “And if you don’t know, can I please resume my mutant male turtle dream?”